Rattling around in Letecia Stauch’s head is no easy task. She’s the stepmother on trial for murdering 11-year-old Gannon at their home in Colorado Springs in January 2020. Letecia confessed during mental evaluations to shooting Gannon but claims it was an alternate personality named Maria who fired the gun at what she believed was an intruder in a cape. That revelation was part of hours-long recordings of her sessions with psychologists. She pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity in the brutal death of the child. Gannon’s body was found in a suitcase in Pace, Florida on March 17, 2020. He had been stabbed 18 times, his skull was fractured from vicious blows, and he was shot in the jaw.
The mental exams included stories about Michael the Archangel who carried business cards and prevented the family from going to church the day before the murder; members of the mafia stalking Letecia because of a traffic accident; visions of her stepfather who was hit by a car and died in 2004; the belief that Gannon could be raised from the dead based on previous claims by a preacher in Colorado; a man named Edgar and his family which included an unnamed man; vampires going door-to-door in Alaska; an episode of nakedness in the garage; and the mysterious Maria who speaks Russian and Spanish.
The sessions were conducted at the Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo after Letecia changed her plea to an insanity defense. Dr. Loandra Torres and Dr. Thomas Grey evaluated her to determine if she was suffering from dissociative identity disorder (DID), which used to be referred to as multiple personalities. They concluded she was feigning symptoms, which was the same result as a follow-up exam requested by the defense, and performed by Dr. Jackie Grimmett. During her testimony, Dr. Grimmett said Letecia was humming to herself and “seemed happier than she should have been.”
“At some point, she turned around to talk to somebody else, then turned around to talk to me. She said she was talking to a vampire,” recalled Dr. Grimmett.
Letecia introduced Dr. Grimmett to a vampire named Justice. She said she had a button in her jail cell and could summon vampires Justice, Jasper and Patrick. Letecia claimed to first encounter vampires during her time in Alaska, where they went door-to-door like Jehovah’s Witnesses. When asked about the vampires’ names, Letecia referenced the Twilight series. Dr. Grimmett found her behavior inconsistent with symptoms of DID.
“The alters present themselves to you,” Dr. Grimmett testified. “You don’t create them, and you don’t name them kind of whimsically.”
She told Drs. Torres and Grey a lengthy story about Edgar and his “family,” including Angelica and a man she refused to name, being in the house with her. Gannon’s little sister, Laina, and Letecia’s daughter, Harley, were sleeping. She claimed that she heard someone in the basement, grabbed Edgar’s gun, and fired at a person in a cape, who she didn’t know was Gannon until she removed the covering draped around him. She said he appeared to be tall because he was standing on the bed. Letecia points a finger at Maria, an alleged alternate personality, as being the person who shot Gannon. She went on to explain that Maria is a protector and probably felt Gannon or other family members were in danger from an intruder, possibly her dead stepfather. Defense attorneys said her stepfather, James Lowry, and a string of her mother’s boyfriends sexually abused her.
“They paint me as this monster and I did all these crazy things. I never once knew it was Gannon. In fact, I didn’t even know it was Gannon until later on,” she said and repeatedly insisted she would never hurt Gannon. “Never in a million years, okay, never.”
She continued her description of what happened stating that the noise woke up 8-year-old Laina, who helped her carry Gannon upstairs while he was still alive and talking. (Law enforcement interviews with Laina are said to not support this account.) At some point, Letecia remembered throwing up, hitting her head after slipping on the steps and explained that is why there was blood in the stairwell. She went on with details of putting Gannon in the truck to take him to a hospital, hearing a howling sound, then passing out. She compared the sound to the one her grandfather made before dying and thought that was when Gannon took his last breath.
Letecia said she drove around with Gannon’s body in the car hoping to raise him from the dead. She said she drove by Burger King, which was his favorite, to the GameStop store which had a video game Gannon wanted, and tried to find preacher Andrew Wommack’s house. She did that because Wommack has publicly stated that his son died in 2001, was in the morgue for four or five hours with a tag on his toe, but came back to life because of Wommack’s faith and refusal to accept he was dead. Letecia said her belief that Gannon could be resurrected caused Edgar and another male to call her mother, who told her she was losing it and had to get to a hospital.
A confusing statement followed. Letecia was adamant that she didn’t move Gannon’s body, claiming it was Edgar’s male family member, who she repeatedly refused to name, but immediately followed with insistence that she had to get Gannon back to South Carolina. His grandparents have a farm there and she said he deserved a proper burial. There were several perplexing claims, including:
- Gannon was alive on January 27 and hiding when deputies searched the house
- Gannon died on January 28, after the caped person was shot by alternate personality Maria-the-protector, who speaks Russian and Spanish
- A bullet grazed her leg and that is why her blood was in the car
- Letecia found herself naked in the garage, with matted blood in her hair, and came up with the story she told detectives about being raped
- The male, who she won’t name, was trying to protect her, and she was trying to protect him. This mystery man keeps popping up throughout her story, usually in the context of involving protection
- When Dr. Grey asked her about driving to Florida, she said she doesn’t remember driving so much, because she prefers to travel on planes
- Shockingly, Letecia claimed the autopsy report was wrong about the 18 stab wounds. She said they were burns from the fire, however, she did not address Gannon’s fractured skull or the two additional bullets found embedded in a pillow that was put in the suitcase with his body
There is quite a cast of characters in Letecia’s story, but one has a prominent role. Her stepfather, James Lowry, who she accused of sexually abusing her, keeps surfacing. Several times, she claims to have seen someone she thought was Lowry, including her account of how Gannon was shot. She texted her supervisor in the wee hours of January 27, 2020, stating her stepfather was hit by a car. That happened more than 15 years ago, but it was the reason she gave for not being able to work that day.
Letecia also said that red and black trigger her, because Lowry always wore that color combination. She said she couldn’t read the Book of James in the Bible because that was Lowry’s first name, and when her brother graduated and his full name was announced, she flinched because his middle name is James, but insisted he is nothing like his father. There were accounts of paranoia about a traffic accident and members of the mafia stalking Letecia because of it, but it is unclear whether this a different accident or the one that killed Lowry.
Psychologists believe Letecia Stauch has personality dysfunctions, but is exaggerating symptoms of DID. Defense attorneys maintain she was insane when she murdered Gannon, the victim of an abusive childhood, who was killing those demons. Their expert, Dr. Dorothy Lewis, is an expert in dissociative identity disorder and examined Letecia. Dr. Lewis determined that she does suffer from DID and will be the first witness for the defense. Dr. Lewis was featured in the HBO documentary, Crazy, Not Insane, and has studied killers including Ted Bundy, and Mark David Chapman, who murdered John Lennon.
Patients who suffer from DID are extremely rare. It’s estimated that only about 1.5% of the population has it, but research indicates the disorder is often misdiagnosed and sometimes requires multiple assessments. In cross-examination, the doctors admitted they have never treated a patient with DID, but had read peer-reviewed studies and additional resources, including the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th Edition, or DSM-5, to aid them.
It can be very difficult for laypeople to grasp the complexities of the human mind, especially when fact and fiction seem to melt together in a tangled mess of bizarre stories. Is Letecia Stauch suffering from a rare mental disorder that would make her sort of a psychological unicorn, or is she a cunning killer who is desperately trying to shift blame about the savage attack that killed 11-year-old Gannon? The answer will ultimately come from a jury who will likely get the case this week
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