Young Boy Left Home Alone With His Evil Stepmom

on Prime Crime. He was going to go play with his friend and he didn't come back. The disappearance of an 11-year-old boy. The whole community came out in full force. Everyone wanted to find this boy. Turns into a devastating tale full of lies and betrayal. The guy was in there. He had one of the guns. That was terrible. That was terrifying. Investigators started to see that something didn't quite fit here. Something was off. Hey there, everybody. I'm Jesse Weber and welcome to Prime Crime, where we break down some of the most compelling and memorable true crime cases. In our next story about the disappearance of a young Colorado boy, you need to hang on. Because this story goes in all different kinds of confusing and chilling directions. It's January 27th, 2020, Colorado Springs, Colorado. 36-year-old Latisha Stauk, who's married to husband Albert Stauk, is calling to report that her stepson, 11-year-old Ganon, has gone missing. 11-year-old children don't just disappear off the face of the earth. That automatically put everybody on edge. So we went to the neighborhood of my garden just like the scene right part. And he's not there. And he went behind her to see him. I get to meet him. Our assignment desk gets the notification. 11-year-old boy is missing in this nice little community called Lorson Ranch. There was a lot of fear. There was a lot of concern of where he could be. Thank you. Can we come in? Hours later, police arrived at the Stauk's home to talk to Latisha, her daughter Harley and Ganon's sister Lena, while Albert, Ganon's biological father, is out of town for work. He was supposed to be here at 6 o'clock, because we were going to eat dinner, because that dinner told him he could play with his friend. And he didn't come back at 6. So we drive to the neighbor's house, and they're like, "No, he's not here." It didn't seem like there was enough urgency in her voice. It seemed like she was not scattering in terms of her thoughts of what's going on. My stepson is missing. It was more like she was trying to piece it together. You have talked to all of his friends, parents. What husband did? He's been on the phone with a bunch of them. He's in Oklahoma. Now he's said he's talked to everyone that he knows of. We had heard he went to a friend's house, but all of the community couldn't find him anywhere. At first, we had heard rumors this boy could have been a runaway. The next morning, Albert arrives back home from a training session with the National Guard. He and Latisha meet with detectives at a coffee shop to gain some insight on where Ganon could have gone. He told her he was going to play. I wouldn't say do all the time. Maybe he's 10 minutes late, but you know, nothing like that. The big deal here is he's a homebody. He'd rather be a homebody than a tingo or a bunch of cartoons, so he's not one just to walk out. We're talking about January and the Colorado Rockies. It's cold. In fact, there was a pretty heavy snowstorm that occurred in the days following Ganon's disappearance. The likelihood that an 11-year-old child without substantial help from somebody outside the home could survive during that period of time greatly to manage the chances that we were going to find him alive and return him to his family. When was the last time he talked to his mom? When he was by what mother? He talked to her, right? They talked almost, I say, five times a week. Not bad, any confusion to it, but the mom's married to a guy that's got a lot of trouble with the law. That was one of my first instincts. It's worth putting down, but I don't know if it's anything to do. There'd be so many tips coming into the Sheriff's Office. They had to have a separate line. So many people thinking they'd seen him turning out not to have seen him. This boy's disappearance was gaining not only statewide attention, but quickly worldwide, nationwide, online, social media, and there was just so much mystery, so much curiosity, so much concern. Then, the day after Ganon disappeared, Latisha tells an investigator she has something to share. So initially you didn't tell me some things because Albert was there. And Latisha, saying she wasn't able to speak freely while Al was around, comes into the police station to talk once more, but this time, she says she wants to tell officials what really happened. Taking me through Sunday into Monday and be as detailed as possible, Sunday Ganon had started the candle. The fire thing went off. It started saying fire, fire, fire, fire. So then I see smoke coming up from the downstairs. So then I ran back downstairs to get Ganon. There's this story that kept being brought up about a candle. What we heard was that he was maybe playing with his Nintendo switch by a candle, and maybe he shouldn't have been on his switch, and that his stepmother came downstairs and he got scared and knocked this candle over. The fire was on, the floor over here, and then on the surface, there was coverage everywhere. I take a whole bunch of them, and I go and like, basically smash down on the sofa and the fire to put it out. Honestly, we were going to fix the carpet and try to like, not, same thing. Albert