Letecia Stauch, the stepmother of 11-year-old Colorado Springs boy Gannon Stauch, whose body was found in Florida after he’d been shot and stabbed, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to murder charges on Friday.
Fourth Judicial District Judge Gregory R. Werner accepted the plea, and Letecia Stauch’s upcoming murder trial, which had been scheduled to start on March 28, is vacated.
In court on Friday, Werner advised Letecia Stauch on the legal ramifications of entering the plea. She answered a few direct questions with a simple “yes,” and also nodded her head in the affirmative.
Defense attorney Joshua Tolini told the court that a psychiatric expert is being brought in from out of state to evaluate Letecia Stauch.
Tolini described the plea being made as part of the “best defense basis to do so.”
In accepting the plea, Werner noted the “huge volume of evidence” that has been presented in the case.
Prosecutors did not object to the plea. Friday’s hearing took about an hour, and Letecia Stauch’s next court hearing is scheduled on March 17.
Gannon disappeared from his family’s Colorado Springs home on Jan. 27, 2020. Letecia Stauch was the last person to see him alive.
The boy’s body was found March 17, 2020, under a bridge near Pensacola, Florida, wrapped in bedding and inside a suitcase. He had been shot in the jaw, stabbed in the chest and back, and suffered a skull fracture. He also had cuts on his arms and hands that appeared to be defensive wounds, Sgt. Jason Yoder, with the Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office in Florida, testified at a preliminary hearing in September.
Gannon’s body appeared to have been in the suitcase for some time, Yoder testified. Authorities found a bullet in his skull, and two bullets in a pillow that was with him in the suitcase, he said.
Authorities believe Letecia Stauch killed Gannon in his bedroom while the two were home alone.
During Letecia Stauch’s preliminary hearing, prosecutors presented evidence that she killed Gannon at their house, then initially dumped his body near Colorado 105 and South Perry Park Road before renting a van and driving with her teenage daughter from Colorado to Pensacola.
Letecia Stauch’s hotel in Florida was about three miles away from the spot where Gannon’s body was later discovered, testimony showed. Letecia Stauch’s DNA was found on a 9 mm gun inside the family’s home, and investigators found a significant amount of bloodstains in Gannon’s bedroom.
His body was found with bloody bedding and a pillow that was missing from the family’s home, and a bullet found in Gannon’s head appeared to have been fired from the 9 mm gun.
On the day Gannon disappeared, Letecia Stauch asked her teenage daughter to stop by a store and buy carpet-cleaning supplies, baking soda, trash bags and other items around 5 p.m, according to an affidavit detailing the evidence against her.
