The Gabby Petito case also relates to the perils of social media. I believe she and the boyfriend had an Instagram account that was all about travel, a certain diet and yoga or something. But… the reality was that they were not doing well. At all.
It seems like parts of our society who are especially Instagram focused have become unable to identify how disordered some people are in real life, and how their “image” is so incredibly different from their reality.
what is a wet print
Yes I know but I was replying to another poster who was commenting about her having 6 horses 
Thanks for explaining. I’m just trying to follow the facts so I appreciate the details.
They were YouTubers about Van Life.
Ahhhh. So they were more about YouTube than Instagram?
RG has nothing to gain for himself personally from being on 48 hours, and potentially a great deal to lose. He’s not a plaintiff in the lawsuit, the criminal trial found he was not the victim of attempted murder (no third shot could be proven to be fired), he couldn’t totally hide his active drug use, and he was involved with illegal taping escapades. Moreover, his account of the events surrounding the shooting does not tally with LK’s story, and it’s an open question whether he might be culpable of aggravated assault or attempted murder himself if we ever had a video fly on the wall account of what really went down. He bumbled and bluffed his way through the trial, but he couldn’t get out of the trial. It’s unclear at this point if his testimony will be sought in the civil trial. But the last thing he needs is more attention on all of this. And doing 48 hours is entirely voluntary. You can refuse.
More broadly, agreeing to do a 48 hours type in-depth interview when you have a civil suit open is not real clever unless you are 100 per cent the righteous injured party (Gaby Petito’s parents) or you are crusading on a principle (like suing a mine for environmental pollution etc where you want widespread publicity on the larger issue).
My guess is team MB would not have sought out the publicity of 48 Hours if KTrifecta hadn’t been so enthusiastic about participating. And of course KTeam bought into participation before the trial, when they thought things would go otherwise.
However, documentary film makers, like law suits, have their own momentum and cannot be called off just because the subjects get cold feet. How many documentaries have we seen where at a certain point we get a photo of a closed front door and a voice over saying the subject “now refuses to talk to us”? And the documentary keeps rolling along gleefully for another hour with the subject’s silence implicit proof the film makers were getting too close to the truth.
It was very interesting to read, I think on the other MB thread, that if you launch a law suit in NJ (probably anywhere), after the defendant has responded especially with a counter claim, the plaintiff cannot just withdraw the suit without a consideration of damages owed the defendant.
In this law suit, TeamMB filed a strong counterclaim at the very start so KTeam has been locked into the suit, and can’t withdraw now unless they negotiate damages with TeamMB and TeamMB agrees. My guess is if that happened, TeamMB would hold out for a lot of cash, if they even considered it. Certainly all the legal fees and probably damages of some kind on top of it.
Anyhow, if I were in RG’s position, or anything like it, I would duck out of talking to 48 hours. Obviously from the position of a viewer, or from the journalist position, getting him included would be delicious because it’s a guaranteed train wreck. But if it turns out he refused to participate then that shows he has more common sense than anyone else on KTeam and I respect that. I think I also understand that MHG declined to participate? I fully get that too.
Now I’m speaking as someone who consumes a lot of news media, documentaries, magazine articles, and also did a bit of journalism in my 20s. It’s an absolute given that small errors creep into most reporting, and also that once you give your story over to a journalist they are absolutely going to shape it into something more or less different than you see it, because that’s their job.
There are lots of situations where you as a private citizen legitimately want and need to summon the attention of media, for a public issue or political issue or social injustice etc. Maybe you are a stellar exemplar of the problem (a rare childhood disease, wheelchair access, your cattle dying from poisoned groundwater etc).
But it’s risky and foolish to call in media attention to personal drama and expect to be able to control the narrative.
I realize that celebrity culture has created a sense in modern society that any publicity is good publicity, and that minor manufactured scandals are good for your profile, at least among teen audiences. But it’s not true when things get serious in law.
I wondered for a long time why LK was being allowed to destroy all vestiges of credibility by her online behavior. Now we have evidence KK and JK were both involved in the harassment of MB and participated in the same kind of unhinged online behavior as LK. And I assume all thought 48 Hours would vindicate them.
I’m just really surprised at the number of serious errors in judgement by the whole family.
Well, if nothing else, we will get Boyd, Mr. B and Mr. D. Oh and did I mention Boyd ? 
