Found Deceased CO - Gannon Stauch, 11, Colorado Springs, El Paso County, 27 Jan 2020 **ARREST** #42

[lucidtx]

If that was the case, why wouldn't the police check the cars ?

They really probably should have, if for no other reason than to just check if he was safe and just hiding out in one of them. One of the first things they're taught about missing kids is to check the house, including family cars, first. In this case, they may have been less thorough because of Gannon's age (he's on the older side of kids who tend to hide like that) and they put too much faith in T. She probably told them she had already searched the house thoroughly, and pushed the runway story. They also would've needed her permission or a warrant to search her car that first night.

 

[lucidtx]

If that was the case, why wouldn't the police check the cars ?

They really probably should have, if for no other reason than to just check if he was safe and just hiding out in one of them. One of the first things they're taught about missing kids is to check the house, including family cars, first. In this case, they may have been less thorough because of Gannon's age (he's on the older side of kids who tend to hide like that) and they put too much faith in T. She probably told them she had already searched the house thoroughly, and pushed the runway story. They also would've needed her permission or a warrant to search her car that first night.

 

[lucidtx]

Yes, it's really unbelievable. It's as if she only views the world from her own irrational point of view. She is totally oblivious to what normal people think or feel. She seems to be incapable of logic or predicting how others would react to her stories.

I truly believe she is multi-disordered. I hope they complete a psychological evaluation. It will probably take months. Maybe even a year.

Imo

There are FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit witnesses on the list. I hope we get to hear from them.

 

[jvikes]

Seeing the AA answered a lot of questions and filled in many blanks in the case. One thing that I cannot understand (one of many) is TS leaving the residence on the evening of 1/28–the same day that AS returned home in the morning. This is when she left with the rental car, went to the airport, retrieved her SUV from airport parking, drove to Douglas county (presumably with GS remains in trunk and dumped somewhere off Sperry Rd.), returning SUV to airport parking, and later called HH for a ride from Powers Rd. (unsure if this is near airport?).

What on earth did AA and LS think she was doing at this time?! I seriously doubt anyone in that house was sleeping... especially with a missing child!! Also I believe she was gone for 2+ hours and the call to HH was just before 11pm.

It also raises the question, why not call your husband to pick you up if you need rides? I think sadly, AS and LH knew immediately TS was full of it and likely killed their son. TS knew she was suspect #1 by Tuesday and quickly ran out of anyone wanting to be within 10 feet of her.

 

[Dre]

he was so many things she was not, genuine, kind, thoughtful, people like Tee look at the world for what they can get from it, every thing they do is motivated by self, even if it seems considerate or generous, it is all a part of the game, sadly they tend to think that everyone is just playing to win as well.
Age is irrelevant, i suspect she saw G's spirit and personality as an act, that only she was clever enough to see through and she resented him and saw him as competition.
it sounds ridiculous but i have known similar people and they have treated young children as though they are acting with some big agenda, trying to manipulate people at an age that those kinds of thought processes don't exist.

RSBBM
@zenzen, this was a great post. I really believe this too, he was a sort of competition for this overall very unevolved human. He was the miracle baby, the one everyone in the family fawned over. add to the fact she hated Landon, and probably always tried to make sure she kept AS happier with her, but deep down knowing she never could without playing games. I wonder if AS' mother visiting added a lot to this, fawning over Gannon and Laina, maybe little negative comments at LS? (picture your son bringing TS home as wife, BARF) Maybe MIL had a couple nice things to say about Landon which also would NOT go over very well internally for LS. Add some chatter of divorce... Anyway, I think overall the motive, while somewhat convoluted to express, is still very clear.

 

[soap mama]

I wonder how aware of the fact that LE would eventually see all of her internet searches, she was, and how many of them were planted. That will really tell a lot. We know she hated her situation and wanted out, so either she straight up plotted to kill him out of anger and vengefulness, and then flee to another state, or she really did just hurt him in a fit of rage, and murder him to cover it up. I think the web searches will tell the story, as prolific as she was.

As of the AA did LE have all of the computer searches or were they still doing data mining?

She’s too freakin stupid to know they would see them lol

 

[pcrum12]

What do you mean? Inside the cars?

/yes - inside the cars when the first responded to the 911 call

 

[jvikes]

And just in my experience, active duty military people always have them. You definitely need a side piece for bow hunting. I think it might even be legally required to carry one in cases where you miss the spot and the animal is suffering. Plus if you hunt boar or bear and miss, you could get killed. Add to that that they are from south, it's pretty much guaranteed.