freaks out about every little thing, so that's where Sunday kind of like stopped and everybody went to bed. But as Latisha gets to the day of Ganon's disappearance, her story couldn't be more different than what she originally told police. As now she says, someone else was involved. And I know there's two things I got to fix. Number one, I need to fix the carpet and number two, I need to figure out, does Ganon need to go get like some burnt tree or whatever. Lurecer Ranch is a bunch of new builds, like construction. So I pulled up and I was like, hey, do you know where you can get the carpet that is in the Lurecer Ranch model home. So we got the carpet from the guy in the construction area. Well, I didn't get it then. He said he was going to bring it to me. So I gave him the address. This is where I messed up. I gave him our code to give in. He was going to go fix it and me and Ganon left. We went some places around town. Initially we had heard he had left to go to a friend's house and didn't come back. Then after days and no one finding any trace of that ever happening. There was news stories that someone came in the house. We started to head home. As we got inside, I heard something and I just started walking on stairs, open the storage closet. And he was standing in there. He had him gloves. I was terrified. So terrified. And then he just knocked me down and he was hitting on me. He was trying to break me. It's all my fault because I gave him our code to fix the carpet. This is where we hear the story of her being attacked. That someone broke into the home, attacked her, and attacked Ganon. And then took Ganon. And here's another layer to a different story that she's now providing investigators. I swear I don't know what happened from there. I really don't know. I kind of like blacked out just a little bit. Investigators begin looking into what Letitius telling them. But in order to do that, they need to examine Letitia herself for evidence. Something that appears to get her agitated. We had talked earlier about whether or not it would be able to take action at this point as far as like gathering evidence. Whether it had been too long. I told you that it wasn't. Is that something that you're willing to do? Yes. If I would do anything for you to figure out who Eduardo is, we'd like to get you over to the hospital for that. No, I would totally do that. But I really am. I just want to give some food and take a minute and I can drive myself to the hospital. The investigators started to see that something didn't quite fit here. Something was off. Okay, you said I was free to go. Are you wanting to leave right now? I'm really hungry. I'm thirsty. Look at my lips, the chat. Can you give me just a few minutes? She said that I would be able to go. And I'm not saying that you can't. I'm asking if you can give me a few minutes. I can't if you can just call me or have to maintain my mental health in this whole situation. Investigators need to work quickly to find Ganon. But now they are unsure what to believe. Coming up, the search for Ganon's stout intensifies. Ganon comes into like jump on him. Ganon was aware that someone was trying to harm me. That was when he had to go on to Ganon. Everything from then is of alert. Hey, everybody, we're going to get back to the stout episode of Prime Prime in a minute. 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So if you're injured, you can submit a claim at 4thepeople.com/primecrime or by dialing pound law that's pound 529 on your phone. All right, let's get back now to the Latisha-style case. We're just trying to find any clues as to where this boy is if he's OK, if he's in our state, if he's in the country, if he's alive. It's January 2020. 11-year-old Ganon Stalk has been reported missing from his El Paso County Colorado home. Ganon's stepmother, Latisha Stalk, initially reported the boy went to play at a friend's house and never came home for dinner. But a day later, she meets with investigators and changes the story, saying he had actually been kidnapped and that she had been sexually assaulted by a construction worker from a new home being built nearby. When I get downstairs, he has the gun and he has Ganon. And then he was like on top of me again. And then I kind of light out again because he's hit my head. But towards the end of the interview, Latisha starts getting combative when being asked to submit for a sexual assault examination. It would be better to get the forensic exam done. I've not gone over there like before you not shower. Not like cleaned. I'm not doing that. That's disgusting. I'm not doing that. But I will God to go. But you realize that's how we gather evidence, right? So if you go take a shower right now and understand that you're like uncomfortable, I would like to get you over to the hospital to get the exam done. So then I'm driving myself there. She was transported to the hospital so that a sexual assault examination can be conducted. But at the hospital refuses to undergo that sexual assault examination. She's really trying to set up this idea and yet she's not willing to give up any evidence that would help us find that person. Sit down on the couch. Sir, I