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The Incident in Netflix’s Gabby Petito Documentary That Most Shocked Me

Y.L. Wolfe
Liberty
Published in
16 min readMar 6, 2025

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A young woman and man on a “van life” adventure at the beach
Photo by KoolShooters from Pexels

They were pulled over by a police officer who pursued them after a 911 call reported a potential domestic violence situation.

“We drove by him,” the caller said after stating his location. “…a gentleman was slapping the girl.”

While in pursuit of the white Transit van identified by the caller, the van abruptly hit a curb before pulling over, alarming the police officer, whose surprised reaction was caught by body cam footage.

Once he’d parked his vehicle, he got out of the car, approached the van on the passenger side, then asked the occupants to turn off the motor.

And there she was, Gabrielle Petito, a slight, blonde 22-year-old woman, crying and demonstrating clear signs of emotional distress.

This is the scene presented in the recent Netflix documentary, American Murder: Gabby Petito. Like most Americans, I knew the story well, having followed it when it happened in 2021. But I’d never seen this body cam footage from the incident that took place in Moab, Utah.

I wanted to be relieved, as if I didn’t know the ending to this story. Someone had called 911 to alert the police that Brian…

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Y.L. Wolfe
Y.L. Wolfe

Written by Y.L. Wolfe

Adventuring, nesting, and raising hell in middle age. Welcome to my second act. | Substack: https://ylwolfe.substack.com | Email: hello@ylwolfe.com