Sandra Cantu Arrest – An arrest was made in the Sandra Cantu murder case of Sunday school teacher Melissa Huckaby, pictured below, with the body found in a suitcase owned by Huckaby.
Before the Sndra Cantu arrest was made, Melissa Huckaby had failed to mention in police and FBI interviews that she supposedly had a black suitcase stolen from her driveway on March 27th, the same day Sandra Cantu disappeared after playing with Huckaby’s own daughter.
Ironically, in trying to cover her tracks, the 28-year old Sunday school teacher told a local newspaper Friday about the supposed suitcase theft.
The published report in the Tracy News drew renewed attention to Huckaby from police Friday and Saturday because the coincidence was highly suspicious.
During the course of her 5-hour police interview late Saturday night, Huckaby gradually cracked under the pressure and confessed.
Tracy police now say that Huckaby’s story about the suitcase being stolen is a lie, and Sgt. Tony Sheneman confirmed the suitcase Sandra Cantu was found in belongs to Melissa Huckaby.
“She was very relaxed for a bit, then she became very emotional, then she became relaxed again, then she became resigned to what was happening,” Sgt. Sheneman told reporters during a 3:00 a.m. press conference.
Sheneman refused to elaborate on any possible motive as to why Melissa Huckaby killed Sandra Cantu.
Huckaby is the granddaughter of Lane Lawless, who is the pastor of Clover Road Baptist Church in Tracy, California where she taught Sunday school. Lawless lives in the same mobile home park where Cantu disappeared.
Huckaby was taken to the San Joaquin County Jail, where she was booked on charges of kidnapping and murder.
And that’s the latest news on the Sandra Cantu arrest.
Tags: melissa huckabee, melissa huckaby, missing girl, murder, sandra cantu, sandra cantu arrest
April 11th, 2009 at 7:50 pm
Melissa Huckaby’s Suitcase Story Unraveled
TRACY — While investigators returned Friday to a church they’d already searched, a Tracy woman said publicly that the suitcase 8-year-old Sandra Cantu was found dead inside sounds like the one that had been stolen from her the same day the girl disappeared.
Melissa Huckaby, 28, told several media outlets Friday that the suitcase disappeared from her driveway in the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park on March 27, the same day Sandra Cantu was reported missing.
Huckaby said she had prepared the suitcase with items to be taken to Clover Road Baptist Church for a Sunday school class she teaches and had left the bag in the driveway of the mobile home she shares with her grandparents. She apparently had forgotten her keys and cell phone, and returned inside to look for them, but gave up after a short while before grabbing a spare set and driving to the church.
When Huckaby’s grandmother called her to say she had found the missing items, she remembered the suitcase was still in the driveway, she said. She asked family members to check on it. It wasn’t there.
She told the Tracy Press she meant to file a police report but never did. Some television stations are reporting that Huckaby said she filed a police report.
According to logs with the San Joaquin County Sheriff’s Office and the Tracy Police Department, no one reported a missing suitcase from the Orchard Park Mobile Home Estates or the Clover Road Baptist Church in the past three weeks.
Huckaby said Sandra had stopped by her house to play with her 5-year-old daughter, but she told Sandra the girl wasn’t being allowed to have a friend over. She said Sandra then left to go to another friend’s house.
The last images of Sandra, captured on a video surveillance camera set up by her grandparents, show the little girl skipping across the roadway toward her home before veering right and heading in another direction.
Sandra’s body was found Monday, inside a large black suitcase discovered in a pond being drained, 10 days after the Jacobson Elementary School second-grader went missing.
A source close to the investigation said that at first glance there were no visible signs of trauma on the girl.
April 12th, 2009 at 8:21 am
More on Melissa Huckaby
“This was an anomaly in the murder of a child,” police Sgt. Tony Sheneman said at a news conference Saturday. “Finding out that it is a woman who is responsible for Sandra’s kidnapping and murder, and then finding out it is a member of the community is another blow.”
FBI statistics show women are involved in just 7 percent of murders of any sort. Solo killings of children by women are even more unusual.
“It’s very unusual for women to be involved in an abduction and murder of a child,” said Candice DeLong, a retired FBI profiler based in San Francisco. “Sometimes we see this when the woman is working with a male partner. It does not appear to be the case this time. But this was not a sexually motivated crime.”
Sandra disappeared on March 27 and hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officials turned out to search for her. Pictures of the girl with dark brown eyes and light brown hair were posted all over Tracy, a city of 78,000 people about 60 miles east of San Francisco. Police said they received 1,500 tips.
Huckaby, 28, had attended the second of several vigils for the slain girl, Sheneman said.
Sheneman said investigators had not determined the motive for the slaying. Police would not say where or how the girl was killed.
Police said autopsy results are not yet available, and they declined to say whether investigators believe the slaying was accidental or deliberate.
Inconsistencies in Huckaby’s story led to her arrest, Sheneman said. There are no other suspects and no other arrests are expected, he said. Her arraignment is scheduled for Tuesday.
Huckaby is a granddaughter of Pastor Clifford Lawless, whose Clover Road Baptist Church was the subject of a police search. Huckaby taught Sunday school at the church and lived with Lawless in the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park that also was Sandra’s home.
Huckaby’s uncle, John Hughes Jr. of Whittier, said his niece was from a good home, but had hit a rough patch in her life and moved in with her grandparents to get past her troubles.
“They opened their home up to her to try to get her life back on track. I think a lot of families have problems like that,” Hughes said.
April 14th, 2009 at 12:31 pm
Melissa Huckaby Molested Sandra Cantu
Prosecutors said Monday they may include rape and molestation charges, in addition to murder, in the case against the Sunday school teacher accused of killing an 8-year-old Northern California girl and putting her body in a suitcase.
Melissa Huckaby, 28, was arrested Friday on suspicion of kidnapping and murdering Sandra Cantu. She is scheduled to be arraigned on Tuesday.
Formal charges have not been filed, but San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Robert Himmelblau said Monday a murder charge against Huckaby could include the special circumstances of rape with a foreign object, lewd and lascivious conduct with a child and murder in the course of a kidnapping.
A decision on which, if any, special circumstances to include in the charges hasn’t been made, but a conviction on any of them would make Huckaby eligible for the death penalty or life in prison without parole, Himmelblau said.
The district attorney’s office hasn’t determined whether to seek the death penalty, he said.
On April 6, Sandra’s body was found in a suitcase by farmworkers draining an irrigation pond located only a few miles from Sandra’s home in the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park.
Huckaby lived with her grandparents five doors down from Sandra in Tracy. The little girl was a playmate of Huckaby’s 5-year-old daughter, Madison.
Police have not said how, where or why Sandra was killed, but Sgt. Tony Sheneman said investigators believe she acted alone.
“We have not been provided with one (a motive),” Sheneman said Monday. “We don’t know why a mother would kill another mother’s child.”
Neither Himmelblau nor Sheneman would provide details on any evidence leading prosecutors to consider the sexual assault allegations.
“I was hoping that wasn’t the case,” Sandra’s aunt, Angie Chavez, said through tears. “I’m in shock. The whole thing is unimaginable.”
July 2nd, 2010 at 10:15 am
Huckaby raped Sandra With a rolling pin then strangled her. Police say that Huckaby drugged Sandra. Sandra didnt do anything to huckaby. Sandra was only in second grade she had a long life ahead of her.Police say they dont know why Huckaby killed Sandra but they say that Huckaby has Bipolar disorder.