can't breathe. I'm just asking you to open the door. She portrays undergoing a very severe anxiety attack to try to get out of the interview. Now we're going to have to call you an ambulance because you said you got chest pain. It's I just told you have chest pain. It's cost of moving. So we're going to call you an ambulance. Yeah. Well, we must throw it until. No, I, no, I, excuse me, I take horizontal pram every day and if I don't take it, I can have a panic attack. That requires them to bring in paramedics and they find that she's perfectly normal. She knows that the investigation is starting to zero in on her. Latisha has now told authorities multiple versions of what happened to Ganon and rumors about what occurred begin circling the neighborhood. You were the last person to see him. Is that right? Correct. Latisha agrees to speak with a local reporter saying she wants to clear everything up. But it seems it only complicates things further. What did you see when you last saw him? Well, I'm not allowed to talk about anything with the case. I would also be willing to talk about how the community needs to have faith and continue to work together and not make these false accusations like the things that have been said that I've disappeared from the community. I haven't been there to help. There's just some weird things that kind of stood out based on her demeanor and all of that. You're speaking with someone. That is in the center of the most heartbreaking situation you could imagine that might have known some answers and couldn't tell the public to try to help. I took care of Ganon for the last two years in our home because his mother didn't want to do it. And I would never, never, ever hurt this child. They have all these theories on how Ganon is dead. He is not dead. We are going to find Ganon. And that's the main goal that we all have. My family has. She would always say that she really loved Ganon and that Ganon was the favorite stepchild of hers. But it's very clear from the way that she would treat the kids. In fact, he was the least favorite child in the house. Ganon was by all accounts of Mama's boy. And that caused Latisha to be jealous of that relationship that Ganon had with his biological mother. Any message for Ganon? Ganon, when you get here, you'll be able to truly tell what happened. And then I really hope I get a sincere apology from everyone. We love you, we miss you. And we know that you come home soon. In the middle of that interview, she's talking about Ganon as if he's going to come home. And then she switches and starts talking about him in the past tense. He was always so helpful with the dogs around the house. He was always like a person, I could say, Ganon, can you go do this and he would do it right away. He was so sweet and such a kind heart. That was a big clue for us. And it did sort of put the investigation on a different track. Detectives still aren't totally clear on what happened the day Ganon disappeared. Yet they suspect Latisha might know more than she's letting on. At this point, even Alstauk, Latisha's husband and Ganon's biological father, tries to get answers out of Latisha. I'm trying to do what I can, outside of the law enforcement, because you don't freaking trust them anyways. Did you trust them? Not based on what I've seen. So that's why I'm going straight to the last person that saw him. If I would be the last person that saw him, then I would be the person that has it. Al expresses concerns that Latisha is holding back information. So he agrees to allow investigators to record their phone calls. If you know what's an accident, are you going to stand by me? Yes, absolutely. I'm sorry, ball of story. I just didn't know what to do. So we are going to get her. Look, how do I get your bike? I was like, get it right. She was really big. The guy was helping. And he fell all over me. I heard bad. She comes up with a story about looking for a bike to buy for Al. And how she and Ganon had gone up there to look at the bike. She describes in very elaborate detail, Ganon test riding the bike, crashing, hitting his head. He was bleeding. Where was he bleeding from? I don't know. There was a piece of wood with blood on it, found in a remote area. Ways away from the house. That was a huge part of the case. When we found the board up in Southern Douglas County, she had to explain why Ganon's DNA would be found on that board. And what we learned throughout those phone calls is, one, the level of lying that she was willing to undergo to deflect the investigation away from being pointed at her. But also, she was giving us little clues throughout where she would actually include small snippets of truth. And she would do it in a way that would explain a way why that truth existed and why somebody else was responsible for that truth. I didn't know what phone to go. No, it wasn't. I suppose we'd take him back. You had to go. No, it wasn't. So the guy took him to take him to 9-1-1, to Craig's this guy, Quincy Brown or whatever. I swear to God, he Quincy is real. There were several names we heard at Wardo, an Uncle Mike, a Quincy Brown. This was someone with a criminal record. What I'm trying to work