What’s exceptional about this case is, within 4 days of the bodycam going public, the deceased was allegedly found. And it happened in large part because the camping/van-travel community has a sense of connection via youtube, and people tend to video where they go and what they do at a rate not even imagined 30 years ago. It was a camping-community person who filmed Petito’s van that noone else noticed, and was able to review their footage during a narrow timeframe which gave the police a solid starting gps - with landmarks.
The Petito case may encourage police to be a bit more accepting in some cases of asking for help earlier in the process, so the window of opportunity for the guilty to cover their tracks narrows to days instead of months.
What if he didn’t kill her but left her and Gabby died from exposure or animals?