Warning: Graphic content, readers’ discretion advised. This story contains a recollection of crime and can be triggering to some readers discretion advised.
Eleven-year-old Gannon Stauch was left at home with his stepmom when his dad left for deployment in the National Guard. Days later, Al Stauch received traumatic news that his son had vanished
He was going to go to play with a friend and didn’t come back .
the disappearance of an 11 year old boy turns to a devastating tale full of lies and betrayal.
in this story ,about the dissapearance of a young colorado boy , you need to hang on because this story goes in all different kinds of confusing and chilling directions.
it’s janury 27th 2020 colorado springs colorado .
36 year old leticia Stauch who’s married to husband albert Stauch
is callin to report that her stepson 11 year old gannon has gone missing
hours later police arrive at the Stauch home to talk to leticia her daughter harley and ganon’s lena.
while Albert gannon’s biolocial father is out of town for work.
it didn’t seem like there was enough urgency in leticia’s voice, it seem like she was not scattering in terms of her thoughts of what’s going on my stepson is missing –it was more like she was trying to piece it together.
law enforcement heard he went to a friend’s house but all of the community couldn’t find him anywhere , at first there were rumors ,this boy could have been a runnaway.
the next morning albert arrives back home from a training session with the national guard.
he and leticia meet with detective at a coffe shop to gain some insight on where gannon could have gone .
” the big deal here is he’s a homebody,so he’s not one just to walk off”
-albert said
we talking about january in the colorado rockies,it’s ccold in fact there was a pretty heavy snowstorm that occured in the days following gannon’s disappearance
the likelihood that an 11 -year old child without substantial help from somebody outside the home could survive during that period of time.
greatly diminish the chances that law enforcement were going to find him alive and return him to his family .
there’d be so many tips comingin to the sheriff’s office, they had to have a seperate line.
so many people thinking they seen him , turning out not to have seen him this boys disappearance was gaining not only statewide attention.
but quickly worldwide,nationalwide ,online, social media ,and there was just so much mystery so much curiosity so much concern.
then the day after gannon disappeared leticia tells an investigator she has something to share.and leticia saying she wasn’t able to speak freely while Al was around
comes into the police station to talk once more.
but this time she say s she wants to tell officials what really happened…
there’s this story that kept being brought up about a candle , he was maybe playing with his nintendo switch vy a candle and maybe he shouldn’t have been onhis switch
and thet his stepmother came downstairs and he got scared and knock this candle over.
but as letici gets tothe day of gannon’s disappearance her story couldn’t be more different than what she originally told police.
now she says someone else was involved
initially we had heard he had left to go to a friend’s house and didn’t come back then after days and no one finding any trace of that ever happening
there was news stories that someone came in the house.
this is where we hear h the story being attacked ,that someone broke into the home attacked her and attacked gannon and then took gannon
and here’s another layer to a different story that leticia now providing investigators.
investigators begin looking into what leticia is telling them ,but in order to do that they need to examine leticia herself for evidence
something that appears to get her agitated
the investigator started to see that something didn’t quite fit here, something was off.
investigators need to work quickly to find gannon but now there aren’t sure what to believe
the whole community came out in full force ,we’re just trying to find any clues as to where this boy is
if he’s okay ,if he ihe”s in the state,if he’s in the country ,if his alive
it’s janury 2020 11 year old gannon Stauch has been reported missing from his El Paso Country Colorado Home.
gannon’s stepmother leticia Stauch initially reported the boy went went to play at a friend’s house and never came home for dinner
but a day later she meets with investigators and changes the story
saying that he had actually been kidnapped
and that she had been sexually assaulted by a construction worker from a new home being built nearby
but towards the end of the interview leticia starts getting combative when been asked to submit for sexual assault examination.
she was transported to the hospital so that a sexual assault examination can be conducted but at the hospital refuses undergo that sexual examination.
