Tracy School Teacher Told Police Suitcase Was Stolen

A Sunday school teacher said someone took her black rolling suitcase from the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park on the day 8-year-old murder victim Sandra Cantu disappeared.

It's a huge suitcase, 28-year-old Melissa Huckaby said in a phone interview today, waterproof, charcoal-trimmed and has an Eddie Bauer logo on the front.

Police have yet to confirm whether it's the same one found Monday morning that contained Sandra's dead body.

Farmworkers discovered a suitcase that generally matches that description submerged in a dairy lagoon two miles north of mobile home park where Sandra lived. Huckaby has lived there, too, for a year with her grandparents Clifford Lane and Connie Lawless, after having moved up from Southern California, she said.

Sandra went missing on March 27, the same day and in the same late-afternoon hour that Huckaby said the black suitcase disappeared from her driveway.

"There's been a lot of speculation on the news about what happened to my suitcase," she said today. "It's not my grandfather's. It's mine, and someone took it."

Huckaby teaches Sunday school at Clover Road Baptist Church, her grandfather's church just down the street from the mobile home park. She spruces up the church classroom every few months, she said, and had packed up in the suitcase with everything she needed to re-do the room that day.

Sandra had come over earlier and asked to play with her 5-year-old daughter, Huckaby said. But Huckaby didn't want her daughter to play because she had to pick up her toys. So Sandra left for another friend's house. Eighteen seconds of surveillance footage that shows Sandra playfully skipping by her family's home show her on her way back to Huckaby's home after leaving that other friend's house, Huckaby said.

After Sandra left, her oldest sister Miranda went to Huckaby's house, too. Huckaby asked Miranda if she could watch her daughter for her while she went down the street to the church. Connie Lawless was home, too.

Huckaby then set the packed suitcase on the driveway by her dark purple Kia SUV - the same one FBI agents and Tracy police detectives towed and searched Tuesday night. But she forgot her cell phone and keys inside the house, so she went back in for about 15 minutes to find them. She couldn't, so she picked up the spare key and left.

She forgot about the suitcase and left it on the driveway.

When she got to the church, Huckaby's grandmother called and said she found her keys and cell phone. Huckaby said that's when she realized she had left the $200 suitcase outside. When her family went out to get it, they said it was gone.

"So I talked to the assistant manager at the mobile home park and asked him to keep an eye out for this suitcase, someone took it," Huckaby said. "I also told some older kids to look out for it. I didn't think much then because, you know, kids were getting out of school and I thought that maybe someone, maybe someone walking by just took it."

She called Tracy police intending to file a report, but decided to do it online. She never got around to it.

Her grandfather - who police also questioned - has had tools stolen from his home there, she said, and she had heard of petty theft and vandalism at the park all the time. So she said she wasn't surprised when she discovered her suitcase gone.

But by the time she had time to file a stolen property report police had already started knocking on everyone's door, asking about Sandra.

"They asked me if I noticed anything suspicious, so of course I told them about my missing suitcase," Huckaby said.

Police questioned her and she said she gave them permission to search her car for evidence, too.

Huckaby has spent several days since last week in the intensive care unit at Sutter Tracy Community Hospital for "internal bleeding," though she refused to say exactly what condition she was admitted for. She was released Thursday morning, she said.

Police had interviewed her at the hospital.

"It's where I was, and I told them that's where I was, so they came just because they had a few questions to ask me about what I know," she said.

Dispatchers said over the police scanner on Tuesday that officers were "changing detail" at the hospital, where they had evidently been stationed for several hours.

Court records show a 28-year-old Melissa Huckaby pleaded no contest on Jan. 9 to a felony charge of second degree commercial burglary and a misdemeanor charge of petty theft with prior theft/burglary/robbery. The criminal complaint says she was locked up in Los Angeles County for conviction of theft in November 2006 and that she tried to steal something from Target in November last year.

The complaint says she's on probation in San Joaquin County and is due back in court on April 17, when she might be sentenced.

The documents list the woman's address as 812 W. Clover Road, Space No. 57, which city property records show is owned by Clifford Lane Lawless and Connie Lawless.

The Melissa Huckaby interviewed today said that's not her.

Asked why the address and cell phone number in the court documents match her own, she said she has no idea.

"I don't know what to say," she said. "That's not me."

Police refuse to comment publicly on any details about the murder case, including Huckaby's narrative.

Police have scheduled a press conference for 3:30 today after cancelling two this morning.

No arrests have been made, and no suspects named, though hundreds of people have been questioned.

(source)