Testimony in the murder trial of Letecia Stauch resumed Friday in Colorado Springs, with the prosecution continuing to lay groundwork it hopes will convince a jury the 39-year-old woman not only killed her 11-year-old stepson, Gannon Stauch, but knew what she was doing and tried to cover up the crime.
Stauch’s team isn’t focusing its defense on disputing the evidence, and instead maintains she had “no idea” what she was doing during the time forensic data shows the fifth grader was stabbed 18 times and shot in the head, his body stuffed in a suitcase and transported 1,400 miles cross-country to the Florida panhandle.
Day 12 of the trial began with a replayed phone call from early 2020 between Letecia Stauch and her then-husband, Gannon’s father, Albert Stauch, recorded in the weeks after Gannon was reported missing.
Albert Stauch was deployed on an out-of-town exercise with the National Guard at the time his son disappeared from the family home in Lorson Ranch, a popular neighborhood for military families south of Colorado Springs.
During the call, Letecia Stauch could be heard repeatedly attempting to redirect the conversation when her now-ex husband asked pointed questions about his son’s whereabouts.
She also offered up an alternate suspect, one of a number she posed in the days after questions and police pressure began to mount: a “pregnant” woman wearing a fake baby bump stuffed with cash, who she claimed threatened her while she was driving with her stepson soon before the boy went missing.
“I need you to quit thinking it’s someone made up,” Letecia Stauch implored her then-husband during the recorded call.
Most of Friday’s day in court, however, was taken up by the presentation of excerpts from a five-hour video interview conducted by now-former Denver-based FBI agent Jonathan Grusing recorded after Letecia Stauch was arrested March 2 in South Carolina, roughly two weeks before the suitcase containing her stepson’s remains was discovered by a road construction crew in Florida.
Grusing begins the interview trying to genially bond with Letecia Stauch, in part over the unexpected struggles of parenting, in what Grusing later explained during questioning was meant as a bid to get Stauch to relax and give her the chance to come clean.
“I think something bad happened to Gannon,” Grusing says in the recorded interview, an opinion he went on to repeat several times during the lengthy interview.
More than once in that interview, Grusing intimates that Stauch knew more about Gannon’s disappearance than what she was sharing with investigators, and questions the motivations behind her subsequent actions. If she truly knew who abducted her stepson, why not be forthcoming about that information?
Grusing also confronted Stauch about information investigators had culled from her internet search history, including phrases such as “blood spurting from arterial bleed,” and “I don’t like my stepson.”
Testimony from blood spatter experts this week set out to show the amount of blood found in Gannon’s bedroom was inconsistent with the description and explanation for his wounds given by Letecia Stauch.
Grusing told Stauch during that initial interview that she could still be a “hero” in this story, if she helped lead investigators to find Gannon’s body, and help authorities find his killer.
“I’m far from a hero,” Letecia Stauch responded.
The trial resumes at 9 a.m. Monday.