she really trying to set up this idea and yet she’s not willing to give any evidence that would help law enforcement find that person.
she portrays undergoing a very severe anxiety attack to try to get out of the interview
that requires them to bring in paramedics
and they find that she’s perfectly normal she knows that the investigation is starting to zero in on her.
leticia has ow told authorities multiple versions of what happened to gannon and rumors what about occured begin circling the neighborhood.
leticia agrees to speak with a local reporter saying she wants to clear everything up
but it seems it only complicates things further
there was just some weird things that kidn of stood out,based on her demeanor and all of that .
you speaking with someone that is in the center of the most heartbreaking situation you could imagine that might known some answers and couldn’t teell the public to try to help .
she would always say that she really loved gannon and that gannon was the favorite stepchild of hers.
but t’s very clear from the way she would treat the kid that in fact he was the least favorite child in the house.
gannon was by all accounts of mama’s boy
and that cause leticia to be jealous of that relationship that gannon had with his biological mother
in the middle of that interview she’s talking about gannon as if he’s going to come home and then she switches and start talking about him in the past tense.
that was a big clue for the law enforcement and it did sort of put the investigation on a different track
detectives still aren’t totally totally clear on what happened the day gannon disapeared.
yet they suspect leticia might know more than she’s letting on
at this point,even al Stauch ,leticia’s husband and gannon’s biological father tries to get answers out of leticia.
al expresses concerns that leticia is holding back information, so he agrees to allow investigators to record their phone calls
she comes up wit h a story about looking for a bike to buy for Al and how she and gannon had gone up there to look at the bike
she describes invery elaborate detail ,gannon test ridning the bike crashing , hitting his head.
there was a piece of wood blood on it found in a remote area ways away from the house .
that was a huge part of the case
when the law enforcement found the board up in sothern douglas county leticia had to explaine why gannon’s DNA would be found on that board.
and what detectives leaned throughout those phone calls is one ,the level of lying leticia was willing to undergo
to deflect the investigation away from being pointed at her.but also she as giving detectives little clues thorughout where she woulc actually include small snippets of truth.
but she would do it in a way that would explay a way why that truth existed and why somebody else was responsible for that truth.
it was several names detectives heard
eduardo/ eguardo ,an uncle mike a quincy brown,this was someone with a criminal record
there was really no connection though ,same stories and there was never really full context to this stories
the dynamics between her and Al were at the very heart of what this case was about prior to Gannon going missing the relationship between her and Al was deteriorating rapidly
neithe Al or investigators are fully believing leticia’s accounts of what happened to gannon
new information comes to light that may be the key to solving this whole case
it’s mid-february 2020 ,officials in colorado have been searhcing for weeks for ayoung boy, 11 year old Gannon Stauch
while initially reported to the police by gannons stepmother leticia stauch, she been providing several versions of what happened they don’t seem to be adding up
at one point when speaking to Al gannon’s father who’s working with authorities leticia brings up another possible player in the case.
it took a lot of strength on Al part to go through those recorded phone calls he had to keep his cool, and not let her know that the noose was tightening that she was quickly becoming the focus point of the investigation.
but then detectives learn new information that changes the course of the whole investigation.
a neighbor living a few doors down said his camera faces the stauch house,Gannon was with leticia in the car he was lethargic,early on the morning the 27 th the way he walks out to the truck
clearly showed that he was under the influence of some sort of drug and one more thing points to leticia, evidence is found at the Stauch home suggesting gannon was possibly killed there .
when leticia calls 911 the police actually go out to the scene and walk through the house and there’s nothing immediately apparent that would suggest something bad had happened.
it really goes to the idea that she did an extensive job of cleaning up the crime scene and then when detectives go into gannon’s bedroom
you can see very fine blood staining on the walls , so small that it was hard to see with the naked eye.
