A parent’s worst nightmare is getting a phonecall letting them know that something has happened to their child. How much worse must that nightmare be when law enforcement asks not for a picture of your loved one but rather DNA and dental records. I’ve also heard it said that one of the worst tragedies a parent can experience is to outlive a child. I have known people both professionally and personally who have gone through that. It never leaves them but the sharpness of the pain does diminish somewhat overtime. I cannot fathom the pain Mr. Stauch and Ms. Bullard have experienced as a result of the defendant’s actions. A sentence in a criminal case such as this will not change the fact that their sons life was taken from them and no sentence I impose and nothing I say will ever change that fact. Ms. Stauch you betrayed the person you loved enough to marry. You told your husband lies and took away someone he loved. You took away every day that Mr. Stauch or Ms. Bullard could have had with their son. When you take a life, regardless of how you do that, you forever alter the future. Neither Mr. Stauch nor Ms. Bullard will ever see their son graduate from high school, go through the joy and the pain of that first love, or get married. They will never know what kind of impact their son may have had on the world if only he had lived to become an adult. And had Gannon’s body not been found? They never would have known what happened to Gannon. They would always have had a lingering doubt about what happened to Gannon. And I cannot imagine the pain and sense of loss associated with that. You betrayed your daughter Harley Hunt. I cannot imagine the emotional impact that you have had on her due to your selfish and calculated actions. This is a young woman that trusted you to put her interests above yours. This is a young woman who believed in you and believed you were innocent of this crime right up until the time that you pled not guilty by reason of insanity and she still loves you. That’s natural for a child and it doesn’t matter how much older they get. You were supposed to protect her. I cannot imagine the guilt she feels or the therapy that she will need to address your betrayal. There is no evidence that she had anything to do with the murder or your coverup of it but some people still think that she is somehow involved. She wasn’t. The incredible strength of will and courage that it took for her to come in and testify is amazing to me but she did it because as she said it was the right thing to do. And while thankfully she didn’t testify let’s not forget about Laina. You betrayed her, too. You took her brother from her and forever altered her family dynamics. She will always wonder who she can trust and will always feel that life. She was there the day you killed Gannon. His body was still in the house when she got back from school. At some point you even claimed this 8 year old girl helped you move her brother’s body from the basement to the back of your car. That’s just simply not true. As she gets older Laina is gonna want to know more and she’s gonna want to know if there was something that she could have done to prevent this. I hope she comes to realize that she has no fault in all of this. You betrayed your stepson and you took his life. You took away everything he was and everything he could ever become. I can’t imagine the terror and confusion that he must have felt in the last moments of his life when he knew his life was being taken by someone he trusted to protect it. Your attempt to raise the claim that you did this because of your adverse childhood is also a betrayal of people that have mental health issues. It Is no secret that there is a large part of our population that has mental health issues. It’s also no secret that our country and our system could do a much better job addressing mental health issues than it does. However, the number of people with mental health issues who become violent is small and the number who become murderers is smaller still. Your claim that a mental health issue caused the murder in this case is a disservice to all those who struggle with mental health issues every day. This isn’t the first case I have presided over in which sanity or mental condition of the defendant has been raised as a defense. I have had cases where the defendant’s mental condition caused the defendant to act out in a certain fashion but even in those cases I have never seen conduct like this. I understand the claim of Dissociative Identity Disorder. I have seen something resembling that and I have seen defendants with schizophrenic disorders. I can understand those. What I have seen is that the mental condition causes the person to act a certain way and when they realize what they did they are astonished by what happened or they have no memory of what happened. Your claim is that it was another personality that murdered Gannon but there is no time during the minutes, hours, and days following the murder where Letecia came out and wondered, ‘gee, why am I carrying a body around in my luggage?’ That just isn’t credible. You knew what you were doing. You made a number of clear and conscious decisions to cover or disguise what you had done. Claiming a lack of motive is a common defense tactic and it can be a sound strategy. The truth is, however, that it only takes a moment to make a bad decision that results in disastrous consequences and oftentimes we never know why a defendant chose a particular course of action. However, that does not mean that they did not intend to undertake a course of action. Sometimes, as in this case, the likely explanation is anger. An 11 year old boy with burns who feels that he’s not being taken care of. An 11 year old boy on the verge of being a teenager. Those of us who have lived through kids that were teenagers, we know how that is. It is not hard to imagine Gannon saying something - ‘you’re not my mom. I want my mom. I want my dad’ and. That would be enough to make you really angry but anger is not an excuse. A defendant is responsible for the choices they made and the actions they undertook even though those choices arose out of or were motivated by anger. It’s clear that you hated and were jealous of Landen Bullard. You saw yourself as a better mother than she was. It’s clear from the evidence that you had some resentment from being left with Mr. Stauch’s children. It’s clear you had some resentment toward Mr. Stauch because he traveled as part of his job. Some of that manifested as early as Al’s assignment in Alaska when you made allegations against the people in his unit. That caused Al to have to return from Alaska. And in one of the phone calls that were played for the jury you talked about having to take care of his kids while he was away and what a good mother you were. It’s clear you felt trapped. You wanted out. You were searching for a new job in a new location in Florida. Mr. Stauch had been gone on his new assignment for less than two days when the fire in the basement occurred, I can imagine that you saw your whole future consisting of taking care of Mr. Stauch’s children while he was off doing his thing and that’s not the future that you wanted. I can imagine Gannon at some point after he sustained his burns telling you he wanted his real mom and how that comment would’ve made you angry. You took your frustration and anger for the marriage, the childcare, the absence of Al and even living in Colorado, you took all of that out on Gannon. The evidence suggests you first stabbed Gannon repeatedly - 18 times. Based on the number of defensive wounds he was clearly conscious for some of that. He was certainly gravely wounded. [He shakes his head] And chillingly, it would also explain how you were able to mimic the sound of Gannon breathing in one of your sessions with Dr. Lewis. Those were probably close to his last breaths. He was dying but not dead. The evidence could also lead one to conclude that he either fell or rolled off the bed where you shot him in the head and then beat him with the butt of a gun or a baseball bat. That would explain the blood found at different levels on the walls in Gannon’s bedroom. I’m also reminded of the look you had on your face when you slipped your handcuffs while being transported back to Colorado and attacked deputy James. I shudder to think that that was probably the last thing that Gannon saw before he died. You have shown no remorse throughout this process. Instead, you’ve made a conscious choice to build a web of lies. When you gave an interview to detective Jessica Bethel on January 29 of 2020, you told her you lied to her about Gannon running away and that he was actually taken by a guy named Eduardo. When you explained that to Detective Bethel, you said you needed to lie because you didn’t wanna face the consequences. You told her that you were trying to come up with a plan about what you should do and finally you told her you really thought you could fix this. I think that’s true. You lied because you didn’t wanna face the consequences. You needed to come up with a plan to fix this and that plan involved covering up what you had done. It involved lie upon lie. But you slipped up at various points and let kernels of truth escape. In one conversation with Mr. Stauch, you told him the FBI needed to close the borders of Colorado, needed to close I-95. I-95 doesn’t go through Colorado it’s an Interstate that runs along the entire eastern seaboard. It’s also not far from where you dumped Gannon’s body. When questioned by Detective Bethel, you told her that Mr. Stauch might also make up some kind of story about you coming at him with a knife. You said you would never use a knife like that. Yet Gannon was stabbed 18 times. Your actions in this case also show a very conscious attempt to avoid responsibility in this case. You started out with the story that Gannon had run away. You gave some hints that it might be related to bath salts or drug use by Gannon. You stayed with that story until you were called into EPSO for an interview. You knew they weren’t gonna buy the story that Gannon ran away. Then you came up with the abduction. And you stayed with some iteration of that for a long time. But