The Colorado Court of Appeals on Thursday reversed the conviction of a Colorado Springs woman found guilty of murder in the death of her 11-year-old stepson, who went missing for nearly two months in 2020 before his body was discovered under a bridge in Florida.

The three-judge panel sent the prosecution of Letecia Stauch back to the lower court for retrial because her attorneys were unable to dismiss a biased juror who ultimately deliberated on the case, .

“Our Supreme Court has consistently recognized the type of error implicated here — a violation of the defendant¶¶Ňőap right to an unbiased jury — as so harmful that it warrants automatic reversal,” Court of Appeals Judge Neeti Pawar wrote in the decision’s majority opinion.

The juror was related to a deputy district attorney in the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office in El Paso County — which prosecuted the case — and should have been dismissed automatically, Pawar wrote.

Kate Singh, a spokesperson for the district attorney’s office, called the court’s opinion “extremely disappointing” in an emailed statement to The Denver Post.

“We remain undeterred in our search for ultimate justice in this case,” Singh said. “We will consult with the attorney general’s office about seeking review of today’s decision in the Colorado Supreme Court and, if necessary, we will be prepared to present the case to a new jury here in El Paso County.”

The original jury found Letecia Stauch guilty of first-degree murder in the death of her stepson, Gannon Stauch, court records show. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Gannon disappeared from his family’s Colorado Springs home in January 2020, and his body, which had been shot and stabbed, was found months later inside a suitcase under a bridge near Pensacola, Florida. Stauch was the last person to see him alive.

A neighbor’s surveillance cameras captured Stauch and Gannon leaving the home together on the morning of Jan. 27, 2020. Stauch returned home, alone, several hours later.

Stauch asked her teenage daughter to purchase cleaning supplies on the day Gannon disappeared, including baking soda and trash bags, according to her arrest affidavit. She told police that the boy had failed to return from a friend’s house, but couldn’t name the friend or the friend’s parents.

The stepmother changed her story several times throughout the investigation, at one point claiming that an intruder had held her captive and abducted Gannon, the affidavit stated. Stauch often provided details that only the killer would know, including explanations for evidence that had not been publicly released.

Investigators believe Stauch hid Gannon’s body in a remote area along the border of El Paso and Douglas counties before moving the body into a suitcase and driving it in a rented cargo van to Florida, where she tossed the suitcase off a highway overpass.

The boy’s body was found by a construction crew on March 17, 2020 — more than 1,000 miles from home. He had been shot in the jaw and stabbed in the chest and back, Sgt. Jason Yoder with Florida’s Santa Rosa County Sheriff’s Office testified in Stauch’s September 2021 preliminary hearing. Gannon also suffered a skull fracture and had cuts on his arms and hands that appeared to be defensive wounds, Yoder said.

A bullet found in the 11-year-old’s head was matched to a gun found in the family’s Colorado Springs home, which had DNA on it from Stauch and two other people, El Paso County sheriff’s Sgt. Rosario Hubbell testified.

Investigators found evidence of blood splatter on Gannon’s bedroom walls and bloodstains on his mattress, carpet and bedroom floor. Traces of blood were also found on the family’s garage floor and on the bumper of Stauch’s car.

“Because we conclude that the trial court committed structural error by denying Stauch’s challenge for cause to a biased juror, who deliberated, we reverse the convictions and remand for a new trial,” Pawar wrote in the decision.

Jurors must not be related within three degrees to the elected district attorney of the county in which the trial is taking place or to any deputy district attorney in that office, Pawar wrote. The juror must be automatically removed, regardless of whether their relative appeared or participated in the case.

The biased juror’s son-in-law worked as a deputy district attorney for the Fourth Judicial District Attorney’s Office and disclosed that on his questionnaire during jury selection, according to the appeals court decision. Stauch’s attorneys tried to challenge him for cause but were denied.

“I think that there is, you know, a difference between somebody saying, I have a son or daughter who works for the police, then (sic), I have a son-in-law who works for the DA who is actually trying the case,” an unidentified defense attorney said in a court transcript included in the appeal decision

El Paso County District Court Judge Gregory Werner asked the then-potential juror how long his son-in-law had worked for the district attorney, if he had discussed the case with his son-in-law and whether he would be influenced by the desire to have the case work out better for his son-in-law, according to the decision.

