(NewsNation now) — Brian Laundry’s sister, Cassie Laundry, answered questions from a small group of protesters outside her home on Monday and explained some of the timeline around her brother’s disappearance and Gabe Pettito’s death.
video, subscribed Exclusively with Nexstar’s NewsNation, by a man who claimed to know the Pettito family.
In the video, Cassie Laundry confirmed that Brian returned to Florida from the western United States sometime on or before August 17, five days after he and Gabe Pettito were arrested and separated by police in Moab, Utah.
The group asked if Cassie Laundry believed her brother killed Gabe Pettito, and whether she believed he was still alive. Her answers to both questions were the same: “I don’t know.”
She told the group she didn’t know anything was wrong until police began questioning her family on 9/11. She said she saw Brian Laundry on September 1 when he and their parents arrived at the Mustang family, not the van he and Pettito owned. She was traveling the country. She also saw him on family vacation on September 6, but said she had no reason to suspect any problems.
Cassie Laundry spoke with the group for nearly 20 minutes, acknowledging that doing so likely wouldn’t satisfy their lawyers, but said the protesters’ insistence was upsetting her children and neighbors.
“It’s not what we want to do,” Cassie Laundry said. “This is not the way we want the world to find out when we are angry and upset. But I cannot make my children cry for three days in a row.”
She also said the media misunderstood her answer to a question about the last time she saw Brian Laundry. In an interview with ABC News on September 16, she said, “I haven’t been able to talk to him.” This meant that she hadn’t heard anything from him since Pettito’s disappearance.
You can watch the full, unedited interview in The Player below.
But on Monday she said that answer was in response to a question along the lines of “What’s the weirdest thing about all of this?” Not “Have you talked to your brother since Pettito disappeared?”
Family attorney Stephen Bertolino He said on Friday that Cassie Laundry She was with the family at Fort De Soto on September 6, which she confirmed to the group outside her home.
She said she was unable to speak with her family during the investigation, and criticized Bertolino’s statement.
“I’m on the boat where my family ignores me and my family’s lawyer puts me under the bus,” she said.
When asked about the comment, Bertolino said, “I do not represent Cassie Laundry. Cassie’s comments can only be attributed to the press’s misrepresentation of my words and my words, which were given only to clarify previous mischaracterization by the press, in the hope of further stirring up this tragic story.”
Someone in the group asked her what she thought when she started assembling the pieces on 9/11, but she said this was something she was “not allowed to answer.”
She said she has been “as baffled and astounding as everyone else” from her parents’ public silence thus far.
She also told the group that Brian Laundry was never violent or “abusive” towards Pettito or anyone else she saw.
During the exchange, Cassie Laundrie asked the group to stop harassing their neighborhood.
“The thing about it is that we know Gaby’s family,” said the man who recorded the video.
“We are,” Kassie Laundry replied. “What do you want us to do? Cooperate with the police. We are not supposed to talk to anyone and you make my children cry.”
“We would like to give [Brian Laundrie’s] “Nephews are answering when they can see their grandparents again,” said Cassie Laundry’s husband, James Luix. “When you know, [they can] see their uncle or something. He was their hero.”
At the end of the video, the group vowed to leave and not return.