Roberta Laundrie letter: ‘Nothing will make me stop loving you’

(NewsNation) — Brian Laundrie’s mother wrote a “burn-after-reading” letter to her son, which included a promise to buy shovels if he needed them, or to bake a file into a cake if he were to be jailed.

A judge ruled the letter can be read into evidence in a civil trial filed against the Laundries by the parents of Gabby Petito. While all parts of the letter are not legible in the photographs that are available, much of it can be deciphered.

“I just want you to remember I will always love you,” the letter begins. “You are my boy. Nothing can make me stop loving you, nothing will or could. …”

The next few words of the letter are indecipherable, but then it continues.

“No matter what we do or where we go,” it reads, before a few more words that can’t be seen. “What we say — we will always love each other. If you’re in jail, I will bake a cake with a file in it. If you need to dispose of a body, I will show up with a shovel and garbage bags. If you fly to the moon, I will be watching the skies for your reentry. If you say you hate my guts, I’ll get new guts.”

“Remember that love is a verb, not a noun. It’s not a thing, it’s not words, it is actions. Watch people’s actions to know if they love you — not their words,” she writes.

“Therefore I am certain that neither death nor life nor angels nor the ruling spirits, nor things present nor things to come, nor powers from above, nor powers from below, nothing in the entire created world can separate our love,” the letter continues.

“Neither hostile powers nor messengers of heaven nor monarchs of earth. Nothing has the power to separate us,” it reads.

The letter cites “Romans 8:38 (extended version!)” before continuing with a parenthetical.

“Nothing can separate us, not hatred, not hunger, not homelessness, not threats, not even sin, not the thinkable or unthinkable can get between us,” it reads.

The letter closes with a final line.

“Not time. Not miles and miles and miles,” the letter concludes.

In a statement, Roberta Laundrie said the letter was written prior to Brian Laundrie and Gabby Petito’s departure on a trip that would ultimately end with Petito’s death. She urged people to read the letter for themselves and said the selective lines that had circulated were meant to sensationalize the letter.

Gabby Petito’s parents are suing the Laundries, alleging they knew of Gabby’s death before her remains were found and that they helped Brian Laundrie attempt to flee justice.