Melissa Huckaby – Sunday school teacher Melissa Huckaby, pictured below, was arrested for the murder of 8-year old Sandra Cantu, whose body was found in a suitcase owned by Huckaby.
Previously, 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, Sandra Cantu’s 28-year old Sunday school teacher told a local newspaper Friday about the 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 arrest in the Sandra Cantu murder case of 28-year old Melissa Huckaby.
Tags: melissa huckabee, melissa huckaby, missing girl, murder, sandra cantu, sandra cantu body found
April 11th, 2009 at 8:19 am
Horror-Melissa Huckaby, a 28 year old Sunday school teacher has been arrested in the murder of 8 year old Sandra Cantu!!!
April 11th, 2009 at 8:39 am
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 failed to return repeated calls for additional comment.
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 8:23 am
Melissa Huckaby Details
“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 12:30 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.”
April 14th, 2009 at 2:47 pm
I have read reports that huckaby’s daughter was on vacation w/her grandma, and the grandpa was out of town at a convention. how could sandra have come over to play w/huckaby’s daughter if she was on vacation? It sounds like M. Huckaby was home by herself when sandra came over. i am so confused by this case. I keep thinking that huckaby is covering for someone. I read one report that maybe she was involved w/a crime on children ring. just sucks that there are NO answers avaiable.
April 15th, 2009 at 8:00 am
I agree, something abut this story does not sit right…my immediate gut reaction was just that…huckaby is covering for someone..
April 15th, 2009 at 11:32 am
Shoot her
April 15th, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Do they know for sure this is Huckaby doing this? It seems a little odd. Why are the police not saying more? How is it that they are refusing to consider other suspects? Why? Rush to judgement? Someone else did this, I bet and will get away with it. I don’t think Melissa is covering for someone. I don’t think she knows who did it but I think someone else did. The prosectors are trying to throw the book at her and get it over with.
April 21st, 2009 at 11:36 am
Melissa Huckaby tried to kill herself on April 6, just hours after Sandra’s body was found 2 miles from the mobile home park where she lived.
Police haven’t confirmed those reports, but did confirm that officers were posted to watch Huckaby at the hospital for several days.
See related story:
http://a11news.com/1747/melissa-huckaby-confessed/
April 21st, 2009 at 11:37 am
Huckaby’s also suspected of drugging another little girl with muscle relaxants at the same mobile home park back in January of this year.
April 23rd, 2009 at 5:11 am
I just cant believe it.. I think she is covering.. Possibly she thought she was covering for accidental death by someone she knows or murder, when she cried as they read charges of sexual assault, I think she was crying for the girl, not herself, and that she was in shock about the sexual abuse herself.. If grabbing the girl , raping her and killing her was a crime of opportunity, so could stealing of the nearby suitcase be.. perhaps the girl was looking int he suitcase and someone passed by.. saw an opportunity.. took both at the same time.. I dont know,, dont beat me up.. I just find it hard to believe…
April 24th, 2009 at 12:47 pm
i think shes covering for someone else surely if she was a sexual predator then her own child would be a victim of her abuse. but after hearing about the alleged kidnap of a 7 year old at the same park then why was she not arrested for that?
she definately is guilty of kidnap and murder but i find it hard to believe she did this alone especially the rape of a little girl but if the reports about her being unstable are true then i`m sure she could be capable of it.
if shes found guilty i hope she gets the death penalty!!!
April 26th, 2009 at 9:11 pm
Huckaby really did that, unbelievable, She should die then. I was the victim of date drugging at the hands of my ex-boyfriend. I had a flash of memory, evidently I became alert for a second and opened my eyes as he was untying me. Pay attention to you’re time, and if you’re children want to go visiting go with them. I believe you answer to the things you do in life, when you die. There are others that say if you accept Jesus as you’re saviour then “All is forgivin” I guess Huckaby is one of those. To bad she’ll have time to ask forgivness. For all the others who would do such horrible things, may they all get hit by Mack trucks before they can repent.
May 4th, 2009 at 12:34 pm
I was & stil am very confused on how this woman could of done this by herself but I was fortunate to find out & see with my own eyes that the car used in this crime was Melissa’s boyfriends Cadillac who was the other main person in the trailer park that they questioned and searched numerous times. It was searched and then kept by the FBI @ the Mountain House fire station up until the day before her last court date. I was told by a very reliable source that they got hits from the kadaver dogs in it & they obviousley have enugh evidence in/on that car to keep it and to not arrest the owner of the vehicle. It’s crazy but I think it will all make better since when we know ALL the evidence…All 500+ pages, recordings, etc. I also know for a fact that she did try to commit suicide by swallowing a razor…CRAZY I’d say! Everyone has their thoughts but I really think her Grandpa or SOMEBODY did something along the same lines to her as a child. I just hope she tells ALL…What does she have to lose at this point.
May 4th, 2009 at 2:26 pm
Sorry correction on my last comment-she swallowed an xacto blade.
May 22nd, 2009 at 1:30 pm
More Charges For Melissa Huckaby
Melissa Huckaby – the Tracy, Caifornia woman charged with the killing of eight-year-old Sandra Cantu – is due back in court, while the case against her takes another twist.
Melissa Huckaby is scheduled to appear in San Joaquin County Superior Court Friday May 22 for further arraignment on charges that she kidnapped, raped and murdered Sandra Cantu.
Her scheduled appearance comes after prosecutors filed additional charges against Huckaby alleging that she tried to poison two people.
In a new complaint filed Thursday, prosecutors say Huckaby gave what they termed a “a harmful substance” to a seven-year-old girl in January and an adult man in March.
The type of substance was not revealed in the complaint.
The girl has since recovered.
September 4th, 2009 at 3:48 pm
I believe that she did this. What makes a man capable of it and not a woman? She poisoned another man & a child, but she isn’t capable of the horrific things that happened to poor Sandra? I pray that there is a guard in prison with a heart– that “accidentally” leaves her cell unlocked every night for the rest of her life. They will rape her & beat her……. and she will deserve every piece of it. How can this be America. How can these people walk by me everyday? My heart & prayers for this mother, all family and sweet sweet Sandra.