Gabby ‘was strangled by her killer’

LOS ANGELES: Gabby Petito, the young woman who died on an Instagram-chronicled road trip across the US with her boyfriend, was strangled and her death was a homicide, the coroner has said.

The body of the 22-year-old lay in the wilderness of Wyoming for up to a month before it was found in mid-September, Teton County coroner Brent Blue revealed.

“We hereby find the cause and manner of death to be: the cause of death by strangulation, and manner of death is homicide,” he said. “Our initial determination is that the body was in the wilderness for three to four weeks.”

Petito had quit her job and packed her life into a camper van for a cross-country adventure with Brian Laundrie, starting in July, documenting their journey in a stream of social media posts.

In images shared by the couple online they are all smiles – but Petito’s family filed a missingperson report on September 11 after she mysteriously vanished and Laundrie returned home to Florida in her van without her.

Laundrie, 23, was declared a “person of interest” in the case. He declined to co-operate with police before disappearing himself.

The FBI has launched a nationwide manhunt, appealing for anyone with information about his whereabouts to contact them.

There have been several reports of possible sightings, but so far he continues to evade capture.