On-lam Laundrie aid: expert

Brian Laundrie is likely hiding some place where he

is “being taken care of ” and isn’t camping in the vast Florida nature reserve where the manhunt for him is focused, a former top FBI counterterrorism official said Monday.

Terry Turchie, a former deputy assistant director of the FBI’s Counterterrorism Division, told Fox News that “people don’t change because they become a fugitive. They tend to try to figure out how they can land in the comfort zone.”

The former G-man, who retired from the bureau in 2001, said, “Clearly he’s not out in some camp or some cave somewhere on the hard, cold ground or … snake-, gator-infested water. He’s somewhere where he’s probably being taken care of.”

“When you see how he came running home after something obviously happened, that kind of tells you what he’s probably doing now,” he added.

Laundrie (pictured), 23, is the sole person of interest in his girlfriend Gabby Petito’s disappearance and death during the couple’s ill-fated cross-country trip.

The 22-year-old Long Island native vanished in late August and her body was found at a remote Wyoming campground Sept. 19, nearly three weeks after Laundrie returned home to Florida alone.

Authorities have focused their search at the 25,000-acre Carlton Reserve.

Turchie said all fugitives “tire eventually, and many of them ended up being on the run for … well over a decade,” adding that he does not believe Laundrie will remain on the lam for that long.

He said the search process for all fugitives is “essentially the same.”

“You interview as many people who need this person as you can, you continue following that. You talk to neighbors, friends and you look for anything [the fugitive] might have said during a time that he

didn’t have this guard up where he hadn’t done anything,” he told Fox News.