Pastor's Granddaughter Arrested In Sandra Cantu Slaying

(04-11) 07:59 PDT TRACY -- A Sunday school teacher was booked early today on suspicion of murder and kidnapping in the slaying of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, whose body was found in a suitcase in an irrigation pond.

Melissa Huckaby, 28, was arrested at 11:55 p.m. Friday after she drove to the Tracy Police Department to be interviewed. She was booked at 3:25 a.m. today at San Joaquin County Jail in French Camp, where she is being held without bail.

"She revealed enough information that we had probable cause to arrest her for both kidnapping and murder," Tracy police Sgt. Tony Sheneman told reporters. During her interview, "she was very relaxed for a bit, then she became very emotional, and then she became relaxed again, and then became resigned to what was happening," Sheneman said.

No motive was disclosed in the slaying, and authorities have not said how Sandra was killed pending the results of an autopsy. Huckaby is scheduled to be arraigned Tuesday.

Huckaby's arrest capped an intense investigation in a case that has transfixed the region and sent shockwaves through Tracy, a city of 84,000 that is considered the gateway to the Central Valley.

Reporters descended on the onetime farming community, which was the focus of similar media attention in December when four suspects were arrested in the torture and kidnapping of a 16-year-old boy.

Sandra's disappearance last month from the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park on West Clover Road fueled an intense search for her by law enforcement and volunteers, and the fear and anguish was evident in the faces of those who attended nightly candlelight vigils at the mobile-home park.

Those emotions transformed into grief - and anger - after the body of the little girl with brown eyes and light brown hair was found stuffed into a suitcase in an irrigation pond two miles north of her home.

Huckaby is the granddaughter of a pastor who lives at the mobile home park. The suspect had claimed that a suitcase belonging to her had disappeared on March 27, the same day Sandra disappeared.

The little girl went missing after telling her mother she was going to a friend's home to play. The last official sighting of her was on a surveillance video taped that afternoon, showing her skipping merrily outside her home.

Huckaby's arrest followed a weeklong focus on vehicles and property associated with her family.

Over the past week, police searched Clover Road Baptist Church, on West Clover Road about a quarter-mile from the park, as well as a shed on the property. Investigators also questioned its pastor, Lane Lawless, who is Huckaby's grandfather, and seized a phone and computer belonging to Lawless and his wife, Connie.

Connie Lawless has said that they welcomed the police scrutiny and that investigators were probably interested in them because Sandra played with their 5-year-old great-granddaughter. Connie Lawless was elected to San Joaquin Valley's Republican Central Committee in 2006 and lost a re-election bid two years later, according to the county registrar of voters.

The couple did not immediately return a phone call for comment today.

Huckaby had previously said that Sandra visited her home on the day of her disappearance to play with her daughter. But Huckaby told the Tracy Press that she had turned Sandra away because her daughter needed to pick up her toys and Sandra went to another friend's home.

Huckaby told several reporters Friday that she had left her Eddie Bauer suitcase in the driveway that day, and that it was missing. She claimed that she later found a note that had the words "suitcase" and "water," as well as the street near the irrigation pond where she was found.
The Tracy Press also reported that Huckaby was released Thursday from Sutter Tracy Community Hospital, where she spent several days in intensive care for what she described as "internal bleeding." Huckaby declined to elaborate to the newspaper.

Debi McComber, 37, a longtime resident of the mobile home park, said this morning that she and her neighbors were stunned by the arrest of Huckaby, whom she described as a seemingly normal and "nice" parent who mostly kept to herself.

"It's a shocker - I can't believe it," said McComber, a teacher in the Tracy school system. "The town will be shocked and relieved in the same breath - relieved that there's not some serial killer out there molesting kids. But it still doesn't bring Sandra back."

McComber added, "She was right down the road and we couldn't stop it. That's what's heartbreaking. I don't know what her motive would be to take her. Why would you take someone else's kid? She had her own kid."

McComber said she recalled first meeting Huckaby at the mobile home park's swimming pool last summer, after Huckaby and her 5-year-old daughter moved into Lawless' mobile home.

"I would have never suspected it," McComber said. "She has a daughter, a 5-year-old daughter. Everybody's wondering what was the motive."

McComber said video footage released by police shows Sandra turning toward Huckaby's mobile home.

"No wonder why Sandra went looking that way," she said. "That's where they live. The house is down that way."