the investigators ,they find blood and DNA all over the home,and the most chilling part of where they find the blood in his bedroom
is it’s underneath his mattress,undernath,the carpet and underneath the carpet pad
and soaked into the concret bellow
and that tells you how much blood came from this young child ,through the blood through the forensics
through the ability to track her movement in the time frame of when gannon was supposedly lost . she had a lot more in connection to this case than she initially law enforcement.
just over a month after leticia reported ganon missing, she’s arrested while visiting family in south carolina.
she’s interviewed yet again, this time by the FBI.
the FBI agent tells her we heard you telling multiple stories on the phone with Al and she says oh i knew you guys were already recording
she says she was hurt, he wasn’t trying to work with her so she purposely gave him multiple different stories.
the FBI agent would lead her down a path and right at the point where she’s going to make a statement that would potentially incriminate herself
she’s conscious enough to know that this is occurring and then she would then pull back
the agent then confronts leticia on something that raised red flags earlier in the investigation .
her google searches was massive in this case, how does it take a body to decompose,face transplants,find people who want to go to jail .
but investigators come across arecording from the night stauch says gannon accidentally caused a fire from a candle that sheds a chilling light on their relationship
there was one video where she was manipulating him on that sunday night
you hear this little boy’s voice and the fear in his voice and she recorded him you hear that recording and it’s this little boy
” i promised i didn’t mean to do it “
and just his voice shaking and he’s crying
while authorities may know who’s responsible for gannon’s disappearance there’s still one major missing piece, gannon is still nowhere to be found.
that’s when a case -changing discovery is made hundreds of miles away
it was a heartbreaking day for detectives.
that 13oo miles away bridge insepctors in pensacola florida find this suitcase and everyone’s heart sunk
bridge inspector found that suitcase down there, decided open t ,just see if anything was in it,body rollled out along with what appears to be a comforter.
investigators discover leticia rented a van and drow 1300 miles to florida with her daughter just days after gannon’s disappearance
they were tracking her ,there was trackers in that rental car and the way she was going, where she was going ,
if you kids missing out of a town in colorado springs why are you leaving?
detectives later found out why ,hotel records right near that bridge from february 4th that gave detectives answers.
authorities believe leticia tossed this suitcase with gannon dead inside over a bridge in the middle of the night.
while her daughter harley slept in a nearby hotel room.
gannon’s body was just discarded as if it was trash, he suffered from not only stab wounds but also a gun shot injury
the bullet that was recovered from gannon was able to be connected to a gun that was found in leticia’s bedroom
the handgun that was used actually belonged to Al Stauchwhat was really eerie about the way that it was found
as it was sitting on the dresser it was actually pointing at a photograph of gannon
it looks like he awas trying to defend himself and fighting back but it was a brutal attack, he was stabbed 17 times, he was hit over the head four times
and then the final injury that he sustained was a gunshot wound to his jaw he was also given hydrocodone so he was poisoned by a very strong drug it really speaks to the horrific hours gannon’s last hours here on earth alive.
leticia is accused ofthe murder of 11 year old gannon stauchbut the twist in the story are quite over with yet..
a roadblock in the case
it’s march 2020 and investigators have leticia stauch in custody in south carolina ,they believe she stabbed and shot her 11 year old stepson gannon to death 2 months earlier in january out in colorado
leticia and authorities arrived back in colorado where she set to stand trial however now there’s even more delays.there was letters to the judge wanting to represnting herself,changing her plea.
she went through at least two competency hearings and even a third closer to that trial date competency is a person’s ability to participate in their defense and to be tried.
after more than 3 years in april 2023 ,leticia stauch goes on trial for first-degree murder. tampering with the deceased human body
and tempering with evidence.
as for stauch defense ,she entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity .
Letecia Stauch was found guilty of all charges. The same day, she was sentenced to life in prison without parole plus 156 years by Judge Gregory Werner, who called her actions “the most horrific I have ever seen” and said that she deserved “the maximum sentence that I can impose according to Colorado law”.