Huckaby case closed, hearts exposed
by Jaclyn Hirsch / Tracy Press
Jun 18, 2010
Although Melissa Huckaby will be behind bars for the rest of her life and the criminal court case has been shut, the case might never end for the family members of the slain Sandra Cantu, as they continue to fight for what they say is their right to privacy.
“Our world has forever been changed,” Angie Chavez, Sandra’s aunt, said in criminal court in Stockton on Monday, June 14. “Sandra wasn’t the only victim affected by what (Huckaby) has done. Our family, the Tracy community and the whole world became victims when she murdered Sandra.”
The story of Sandra’s disappearance rocked the town of more than 80,000 residents last year, when she went missing from her home in Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park on West Clover Road in Tracy on March 27, 2009. A farmer discovered a suitcase with Sandra’s body crammed inside on April 6, 2009, in a drained dairy pond north of town. Huckaby, the then 28-year-old single mother, was arrested four days later for Sandra’s kidnapping and death on April 10. She pleaded guilty in May this year to murdering and kidnapping Sandra, and was officially sentenced earlier this week.
Family fights for privacy
The gruesome murder will have lasting effects on Sandra’s family and the many residents who call her “Tracy’s Angel,” and the family has fought tirelessly to keep the details of the murder private.
Judge Linda Lofthus decided Monday, June 14, to release the 1,825-page grand jury testimony and most of the crime photos, which include details of how Huckaby, a Sunday school teacher, kidnapped and drugged Sandra last year, brought her to the church where she taught just down the road from the mobile home park where they both lived, and murdered her.
The crime scene photos include images of the rolling pin prosecutors said Huckaby used to molest Sandra. The rolling pin was found in the church with Sandra’s blood on it, and its handles matched injuries on Sandra’s body.
“Melissa wasn’t prepared for us to find those things,” Tracy police detective Tim Bauer said. “She didn’t clean up good enough.”
The details of the murder and cause of death — “homicidal asphyxiation” — were released Monday morning by prosecutor Thomas Testa after Lofthus lifted a gag order that had prevented those associated with the case from speaking to the public.
Lofthus decided against unsealing the autopsy photos and lifted the protective order over the autopsy report. She said the release of the autopsy report is up to the county sheriff-coroner’s office, because the report was never an official part of the court file. A hearing in civil court today, June 18, will decide if the autopsy report will become public information.
Details found in that report are included in the grand jury transcripts, but the actual report was never brought before the court.
A motion filed Wednesday, June 16, by lawyers representing Sandra’s mother, Maria Chavez, and sister, Simone Chavez, said the family wants to avoid the graphic details of Sandra’s death from becoming public, although many of the details began to surface once Lofthus lifted the gag order.
The family’s lawyers argue that Marcy’s Law, a 2008 amendment to the state constitution, gives crime victims’ close relatives the right to privacy.
“Anything anybody has the right to know is already known,” Archie Bakerink, the lawyer for Maria, said.
Bakerink and Stewart Takak, the lawyer for Simone, wrote in the motion that the media has followed Sandra’s family, their home in Tracy has been “staked out” by media and the police have intervened in the past to keep the media out of the neighborhood.
“The Tracy community has been great to her (Maria) and the family,” Bakerink said. “The media can undo all of it.”
Bakerink said he and Tabak have not decided whether they will appeal to the state’s 3rd District Court of Appeal to try and overrule Lofthus’ ruling to unseal the grand jury transcripts and most of the crime photos.
Bakerink said the family’s primary objective was always to keep the autopsy report and autopsy photos sealed, and the family was “very pleased” with Lofthus’ ruling Monday that keeps the autopsy photos sealed forever.
Lofthus said Monday afternoon that she was concerned about the autopsy photos being leaked on the Internet and wanted to avoid putting the photos in the wrong hands.
“Once published, it goes viral,” Lofthus said in court Monday afternoon.
She said she trusts the mainstream media, but was concerned about bloggers and those “on the fringe of mainstream media.”
