Hiker recalls Brian Laundrie encounter on Appalachian Trail

all right so can you tell me how you felt after you realized you saw brian laundry the next day that night and what did you do tell me about dog bounty hunter also yeah yeah absolutely yeah i mean i was totally i would say jacked up i mean my heart was racing all night i mean i saw him at 12 30 and i i couldn't go to sleep all night long i mean um you know seven o'clock in the morning i was still wide awake and i was gonna start hiking that next day so i was wide awake in the hours following that i started texting some family and friends and just to kind of tell them because i just couldn't believe it still and one of my co-workers said well you should call dog the bounty hunter and he sent me his phone number so i called i got a voicemail but i just left him a quick little voicemail and then i was uh texting with my family and i said somebody reach out to dog the bounty hunter just kind of joking and my wife did it she posted something on dog's website and his his daughter dog's daughter followed up with my wife and that's really how all the media attention started going um g what i hear is that there were a lot of media sources that were kind of um monitoring his his website and all of a sudden all the interview requests started rolling in and you kind of you told me earlier that you couldn't sleep after you saw brian can you tell me a little bit about that feeling you had after you saw him sure yeah i mean murderer yeah yeah absolutely i mean you know when i thought about it it's like you know hey heck you just you know we're face to face with a murderer 15 minutes ago and and yeah it's just like your heart jumped out of your chest when i saw that picture of him and you know it's you know i've never had a feeling like that before and obviously never seen a murderer face to face so it was uh it's quite a quite a feeling and like i said it kept me up all night long i mean i couldn't go to sleep because it was just like wow so pumped up and i was ready to go catch the guy i mean i was like you know i made six calls to law enforcement i was like somebody called me back you know and so you know that was kind of it and how about you said you talked to dog's daughter how did that happen well um of course you know she was in communication with my wife and then you know my wife gave her my phone number and she called and she had a couple of questions for me she wanted me you know she wanted to understand what exactly happened and then they sent me a um an audio clip because they wanted me to hear what brian sounded like to make sure that the voice was the same too um not just you know face and everything but the voice and i agreed that it was him and then um last night dog called me also and uh he wanted to hear firsthand you know my account of the of the story and everything you know is he going to include that in his um i think he's filming like a documentary or show did he say that's going to be part of it or he didn't say anything like that you know it was really just you know get to the details and everything okay so yeah is there anything i shouldn't should ask you that we didn't talk about well yeah there's you know there's probably people that are out there that are doubting what i'm saying um i know there were people out there on social media that were being a little mean to my wife and on dog the bounty hunter's website and i just want to kind of tell people that you know i didn't ask for this you know i had this was my fourth a.t trip of the year and you know it's something that i love doing coming out here and getting away in nature um i hate having my phone with me i take a few pictures and and send take a do a couple videos for my family but uh you know i ran into him and uh into brian and i really you know believed that that was him and i thought that it was my civic duty you know to make the calls to the fbi and to 9-1-1 and to follow through with it to make sure that the petito family you know got the the do justice that they deserve for their daughter and so you know i didn't want to have uh you know a million phone calls and text messages you know during my trip but you know i thought it was the right thing to do so those people that doubt me you know it's fine they can doubt me and but i really believe what i saw i'm not doing this for publicity or anything else i really believe that it was him that i saw so you're saying you you know you weren't asking for this you were just on a hike with your friend tell me a little bit more about that like what your plans were and if it was annoying getting all the texts and calls sure yeah i mean our plans were to come up here i was driving up on friday after work and uh and we were gonna meet actually on saturday morning and so i got up to the tennessee north carolina state line at around 12 30 a.m on saturday morning and i had never been to the area and i was actually going to park my car at davenport gap the parking lot there and i when i pulled down there i passed the the parking lot and so i had to do a three-point turn to turn around dark secluded country road um the pigeon river is on one side and there's a mountain going up on the other so i had to be real careful doing the turn and as i was doing the turn a car approached from the from behind me and they kind of flashed their lights on and off i took it as they were kind of saying go ahead and make the