The man’s answers were not provided, but he was ultimately not dismissed.

One Colorado Court of Appeals judge agreed that the trial court erred in not dismissing the juror, but argued that Stauch waived her right to a new trial when her attorneys did not use their available peremptory challenges to dismiss the biased juror, according to the minority opinion in the decision.

“By electing not to remove biased jurors peremptorily, defendants participate in their seating every bit as much as the trial judges who erroneously fail to remove them for cause,” Judge J. Bernard wrote.

A true-crime influencer on YouTube is apologizing after selling access to autopsy photos of 11-year-old Gannon Stauch, a Colorado Springs boy murdered by his stepmother three years ago.

The poster, who goes by Zav Girl, has received intense backlash online after publishing the photos of Stauch in a video on her now-defunct Patreon page, which allows creators to charge money for content.

The woman received the photos through an open records request with the Colorado Judicial Department, an agency spokesperson confirmed Friday.

Autopsy photos normally are not releasable under Colorado’s open records laws, but the photos of the murdered boy became public record after they were introduced as exhibits during the May trial of his stepmother.

Patreon removed the video and Zav Girl’s account from the site. A spokesperson said that the content violated guidelines for violent and graphic content.

Zav Girl, who has nearly 88,000 YouTube subscribers, apologized to Stauch’s family in a Thursday, saying she’s been doing “major soul-searching and reflecting.” She said she put the video with the trial evidence behind a paywall, thinking it wouldn’t be made public. The photos, she explained, already had been seen during trial and weren’t new.

“To Gannon’s family, I have no words that can make this better,” the social media influencer said. “No one should have to go through what you guys went through.”

Gannon Stauch went missing in January 2020 and his disappearance became national news. His stepmother, Laticia Stauch, was arrested and charged with murder in March of that year, days before a construction crew found Gannon’s body in Florida.

An El Paso County jury in May found the stepmother guilty of first-degree murder, among other charges. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

The murder case spawned a host of documentaries, podcasts and YouTube videos.

An El Paso County jury on Monday convicted Letecia Stauch of first-degree murder in the death of her 11-year-old stepson, finding the woman was sane during the brutal attack in the family’s Colorado Springs home three years ago.

Jurors rejected Stauch’s defense that she suffered a mental break and was legally insane when she stabbed and shot Gannon Stauch on Jan. 27, 2020.

The 39-year-old woman was also found guilty of tampering with a human body and tampering with evidence.

Immediately after the conviction, Stauch was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole plus 13.5 years in an emotional hearing during which Gannon’s family spoke about his life and death. The 11-year-old boy was born prematurely and weighed only 1 pound, 6 ounces at birth, his mother, Landen Bullard said. When he was born, his father’s wedding ring fit over Gannon’s arm up to his shoulder, another relative said.

“You came into this world fighting, and unfortunately you left this world fighting,” Bullard said, crying as she spoke in court.

Gannon’s father, Al Stauch, remembered Gannon’s love of video games and sports, as well as his joyful approach to life. He apologized to his son for leaving him alone with Letecia Stauch.

“Gannon, I never in my wildest dreams would have thought you would have been in danger, buddy, or I would not have left you at home with what turned out to be a murderer,” he said, before putting his head down on the podium and weeping. “I’m so sorry.”

Letecia Stauch did not appear to visibly react when the verdict was read; she yawned, fixed her hair and drank water as Gannon’s family spoke. Before she was sentenced, she smiled and laughed while talking to her attorneys.

Fourth Judicial District Court said the case was the “most horrific” he’d ever seen. He sentenced Stauch to the maximum possible penalties on each charge. He said Stauch crafted a “web of lies” after the murder in an attempt to avoid responsibility and that her claim of insanity did a disservice to people who are truly mentally ill.

“That just isn’t credible,” he said. “You knew what you were doing. You made a number of clear and conscious decisions to cover or hide what you had done.”