out with you here is just the freaking truth. Alfred, I'm telling you. He parked Ganon all of a sudden. Okay, well, who tied you up? Who did this? You didn't do it. Who did it? Who hurt Ganon? Who has Ganon? How are they going to kill me? Who is they? These are the questions I need to know. They hurt Toby and they were in court. I would have not been Quincy Brown. There was really no connection, though. I got the same stories. And there was never really full context to these stories. So Quincy Brown is the one who has him. But he's coming out to me because I know he is. Quincy Brown is the one holding Ganon for all the money. Hey, you didn't tell me. So, three weeks now, you've known who has my son. The dynamics between her and Al were, I think, at the very heart of what this case was about. Prior to Ganon going missing, the relationship between her and Al was deteriorating rapidly. In those phone calls, she's constantly talking about and trying to talk Al into supporting her through this entire thing. She felt like Ganon was the key to draw Al in closer to her and to keep that relationship going. I have not filed anything yet. I'll give you the straight-up on us truth. We're at the same point now. Unfortunately, three weeks later, I was not getting the whole truth. Even yesterday, when we were talking, it wasn't adding up. And it still isn't. There's three or four different versions. Neither Al nor investigators are fully aware. believing Latisha's accounts of what happened to Ganon. But coming up next, new information comes to light that may be the key to solving this whole case. He calls me back and says, "You're gonna want to come back down here. I found the video." And that is what we believe is the last sighting of him. "You know where an 11-year-old is. And I am here telling you we could go find him. And you were not giving us his location." "A live or dead?" "I did not hurt my child. Okay." It's mid-February 2020. Officials in Colorado have been searching for weeks for a young boy, 11-year-old Ganon Stalk. While initially reported to police by Ganon's stepmother, Latisha Stalk, she's been providing several versions of what happened. And they don't seem to be adding up. At one point, when speaking to Al, Ganon's biological father, who's working with authorities, Latisha brings up another possible player in the case. She told you to walk into Petco? "She forced me. It's just being called up in the wrong place at the wrong time. With people who are money laundering wanting me to deliver a paper to these Mexican restaurants, and you're supposed to get packages back from them. And I wouldn't do it." "You want me to believe you, but I feel like you're just telling me something to make me feel better about Ganon missing. Kind of like the Quincy Brown thing. I mean, now it's a pregnant lady with cash in her belly." "I'm innocent." It took a lot of strength on Al's part to go through those recorded phone calls. He had to keep his cool and not let her know that the news was tightening, that she was quickly becoming the focal point of the investigation. "What's wrong with you?" "What's wrong is my son's missing and you keep lying to me, okay? That's what's wrong. Okay, fine, give me my son back. Tell the truth, give me my son back." "I don't have him." "Where's he at then? Who has him? You have to answer not one of my questions. You're not doing nothing but lying to me and sending me in a different direction than what you know is the truth." But then, detectives learn new information that changes the course of the whole investigation. "One of the first days I covered this little missing boy, the neighbors were doing whatever they could and I got to speaking with Rodrick Drey and he said, 'You know what? I lived just a few doors down and my camera faces their house.' He calls me back and says, 'You're going to want to come back down here. I found the video. I found him in the car with Latisha." He was lethargic early on the morning of the 27th, the way he walks out to the truck. Clearly showed that he was under the influence of some sort of drug. And one more thing points to Latisha's stout. Evidence is found at the stout's home suggesting Ganon was possibly killed there. "When Latisha calls 911, the police actually go out to the scene and walk through the house and there's nothing immediately apparent that would suggest something bad had happened. It really goes to the idea that she did an extensive job of cleaning up the crime scene and then when we go into Ganon's bedroom, you can see very fine blood staining on the walls, so small that it was hard to see what the naked eye." The investigators, they find blood and DNA all over the home and the most chilling part of where they find the blood in his bedroom is it's underneath his mattress, underneath the carpet, underneath the carpet pad and soaked into the concrete below. And that tells you how much blood came from this young child through the blood, through the forensics, through the ability to track her movements in the time frame of when Ganon was supposedly lost. They're all to piece together that she had a lot more in connection to this case and she initially told law enforcement. "You