Prosecutor Michael Allen delivers his opening statement in the murder trial against Letecia Stauch on April 3, 2020. Authorities said the defendant stabbed and shot her stepson Gannon Stauch, 11. (Screenshot: Law&Crime Network)
Jurors on Tuesday heard audio in which the grieving father of Gannon Stauch, 11, confronted the child’s stepmother.
“Did you kill Gannon?” Al Stauch asked defendant Letecia Stauch, 39.
“I can’t believe you asked me this!” Letecia Stauch said.
Now, however, she stands trial in Gannon’s death and is putting up an insanity defense. Her attorney does not dispute that she killed the child that day on Jan. 27, 2020, in El Paso County, Colorado. Prosecutors said she stabbed Gannon 18 times and shot him once in the head (missing two other shots).
“There is no explanation for it,” defense lawyer Will Cook said of the killing during his opening statement. “I don’t have one.”
“Did you kill Gannon?” Al Stauch finally asks #LeteciaStauch on the recorded call.
LS: “I can’t believe you asked me this!”
She asks why he thinks she killed Gannon.
AS: “You changed your story again…for the fourth time.” pic.twitter.com/ZM5RFhtVhF
— Cathy Russon (@cathyrusson) April 4, 2023
The question before jurors is whether Letecia Stauch was sane during the act. District Attorney Michael Allen of the 4th Judicial District told jurors on Monday that she knew right from wrong.
“Everything that happened to Gannon from that point forward was her decision,” he said. “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 numerous stories to investigators to manipulate the course of the investigation, and finally to discard Gannon inside that suitcase off of a Florida bridge like garbage.”
Authorities brought up allegations that she often changed her story from when she reported Gannon missing on Jan. 27. A bridge worker in Pensacola, Florida, on March 17, 2020, discovered the suitcase in which Gannon’s abandoned remains were stuffed.
During the search for Gannon, Letecia Stauch told investigators various stories about the disappearance, including that she was raped (though she gave different names of her attacker), Allen said. “Most cruelly,” she alleged that the child’s birth mother Landen Hiott was involved in his disappearance, the prosecutor said.
As heard on the audio, Al Stauch confronted his then-wife with her shifting stories.
“I just got to know,” he said. “You told me to be straight up. I got to know what’s happening to my son.”
Letecia Stauch said she didn’t know why he could think she killed Gannon.
“There’s a lot of unknowns,” Al Stauch said, telling her she changed her story to him “for the fourth time.”
He testified on Tuesday that Letecia Stauch previously claimed Gannon had it out for her. To his recollection, she asserted the child threatened her with a knife or came at her with one. He testified, however, that he saw nothing like this.
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