turn you know i'm back here but go ahead and make the turn and i did that and then as i was coming back past the car um the guy stopped and rolled down his window and kind of waved at me and that's when i i started talking to brian laundry and uh you know so um you know we had some a conversation and uh and you know we i ended up leaving there i wasn't i was going to spend the night there but he was just weird acting and i didn't know it was him at the time so ultimately i met my friend the next day and we started our hike and and yeah it's been you know kind of annoying getting all of the texts and all that but uh as i said you know i it's kind of my civic duty i thought you know once i realized it was him to follow through on that not just to turn you know an eye you know a blind eye to it and move on but i really thought that you know it was the right thing to do so when you realized it was brian how'd you feel were you worried were you scared because you said you were alone yeah well when i first talked to the him before i knew it was him i realized there was something wrong with him he was acting very weird i originally thought that maybe he was on drugs and so i was originally going to spend the night in the parking lot right there at davenport gap but after just seeing him i was like there's no way i'm staying here i mean if this guy comes back you know he might want to do something bad and so i took off i got back on i-40 and i was headed west and it kind of hit me what if that was brian laundry and so i got off the first exit that i came to and i pulled down and opened up my phone and looked on the internet for pictures of him because i didn't know what he looked like and the thing that stood out when i saw brian was he had this really dark beard and mustache it was very thick but short and when i got there and i was looking at the pictures the first picture i saw of him it was a portrait view of him and he had that same beard and mustache same you know it was the same face and i knew it was him and i immediately started looking to see if i could find the number for the fbi and so i was pretty sure right then and there after i talked to the fbi though i got back on and i was looking at other pictures of him and i saw a profile view of him and of course because when we were talking our cars were parked side by side and he kept on looking forward he didn't look straight at me very much and so i had that profile view of them and when i when that profile view came up my heart literally jumped um i was like holy crap there's no doubt in my mind that that was brian i even called the fbi back right then and i was like i was so you know just hyped up um you know i guess you know from looking a killer right in the eyes and then you know realizing it was him that i had seen just 15 minutes ago um and and i called the fbi again and i told him i said that was really him you guys have got to go you know look and uh you know they took my information both times but i didn't really hear back from him or anything do you think he was really going to california or do you think he was just having like an episode like a mental breakdown of sorts or yeah so you know when i first saw him i kind of thought that he was on drugs because he was acting really weird but as i thought about it i don't necessarily think he was on drugs because he was um talking very clearly he wasn't like um slurred speech or anything like that and i it's what i kind of thought then is that you know after a month of hiding out after killing somebody that you supposedly love i mean it's got to be just wearing on him and for somebody that is you know on the run to just go and stop some stranger and start talking to him about his girlfriend i mean that's just weird and and i think yeah you know mentally it's probably getting to him and what did he say about his girlfriend yeah so when um when we first stopped and we were across from each other it took him a minute to say something to me and he said man i'm lost and i was kind of thinking well i'm a hiker maybe he's a hiker i was you know trying to find that parking lot and i said well i'm not from around here but you know where are you trying to go to and he said man i've i've got to get to california i wasn't really expecting to hear that you know here we are in on the east coast and he said my girlfriend and i got in a fight and she called me and she told me she loves me but i've got to go to california to see her and i said well man the i-40 is right there you can literally take i-40 west all the way to california and uh he kind of shook his head and he said no i'm just going to take this road to california and the road that we're on is a little you know two-lane country road called called walt waterville walter excuse me waterville road waterville road and um you can't get to california on that road but he started driving off and that's when i left did he have like a laugh or was dead serious when he said he's going to use waterville road to get to cali no he was dead serious i mean he was yeah um but you know he was obviously you know kind of out of his mind but yeah he wasn't laughing he was just you know that's what i'm doing and he left can can you describe the car a little bit or whatever do you notice a license plate or was the car new yeah so when i pulled up there it was definitely a pickup truck um you know i was sitting in my car and his he was up above