“, even barring cops from speaking to their lawyered-up son, who has since vanished himself. “
For the accused or suspected to get “Lawyered up” is a Constitutional right. It is a very good thing to do. It is not just for the guilty. In fact it is even more important for the innocent. Why? Because they will be even more at the mercy of the police and not know that cops will twist words, lie, intimidate, and exhaust a person to get an admittance of guilt. They will be convinced they are trapped and the only way to get relief is to go along. Usually with the hope that will mean leniency.
Bottom line. Any lawyer that advises a client to talk to the police when that client is under investigation is not doing his or her job.
But I think what most people find to be despicable is that Laundrie didn't just refuse to cooperate with the police, he refused to talk to Gabby's parents for two weeks before the police ever got involved.
By any account, he left her stranded in a desert and drove her car back to their home, thousands of miles away.
That is true:
1. When the client is in fact guilty, and will have to either incriminate themselves, or lie.
2. When there is reason to believe the investigators are acting in bad faith. See, e.g., all the cases where the FBI secretly subpoenas a person's email, text messages, and telephone records, studies them for months, then shows up at their door at 6:00 a.m. and wants to ask a few questions. They aren't trying to discover anything about the contents, or sequence, of the communications -- they already know everything. They are trying to get the befuddled target to make, or agree to, an off the cuff but demonstrably untrue statement about some trivial detail of communications that happened years before, so that the target may be indicted for lying to a federal officer.
3. Other, fact based, situations.
If the client did not do it, or if the client did it, but what was done was not criminal, then speaking to law enforcement, with counsel, with appropriate ground rules, such as knowing what the questioning will be about, so that the client, and counsel, have an opportunity to review the records law enforcement is looking at, is often the best thing the attorney can advise the client to do.