Former FBI agent says Brian Laundrie will likely be found in his ‘comfort zone’

Former FBI agent Terry Turchie said fugitives like Brian Laundrie “tend to try to figure out” how they can reach their “comfort zone” when they are on the run and often find themselves in these places.

Laundrie, 23, is wanted for debit card fraud and is a person of interest in the homicide of his 22-year-old fiancée, Gabby Petito, who went missing on September 11. Laundrie’s family last saw him on September 13. .

“People don’t change because they become fugitives,” Turchie, who spent a year in the mountains of North Carolina between 1998 and 1999 in search of Olympic bomber Eric Robert Rudolph, told Fox News. “They tend to try to figure out how they can land in the comfort zone.”

Laundrie loved hiking and traveling, so some experts have suggested he may be in the wild or on the road, and several potential sightings have added some credibility to these theories. Others suggested that the fugitive might be closer to home and could get help from another person.

Laundrie’s sister, Cassandra, described her brother in an interview as a “poor” survivor.

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“Clearly he’s not in a camp or cave somewhere on hard, cold ground or… water infested with snakes, alligators. He’s somewhere he’s probably taken care of. “said Turchie. “When you see how he got home after something obviously happened, it kind of tells you what he’s probably doing now.

Laundrie and Petito were driving across the country in a van when Petito disappeared. Laundrie returned to her North Port, Florida home without Petito on September 1. Ten days later, Petito’s parents reported his disappearance. Laundrie’s parents reported him missing on September 17, but recently said the last time they saw him was September 13.

The FBI found Petito’s remains in Moose, Wyoming, where the couple were visiting Grand Teton National Park on September 19.

Turchie explained how a key player in the FBI’s search for Rudolph in the 1990s was a man who shared some of Rudolph’s interests. Rudolph had spent time talking to the man at his health food store in North Carolina, and the man eventually gave the FBI some useful information about Rudolph after initially refusing to speak to the agency because he was fiercely anti-government.

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The laundry can also be surrounded by people he knows or trusts. Driving to distant places is “exactly the sort of thing it could very well be what he is doing,” but he would have to have the finances to do it, Turchie said. A minor traffic error could also make “its fleeting run quite short”.

While all fugitives are different, they “all get tired eventually, and many of them ended up on the run for … over a decade,” Turchie said, adding that he didn’t think Laundrie would be on the run for that long.

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“But the formula is essentially the same,” the former FBI agent said of the search process. “You interview as many people who need this person as you can, you keep following that. You talk to neighbors, friends and you look for anything. [the fugitive] could have said for a while that he didn’t have that guard where he hadn’t done anything. “

These clues, according to Turchie, will ultimately lead those responsible to discover Laundrie in the same way they helped them find other fugitives.