3 Years After Gabby Petito's Death, Mom Says 'There's Never Going to Be Closure' (Exclusive)

Gabby Petito, 22, disappeared on a cross-country trip with her fiancé Brian Laundrie in the summer of 2021

More than three years have passed since the death of 22-year-old Gabby Petito, who disappeared on a cross-country journey with her fiancé Brian Laundrie in the summer of 2021.

Her body was discovered on Sept. 19 near a campground in Wyoming.

Laundrie, who died by suicide, was found in a nature preserve near his family’s home in North Port, Fla., on Oct. 20. Nearby was a backpack containing what the FBI described as a notebook “claiming responsibility” for Gabby’s strangulation death.

“Year three hit me the hardest so far for some reason, and I know there's never going to be closure,” Gabby’s mom Nichole Schmidt tells PEOPLE. “I think what hits me is it's been three years now since the last time I heard her voice or seen her, and that's really hard.”

“We're never going to feel like we have justice,” she adds. “There's just nothing we can do to make us feel better, but what we can do is continue on with her legacy.”

After her murder, Nichole, along with her husband Jim Schmidt and Gabby’s father Joe Petito and Joe's wife Tara, found purpose and healing by using the enormous publicity generated by their daughter’s case to try to prevent similar tragedies from happening to other families.

The two couples created the Gabby Petito Foundation, which is focused on raising awareness about domestic violence while also creating tougher laws and policies governing how police respond to reports of intimate partner abuse and missing persons.

Related: Gabby Petito’s '4 Parents' Share How Her Tragic Death Fulfilled Her Lifelong Dream of Bringing Them 'All Together' (Exclusive)

They have also championed the work of the Black and Missing Foundation and Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women & Relatives, along with the National Domestic Violence Hotline.

“We can give ourselves this motivation to keep going and not be sad all the time,” she says. “I know Gabby would not have wanted that.”

But continuing to move forward despite their grief can be difficult.

Related: Gabby Petito’s Parents Want Teens to Look Out for These Dating Red Flags to Prevent Domestic Violence (Exclusive)

Last week, police body cam video was released that showed Laundrie’s parents Christopher and Roberta declining to talk to North Port police officers who showed up at their Florida home on Sept. 11, 2021, asking about the whereabouts of the 22-year-old budding YouTube blogger after a missing persons report was filed, per FOX News.

“I’m not talking to anybody, Christopher says.

When asked by an officer when the last time he saw his son and Gabby, Christopher responded, “Brian is here and that’s all I am going to say.”

“I watched it,” says Nichole about the body cam footage. “It made me sick. There’s no empathy. No compassion. I cried. ... It just keeps going. Stuff coming out constantly and it's been three years and there's still more. It's like the infomercial is, ‘Oh, wait, there's more.’ I'm like, when is this going to stop?”

Nichole, who just traveled to Wyoming with Tara to speak at a domestic violence luncheon for the domestic violence advocacy group SAFE Project and sat on a panel at a National Center For Victims of Crime panel in Portland, says the foundation is currently working towards building a domestic violence awareness education program for schools. The program would be accessible to all students across the country at no cost to the schools.

“We want every kid to have access to education around healthy relationships, self-respect, boundaries, a healthy friendship, just learning all about how to be a healthy person,” she says. “I think that once we can have a program that's cohesive across the country, it's not going to happen overnight, but we'll see it change in a few generations down the line — where people are going to be better for that after learning so young.”

Related: Gabby Petito's Parents Say 'She Would Be Alive Today' If Police Handled Traffic Stop Differently (Exclusive)

The foundation is hoping to use technology to help them with their goal.  “We want to use maybe some module-based online platform where it would be easy for schools to just bring in and eventually turn it into something where teachers are trained and it's mandatory in the schools from early ages all the way through those high school years,” she says.

“It's an epidemic,” Nichole says about domestic violence. “It's a crisis across the world. We're doing the best we can, but we need to slow it down, stop it in its tracks, and the only way we're going to do that is to get to the youth.”

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Raising awareness is key.

“I learn what's going on in the world and I see the constant murders and the amount of missing people that have no attention paid to them,” adds Nichole. “And I get angrier and angrier every day, and that's what drives me. It's not just Gabby and her murder. It's everything else that I see and all these other victims and these survivors, and I just want to fight for them. I want to be their voice, and if people are going to listen, I'm going to use that platform.”

If you are experiencing domestic violence, call the National Domestic Violence Hotline at 1-800-799-7233, or go to thehotline.org. All calls are toll-free and confidential. The hotline is available 24/7 in more than 170 languages.

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