It means the edit is completed right before it airs. Film term from when film was actually used…
GREAT post. I 100% agree.
I completely understand why any number of people who are tied to this case would decide that it is NOT in their best interests to actively participate in the 48 hours episode. Especially RG and MHG. Perhaps they have different concerns about what risks might be involved if they actively participated… but the fact remains that for both of them, there is FAR more downside to continue drawing attention to whatever part each of them had
with respect to this horrible situation.
As far as the bolded part goes… I can not understand the K family’s online behavior AT ALL. I guess I can understand that LK may have been prone to posting all sorts of stuff right up until the shooting happened… but after the shooting? She knew a criminal case would happen. She knew she would be a key witness. I can’t for the life of me understand why she thought it was smart to say ANYTHING online about it.
Then, she filed the lawsuit. Why in the world would BOTH she AND her parents carry on, making all sorts of online statements, after filing a lawsuit? It’s all going to be used against them, to the maximum extent possible.
Last thing… they did themselves ZERO help in the court of public opinion. I am not sure how they still don’t seem to realize this… but they don’t.
Because the Trifecta remains in total denial. I can’t imagine they don’t comprehend how complicit at least two of them are in this tragedy.
The degree of denial is AMAZING to me.
I can’t wrap my head around that.
Probably because none of them have ever been held accountable for anything. Absolutely nothing. Now it’s time to pay up.
@scribbler should write the true crime book (with assistance of our legal eagles.)
No one would believe a “based on an actual event” movie.
Good point!
But now I wonder even more about how she can be alleging that the shooting left her irreparably damaged, to the detriment of her “riding career.” I mean, riding SIX horses only four months after being shot in the chest “twice, at point blank range and nearly bleeding out and flatlining twice,” etc.
And I also wonder how many 48 Hours viewers - or potential jury members for the civil trial - will have any clue about how incongruous all that is.
I have concerns too. I remember an episode of Dateline where the wife’s ambition was to make the Olympics. She was actually a cowboy mounted shooting competitor.
Yes. I went for 3 years assuming the basic narrative was “junkie black sheep adult child being kept on a short string by reasonably functional upper middle class family who understandably picked up after her, but were ignorant of her more awful behavior.” It’s a known situation and a dilemma faced by more than one family: are we helping or just enabling?
But the recent revelations show that at least in this case, the family went way beyond just well-meaning passive enabling. They actively participated in and encouraged the daughter’s malicious and unhinged behavior. Then they went online and participated in the same cyber bullying tactics the daughter used. So the narrative now becomes something like “BSC family from hell helps junkie daughter terrorize her coach and landlord.”
So now we see the family would have been no help in reining in LK from her disastrous online campaign because they are the same.
Of course I now want the back story. What’s the role of mental illness or substance abuse? What other things have they done previously? We may never know all this but perhaps things will come out later on.
I also liked the suggestion that JK was involving himself in writing some of the more recent submissions because they have the veneer of legal form (LK couldn’t have written them) without the correct content or spell check even from a basic ambulance chaser office. They are markedly below the level of earlier submissions from this same legal team just in basic competency.
Anyhow, it seems like LK has always flaunted being law-adjacent despite IM/JK characterizing JK as “not a real lawyer” (which is evidently more true than he likely thought). LK has used the persona of being law-adjacent to intimidate very small fish and marginal people, with the idea she has privileged access to “law” and can always sic “law” on people with no consequences for herself. Now we see that her father also has actively been involved in this stuff, which shows he really isn’t a lawyer :), which he did tell us.
Anyhow the catch is that when you end up involved in a real legal process, there is a strong process in place to arrive at the truth and apportion blame. Trials both criminal and civil are never fully satisfying to either party but they do have excellent mechanisms for compelling as much of the truth as possible to be unveiled. So if your idea of being law-adjacent up to now is lying, bluffing and blustering until people back away from you, ending up in an actual trial is going to be a rude awakening.
Curious, has anyone brought attention to 48 Hours the erroneous statement about Lauren just now getting back to riding?
I have checked the comments sections of the 48 hours videos a few times… but so far… a lot of the people who are following this case closely on COTH don’t seem to be commenting there. Which I can understand.
I would be hesitant to comment publicly online under my real name and I figure there are folks with better access to the actual 48 hours team or already active on YT with avatars 
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