3 Years After Gabby Petito's Death, Mom Says 'There's Never Going to Be Closure' (Exclusive)

Mar. 15, 2025

The Petito & Schmidt Families

Her body was discovered on Sept. 19 near a campground in Wyoming.

“We’re never going to feel like we have justice,” she adds. “There’s just nothing we can do to make us feel better, but what we can do is continue on with her legacy.”

Tara and Joe Petito, Nichole and Jim Schmidt.AP Photo/John Minchillo

AP Photo/John Minchillo

They have also championed the work of theBlack and Missing FoundationandMissing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Relatives, along with theNational Domestic Violence Hotline.

But continuing to move forward despite their grief can be difficult.

Last week, police body cam video was released that showed Laundrie’s parents Christopher and Roberta declining to talk to North Port police officers who showed up at their Florida home on Sept. 11, 2021, asking about the whereabouts of the 22-year-old budding YouTube blogger after a missing persons report was filed, perFOX News.

“I’m not talking to anybody, Christopher says.

“I watched it,” says Nichole about the body cam footage. “It made me sick. There’s no empathy. No compassion. I cried. … It just keeps going. Stuff coming out constantly and it’s been three years and there’s still more. It’s like the infomercial is, ‘Oh, wait, there’s more.’ I’m like, when is this going to stop?”

Nichole, who just traveled to Wyoming with Tara to speak at a domestic violence luncheon for the domestic violence advocacy groupSAFE Projectand sat on a panel at aNational Center For Victims of Crimepanel in Portland, says the foundation is currently working towards building a domestic violence awareness education program for schools. The program would be accessible to all students across the country at no cost to the schools.

“We want every kid to have access to education around healthy relationships, self-respect, boundaries, a healthy friendship, just learning all about how to be a healthy person,” she says. “I think that once we can have a program that’s cohesive across the country, it’s not going to happen overnight, but we’ll see it change in a few generations down the line — where people are going to be better for that after learning so young.”

The foundation is hoping to use technology to help them with their goal.  “We want to use maybe some module-based online platform where it would be easy for schools to just bring in and eventually turn it into something where teachers are trained and it’s mandatory in the schools from early ages all the way through those high school years,” she says.

“It’s an epidemic,” Nichole says about domestic violence. “It’s a crisis across the world. We’re doing the best we can, but we need to slow it down, stop it in its tracks, and the only way we’re going to do that is to get to the youth.”

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Raising awareness is key.

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go tothehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

source: people.com