First of all, I have no idea where he is.
If you need to ask who “he” is, you’ve been cut off from civilization the last 2 weeks.
The Daily Mail says (here), “As of Tuesday, the hashtag #GabbyPetito has received more than 650 million views on the social media platform TikTok, according to the Associated Press.” That was 36 hours ago; it could be a billion by now.
Ink-stained newsies have known forever that readers love crime stories. The late Ann Rule made a fortune churning out paperbacks about murderers. In the film adaptation of Annie Proulx’s The Shipping News, a typesetter makes his mark as a reporter by stumbling onto a sensational crime. The Godfather is one of the most popular films of all time. For reasons I can’t fathom, people are fascinated by criminals and crime.
I’m not, nor have I served prison time (but I’ve heard prisons are crime schools); so it probably won’t surprise you that I’m no good at thinking like a criminal. Maybe because most of them are stupid and get caught. They lack my imagination.
For example, it took police 4 days to apprehend Boston marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Given that much head start, I figured he was long gone. Granted, the FAA immediately shut down the airport, and the city shut down parts of its transit system. But I figured he could move in public until they knew who they were looking for. I thought that if I were him, I’d head for the docks and try to stow away on a ship leaving the country. I was wrong. He was found in a backyard not far from the crime scenes. He never made it out of town.
Now take the Gabby Petito case. This is not yet officially a murder case, only informally a “homicide” case, and her missing fiancé isn’t officially a suspect, only informally a “person of interest,” but there’s a massive manhunt underway for him in a 25,000-acre swampy nature preserve. Why? Because he told his parents that’s where he was going and they found his car there. They also said he left his phone and wallet at home, and they worried he might hurt himself (see updated story here). But there’s been no sign of him.
Serial bomber Eric Rudolph “spent more than five years in the Appalachian wilderness as a fugitive, during which time federal and amateur search teams scoured the area without success,” Wikipedia says. That case also received wide notoriety; and if you had asked me where I thought he was, I’d have replied, “South America.” Wrong again. He was living in the woods, and was caught when he snuck into a nearby town to dumpster-dive for food scraps.
Petito’s fiancé now has a 9-day head start. He has a problem, though: Nearly everyone in the Western Hemisphere knows what he looks like, and knows police are looking for him. He had at most 3 days to travel relatively inconspicuously, before his disappearance hit the headlines. If I were him, I’d have gone into that nature preserve, straight through and out the other side, as fast as I could move, and then hightailed to somewhere else. There’s a range of possibilities; a boat to South America, or traveling cross country (at night) to the Mexican border, or even northward toward the Canadian wilds. He was used to traveling, and familiar with a lot of back roads and desert country. I wouldn’t expect to stay in an area where he knew law enforcement would soon be looking for him.
It’s possible, of course, he’s still in the nature preserve, even though it’s a poor hideout (details here). Maybe he’s not alive; the police sent in dive teams, but so far they’ve found nothing.
Maybe an alligator ate him.
Update (9/23/21): He’s now been indicted in Wyoming for charging over $1,000 to her debit card after her death. See story here. These charges occurred before he returned to Florida and went missing. If there are no more charges to her card, that could mean he’s dead, hiding in the swamp, smart enough to not keep using it (which would show his movements), or the account (likely) has been blocked.
Photo below: Police taking a material witness into custody in a missing person case
He may have gone to the swamp and committed suicide. Eventually his body will probably be found, though it sometimes takes some time for a body to be found. I suspect he is alive and if he knows how to survive in the swamp he could be in that nature preserve for some years. If the number of deer go down it could be he is there. Eventually he will have to come out either for some sort of supplies or to move to another location. The fact a photo that certainly looks like him suggests to me that was intentional and he is elsewhere. [Edited comment.]
ABC News reported the person photographed by a wildlife camera in the Florida panhandle is a local resident of that area.