A true-crime influencer on YouTube is apologizing after selling access to autopsy photos of 11-year-old Gannon Stauch, a Colorado Springs boy murdered by his stepmother three years ago.
The poster, who goes by Zav Girl, has received intense backlash online after publishing the photos of Stauch in a video on her now-defunct Patreon page, which allows creators to charge money for content.
The woman received the photos through an open records request with the Colorado Judicial Department, an agency spokesperson confirmed Friday.
Autopsy photos normally are not releasable under Colorado’s open records laws, but the photos of the murdered boy became public record after they were introduced as exhibits during the May trial of his stepmother.
Patreon removed the video and Zav Girl’s account from the site. A spokesperson said that the content violated guidelines for violent and graphic content.
Zav Girl, who has nearly 88,000 YouTube subscribers, apologized to Stauch’s family in a video posted Thursday, saying she’s been doing “major soul-searching and reflecting.” She said she put the video with the trial evidence behind a paywall, thinking it wouldn’t be made public. The photos, she explained, already had been seen during trial and weren’t new.
“To Gannon’s family, I have no words that can make this better,” the social media influencer said. “No one should have to go through what you guys went through.”
Gannon Stauch went missing in January 2020 and his disappearance became national news. His stepmother, Laticia Stauch, was arrested and charged with murder in March of that year, days before a construction crew found Gannon’s body in Florida.
An El Paso County jury in May found the stepmother guilty of first-degree murder, among other charges. She was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
The murder case spawned a host of documentaries, podcasts and YouTube videos.
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