Gannon’s disappearance three years ago prompted national attention during the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic. Letecia Stauch reported the boy missing on Jan. 27, 2020, saying he had gone to a friend’s house to play and never returned home, but almost immediately drew suspicion because she gave shifting accounts to investigators.

For weeks, authorities coordinated a massive public search effort for Gannon, while investigators privately zeroed in on Letecia Stauch as the prime suspect in the killing, testimony revealed during the month-long jury trial.

After killing Gannon, Letecia Stauch hid the boy’s body in a remote area along the El Paso/Douglas county line, before moving the body into a suitcase and driving it in a rented cargo van to Florida, where she tossed the suitcase off a highway overpass.

She was arrested and charged with murder on March 2, 2020, days before a construction crew found Gannon’s body on March 17, 2020.

“Gannon was born severely premature and barely filled my two hands the first time I held him,” Al Stauch said Monday. “But at the end of his life, after his body was cremated into a pile of ashes, he was ultimately no bigger than the first time I held him.”

During the trial, Stauch’s defense attorneys claimed she suffered serious childhood abuse that led to the development of multiple personality disorder and that she suffered a mental break when she killed Gannon.

Prosecutors countered that Stauch was sane and motivated by hatred of Gannon. They said she resented caring for the boy and pointed to her extensive efforts to cover up the crime as evidence of her sanity.

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An El Paso County jury is deciding whether a woman who killed her 11-year-old stepson was sane when she stabbed and shot the child or suffered a mental break so extreme that she cannot be held legally responsible for her actions.

Letecia Stauch’s defense attorney did not dispute that the mother and former special education teacher killed her stepson, Gannon Stauch, but said she suffered a mental break before she killed him and has disassociated since the Jan. 27, 2020, killing.

“It was her,” Josh Tolini, Stauch’s defense attorney, said during closing arguments. “But she was not in her right mind when she did it.”

Testimony in the month-long trial in Colorado Springs drew to a close Friday, more than three years after Gannon’s disappearance prompted massive searches and drew national media attention. Stauch, 39, pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of murder, tampering with a body and tampering with evidence in connection with Gannon’s death.

Under Colorado law, a person can be found not guilty by reason of insanity if, at the time of the crime, they were so impaired that they either did not understand what they were doing or, if they did know what they were doing, could not recognize their actions as morally wrong.

Jurors were sent to deliberate just after 1 p.m. Friday and had not reached a verdict by 5 p.m. They are scheduled to return to the courthouse at 9 a.m. Monday to continue deliberations.

If Stauch is found guilty of first-degree murder, she faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison. If she is found not guilty by reason of insanity, she will be committed to a mental hospital for treatment and could eventually be released if her condition improves.

Prosecutors on Friday argued that Stauch’s actions to cover up the killing prove she is not insane.

“If they don’t have the capacity to know right from wrong, they don’t hide the body,” Senior Deputy District Attorney Dave Young said.

Stauch attacked Gannon in his bedroom by stabbing him 18 times, then crushing his skull and then shooting him, according to trial testimony. She hid Gannon’s body in a storage room before moving it to a remote area along the El Paso/Douglas county line, and later hid the body in a suitcase and drove it to Florida.

After weeks of intensive searches around Gannon’s Colorado Springs neighborhood, construction workers found the boy’s body in March 2020 under a bridge near Pensacola, Florida. Investigators never found the tool Stauch used to stab him, the clothing she wore during the attack or the shell casings from the family’s gun, prosecutors previously said. Stauch attempted to clean Gannon’s bedroom of evidence and put her bloody shoes in the washing machine, they said.

“It¶¶Ňőap not psychotic, it¶¶Ňőap strategic,” Young said.

Prosecutors never developed a motive despite the “biggest investigation in the history of El Paso County” because there wasn’t one, Stauch’s defense attorney said.

“They cannot come up with a motive because there is no motive that makes sense,” Tolini said. “This was a psychotic break.”

In a rebuttal to Tolini’s closing arguments, Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen said Stauch killed Gannon simply because she hated him. She was looking to leave her marriage and had previously searched online about hating her stepson, he said.

“Does the brutality itself prove psychosis?” Allen asked. “The brutality speaks to the abject hatred she had for Gannon and the pure determination she had to kill Gannon.”