Les Garcia, a spokesman for the sheriff’s office, said Sheriff Steve Moore wants to make a “well-informed” decision about the autopsy report and has involved county lawyers to help sort through public record law and case law to determine “the right thing” to do.
“He just wants to make an informed decision before he makes that final determination,” Garcia said.
Garcia said Moore is unavailable until Monday, June 21, and said Moore will not show up at the hearing this morning.
Moore told The Record on Tuesday, June 15, that he is “looking for the right answer” and “not looking for an excuse not to do it.”
Prosecutor Thomas Testa said the autopsy report was written in technical medical language, and the doctor spelled out the details in “plain language” when he gave testimony to the grand jury.
He said just about everything that is in the autopsy report is also in the grand jury transcript in “one way or another,” and reading the autopsy report would be “anti-climactic.”
Testa said the summary of charges that he released Monday contained most of the main points of the case, including the doctor’s report that Sandra had “injuries to the external genitalia which were consistent with the diameter of the rolling pin handles.”
He speculated that Sandra’s family could be concerned about how much information is on the Internet, but said most of the details have already come out.
An emotional day in court
Huckaby’s sentencing Monday morning was filled with emotional remarks from Sandra’s family, Huckaby’s mother and Huckaby herself, before Lofthus decided to sentence Huckaby to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
This was the first public statement Huckaby, 29, has made about the murder.
She pled guilty last month to the kidnapping and murder in order to avoid the death penalty. Charges that she raped Sandra were dropped with the plea deal.
Sandra’s aunt, Angie Chavez, showed a four-minute slideshow with pictures of Sandra before she spoke on behalf of the maternal side of the family.
As the slideshow began, Huckaby put her face in her hands and started to cry as she watched pictures of Sandra on the projector screen directly in front of her.
The slideshow included pictures of Sandra from early childhood, sleeping on her mother’s chest, through the last moments of her life captured on camera March 27, a surveillance video of her skipping in the mobile home park.
“Seeing these images of Sandra are bittersweet,” Angie Chavez said. “The video of her skipping down the street will forever be etched in our minds, and the pain of knowing that she was so close to home and we couldn’t protect her from Ms. Huckaby is unimaginable.”
Chavez’s emotional three-minute prepared speech reflected on how the family will be forever affected by Huckaby’s actions.
“All we have left are pictures, videos and memories of Sandra that remind us of the innocent, sweet and larger-than-life person that she was,” Chavez said. “We hope that as Ms. Huckaby watched this video that she will forever be haunted by the pictures and by what she has done.”
Sandra’s father, Daniel Cantu, and paternal grandmother, Connie Cantu, also made heartfelt remarks.
Huckaby’s mother, Judy Lawless, spoke for about two minutes after the Cantu family. This was the first public statement made by anyone related to Huckaby since last year. Huckaby’s father, Brian, was also in the courtroom, along with a few other family members.
“I understand the anger that you must have,” Lawless said, crying. “I would be angry, too.”
Lawless apologized to Maria Chavez, Sandra’s mother, and said the family continues to “grieve” and “pray” for Sandra’s family every day.
“If I could take this all away I would, but I can’t,” she said. “If I could give you justice, the justice that you deserve, that would be to have your baby girl in your arms right now.
From mother to mother, I am so sorry.”
Huckaby asks for forgiveness
Melissa Huckaby spoke quietly but emotionally for just over three minutes Monday morning before her sentencing.
She apologized to Sandra’s family, the community of Tracy, Tracy police officers, her family and her own 6-year-old daughter — who was close friends with Sandra. But she directed most of her comments to Maria Chavez, Sandra’s mother.
“Words cannot convey how badly I feel for the pain that I have caused you,” Huckaby said, crying. “It is not enough that I say that I’m sorry … I wish I could bring Sandra back, but I can’t. I wish I could trade places with her, but I can’t do that, either.
