The case sparked more public interest and coverage on news and social media than other missing persons and murder cases.[50][51][52] This heightened interest was attributed to several factors including: the refusal by Laundrie and his parents to comment on the status of Petito;[4] the amount of content on social media documenting their lifestyle;[53] the video footage of the Moab, Utah, traffic stop; the audio footage of the 9-1-1 emergency dispatch call;[50][53][54] the video posts by witnesses which provided a lot of publicly available evidence; the idea that the couple was young and attractive[53] and in a romantic excursion gone wrong;[51] the domestic violence incidents in their relationship; an increase in interest in cross-country vandwelling trips due to the COVID-19 pandemic,[53] as well as the general increase in interest in true crime television and podcast programming in the preceding decade.[51]