The lawyer for the family of Brian Laundrie, the missing man whose fiancée Gabby Petito was found strangled in the woods last month, has called speculation that his clients planted evidence of their son in a Florida preserve “in nice terms... hogwash.” Speaking in a Wednesday night phone interview with CNN host Chris Cuomo, attorney Steve Bertolino argued that officials, who met the Laundries at the entrance to the Carlton Reserve, knew exactly what the parents had been carrying. “Fortunately for the Laundries,” Bertolino added, “the press was following them the whole time” they searched the park.

Bertolino told Cuomo that his clients had asked to enter the park earlier on Wednesday after it had been reopened to the public the previous day. Laundrie’s father, Chris, was the one who by “happenstance” found a white dry bag in brambles off a trail, Bertolino said, while authorities located a backpack and human remains. Bertolino said that “the probability is strong” that the remains were Laundrie’s, “but we’re going to wait for the forensic results to come in and verify that.” Bureau investigators began calling Brian Laundrie a “person of interest” in Petito’s murder on Wednesday.