The massive search for Gabby Petito after the Florida woman vanished in September and was later found dead in a Wyoming national park has resulted in at least nine bodies of other missing people being discovered.
Authorities began searching for Petito when she was reported missing on September 11. Her body was found in Wyoming on September 19, two days after Laundrie, the sole person of interest in her death, disappeared from his home in Florida.
The search for Laundrie may have come to an end Wednesday when human remains were found in the Florida reserve where the prime suspect in her death had escaped.
But the national manhunt and suspected sightings of Laundrie by police everywhere from Florida to along the Appalachian trail to the West Coast have uncovered other tragic victims.
The most recent body found was that of 22-year-old Emily Ferlazzo in a case with shocking similarities to Petito’s. Ferlazzo was reported missing by her parents on Monday after her 41-year-old husband, Joseph Ferlazzo, returned to her parents’ house in New Hampshire to tell them he had not seen his wife since Saturday.
The couple were living in a small bus that they had renovated into a home and had driven to Vermont to celebrate their first wedding anniversary. The day after Emily was reported missing, Joseph allegedly confessed to shooting her in the end and dismembering her body in their camper.
Police located the camper that Joseph had ditched to discover bags of human remains, a handgun, and a handsaw. The human remains were sent to the medical examiner on Wednesday to be identified. Despite his earlier confession, Joseph pled not guilty on Wednesday.
Petito’s case can be credited in some capacity for three unrelated bodies that were found in different states on Saturday, October 9.
Human remains were found in a California desert on October 9 during a search for a missing New Jersey woman who disappeared June 28. Lauren Cho of Flemington, New Jersey, was in Yucca Valley, which is where she was last seen, with her friends and former boyfriend.
Friends say she had planned to move out West with her former boyfriend Chris Orell and live a more ‘creative’ life where she planned to start her own food truck.
The remains found in California currently have no definite connection to the 30-year-old, but coroners are in the process of identifying the body and determining a cause of death which could take weeks. The area where the body was found is near where Cho was last seen before she became ‘upset and presumably walked away from the resort, leaving behind her personal belongings,’ her friends told Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department.
Renewed interest in Cho’s case developed as people began to recognize cases similar to Petito’s that were not receiving the same amount of national attention, specifically when involving women of color.
The remains of Sara Bayard was also discovered on October 9 after being reported missing on July 4 but last seen at a gas station in Douglas County on June 28.
Her remains were found off the highway in Douglas county and identified several days later. The investigation into the cause of death for the 55-year-old has stalled due to the lack of body tissue that were found with her remains, which were mostly bones.
Bayard was reported missing in Douglas County the same day that Petito posted an Instagram picture at Monument Rocks, also in Douglas County.
The third body found on October 9, has been identified as Josue Calderon. The body of the 33-year-old man from Rhode Island was discovered stabbed to death on the Blue Ridge Parkway along the Appalachian Trail below the Yadkin Valley Overlook in North Carolina.
Before Calderon was identified, rumors began to circulate that the body may belong to Laundrie who the FBI and other investigators have been searching for along the Appalachian Trail.
