Gabby Petito's Family Heads to Wyoming to Retrieve Body, Get Case Update

Gabby Petito's body has been held and studied for a month to determine how she died -- and now that we know, her family is finally allowed to go get her and lay her to rest.

The late 22-year-old's parents are reportedly heading to Wyoming Wednesday morning from the east coast -- where they'll retrieve her remains, have her cremated ... and then return to New York this weekend with her ashes.

It also sounds like law enforcement will brief her mom, father and stepfather on the latest updates in the case.

The family has reportedly said they won't be commenting on anything to the media until they're back in NY -- although, Gabby's mother did speak out against the Laundrie family lawyer Tuesday after he called her death a "tragedy" upon release of the autopsy findings.

You'll recall ... the Teton County coroner publicly announced Gabby's cause of death, which took quite a long time to conclusively uncover. Turns out, she was manually strangled to death at the hands of a person.

The coroner noted that Gabby's homicide seemed to be carried out in "a lot of anger" -- while also pointing out her body had been left out in the wilderness for at least 3 for 4 weeks before she was finally found last month.

Of course, the one person law enforcement still wants to talk to -- but can't seem to find -- is Gabby's fiance, Brian Laundrie ... who's considered to be the prime person of interest in the case, and one of the last people to have seen her alive.

The couple was traveling cross-country together through much of the summer, and had squabbles along the way -- most notably in August, when cops in Moab, Utah responded to a report Brian had struck Gabby.