Accused Killer Stepmom Letecia Stauch, Murder Trial Day 10

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A Colorado woman was on trial on Monday accused of murdering her 11-year-old stepson in January 2020, then driving to Florida with his body to dump it over a bridge.

Letecia Stauch has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, and her attorney told the jury in Colorado Springs that she suffered a ‘psychotic crack’ that caused her to kill the little boy. Her legal team point to a traumatic childhood with years of sexual and mental abuse.

Prosecutors argue that she was unhappy in her marriage and resentful of being treated like an unpaid babysitter. Her husband was away at the time of his son Gannon’s murder, on deployment with the National Guard.

The trial is expected to last several weeks. 

Michael Allen, the district attorney, argued in his opening statement that the steps that Stauch took to cover up her actions are proof that she knew what she did was wrong – and was therefore sane. 

She cleaned up blood in Gannon’s bedroom, moving his body to various locations to hide it before disposing of it ‘like garbage’ in a river that flows into the Gulf of Mexico in hopes it would never be found, he said.

Stauch also lied to investigators various times to try to hamper their investigation, Allen said, changing her accounts of what happened to the little boy. 

She claimed two different men had raped her and then abducted Gannon and, later, that one of those men had taken Gannon after he hurt himself in a bike crash.

‘All of her actions were purposefully designed by her to distance herself from what she did,’ Allen said.

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But defense attorney Will Cook said the gruesome details highlighted by Allen, including how Gannon was killed and the lack of a motive, are proof that Stauch was ‘insane’ because it all does not make sense.

‘These are all signs and evidence of a mind, a soul, that is broken in a most fundamental and profound way,’ he said.

Cook suggested Stauch developed dissociative identify disorder as a result of being physically, emotionally and sexually abused by her absent mother’s string of partners during her childhood, sometimes sleeping in a car in the driveway to escape the abuse. 

Cook said that when Stauch killed Gannon, in her mind she was killing the ‘demons’ from her childhood and life.

Based on surveys given to potential jurors, many were skeptical of Stauch’s mental health defense, Cook said. 

He urged jurors to put aside their impulse to make someone pay for such a brutal killing and keep an open mind because the judicial system requires Stauch to be presumed innocent.

‘I’m not telling you to like it. I’m just telling you that’s the way it is,’ he said.