Yeah, all signs point to they likely had guns more than not. Although on the hunting note, where I bow hunt you cannot have a firearm on you unless you're a licensed conceal carry gun owner and can't put an animal out of misery with a gun that maybe was poorly hit by a bow. Reason being you'd have the opposite effect from some people - they'd shoot it with a gun first, then post mortem shoot them with the bow to "be legal". Other states may be different, I've only hunted in the midwest.

 

[soap mama]

There have been multiple comments about something not being “right” about TS

i May be way off, but she does hail from an impoverished area of NC, predominantly Native American. It’s possible she lacked some essential care, nutrition etc that affected her development.

Or she’s just bat poop crazy

 

[jgarris]

If that was the case, why wouldn't the police check the cars ?

Trying to rationalize in my mind...but it seems like T didn't really show much worry (at all...ever) and the police probably fed off of that and thought it was just a kid running off and being a kid. I know that probably seems weird to say with the time, but I can't count how many times I rode a bike to friends and I was supposed to be home at a certain time and was well beyond coming home at that time.

 

[jgarris]

Something clicked here for me.

I have the beginnings of an idea.

LS came home and backed into the driveway. Let's say she drugged Gannon and waited a loooong time for him to die. Drove around for a while. He finally passes out. She stops somewhere and puts him in the suitcase, which she had with her. No blood yet. She thinks he's dead.*
She intends to bring him home in the suitcase and place him back in bed.... exactly like he was that morning. She has the picture to help her make it look like he hadn't left his bed all day.

She gets home and brings him in, inside the suitcase, through the garage. Starts to put him in his bed and she realizes he's still alive. She is running out of time, so she gets a .22, pushes his face into the pillow and shoots him. Blood splatter, not much noise... bullet lodges inside his body and doesn't make an exit wound.

Maybe her original intent was to send little sister in to find him dead after school.

*Or, if not dead, she thought he would suffocate inside the suitcase.

This seems like a really good theory. The only question I have is - if police are for sure that Gannon came home after that 4-hour window (and they mention in the AA that video isn't clear enough to tell for certain) did they see her unload a suitcase or anything? I feel like unloading a suitcase would be a case closed for this being almost spot on for this theory.

 

[Warwick7]

IMO
I think when LH got home, this is the point where LS told her to go outside and play and not to bother her brother because he was sick or sleeping. We even read where a neighbor or another camera saw LH outside riding her bike around that time.

Those poor kids were under total control of that monster. They would not dare go against her words and so they probably always obeyed her to avoid her sick and twisted wrath. I dont even want to think of some of the sick and twisted punishments this women may have invented for them if they ever went against her.

You are right.
LH comes home at 3:11 and supposedly GS is sleeping. Yet LH stays in the house till 3:28.

Even though, in the run away police report, GS leaves at 3:15 tells and TS he's going to a friends while she's exercising in the basement.

 

[Megnut]

FWIW, for those of you who think LE should've checked the trunk -- TS's vehicle was an SUV/crossover, with no trunk --

Had LE peered in through the hatch, likely they would have spied nothing more than a suitcase....

JMO

 

[squareandrabbet]

Actually I'm re-reading the affidavit and I misread something. Apparently she did text a detective some kind of story about a candle, smoke and both her and Gannon bleeding in the basement. Like most T tales, it's disjointed and bizarre - sorry I can't transcribe it right now.
View attachment 241852

On Feb 13 she spoke with Al on the phone and told him another strange story about Gannon burning himself and wiping blood on the walls. Again, very bizarre.

View attachment 241853

I think she told Al and others early on something about a candle, the carpet being burned, etc etc to try to T-splain the extensive cleaning she did down there. When she heard that blood had been found, she tried to continue that weird storyline to account for it. That's my best guess anyways. I hope she didn't also burn that poor kid.

Edit: also in my experience, kids are very rarely seriously burned by household candles, and burns in general don't really bleed like she describes.

Yeah, that was so super dumb and bizarre that I wondered if by then, LE hadn't told AS to play along with T (candle burns blister, and thus generate pus not blood; which I should think might have been knowledge even Laina had noticed, and almost certainly would have been common knowledge by Gannon's age). This is also the same general time that T had been (according to T) telling Al that she was meeting him in a rental car because she "didn't want Gannon to recognize her car", no?

I don’t think anyone is saying HH shouldn’t be held responsible at the age of 17. We are saying as of right now there is no reason to believe she was knowingly aiding her mother in covering up the murder of her stepbrother. Why continue bringing her into this as part of the crime when there is no evidence alleging she was a willing participant. Again, if evidence comes out she knew have at her. She is fair game then.

Personally, I think that HH is "of an age" where a "sleepaway boyfriend" would not be an impossible thing to have; and which nobody has touched upon publicly either way, with her being a minor and all.

