Affidavit: Stepmother changed story

Investigators searching for missing Colorado Springs boy Gannon Stauch concluded that his stepmother killed him because of her wildly changing stories about their final days together, her cellphone and internet search records and erratic behavior in the days after he went missing, according to an El Paso County sheriff’s arrest affidavit.

Letecia Stauch originally told El Paso County sheriff’s deputies on Jan. 27 that her stepson had left to play with friends but never returned home. Almost immediately, her story did not hold up because she could not tell deputies the names of her stepson’s friends or of his friends’ parents, an El Paso County Sheriff’s Office detective wrote.

“As will be discussed below, investigators do not believe Letecia went to any neighboring houses to attempt to locate Gannon and was one of many lies told by Letecia during the investigation,” the affidavit said.

The arrest affidavit, which had been sealed, was leaked Thursday night and posted on Facebook, Reddit and other social media sites. On Friday, the affidavit was unsealed by El Paso County District Court Judge Gregory R. Werner.

Leticia Stauch was arrested March 2 in Myrtle Beach, S.C., for investigation of first-degree murder and other charges. She is being held without

Paso County Jail.

On March 17, Gannon’s body was found underneath a bridge by a road construction crew in Pace, Fla., more than 1,000 miles from home. The affidavit does not explain when Gannon’s body was taken to Florida or who might have transported it there.

After the body’s discovery, Stauch was charged with nine additional crimes, including another count of first-degree murder and six crimes of violence. The

bail in the El crimes-of-violence charges accused the stepmother of using a gun, a knife and a blunt instrument to kill the boy. The arrest affidavit also mentions those possible weapons but does not specifically describe how any might have been used.

What is clear in the affidavit is that something violent happened in the boy’s bedroom that left blood spatter on the walls and an electrical outlet and left blood stains on his mattress and stains

that had soaked under the carpet, the affidavit said.

The affidavit does not offer a motive for the killing. Text messages on Stauch’s phone, obtained through search warrants, show she was frustrated with caring for her husband’s children and felt she was nothing more than a babysitter, the affidavit showed.

“Based on Letecia’s internet history, it is reasonable to believe that she was unhappily married to Mr. Stauch, and had some degree of resentment towards the family as a stepparent,” the affidavit said. “Furthermore, days before Gannon’s murder, Letecia appeared to be searching a move to another state to a twobedroom apartment.”

Investigators believe Stauch killed the boy on the afternoon of Jan. 27 and then asked her 17-year-old daughter to pick up cleaning supplies, including baking soda and garbage bags. It’s likely Stauch stored the body in the back of her Volkswagen Tiguan before allegedly driving to a remote area near Palmer Lake along the El Paso/Douglas county line to dispose of it, the affidavit said.

Investigators received a judge’s approval to place a GPS tracker on her Volkswagen and later removed a computer chip from the car to trace her movements as the search for the boy continued. The devices showed Stauch making multiple trips to the area near Colorado 105 and South Perry Park Road.

Searchers focused on the area for several days in late February searching for the boy, sometimes poking through deep snow with poles. While they did not find the boy, they did find a piece of particle board with blood on it, and DNA tests indicated a match to Gannon, the affidavit said.

Meanwhile, Stauch kept changing her story about what happened.

After originally reporting the boy had left home to play with friends, she told detectives two days later that an intruder held her captive and raped her in the basement of the family’s home and that her attacker had abducted Gannon, the affidavit said.

She first described the rapist as a Hispanic male who worked at a nearby construction site, and then she told authorities he was a black male who appeared on a sheriff’s wanted list.

As Stauch’s story continued to change, including in media interviews, investigators received permission to wiretap her phone calls. They listened as she offered various explanations to her husband, her sister and her friends, the affidavit said.

Often in those conversations and in interviews with detectives, Stauch would provide details or explanations for evidence that had not been publicly released and would only be known by a killer, the affidavit said.

“Within Letecia’s falsehoods, there are details corroborated by physical evidence that would be near impossible to know without being intimately involved in the murder,” the affidavit said.

In the affidavit’s conclusion, the deputy wrote, “Letecia has not provided a fully truthful statement to investigators at any point during this investigation, particularly regarding the circumstances of Gannon’s disappearance. This would reasonably be suspected activity of an individual that committed the crime under investigation, namely murder.”