She said she has no explanation for what happened and denied that she sexually molested Sandra, although the county pathologist claims Sandra was molested with the rolling pin found in the church.
Huckaby also said Sandra did not suffer.
“I alone am responsible for Sandra’s death,” Huckaby said, with a tear rolling down her cheek. “I still cannot understand why I did what I did. Every day I try to discover the motivation, but I still do not have an answer. This is a question I will struggle with for the rest for my life.”
Huckaby thanked her family for “unconditional love and support” and also asked her daughter for forgiveness. She also said that in her heart she believes God and her family have forgiven her, and asked Sandra’s family for their forgiveness.
“Not a day, not an hour goes by that I don’t think about the harm that I caused,” Huckaby said, sobbing. “For the rest of my life I’m going to have to live with this … the responsibility of her death.”
Details of Sandra’s kidnapping
The documents released by Testa state that the last evidence Sandra was alive — captured in a surveillance video at 3:54 p.m. March 27, 2009 — came just eight minutes before Huckaby was seen driving her Kia sports-utility vehicle out of the trailer park, where both Huckaby and Sandra lived, and toward Clover Road Baptist Church.
The media release states that at about this time, Huckaby reported to mobile home park management that her Eddie Bauer suitcase had been stolen.
Eighty-five minutes after driving away from Orchard Estates, the release says, Huckaby was seen driving away from the vicinity of the church before she returned about 30 minutes later.
During that 30 minutes, the prosecutor’s report says, Huckaby was seen by a former U.S. Marine and his wife near an irrigation pond at Bacchetti and Whitehall roads north of Tracy. The report says the suitcase with Sandra’s body was pulled 10 days later from the same irrigation pond where the man and his wife saw Huckaby.
According to the timeline, Sandra’s body had been dumped by 6 p.m. March 27 — no more than two hours after she first went missing.
On March 28, police say that Huckaby handed FBI officials a handwritten note that read: “Cantu locked in stolin suitcase thrown in water onn Bacchetti Rd. & Whitehall Rd witness” (sic).
Detective Bauer, the lead Tracy investigator on the case, said Huckaby first became a suspect when she “found” the note.
He said that was the investigation’s first contact with Huckaby, who said her daughter was friends with Sandra.
That same night, FBI officials talked to Huckaby in her home and asked her explain how she “found” the note. They walked around the trailer park and asked her to suggest neighbors who could be responsible for Sandra’s kidnapping, and she pointed to Christian Sinclair, a neighbor. Bauer said police investigated Sinclair, but were able to rule him out.
Bauer said FBI officials said her behavior was uncommon because she appeared overly excited when she found the note, but calmed down quickly.
He said her reaction to the note was “a front” and she had to appear excited about it even though she wrote it.
Prosecutors say that the handwriting matched samples of Huckaby’s writing, even though the writing in the “witness” note was disguised.
When Clover Road Baptist Church was searched on April 6, 2009, police found that one of the church’s window blinds was missing a draw cord — the cord that was used to tie shut the Eddie Bauer suitcase was a match for the cords on the other church blinds.
Bauer said all the evidence indicates that Huckaby acted alone. He said her grandparents were babysitting Huckaby’s daughter and Sandra’s sister at the time, and police are certain they had no knowledge of the crime.
He said Huckaby’s grandparents thought she went to the church to decorate the Sunday school room for Sunday.
It also appears Huckaby drugged Sandra before killing her. Alprazolam, a form of the muscle relaxant and anti-anxiety drug benzodiazepine, was found in Sandra’s body. Bottles of alprazolam were also found in Huckaby’s purse and home, the prosecutor's report stated.
Prosecutors had accused Huckaby of drugging a 7-year-old girl in January 2009 and a 37-year-old man in March 2009 with benzodiazepine, though those charges were dropped as part of Huckaby’s plea bargain.
The two other victims
Prosecutors and detectives allege that Huckaby kidnapped a 7-year-old girl who lived in the same trailer park and drugged her at Wendy’s one afternoon, without the consent of her mother. Testa wrote in Monday’s report that Huckaby alleged that the girl’s grandmother knew she was with Huckaby, but the grandmother denied the claim.