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Six days after 11-year-old Gannon Stauch disappeared from his family’s Colorado Springs home in January 2020, his stepmother Letecia Stauch loaded her belongings into a rented cargo van to move across the country.

As authorities scoured the boy’s neighborhood and prepared for extensive searches with drones, sonar, dog teams and volunteers, his stepmother struggled to move a heavy suitcase into a van behind a Budget Truck Rental location, her half-brother, Dakota Lowery, testified this week at Letecia Stauch’s murder trial.

She wouldn’t let him help her with the suitcase, he said on the stand. When he asked what was inside, she told him it was softball gear.

“I didn’t feel right about it,” he said softly, becoming emotional. “I just felt like it was too heavy for her.”

Weeks later, construction workers discovered Gannon’s body in that same suitcase, under a highway overpass in Florida. The 11-year-old had been shot, stabbed 18 times and suffered a skull fracture. Authorities later charged Letecia Stauch with first-degree murder.

“When he was found, I knew she did it,” Lowery testified. “When I seen that suitcase, I knew she was acting funny about it.”

His account came on the sixth day of testimony in what is expected to be a six-week jury trial in El Paso County District Court for Letecia Stauch, 39, who has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the killing of her stepson.

Prosecutors say she killed Gannon in his bedroom, then carefully cleaned up the crime scene and hid Gannon’s body in a remote area nearby before driving the body to Florida and dumping the suitcase under a bridge.

Stauch’s defense attorneys suggest she had a mental break during the killing and cannot be held criminally responsible for Gannon’s death because she was legally insane. Both sides sought to bolster their positions in the early days of the jury trial.

Prosecutors have focused this week on the lengths that Stauch went to to try to cover up the crime, including offering many different lies about what happened to Gannon. In a 911 call the day Gannon disappeared, she said Gannon had gone to visit a friend and did not come home. In phone calls with Gannon’s father and her then-husband Albert Stauch just a couple weeks after Gannon disappeared, she claimed a man broke into the family’s home, raped her, then beat and kidnapped Gannon.

“I said, ‘Where is the bloody mess, the clothes, the rags?'” Albert Stauch testified. “And she said, ‘Well I disposed of it.'”

Albert Stauch was working with law enforcement at the time, and the phone calls were recorded and played in court. During the emotional conversations, Albert Stauch confronted his wife about details in her stories that didn’t make sense and pushed her to tell the truth about what happened to Gannon. She repeatedly cried, screamed and asked for immunity from criminal prosecution in the calls. She would not explain why she needed immunity.

Through cross-examination of the prosecution’s witnesses, Stauch’s defense attorneys have sought to show she had a traumatic childhood and suffered from mental illness. Lowery, who is 14 years younger than his sister, testified that his father was an alcoholic and beat their mother, sometimes so severely that their mother would take the children to a hotel room until he sobered up.

Lowery testified that when he was a toddler, his father gave him so much alcohol that he passed out. Letecia Stauch left home when she was 16, Lowery testified. Sometimes, when she came back to visit, she would leave Lowery knives to protect himself, he said.

Lowery said he initially thought his sister might have “snapped and went crazy” when she killed Gannon. But he said after learning about her actions after the killing, he no longer believes her claims of insanity.

“Too much got done for her to be saying that,” he said.

The trial continues Friday.

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A Colorado Springs woman accused of murdering her 11-year-old stepson suffers from multiple personality disorder due to severe childhood abuse and underwent a mental break when she killed the boy three years ago, her defense attorney argued in court Monday.

Attorney Will Cook began laying out an insanity defense during opening statements in the jury trial of Letecia Stauch, 39, who is charged with first-degree murder in the death of her stepson, 11-year-old Gannon Stauch.

The boy was killed Jan. 27, 2020, but his body was not found for weeks, prompting extensive missing-child search efforts — including an emotional plea from Gannon’s parents for his safe return — and drawing national attention from media and internet sleuths in the early days of COVID-19.

Although Letecia Stauch was arrested weeks after Gannon’s killing, the process of bringing the case to a jury was slowed by the pandemic and questions about her mental competency to stand trial.

