Missing Colorado Boy Update: Stepmother Arrested In South Carolina, Charged With Murder Of 11-Year-Old

The stepmother of a missing Colorado boy was arrested Monday and charged with his murder.

Leticia Stauch was arrested in South Carolina and is planned to be extradited to Colorado Springs. Her stepson, Gannon Stauch, 11, was last seen on Jan. 27. The same day, Leticia Stauch reported him as a runaway.

“… The person who committed this heinous, horrible crime is one that I gave more to than anyone else on this planet,” Albert Stauch, the boy’s father, said in a written statement. “And that is a burden that I will carry with me for a very long time.”

Gannon Stauch’s body has not yet been found but authorities are confident that he is no longer alive. Despite initially denying any hand in the boy’s disappearance, security footage later provided by a neighbor showed Leticia Stauch driving away with Gannon and later returning without him.

Leticia Stauch initially told authorities that she had last seen the boy at their home before he left to walk to a friend’s house between 3:15 p.m. and 4:15 p.m.

She is now charged with child abuse resulting in death, first-degree murder of a child under 12 by a person in a position of trust, tampering with a deceased human body and tampering with physical evidence.

“I want to leave this earth knowing that justice was served,” Landen Hiott, Gannon Stauch’s mother, said in a statement, also adding that she had trusted her son’s stepmother and that the situation was a “nightmare.”