Gabby Petito's Dad Combats 'Missing White Woman Syndrome' with TV Series Focused on Marginalized Communities

Joe Petito became upset when he first heard the term “Missing White Woman Syndrome.”

His 22-year-old daughter Gabby disappeared on a cross-country journey in the summer of 2021, later to be found slain by her fiancé Brian Laundrie.

The desperate search for Gabby made headlines across the globe. But the intense online interest and widespread, non-stop media coverage represented what many believed to be an instance of “Missing White Woman Syndrome” — where White crime victims get more public attention than non-White ones.

“When I first heard Missing White Woman Syndrome, I didn’t like the phrase and I didn’t know anything about it, to be honest,” Joe tells PEOPLE in an interview.

However, Joe quickly realized that it was “a real thing,” he says.

“You start looking at stories that go mainstream, and they always seem to look the same — and that needs to change,” he says. “Everyone deserves the same attention, and every story deserves the same type of assistance.”

Now, Joe is hoping to shine a spotlight on cases that have too often been ignored. He’s collaborating on a television series featuring those cases called Faces of the Missing, a Backlot Productions and Boundless Films collaboration with executive producers Dana Richie, Francesco Lucarelli and Elaine Aradillas. (The sizzle reel for the series is shown below.)

“We have a plan to try and get as many people’s stories in front of as many people as possible, and hopefully it works,” he says. “It’s not only getting the stories out there but getting the stories out there to the people that have leverage in the true crime community — because that’s how Gabby’s story got out there, was social media. When social media was going wildfire with the story, that’s when the national media started to pick it up.”

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Making Gabby Proud

Gabby, a YouTube vlogger, disappeared while driving around the U.S. with Laundrie, 23, in the summer of 2021. Her body was later discovered near a campground in Wyoming.

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

After Gabby’s murder, Joe, along with his wife Tara, Gabby’s mom Nichole Schmidt and her husband Jim, found purpose and healing by using the enormous publicity generated by the tragic case to try to prevent similar tragedies.

They came together to create the Gabby Petito Foundation, which raises awareness about domestic violence while also creating tougher laws and policies governing how police respond to reports of intimate partner abuse and missing persons.

In recent months, the foursome have begun using their platform to raise awareness about the thousands of missing and unsolved murders of and people of color and Indigenous people whose cases often get too little attention.

“When it comes to missing persons, they just don’t get any amplification,” he says. “So doing things that we can by helping get their stories out as far as we can get them, you and I included, it’s going to help find those people.”

“I understand what it takes, the heartaches and the anxiety and the hopelessness. But I only had to endure it for a little over a week and a half,” he said. Others have “had to endure lifetimes, years of not knowing. And I don’t know how people deal with that. And it breaks my heart when I see that.”

Joe says he wants to use social media as a tool “where people can help dive in in their own private groups that they have, their own sleuth groups that they do from home to help get information out there. Hopefully that can work just the same way it did with Gabby.”

“We had precincts and police departments from all over the country looking and searching,” he says. “They found seven bodies looking for Gabby. So, I know there’s more that can be done, and the louder the message, the more pressure gets put to make sure that the story stays at the forefront.”

Joe, a warehouse store chain manager in Florida, says he hopes that his daughter is proud of his family’s new mission.

“I hope she’s proud. I really hope us as a family, my wife, Jim and Nikki and the kids are showing her that we’re trying to carry on what she started,” he says. “She’s probably laughing at us at the same time, ‘Stop crying over it!’ But we can’t. We’re just going to help out. One day I’m going to get to see her again and hopefully when I ask her, ‘Did I make you proud?’ She’ll say ‘Yes.’”

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.