Are you sure you're not speaking from experience?
Point To Note :
I want this guy caught and I want answers for this girl's family. That being said, if he has any skill whatsoever, his line of thinking in how to escape and evade will mirror some of what I discuss below. If he's guilty, Petito's family deserve real justice.
Laundrie is from Florida. So the two biggest mistakes people make when they are on the run is
1) They eventually attempt to make some kind of contact with their old life.
2) They stay in the area they know ( while they have a better assessment of the resources there, the odds of them running into someone they already know or knows of them increases exponentially)
For all intents and purposes, Laundrie, if he's alive, needs to treat everyone in his "past" life as dead. The problem is the runner believes they are dead to their family when it should be the other way around. You have to treat your family, your friends, your coworkers, your associates, your neighbors, your classmates and on and on and on as if they all died.
Where should Laundrie go? Well it's always better in a dire situation to pick a place where you can blend in, no one knows you, the odds of someone who used to know you finding you is very low, there's some kind of potential resource base and, given you are functionally homeless, a place with good weather.
(Anyone want to be homeless in a bad New York winter?)
So let's say Laundrie goes to California. There are 40+ million people there already. It has the largest homeless population in America and plenty of illegal immigrants there already.
If he manages to last past this media explosion where his face is plastered constantly in the daily news cycle, he should immediately buy a sports hat for a local team. Or several for several local teams. You see a guy in San Diego wearing a Padres hat, is that going to trigger your suspicion? Or a guy in LA wearing a Chargers jacket? The other issue is when Laundrie spots someone else in a Padres hat or a Chargers jacket, he can make some small talk. If Justin Herbert gets hurt, do you think Daniels can do anything decent in relief? Keenan Allen has been there forever, how long do you think he can keep playing?
Commonality bonds people. It eases tension. It denotes something other than "pure stranger" It's also an opening. I was born here as a kid and moved to X when my dad got a work transfer, now I'm back. What's a good cheap place to eat? Where can someone find some part time work for cash? If I'm looking for X or Y, what's your advice? Is it that uncommon for people to move in and out of the LA area all the time?
Law enforcement is looking for someone alone. So while it's counter intuitive, if Laundrie is around people again, and if he can hold a cover story, that changes the dynamic. Cops are looking for a single guy on the run. They aren't looking for a guy who just gained 40 pounds in a Padres hat hanging out with another person.
So maybe he needs to eat. You walk into an In And Out and before you do, you pick up a discarded empty drink cup in the parking lot first. You sit in a booth. Read a book or a newspaper or magazine. Make sure your cup is visible. Pretend to do things as if you belong there. Watch who leaves their tray unattended after they leave. Then sit there. Very natural. Eat what's left.
Or go to a large hotel and walk in casually. Explore the public areas when there's a little bit of higher traffic. See who leaves their room key out. Walk into a room? Of course not. But now you can walk in later with a laptop bag and a clipboard with the room key visible clipped to the top and, if no one is checking, get a continental breakfast.
Get an orange traffic vest. Find a hard hat if you can. Carry that clipboard or a metal Posse box. Carry a Pelican case around. Pretend to take notes. Could be any city in America. You could be working for the city. Or some engineering firm. Or for a utility. This allows you to case out locations and sites without looking suspicious when you might otherwise look suspicious. You are just a working stiff who only has a TV dinner and nagging wife at home to look forward to in life.
Easiest weapon to get first is a knife. Get a neck sheath and lanyard. Keep it under your T shirt or under your zipped jacket. A Karambit would be the most practical.
Easiest firearm until you can source a commercial grade pistol is a bang stick. Metal pipe, a shotgun shell and a nail. Slam fired at close range. You can technically make a simple one for a 22 caliber round. Or a 9mm. It's not that complicated.
If you can source one before you get to the west coast, a 26 inch expandable baton. Easy to conceal and deploy.
Federal law enforcement will be looking for someone hiding in Florida. Then don't be that, be someone slipping through the shadows on the other coast. They'll attempt to use facial recognition, so understand how to avoid places where you expose yourself. Don't show up at an airport. Don't go to a major public sporting event. Don't drive with your face exposed. Use a Glad bag full of sand and make a rope lanyard for it and hide it under your jacket as a weight to change your "gait" We are talking about a young white male in his early 20s that's about average height and is, so far, height weight proportionate. Think about where that profile is very common. You have to be smarter than to go to Minnesota into Ilhan Omar's district where you might stick out like sore thumb.
You have to give yourself a schedule and some practical goals. You can't just wander aimlessly forever. You have to make a checklist and start working your way down that checklist.
Psychologically, you have to turn it into a type of game. Moving pieces on a chessboard. You can't think about Item 73 on your list when you are still stuck on 12th on the list. It's easy to overwhelm yourself if you lack discipline.
Hide in plain sight. Build a cover. Hold your "legend". Disappear in a crowd.
The possibility exists, however slim, that he might be innocent of killing Petito. But, to be fair, it's unlikely. If he hurt someone I loved? I'd find him. He wouldn't last long. Many of you have daughters. What would you do to someone who robbed you of someone you loved? And not just anyone, but your baby girl. It's different for fathers and daughters, the bond and relationship is just different. If someone hurt your baby girl, you don't want some glory hog FBI bureaucrat on the hunt. You want a straight up Tier 1 relentless amoral pipe hitter like me.