know why you're here? Do they inform you why you're under arrest?" "I'm under arrest?" "Yes." Just over a month after Latisha reported Ganon missing, she's arrested while visiting family in South Carolina. "I'm getting charged for eight maintenance. "We found enough, you call it probable cause or a warrant to be issued." "Okay, a warrant for a lot, no." "It was for the murder." "A warrant." "You're counting the stuff." "So, that's what the evidence shows." "Okay." She's interviewed yet again, this time by the FBI. "There's a lot of stories out there. So if someone truly took Ganon though, we need to know the real story because you put out quite a few different stories." The FBI agent tells her, we heard you telling multiple stories on the phone without and she says, "Oh, I knew you guys were already recording." She says she was hurt, he wasn't trying to work with her, so she purposely gave him multiple different stories. "I don't think you intended the first Ganon at all. Something bad happened in the screen. If you didn't do it, and it helps me find Ganon, I didn't do it." "Okay, so then help me find out who did." "So just what?" "That's a Ganon in his room." "Don't watch the Ganon in his room." "There's a tool of blood in the corner." "Okay." "That's Ganon's blood." "Where do you think that I had any involvement with Ganon and where did he go?" "You're the last to do it with him. You told a lot of lies." He would lead her down a path and right at the point where she's going to make a statement that would potentially incriminate herself. She's conscious enough to know that this is occurring and then she would then pull back. "If you can point me to a different person, then I can help you. If you trusted me, to talk to me, you would tell me where Ganon is right now. If you would have told police the very first night that he was taken forcibly, everything would have been different." The agent then confronts Latisha on something that raised red flags earlier in the investigation. "Here I even have what you entered in your phone, the stuff that you've entered and deleted, like what a spurting fan arterial bleed, direct pressure not controlling." "You what? I didn't want this up." "Somebody did in your phone. I don't like my stepson." "No." "I don't like my stepson. Should I get a divorce? How to get blood out of her shoes?" "Out of shoes?" Her Google searches were massive in this case. How long does it take a body to decompose, face transplants, find people who want to go to jail? "If you did something bad to Ganon, could you ever admit it?" "What? I didn't do anything bad to Ganon." "Right now you're the last person in Ganon." "I don't do bad things to the people. I don't." "I don't think you do bad things." "I don't do bad things to anyone and I didn't do anything bad to Ganon. Why would I hurt our child and everything in the world? Why? I have no motives. None." But investigators come across a recording from the night when Stauk says Ganon accidentally caused a fire from a candle that sheds a chilling light on their relationship. "Granon, her promise is the last time I'm going to ask you, I'm just afraid to help, okay? Are you sure you didn't do it on purpose?" "We did it." "Okay, the promise." "We promise." "Pinky promise." There was one video where she was manipulating him on that Sunday night. "We're gonna have to sell stuff to fix it, okay? So we figure out what we got to sell. We can sell the sofa, we can sell whatever because we got to get it fixed so lady, don't be mad at us and kick us out of the house. Okay? You got it? You got it? "I'm just worried about my parents." "Listen, listen, listen, listen." "You hear this little boy's voice and the fear in his voice and she recorded him. You hear that recording and it's this little boy. I promised I didn't need to do it and just his voice shaking and he's crying." While authorities may know who's responsible for Gatton's disappearance, there's still one major missing piece. Gatton is still nowhere to be found. That's when a case-changing discovery is made hundreds of miles away. "We're here at the bridge. Next this game you can't even want and reference the suitcase." It was a heartbreaking day. We got the news that 1300 miles away, bridge inspectors in Pensacola, Florida. Find this suitcase and everyone's heart sunk. "We're expecting the bridge, found that suitcase down there, decided we'd open it to see if anything was in it. Body rolled out along with what appears to be a comforter." Investigators discover Latisha rented a van and drove 1300 miles to Florida with her daughter just days after Gatton's disappearance. "They were tracking her. There was trackers in the rental car and the way she was going, where she was going. If your kids missing out of a town in Colorado Springs, why are you leaving?" We later found out why hotel records records right near that bridge from February 4th, that gave us answers. Authorities believe Latisha tossed this suitcase with Ganon dead inside over a bridge in the middle of the night while her daughter Harley slept in a nearby hotel room. Ganon's body was just discarded as if it was trash. He suffered from not only stab wounds, but