In court on Monday, prosecutors alleged that Stauch was sane when she killed Gannon inside his bedroom, hid his body in a remote area nearby and then rented a van and drove the boy’s body to Florida, where she dumped his remains under a bridge.

Cook argued that Stauch was out of her mind and shouldn’t be held legally responsible.

“There is no motive,” Cook said, showing jurors a photo of Gannon and his stepmother smiling together the day before he was killed. “There is no reason. It doesn’t make sense. It¶¶Ňőap insane. A smiling photo, and the next day, Gannon is gone. No reason for it.”

Fourth Judicial District Attorney Michael Allen pointed to Stauch’s extensive efforts to cover up the crime as proof of her sanity. She cleaned the very bloody crime scene, hid Gannon’s body and lied about what happened, he said.

“All of her decisions, all of her deliberate actions, betray her claims of insanity,” Allen said. “She knew that what she had done to Gannon was wrong.”

Stauch reported Gannon as missing from the family’s Colorado Springs home in January 2020, prompting an extensive search effort. His body was found in March 2020, inside a suitcase under a bridge near Pensacola, Florida.

He had been shot, stabbed 18 times and suffered a skull fracture. His body was wrapped in bedding from the family’s home, and bullets found in the suitcase appeared to have been fired from a gun kept in the family’s home.

Stauch pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, which means she claims she cannot be held criminally responsible for the killing because she was legally insane at the time of the crime. If she is found not guilty by reason of insanity, she would be committed to a mental health facility for treatment, rather than prison, and could eventually be released if she is later found to be sane.

If found guilty, she faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison.

Cook told jurors during opening statements Monday that Stauch developed dissociative identity disorder, also known as multiple personality disorder, after suffering years of emotional, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of her mother’s boyfriends when she was a child.

“The person she was killing that day, attacking, it wasn’t Gannon,” Cook said. “It wasn’t Gannon to her. She didn’t wake up that day and go, ‘I’m going to kill my stepson.’ No. She was killing the demons… from the dark depths of her childhood and her life.”

Allen rejected those claims by focusing on how Stauch carried out the killing — she attacked Gannon in his bedroom, he said, first stabbing him, then crushing his skull, and then shooting the boy. Stauch hid Gannon’s body in a storage room before moving it to a remote area along the El Paso/Douglas county line and later driving it to Florida.

“The one place where a boy like Gannon should have felt the safest — his bedroom — turned into the stuff of nightmares,” Allen said. “That bedroom is where he was brutally murdered.”

Investigators never found the tool Stauch used to stab Gannon, the clothing she wore during the attack or the shell casings from the family’s gun, Allen said. Stauch scrubbed the walls and floor of Gannon’s bedroom and put her bloody shoes in the washing machine, he said.

“The defendant took very deliberate action,” he said. “She decided to hide her crimes from the world.”

Stauch faces 12 charges in connection with the slaying; prosecutors on Monday dismissed a single count of child abuse resulting in death, saying that the facts of the case no longer support that charge.

The jury trial is expected to last six to eight weeks. Prosecutors will begin presenting evidence at 9 a.m. Tuesday.

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Jury selection began Monday in the murder trial of the Colorado Springs woman accused of killing 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 Jan. 27, 2020, prompting 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, inside a suitcase 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 suitcase appeared to have been fired from a gun kept in the family’s home, investigators previously testified.

Stauch pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, which means she claims she cannot be held criminally responsible for the killing because she was legally insane at the time of the crime. If she is found not guilty by reason of insanity, she would be committed to a mental health facility for treatment, rather than prison, and could eventually be released if she is later found to be sane. If found guilty, she faces mandatory 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 trial could stretch as long as six weeks. A large pool of jurors is being called because of both extensive prior media coverage of Gannon’s disappearance and the expected length of the trial.

Stauch was arrested and charged with her stepson’s murder about two weeks before authorities found the boy’s body. Investigators became suspicious because Stauch gave authorities shifting accounts of what happened to Gannon. She called 911 to report him missing the day he disappeared and claimed he’d failed to come back from a friend’s house, but she couldn’t tell dispatchers the name of the friend he’d gone to visit.

