Gabby Petito‘s final text to her mom may have been a cry for help, online sleuths have claimed.
Petito’s mother, Nichole Schmidt, received a bizarre message from her daughter on August 27 that read, “Can you help Stan, I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls.”
Stan is the name of Petito’s grandfather, but Schmidt told authorities that her daughter never called him “Stan.”
In a Facebook group dedicated to Petito’s disappearance, some speculated that Stan is actually an acronym that stands for “Send The Authorities Now.”
“What if she was scared [but] didn’t want Brian to get angry so then she added, ‘I just keep getting his voicemails and missed calls,’ just to show him she wasn’t asking for help.”
Others alleged that Stan actually refers to the 2000 Eminem song in which a man named Stan kidnaps and kills his pregnant wife.
The hypotheses came just days after an autopsy confirmed Petito died by strangulation.
“The Teton County Coroner’s Office is [issuing] the following verdict: in the death of Gabrielle Venora Petito, we find the cause of death is death by strangulation and manner of death is death by homicide,” Teton County Coroner Dr. Brent Blue said during a press conference on Tuesday, October 12.
While Dr. Blue could not pinpoint the exact date of Petito’s death, he explained that it may have been about “three to four weeks from the time the body was found.” He also could not comment on the result of the toxicology report but did confirm that “Gabby was not pregnant” at the time of her death.
Petito and her fiancé, Brian Laundrie, had been traveling in a white 2012 Ford Transit van from New York to the West Coast of the United States, stopping to visit national parks along the way. Petito was last seen at Grand Teton National Park in Wyoming after checking out of a Salt Lake City hotel on August 24.
The Long Island native, 22, was reported missing on September 11. Laundrie, who is named a person of interest in Petito’s disappearance, has refused to talk to police and is now missing.
Petito’s best friend, Rose Davis, told The Daily Mail that Laundrie allegedly has “these jealousy issues … He struggles from what Gabby called these ‘episodes,’ where he would hear things and hear voices and wouldn’t sleep.”
“He was always worried she was going to leave him. It was a constant thing to try to get us to stop hanging out,” she further explained. “He’d demand she be home for dinner, often cut our time short. He’d demand to pick her up from my house, even when I had a car and offered to drive.”
“This whole thing is just so heartbreaking,” Rose added. “It’s so crazy and surreal.”
If you or someone you know is experiencing domestic violence, please call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233 for confidential support.