also a gunshot injury. The bullet that was recovered from Ganon was able to be connected to a gun that was found in Latisha's bedroom. The handgun that was used actually belonged to Alstab. What was really eerie about the way that it was found is that as it was sitting on the dresser, it was actually pointing at a photograph of Ganon. It looks like he was trying to defend himself and fighting back, but it was a brutal, brutal attack. He was stabbed 17 times, he was hit over the head four times, and then the final injury that he sustained was a gunshot wound to his job. He was also given hydrocodone, so he was poisoned by a very strong drug. It really speaks to the horrific hours of Ganon's last hours here on Earth alive. Latisha is accused of the murder of 11-year-old Ganon stout, but the twist in this story aren't quite over with yet, when we return a roadblock in the case. She felt like she could manipulate the court system. She was trying to feign incompetence. It hurt me to ask you, because you're my wife. It's March 2020, and investigators have Latisha stout in custody in South Carolina. They believe she stabbed and shot her 11-year-old stepson Ganon to death two months earlier in January out in Colorado. Latisha and authorities arrive back in Colorado where she set to stand trial. However, now there's even more delays. There was always something on her end to delay. There was letters to the judge wanting to represent herself, changing her plea. She went through at least two competency hearings, and even a third closer to that trial date, competencies and a person's ability to participate in their defense and to be tried. After more than three years in April 2023, Latisha stout goes on trial for first-degree murder, tampering with the deceased human body and tampering with evidence. As for stout's defense, she entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. January 27, 2020, Ganon's home turned into the stuff of nightmares. The one place a little boy like Ganon should have felt the safest is in fact where he was brutally murdered. Evidence in this case will show that she couldn't distinguish between right and wrong. I felt very confident going into the trial, but there's that unknown. You're bringing strangers into the courtroom that have to sit and listen to evidence. That's very difficult to listen to. Having to get over the hurdle of proving that she was sane is an added element. There was an overwhelming amount of evidence that timelines, the locations of the GPS, even the recordings. It did come up during the trial that Latisha may suffer from having multiple personalities. And from an insanity defense standpoint, if your client has any kind of mental disease or defect, you throw that all against the wall and see what sticks. There's an awful, awful thing that's done to Ganon. In the court of public opinion and the media, he's guilty. This is going to come down to Santhi. The issue for that both for the defense and ultimately Jury in making the decision is whether or not you had that multiple personality disorder. The stock was dealing trauma and abuse that had been going on since she was a toddler. The troubled childhood, that's where the fragmentation personality comes in. The big thing that stuck out to me was Latisha's demeanor in the courtroom. All lies were on her when they're giving the defense's opening statements. That was the only time I saw any reaction and it was her putting a tissue to her face when they were talking about alleged abuse she went through as a child. Nothing about Ganon. Since I go from teacher, loving stepmother, loving mother, being a killer of 11 year old boy, there was some major, iconic crack. Much of the state's case focused on just that, Latisha's mental state at the time of the crime, even calling her daughter to the stand. Had you ever seen your mom change personalities into someone, she isn't? No. Had she ever been treated for any mental illness in your lifetime? No. If there was one person that knew the defendant best, it was Harley Hunt, her own daughter. In having her come in and talk to the jury and the manipulation that she suffered at the defendant's hands, went in a long ways to show that she was of very sound mind, that she knew exactly what she had done. Did you ever ask your mom, "What are we doing? Why are we leaving?" No, I didn't really question her a lot. I would be told that I'm being disrespectful or talking back. And what would happen if you were being disrespectful or talking back to your mom? Sometimes she'd like backhand me. The conscious decision to drive Ganon's body all the way down to Florida, how many times Latisha must have been able to think through her actions and maybe have the opportunity to change course, but she didn't. I'm still in shock. I defended her for years and I just feel like I've been humiliated and let do. You could see how hurt the family was that this was even an argument brought up that she was insane. They knew her for years and years and she was totally fine. They trusted her to take care of their kids and now it's just suddenly a switched argument. Oh, she's insane. Did Miss Stalk ever give you any self-diagnosis of potential