DENVER (KDVR) — Colorado’s trial of the year is sadly only one of the hundreds of murders of children that happened in the state in the last 15 years.
Letecia Stauch was arrested in 2020 after her stepson Gannon’s disappearance. His body was found in Florida several weeks later.
On Monday, she was found guilty of all charges related to murdering her 11-year-old stepson, including first-degree murder after deliberation, first-degree murder of a child under 12 years old by a person in a position of trust, tampering with a deceased human body and tampering with physical evidence. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole plus 13.5 years.
The number of Colorado’s murder victims under the age of 17 has been rising along with violent crime in general in the past six years, though the Stauch murder stands out as especially gruesome. There were 42 murder victims under 17 in 2022, nearly three times as many as in 2016, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.
Prior to 2017, the number of murder victims under 17 never been higher than 20 in a given year going back to 2008. Between 2017 and 2022, there have been 31, on average.
On any given year of the last 16, including 2023, about one in ten of Colorado’s murder victims are under the age of 17. About one out of every 20 is a child under 10 years old.