Ky Rants - Colorado Stepmother Kills 11-Year-Old Boy

**Episode Transcription

Hey LaMs Ky here, back with another Ky Rants.

This is sponsored by my LaM Patreon.

On January 27, 2020, Gannon Stauch, an 11-year-old, was reported missing by his stepmother, Letecia Stauch and a community and state wide search began.

On March 2, 2020, Letecia was arrested in connection with her stepson’s disappearance. As investigators (you know) investigated the case, they gathered irrefutable evidence from the Stauch home. They focused particularly on Gannon’s bedroom which revealed to them that a gruesome and violent event happened there. Blood spatter on the walls, a stained mattress, and soaked carpets told them a of a murder that occurred within the family’s own home – mainly in Gannon’s bedroom.

This is why Letecia was arrested, because authorities believed she murdered Gannon in their house right before reporting him missing.

“Evidence recovered from the residence and inside Gannon’s bedroom supports that a violent event occurred in the bedroom, which caused bloodshed, including blood spatter on the walls, and enough blood loss to stain his mattress, soak through the carpet, the carpet pad, and stain the concrete below his bed.”

Not only did Letecia allegedly do this, but she pulled her 17 year old daughter into the crime. She asked her to go and by baking soca, trash bags, and carpet powder. Then they went to work cleaning oup the blood.

During a five-hour recorded interrogation by the FBI, agent Jonathan Grusing questioned Letecia and she revealed that she knew more than she’d initially let on about Gannon’s disappearance.

Agent Grusing showed Letecia her browser search history and pointed out key searches like “I don’t like my stepson” and “blood spurting from arterial bleed.” (Wow really?! Also, it’s like I always tell you – if you’re going to commit a crime please for the love of the police and investigators, have as much evidence on and around your person as possible! Make sure you have a search history, text messages, emails, a manifesto – paint your plans on a wall if you have to!)

Letecia Stauch

Throughout the investigation, Letecia lied her ass off. She told stories to the detectives and with each story, she added more embellishment or just full out changed what she was saying. Among her lies was that she had hired some guy to repair a part of her carpet and he raped her and kidnapped Gannon.

Then, two weeks later, on March 18, 2020, Gannon’s lifeless body was discovered in a suitcase beneath a bridge in Florida.

During the trial, Letecia was accused of stabbing Gannon 18 times and then hitting him in the head, and finally shooting him. (Damn lady!)

Of course she plead not guilty by way of insanity.

Her attorney argued that she was sexually abused as a child (which caused what?! Her to grow up to be a murderer?!) which caused her to develop DID (dissociative identity disorder). Really?! Your case is that one of her personalities did this? THAT’S your case? You know you have no leg to stand on when, as an attorney, you start reaching. Because man is his reaching REACHING

It also came out that Gannon’s father, Al Stauch, (who by the way, had divorced Letecia after she was arrested in March of 2020) had become suspicious of Letecia and asked the FBI to listen to his phone calls with her.

Before Letecia’s sentencing this month – as of this recording, Al addressed the courtroom. He requested that her sentence reflect the distance she had driven from Colorado to Florida to callusly discard his son’s body. He told the jury and court that Gannon’s last words to him were, “I’m Going to Finish Watching Pokemon.”

Gannon Stauch

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His words resonated with the profound loss and pain that this case had inflicted on his life.

Prosecutors argued that Letecia’s motive for this act was to inflict pain and suffering upon her husband, who was away on a National Guard deployment when Gannon disappeared. The judge also believed that jealousy and hatred of Gannon’s mother, Landen Bullard, played a role in her actions.

Despite her claims of insanity and her troubled past, a Colorado state mental hospital had declared her sane at the time of Gannon’s death.

Before handing down her sentence, judge Gregory Werner said that the “facts in this case are the most horrific I have ever seen” and that Letecia’s “conduct in this case deserves the maximum sentence that I can impose according to Colorado law.”

He also pointed out that, compared to others who said DID or any mental illness was the reason for whatever crime they’d committed, Letecia was never surprised by what her so called other personalities did. Instead of the surprise, the shame and the hurt that should have followed and act that the didn’t know she did, she went about purposefully and intentionally covering up her tracks.

“There is no time during the minutes, hours and days following the murder where Letecia came out and wondered ‘Gee, why am I carrying a body around a body in my luggage?’ That just isn’t credible.” A quote from the judge.

Letecia was convicted of first-degree murder, first degree murder of a child by a person in a position of trust (I didn’t know that was a thing), tampering with evidence, and other unnamed charges. She was given life in prison without parole.

Anyways, that’s it for Ky’s Rant today.

I’ll see y’all later, bye.

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