Monster hunt / Man hunt

The Gabby Petito case and internet sleuthing...

Thank you so much for your lovely messages from Friday. I had a really, really nice weekend. Today’s newsletter is a bit of a heavy one - it’s about violence against women, rape culture, and family and intimate violence. Please skip it if you feel fragile right now. Aroha nui x

A homicide and missing persons case has completely taken over parts of the internet and the United States. I wanted to write about why that might be - what attracts people to hunt men they view as monsters.

Gabby Petito, young, beautiful, and white, went missing on August 27 of this year while travelling in the Bridger–Teton National Forest in a van with her boyfriend. Her body was found on September 19. Her boyfriend is on the run. It matters that she’s pretty and white because that’s why the case has gotten so much media attention.

According to this article - in Wyoming, the state where Petito's body was found, only 18% of indigenous female homicide victims get newspaper coverage, compared with 51% for white female and male victims, according to a state report.

Between 2011 and September 2020, more than 400 indigenous women and girls were reported missing in Wyoming, according to the report.

It’s not necessarily the case that I’m obsessed with following. It’s the way it’s being followed that I’m obsessed with.

Instagram and TikTok users have devoted weeks to providing updates on the case. Almost 24-7 coverage. TikTok “psychics” have racked up millions of views saying they have spoken to Gabby Petito’s spirit. They all seem to genuinely believe they’re solving a crime that is just fairly open and shut.

These “citizen investigators” or “citizen journalists”, as they often call themselves, are continually looking for a motive for the boyfriend Brian Laundrie. They have posted that he listens to sad songs, reads a lot of Chuck Palahniuk, and likes creepy art.

You really have to see it to believe it - thousands of Instagram stories, round-the-clock, screen shots of screen shots, analysis of Pinterest accounts, zoomed-in videos allegedly showing bodies and grave diggers. These are all on accounts that previously only hosted recipes and Live, Laugh, Love tiles. It’s beyond bizarre.

They’re convinced Brian Laundrie is sending them clues as to why he (probably/allegedly) murdered Gabby Petito. They are sure they’re seeing things the FBI, police, and investigative journalists cannot see.

This is not a new phenomenon of course. Lots of cases capture the public’s interest - but what I find particularly interesting is that this is a domestic violence case.

Most sleuthers seem to not understand that his motive (if he did it) is likely simply that he’s a violent man who (allegedly) often abused his partners physically and emotionally. They were in a partnership where there was domestic violence. As has been reported many times, the vast majority of men who kill their partner have at least one violence conviction.

Men who are violent with their partners often eventually kill them. The motive is the same motive they have for hitting their partner. In fact, criminology expert Dr Jane Monckton Smith studied 372 killings in the UK and found there’s an eight-stage pattern, a timeline of sorts, toward killing their partner.

Online “sleuths” are obsessed with revealing and interpreting “clues” when the real clues are simply Dr Monckton Smith’s timeline. Brian Laundrie had attracted police attention due to his treatment of Gabby Petito.

Moab Police Department pulled over their van on 12 August after it was speeding and hit a curb. Gabby Petito is hysterical. Brian Laudrie is calm and laughs with police. Body cam footage shows Gabby Petito saying he grabbed her face, the [male] officers discuss a witness account of Brian Laudrie shoving Gabby Petito. Petito, shaking and sobbing, tells officers she hit Laundrie. 

The clues to the potential for murderous behaviour are in the way men treat their partners. They’re not in books or Instagram art. They’re not hidden. They’re right there - in a system that is often complicit in ignoring them.

But this simple explanation seems to be too difficult to face head-on. A monster hunt is far more captivating than a simple manhunt where the answers are in looking at the way we as a society tolerate and accept violence against women, particularly in intimate relationships. Discussing openly toxic masculinity and the everyday sexism and often Government-sponsored (Texas ahem) misogyny and violence toward women is hard. People want a mad-man, a “sociopath”, an aberration.

People look for monsters because they want to believe a monster is behind the murder of a young woman who had her whole life ahead of her. But the reality is - it’s not a monster, it’s just a man.

And once the hunt is over, there will still be more lives snuffed out by gendered violence.

On average, nearly 20 people per minute are physically abused by an intimate partner in the United States. During one year, this equates to more than 10 million women and men. One in three women and one in four men have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner.* Overwhelmingly this violence is carried out by cisgender men. So why are folks so convinced Brian Landrie is an evil genius?

Ending gender-based violence requires all of our efforts and an enormous part of that is facing the reality of it. But, that is easier said than done.

In early-2019, a man who I once considered a mentor went to court for rape. After the case, it was revealed that he was a serial rapist - preying on vulnerable elderly people.

He’s not the first rapist or violent man I’ve known. Like most women, I have had friends who have had violent partners. I’ve lost a friend to murder at the hands of a man - she was 16. But all of those men were men I recognised as violent men.

I wrote about hearing what he did: “I felt sick to my stomach. My heart broke for the victim and her family. And then I wondered if there had been a mistake. Surely not him.

“For me, it was an unwelcome insight into how we look at, or minimise, rape in the rape culture that we live in.

“For context, there is no doubt he attacked someone, he has been found guilty and is guilty. But in my head I immediately began to look for answers. Did he black out? Did he not know what was happening? Was he having a psychotic episode?”

I was looking for answers but I had somehow begun the process of minimising of his actions. This was an open and shut case.

It was a lesson to me on how even when you devote your life to talking about this stuff, it’s still ingrained in us to believe in monsters and monstrous acts over entitlement and a culture of misogyny that still puts women at the bottom of the heap. I wanted to explain it. I wanted to understand why I didn’t know. I also knew that I wanted to see a monster. This was a monstrous act. He must be a monster.

The Gabby Petito case reminds me that we do this even when the (alleged) culprit fits the bill of the entitled misogynist who feels he owns his partner. Without meaning to (at all), we minimise the actions of these men by enacting the monster clause.

A book made him do it. The music made him do it. He must be in a cult. He’s sending us clues because he’s a mastermind! It’s all very similar to victim blaming language. And I know that even saying that will horrify the sleuthers who truly believe they’re doing important work. But I can’t help but feel it in my bones that it’s the wrong way to approach this.

It’s an addictive and reassuring fantasy to cling onto the idea of monsters. Aberration means a characteristic that deviates from the normal type. It is comforting.

Far more comforting than acknowledging that there’s no mystery. Every day men attack women, and every day they kill them.

*NZ stats: Cops attend family violence incidents every four minutes. Last year, police attended about 105,000 domestic violence incidents. If all incidents were reported, they would have attended at least 525,000 calls for help.

Rest in peace Gabby Petito and all victims of violence at the hands of men.