The girl was seen around 1:30 p.m. in the afternoon Jan. 17, 2009, and went missing until around 5 p.m. when she returned to the trailer park in Huckaby’s car.
The girl’s mother said her daughter was “slurring her words” and “acting drunk,” and decided to take her daughter to the hospital.
The girl’s urine sample tested positive for the same drugs found in Sandra’s body.
Police searched the girl’s home and found no drugs containing benzodiazepines, which are similar to Xanax or ativan.
The 7-year-old girl said she drank some “funny tasting water” when she was with Huckaby, Testa said.
Daniel Plowman, the 37-year-old ex-boyfriend of Huckaby who was drugged last March by Huckaby, said she gave him something from a Tupperware container that was “very bitter — like sucking on an aspirin.”
Plowman was found later that night passed out in his car in the McDonald’s drive-through line and was charged with driving under the influence. He said he had no memory of getting behind the wheel.
Traces of Xanax and ativan were also found in his system. He is not prescribed any medications and said he does not take anything other than ibuprofen.
Bauer said these two instances could have been practice for drugging Sandra, and that he didn’t believe Huckaby had any intent to kill the 7-year-old girl or her ex-boyfriend.
Bauer said he thinks she drugged the 7-year-old girl to see the effects the drugs would have on a child with similar height and weight to Sandra.
“All we know is that we had the same drug in three people three different times, and the last person was found dead,” Bauer said. “She did her research. She had already seen twice what the medication would do to a grown adult and a child.”
Huckaby’s motive and mental health
As details emerge from the investigation into Sandra’s death, some of Huckaby’s public comments have been questioned, along with her mental health.
She said she did not sexually molest Sandra, but evidence found by the police in the church April 6 led detectives to believe she was molested, and the county pathologist told the grand jury that Sandra was most likely sexually assaulted.
The question on everyone’s mind is why Huckaby did what she did.
While no one has any concrete answers, some have offered theories and speculation of motives for the murder.
Bauer said he has several theories on why Huckaby approached the FBI with the note, which initially led investigators to her.
One theory is that she wrote the note and gave it to the FBI because she wanted them to find Sandra, he said. He also said she might have wanted to insert herself in the investigation because she is an “attention seeker.”
Bauer also said she could have been testing the police to see if they would go search the dairy pond in rural Tracy.
Although Huckaby has never said why she killed Sandra, Bauer said he has some theories, such as her jealous nature.
He said that after interviewing family and friends of Huckaby, he learned that she had issues with sharing people that were close to her with others, such as her daughter.
Bauer said Huckaby told him that Sandra would come over to play with her daughter between 10 to 15 times a day, and he speculated that maybe Huckaby wanted her daughter all to herself.
Other theories about her mental health have also been talked about.
“Melissa didn’t tell me why she did what she did,” Bauer said. “She could make excuses and say it’s because she’s bi-polar… We don’t know that.”
He said she claimed to be taking her medications regularly when he interviewed her the day she was arrested.
“I don’t know what the benefit to killing Sandra is except that she gets her out of the picture if she’s super-jealous to the point where she doesn’t want her around,” Bauer said. “I don’t know if things got carried away in the church.”
He said he would like to sit down and talk to Huckaby someday to find out exactly in what order everything happened.
“Why did she sexually assault her? Did she do it for her own gratification? Did she do it because she was in a manic rage?” Bauer asked rhetorically.
He speculated that she could have sexually assaulted her to redirect the investigation toward a man.
Testa, the prosecutor, said he doesn’t “buy” into the theory her mental state was unstable, “because there is so much showing that she is lucid.”
He said one theory he has is that Huckaby killed Sandra to cover up the sexual molestation, because Sandra wouldn’t have kept the molestation secret.
Maybe “she had to kill her to silence her,” he speculated.
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