During a preliminary hearing in the case, investigators testified 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 she then returned to the dump site about three days later and collected 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 in a hotel about three miles from the area where Gannon’s body was ultimately found before continuing on to Orlando and then South Carolina, where Stauch previously lived.

Investigators believed Stauch was unhappy in her marriage and resented caring for her stepson. She asked her teenage daughter to buy carpet-cleaning supplies, baking soda, trash bags and other items on the afternoon Gannon disappeared, authorities said.

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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.

The murder case against Letecia Stauch in the death of her 11-year-old stepson will move forward, an El Paso County District Court judge ruled Thursday.

District Judge Gregory Werner found sufficient probable cause after listening to testimony during a preliminary hearing earlier this month for Stauch, 38, who is accused of killing Gannon Stauch in January 2020, while the two were home alone.

The boy disappeared Jan. 27, 2020, and his stepmother was charged with first-degree murder on March 2, 2020. Gannon’s body was found under a bridge in Florida on March 17, 2020. He had been shot and stabbed, then put into a suitcase and thrown off an overpass near Pensacola.

During Letecia Stauch’s preliminary hearing, prosecutors presented evidence that Letecia Stauch killed Gannon in his bedroom, 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, 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.

Letecia Stauch is scheduled to return to court Nov. 4.

The 11-year-old Colorado Springs boy whose disappearance last year drew national attention before his body was found in Florida was shot and stabbed, a detective testified Thursday during a preliminary hearing in the murder case brought against the boy’s stepmother, Letecia Stauch.

Gannon Stauch disappeared from his family’s Colorado Springs home on Jan. 27, 2020. Letecia Stauch, 38, was the last person to see him alive, and authorities believe she killed Gannon in his bedroom while the two were home alone that afternoon.

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.

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.

In Gannon’s bedroom, investigators found evidence of blood splatter on the walls and bloodstains on his mattress, carpet and bedroom floor. Authorities also found traces of Gannon’s blood on the family’s garage floor and on the bumper of Stauch’s car, according to an affidavit filed against her.

A 9 mm gun found in the family’s home had Stauch’s DNA on it, a well as the DNA of two other people, El Paso County sheriff’s Sgt. Rosario Hubbell testified. The bullet found in Gannnon’s head appeared to have been fired from that gun, he testified.

On the day Gannon disappeared, 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 the affidavit.

She called 911 to report Gannon as missing, saying he had failed to return from a friend’s house, but she couldn’t name the friend he was supposedly visiting, and her account changed constantly throughout the investigation, sometimes including details about the crime that only the killer would know, according to the affidavit.

The morning after Gannon disappeared, Stauch drove her car to the Colorado Springs airport and parked there. She then rented a car, picked up Gannon’s father from a flight — he’d been out of town for two days — and returned home in the rented car, testified Kevin Clark, who worked the case as an analyst for Colorado Springs police.

Later that night, Stauch retrieved her car and then drove to the area near Colorado 105 and South Perry Park Road in Douglas County, where investigators believe she initially dumped Gannon’s body. Stauch’s phone appeared to be in airplane mode for several hours that night, testimony revealed, and searchers later found a board with Gannon’s blood on it in that area.

On Feb. 1, 2020, Stauch rented a van and drove with her teenage daughter from Colorado to Pensacola. They arrived just after midnight on Feb. 4, he testified. They stayed in a hotel about three miles away from the spot where Gannon’s body was later discovered before heading to Orlando and then South Carolina, where Stauch previously lived.

In an unusual move Thursday, Stauch declined to be present during the preliminary hearing, instead allowing the proceeding to go forward without her.

One of her defense attorneys, Joshua Tolini, pointed out during cross-examination that the back door to the family’s home opened 10 times during the window of time in which investigators believe Gannon was killed —  he suggested someone else might have entered the home. He also said there was no history of documented child abuse or problems in the home that typically precede child homicides, and said that Stauch’s coworkers and friends described her as a good stepmother.

Stauch’s online activity and Google searches suggested she was unhappy in her marriage and may have resented caring for her stepchildren, according to the affidavit.

Judge Gregory Werner is scheduled to make a ruling Sept. 23 as to whether prosecutors presented evidence showing sufficient probable cause to take the case to trial.