mental illnesses that she felt she had? She talked a lot about being manic, slipping in and out of reality. Did she ever bring up anything about having another personality or multiple personalities? She did not. She was reading books and was picking up things that she could do or say that would support an insanity defense and she did those things during different evaluations. She was clearly trying to manipulate that process. Did you or Dr. Gray ever consider the fact that she could just be making this all up? Yes. And then comes Maria, a different personality of Letitius. She talks about going into protection mode and she often references Maria as the protector. Someone who has this associative identity disorder, they're going to be able to recall what happens as a different person. I would think that if Miss Stalk had dissociated into Maria, there would be a lack of awareness or understanding or memory. The biggest hurdle I think was really the gravity of the injuries that gained and suffered. It gave us some concerns that it wouldn't be too much of a stretch for a juror to say. The only reason that somebody would carry out an attack on 11-year-old like that is if they were crazy, that they had gone insane. It's exactly what the defense argued. Not that Letitius didn't commit the killing, but that she was insane at the time and not criminally responsible. When I was interviewing her over a period of time, suddenly it seemed to me that she was speaking Russian. And then I was like, "No, we don't understand," and I was like, "No, no, no." It looked as though she had switched into a different entity. And she described any altars to you or other personas. She referred to somebody named Maria. Maria apparently was a physically abusive entity, and when I first saw that, I thought, "Have I just met the aspect of her personality that killed Ganon?" Ganon and I had to protect the people that were in the house, okay, because if someone was in the normal, they were going to raise someone, they were going to bless them, they were going to kill them. I had to protect them. All I did, okay? And I fired a gun. They did not know. They didn't have a safety. I trained to kill them. That's what I do. Kill. They're living. I took the gun. I fired to gun at someone. They had a cape on them. They looked at me just fine. Kill the man. When she was speaking in that Maria voice, that gave me goosebumps because that was the first time I think I heard anything of any admission. and really of guilt, but it's in this other voice. Their job is to put doubt in the jurors' minds, right? And those videos were certainly compelling. - The case is then delivered to the jury as Latisha's future is placed in their hands to decide. - When you turn a case over to a jury for deliberations, you sit there and you think about, well, could we have done this differently? Did the jury pick up on the things that were important for the case or did they miss something? Were they paying attention? You just never know until you get that verdict. - There was that feeling of fear what could happen, but there was just that hope it would be a result soon and there would be justice served. - After nearly eight hours of deliberations, the jury comes back with their decision. - We the jury find the defendant Latisha Stalk guilty. - The jury found that Latisha Stalk was guilty of all crimes straight across the board. It was not surprising to me after all of those lies and all of those calculations and miscalculations that the jury thought you weren't insane. You knew what you were doing and this is murder in the worst possible way. - You have shown no remorse throughout this process. Instead, you've made a case to build a web of lies because you didn't wanna face the consequences. You are conducted in this case, deserves the maximum punishment. I remand you to the custody of Colorado Department of Corrections for the remainder of your life with no possibility of parole. - I remember Ganon's mom telling me after the verdict and it hurt to hear that she and her heart knows that Ganon loved this woman in his final breaths. It was just incomprehensible. How someone could hate a little boy who loves you. The idea that a little boy could suffer this sort of horrific attack at the hands of somebody that was supposed to be caring for them is unimaginable. It's something that will always be on my mind. But most importantly, I'll never forget the smile that Ganon had, the stories of how happy he was and how much of a fighter he was and just the love that he had for his entire family. - This is a tough one. It really, really is thinking about what happened to Ganon at the hands of a woman who was supposed to protect him and based on what we saw with Letitia Stauk, I wouldn't be so hopeful that we'll ever get the straight story of what happened. Now at the time of this recording, we've actually reached the four-year anniversary of this young boy's death. And to imagine where his life could have been and what he would be doing today, that to me is the saddest part. Thanks for joining us here on Prime Crime. I'm Jesse Weber, and as always, stay safe. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)