me in a pickup truck um it was you know it was 12 30 at night and the only real light was the light from my headlights and his headlights out there but it was definitely i i told the fbi it was a white colored truck you know maybe it could have been just some other light color but i i said it was a white truck and i pegged it as a ford f-150 um i i don't you know i wasn't you know going in trying to figure out what kind of vehicle it was and or anything but i thought it was a ford f-150 50 and it was definitely a newer vehicle it wasn't like an old beat-up truck or anything like that it was a new truck um when we left there uh when we went our our separate ways i definitely wasn't trying to get his license plate or anything i you know i wasn't planning on calling the police then i had no reason to so you know i just kind of took off out of there because i didn't want to be around when he came back yeah did he seem like um nice or was he just kind of a concerning character when you met him yeah well i mean he was nice in the fact that you know he didn't have anything bad to say or or you know he didn't act aggressive for anything but you know you could tell you know he wasn't all there you know that um you know there was something wrong with him um i almost was gonna ask him if he was okay but at that point i was just more worried about just getting out of there yeah you felt like a little uneasy about the situation or you just wanted to get to bed oh it was uneasy about the situation yeah you know for somebody you know the way he was acting and the things he was saying it's just not what a normal person you know pulls it over stops somebody at 12 30 in the morning to start talking to somebody about and so i was like yeah i've got to get out of here oh yeah absolutely and um are you planning to talk to is the fbi going to see you in person or how's that going to work moving forward yeah so i called the fbi three times and i called 9-1-1 three times um yesterday um so that was sunday night at seven o'clock i got a call back from um one of the sheriff's offices in north carolina the one that got the 911 call and the officer kind of informed me of what they had done that they had talked to the fbi twice on sunday and they they've made an offer to let me meet with the fbi um either tomorrow or wednesday but they could set up a meeting with the fbi at that time tell me about the you're going to meet with the fbi you said um yeah i haven't confirmed that yet but they've made the offer to meet with me like i said i did speak with the local police office in sheriff's office in north carolina one of the things they told me is and i was the big the thing that was the biggest disappointment to me is after six calls no one had you know from law enforcement had gotten back with me to hear my side of the story or the details from me directly and so um but the the detective that i spoke with on sunday night was very informative what he told me was i put i placed the call to the north carolina 911 system at 2 30 in the morning and they had somebody out on site at 305. basically they had somebody out there for 50 minutes driving that area and in that time they pulled over one person of the only vehicle they saw out there during that 50 minute time to check him it wasn't it was somebody else it wasn't even in a truck it was a car um so i felt you know relieved that they had um you know actually done something i was i was glad to hear that and the detective actually apologized because uh he said one of the the their rules for finishing out a 9-1-1 call is to make sure that the people that make the call are informed about what the outcome of of the situation is and so he apologized that his office hadn't done that and but you know as i said i have not heard directly from the fbi or from the tennessee 9-1-1 i had called the tennessee 9-1-1 system twice um but i probably will take the officer up and um he said he would bring the fbi to meet with me so i probably will take him up on that offer um when would you like to do that or when would you do it while you're up here or maybe down in florida or yeah i'm probably going to stay up here for a couple more days so either tomorrow or wednesday i'm going to arrange to have that do that can you tell me a little bit were you able to see what brian was wearing well what i noticed about him you know in the photos of him he's bald i couldn't tell that because he had some sort of bandana or shirt wrapped around his head um and then of course i only saw him you know because he was sitting in the truck kind of you know the top portion of his body and it looked like he had on a t-shirt kind of with the sleeves cut off and it was a dark color and um did did he look like he's seen like hard times in the recent weeks or did he look totally well kept maintained he he looked fairly well kept i mean i didn't see i mean he didn't look like i look right now you know having come off the trail um he looked fairly fairly clean and well kept is there anything else i didn't ask you that you think should be known or that could be added to this this story um let me think uh not a whole lot um you know the the incident itself was pretty short and sweet you know so now i think that's about it

Channel: Daily Mail

Views: 587,456

Keywords: appalachian trail, brian laundrie encounter, dennis davis

Id: gfZKa9Zg-34

Length: 17min 0sec (1020 seconds)

Published: Tue Oct 05 2021