After weeks of testimony, jury deliberations began on Friday afternoon in the trial of Letecia Stauch, the Colorado woman accused of murdering her stepson and discarding his body in a suitcase under a bridge in Florida.
Stauch is charged with first-degree murder, child abuse resulting in death, tampering with a dead body, and tampering with evidence in the death of her stepson, Gannon Stauch, who Letecia initially reported missing on January 27, 2020, but led investigators to suspect her right from the start.
Letecia was married to Gannon’s father, Eugene “Al” Stauch, and in 2020 was stepmother to his two children: Gannon, 11, and Laina, 8. Stauch also had a 17-year-old daughter, Harley Hunt.
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Testifying at Letecia Stauch’s murder trial in Colorado Springs, Harley Hunt said it never crossed her mind that her mother was transporting the body of 11-year-old Gannon Stauch in a suitcase in their rented van after killing him, as prosecutors allege.
“I’m still in shock. I defended her for years. I just feel manipulated and lied to,” Hunt said.
When pressed by the defense, Hunt said she never looked in the back of the van where their luggage was as they traveled through Texas and Louisiana on their way to Florida and then South Carolina in February 2020.
She said she never smelled anything unusual. But Hunt also said her mother insisted on keeping the air conditioning on even when she complained of being too cold.
Prosecutors say Letecia Stauch stabbed Gannon 18 times and shot him before reporting him missing in January 2020 while her then-husband and Gannon’s father, Albert Stauch, was away at National Guard training.
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While the search for the boy continued, Letecia Stauch and her daughter, who was 17 then, left in a rented van with plan to start a new life somewhere else.
Bridge inspectors found the boy’s remains in March 2020 in a suitcase under a bridge in the Florida Panhandle.
Prosecutors said Stauch snuck out from a hotel room where she was staying with her daughter in Pensacola to dispose of his body in the middle of the night.
Hunt said she did not remember if their van was parked in a different spot when they went to leave the hotel the following morning.
Stauch is charged with first-degree murder, tampering with a deceased human body and tampering with physical evidence. She has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
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