I also am not sure people have done much thinking into what kind of plausible excuse T could have given HH, to excuse why she wanted HH to pick her up somewhere at 10:30PM; they're just pre-deciding it was weird because they themselves would never do it. Maybe T said she was out driving around looking for G, and while she was doing so, the Tiguan died? I mean, I'm willing to be proven wrong; but as the AA tells us, there were a couple of rental cars in the mix for a few days; and just because it's strange to us to be asked to go pick up somebody somewhere at 10:30PM, doesn't mean it was strange to everybody or particularly to HH; as teenagers tend to be night owls anyway. My mother's mind would immediately leap to evil, as she's a lark who subconsciously thinks nothing good ever happens after dark; whereas as an introvert, I myself prefer the dark, for example.

I'm really confused on this for I thought I read that the house has 2 bedrooms on main floor and 2 bedrooms us the basement. And, I thought I read that Gannon and HARLEY'S bedrooms were the one's in the basement, not LAINA'S.

That certainly is possible, considering that Laina is the youngest and thus more likely to need parental attention throughout the night/have nightmares/etc. I can't recall myself; except insofar as it is helpful to keep reminding me/myself that their basement was developed and had a purpose (my folks' is nearly undeveloped. You could countenance maybe using it as an exercise studio; but it's got no insulation, so nothing more than that; storage for the overflow of house plants; and laundry.)

 

[Warwick7]

JMO
One thing I find incredible is how she was so willing to blame and allow someone else to go to prison for the rest of their lives for something she did.

She tries to blame both Eguardo and Quincy and she was willing to let either of them take the fall for her murderous crime.

These two people have a right to be really mad at her. And she probably has not even thought about one of them who may eventually be in a prison near her. She had better keep one eye open in the back of her head because I would not be surprised if one of them wants to get revenge.

BBM

Since she was young I think this is an ongoing personality stain of hers....

 

[Warwick7]

The AA says the younger sister told LE when she came home TS told her GS "was asleep in her bed and she could not see him." The child said she was told to go outside and play.

The way the report is written, it's unclear whose bed GS was supposed to be in. "Her bed" could have referred to either the sister's bed or TS's bed. I'm assuming it probably meant the sister's bed as that would be a way to keep the child away from the whole area IF the children's bedrooms were next to each other.
JMO

Excellent point. I haven't read the whole AA just bits and pieces. The whole thing is my project today and tonight.

 

[Warwick7]

My phone locks automatically after a period of time of no activity. I could tell it not to, but the default is to lock. I then have to unlock it when I pick it back up. I imagine LS’s phone is similar.

But that's the only time it registers locked or unlocked. There are sections of time where she's not on her phone 3 hours or 4 hours at a time. And it never registers locked or unlocked.

I find this very odd this is exactly the moment that she's leaving to do a suspected killing, and the exact moment she comes back from a suspected killing.

 

[RaspberryMama]

FWIW, for those of you who think LE should've checked the trunk -- TS's vehicle was an SUV/crossover. with no trunk --

Had LE peered in through the hatch, likely they would have spied nothing more than a suitcase....

JMO

And maybe not even that if there is a concealed pop up area in the hatch. My Traverse has this and I'm sure many other SUVs and crossovers do too.

 

[Megnut]

JMO

I have a new theory --

(I still think that Gannon was seriously injured late Sunday -- a nearly unsurvivable injury that miracle baby Gannon survived -- I think further that the injury may have started in the living room, with Gannon running to his bedroom... in any case, I believe Gannon walked by his own power from his bedroom, up the stairs, and to the truck on Monday morning. I believe further that he left with TS, and did not return alive.)

I think TS spent much of the time from 8 to 10 am getting Gannon dressed and upright. Dressed in clothes and dressed, with bandages.

Rewatching the video.... is it possible that Gannon's head is wrapped in such a way that he's effectively blindfolded? Could it be that TS got him as far as the garage, ran back inside for whatever reason (like to leave her phone), and eager to get to the doctor where he may have thought he was going, he made his way to the truck... dropped his switch or phone, couldn't retrieve it because he couldn't see, and simply waited for TS as he likely had been instructed to do?

With his head wrapped, his eyes covered, TS could lead him anywhere after that --

JMO JMO

 

[RaspberryMama]

And maybe not even that if there is a concealed pop up area in the hatch. My Traverse has this and I'm sure many other SUVs and crossovers do too.

Replying to my own post (how tacky!) to say we should also remember there were 3 hours between the time LS called 911 and an officer actually came to the house. She had time to take the body and evidence somewhere, notice blood in the garage, and pull the Tiguan in to hide it.

If an officer arrived before she was home she could have planned to say she was out looking for Gannon.

In fact, she may have done just this because LE did ask her that evening which friends, which houses she had already been to. She couldn't give them any specific answers.