all of those versions had something in common. You were always the victim. In one you’re beaten and raped and Gannon was abducted. In one, someone stole Gannon out of a truck in the parking lot. In another you let someone drive Gannon to a hospital to take care of a head injury that he had after falling off of a bike. In all of them, you could claim it wasn’t your fault. You were just int he wrong place at the wrong time. Then, you got arrested. You stuck the the story that it was someone else that took Gannon. During the hours you spoke with Special Agent Grusing he told you he thought sometimes good people do bad things and sometimes it’s an accident. Then they found Gannon’s body. Then you saw the mountain of evidence against you. And this is a mountain the size of Everest. What was your position after that? Well it was an accident and you, Letecia, didn’t even do it. It was Maria Sanchez. You carefully crafted your new story to continue to avoid responsibility. It also allowed you to take advantage of the out that Mr. Grusing and Mr. Stauch suggested much much earlier when they asked you if this was an accident. Now it was an accident. Your Maria Sanchez personality shot Gannon by mistake because she thought he was an intruder in a cape. Multiple personalities is not credible in this setting as regardless of how many personalities you have, you only have one body. I have presided over cases where a mental disease or defect prevented a defendant from remembering the course of events including the commission of a crime. Without exception, those defendants have been terrified when contacted by law enforcement because there was a period of time in their lives that they could not account for. Their body may have sustained an injury and they don’t know how it happened. They may have some new object in their house or on their person and they have no idea where they got it from. We all have free will and we all make choices based on that free will. The people who suffer from the mental disorder you claim are terrified because their free will has been taken from them and they are being subjected to things and experiences they don’t understand and don't have any recollection of. You didn’t behave anything like that. One of the purposes is to impose an appropriate sentence for the criminal conduct that occurred. Another purpose is to punish an offender by imposing a sentence that takes into account the seriousness of the offense. Yet another purpose of sentencing is to prevent crime and promote respect for the law by providing an effective deterrent to others likely to commit a similar offense. Anyone who’s been in my courtroom before knows that I’ve said sentencing are the most difficult thing that i do. That’s especially true in cases where someone has lost his or her life. Nothing I or the law can do will ever bring that person back. I have handled hundreds if not thousands of criminal cases over the years. I think in this point in my career I’ve presided over something like 200 jury trials. I’ve sentenced hundreds more defendants pursuant to plea agreements. This is not the first murder case that has cine before me. This is not the first case I’ve presided over which involves harm to a child. This is not the first case I have had where a person who was in an unhappy marriage committed a crime. Sadly, statistically there is a high correlation between violent acts including murders and family members. I have had a number of cases which have demonstrated one person’s capacity for cruelty toward another human being. I can however say without hesitation that the facts in this case are the most horrific i have ever seen. Your conduct in this case deserves the maximum punishment that I can impose under Colorado law. As such with respect to the charge of first degree murder after deliberation I remand you to the custody of the Colorado department of corrections for the remainder of your life with no possibility of parole. With respect to the charge of murder in the first degree of a child under twelve by a person in a position I remand you to the custody of the Colorado department of corrections for the remainder of your life with no possibility of parole. Those two sentences will merge. If you have questions about that, you can ask your attorneys. With respect to the charge of tampering with a deceased human body I’m also going to sentence you to 12 years followed by a 3 year period of parole. That sentence is to be consecutive to the life sentences that I’ve already imposed. With respect to tampering with physical evidence I’m going to impose an 18 month sentence. That is also consecutive to the sentences for the murder changes I have imposed. I also understand with the consent of the prosecution and I’m assuming no objection from the defense that I will dismiss all the charges in 20CR3170, close that out subject to restitution, give the people 49 days for restitution, 14 days for response and if there’s an issue we will set it within the 90 days from ?. I think that resolves all outstanding matters.

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