Letecia Stauch, 39, is accused of killing her stepson Gannon Stauch, 11. (Inset photo of Gannon is a file photo; Courtroom photo from Law&Crime Network)
During a Facetime call played for jurors on Tuesday, 39-year-old Letecia Stauch once complained to a detective about being constantly questioned about her then-missing stepson, 11-year-old Gannon Stauch.
“Is there anything else you could share with me to help me find Gannon,” Detective Jessica Bethel said, then, after a pause, “Where are you now?”
“You keep asking me that over and over and over again,” Stauch replied.
“Where are you now?” said Bethel.
In Facetime call, accused of child killer #LeteciaStauch questioned Senior Detective Jessica Bethel about deputies being home while her teenage daughter was alone and unable to leave the house. Stauch is on trial for the murder of her stepson Gannon in 2020. pic.twitter.com/pVVzqJfZNe
– Law&Crime Network (@LawCrimeNetwork) April 12, 2023
Prosecutors said Stauch knew the whereabouts of her stepson. Authorities say she stabbed and shot the child on January 27, 2020 in her bedroom in Colorado Springs, Colorado, and hid the remains, eventually taking her to Pensacola, Florida, where bridge workers took her. found in a suitcase on March 17, 2020. .
Stauch puts up an insanity defense. Her lawyer Will Cook told jurors in opening statements that she lived with dissociative identity disorder and suffered physical and sexual abuse growing up. Prosecutors claim she knew what she was doing when she cleaned up the crime scene, lied to everyone that she didn’t know where Gannon was and pushed that suitcase over the railing of a bridge in Pensacola.
“Everything that happened to Gannon from that point on was his decision,” District Attorney Michael Allen of the 4th Judicial District told jurors. “She carried out actions to kill Gannon, to put his body in the suitcase and hide it, to hide evidence of what she did to Gannon, told many stories to investigators to manipulate the course of the investigation , and finally to throw Gannon inside that suitcase off a Florida bridge like trash.
The child’s father, Al Stauch, was out of town while deployed with the National Guard at the time of Gannon’s death.
Now divorced from Letecia Stauch – or as he called her, “the defendant” – Al Stauch testified that he confronted her with her changing stories about her son’s disappearance.
He told the court that she had previously claimed the child had it for her. According to her memories, this allegation involved her son threatening Letecia Stauch with a knife or lunging at her with a knife. He said he had never seen anything like it and had seen no evidence that Gannon had done it for the defendant.
“Absolutely never seen that, period,” he testified of his son’s alleged grudge.
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