A 38-year-old woman has been sentenced to life in prison without parole for the 2020 murder of her stepson, 11-year-old Gannon Stauch.
Letecia Stauch was convicted of first-degree murder by a Colorado court on Monday, as well as several other charges including first-degree murder of a child by a person in a position of trust and tampering with evidence, Associated Press reported.
She had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Her defense attorney, Will Cook, also said she was sexually abused as a child, which caused her to develop dissociative identity disorder, formerly known as multiple personality disorder.
Despite these claims, however, Stauch was declared sane at the time of Gannon’s death by a Colorado state mental hospital, according to AP, making her able to understand the difference between right and wrong in the eyes of the court — and able to form the intent to commit a crime.
Prior to her sentencing, the judge, Gregory Werner, said that the “facts in this case are the most horrific I have ever seen,” according to CBS Colorado.
He added that Stauch’s “conduct in this case deserves the maximum sentence that I can impose according to Colorado law.”
The judge also said that, compared to other defendants who cite mental health problems as reasons for their actions, Stauch was never surprised by what she claimed her other personality had done. Instead, she covered up her tracks purposefully.
“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,” Werner said.
Stauch was accused of stabbing Gannon 18 times before hitting him in the head and shooting him.
The teenager was declared missing by his stepmother on January 27, 2020, and in March, she was arrested in connection with his disappearance.
His body was found about two weeks later in a suitcase below a bridge in Florida.
According to the arrest affidavit, Stauch murdered Gannon at their home shortly before reporting him missing.
“Evidence recovered from the residence and inside Gannon’s bedroom supports that a violent event occurred in the bedroom,” read the affidavit, “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.”
According to the affidavit, Stauch asked her 17-year-old daughter to purchase trash bags, baking soda and carpet powder on the same day, which investigators said were used to clean up blood.
Earlier in the case, jurors heard a five-hour recording of Stauch’s initial interrogation by FBI agent Jonathan Grusing, who questioned her after her arrest in March 2020. The recording allegedly revealed that she knew more about her stepson’s disappearance than she’d initially claimed.
At one point, Grusing told Stauch that her internet search history had been obtained, and showed searches including “I don’t like my stepson” and “blood spurting from arterial bleed,” the Colorado Springs Gazette reported.
Throughout the case, Stauch concocted various stories to mislead investigators. She even claimed that a man she had hired to repair a carpet raped her and then abducted her stepson.
Gannon’s father, Al Stauch, divorced her shortly after her arrest in March 2020.
AP reported that Al Stauch allowed the FBI to listen to his phone calls with his then-wife after he became suspicious of her.
Prosecutors in the case claimed that Stauch killed Gannon to hurt her husband, who was away at a National Guard deployment at the time of Gannon’s disappearance and death. The judge also said he believed Stauch was motivated by “hatred and jealousy” of Gannon’s mother, Landen Bullard.
Before Stauch’s sentencing in court on Monday, Gannon’s father spoke to the courtroom and requested that her sentencing include a year for every mile she drove from Colorado to Florida, where she dumped Gannon’s body in 2020.
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