Jury selection began Monday in the murder trial of the Colorado Springs woman accused of murdering her 11-year-old stepson and then driving across the country to dump his body in Florida.
Letecia Stauch, 39, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Gannon Stauch, who disappeared from the family’s Colorado Springs home on January 27, 2020. extensive searches for the boy. Letecia Stauch was the last person to see Gannon alive, and investigators believe she killed the boy in his bedroom while the two were home alone that afternoon.
Gannon’s body was found in March 2020 in a trunk under a bridge near Pensacola, Florida. He had been shot in the jaw, stabbed in the chest and back and suffered a skull fracture, authorities said. His body was wrapped in bedding from the family’s home, and bullets found in the trunk appeared to have been fired from a gun kept in the family’s home, investigators have previously testified.
Stauch pleaded not guilty by reason of insanitymeaning she claims she cannot be held criminally responsible for the murder because she was legally insane at the time of the crime. If found not guilty by reason of insanity, she would be admitted to a mental health facility for treatment instead of jail, and could eventually be released if later found to be sane. If found guilty, she faces life in prison.
Jury selection in the case began Monday and is expected to last about two weeks. Opening statements are scheduled for April 3 and the process could take up to six weeks. A large pool of jurors is convened due to both extensive previous media coverage of Gannon’s disappearance and the anticipated length of the trial.
Stauch was arrested and charged with the murder of her stepson about two weeks before authorities found the boy’s body. Investigators became suspicious as Stauch gave authorities shifting bills of what happened to Gannon. She called 911 to report him missing the day he disappeared, claiming he hadn’t returned from a friend’s house, but she couldn’t tell dispatchers the name of the friend he had gone to see.
During a preliminary hearing in the case, investigators stated that they believed Letecia Stauch killed Gannon in his bedroom, then dumped his body in a remote area near Palmer Lake along the El Paso/Douglas county line. They indicated that she returned to the dump about three days later and retrieved the body.
Stauch and her then-teenage daughter drove a rented van from Colorado to Pensacola between Feb. 1 and Feb. 4, 2020, investigators testified. They stayed at a hotel about three miles from the area where Gannon’s body was eventually found before traveling on to Orlando and then South Carolina, where Stauch previously lived.
Investigators believed that Stauch was unhappy in her marriage and disliked caring for her stepson. She asked her teenage daughter to buy carpet cleaning products, baking soda, garbage bags and other items the afternoon Gannon disappeared, authorities said.
