SANDRA CANTU - 8 yo (3/2009) - Tracy CA

Melissa Huckaby's surprise guilty
plea in the murder of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu brought the criminal
case close to an end, but left many unanswered questions for the people
of Tracy, Calif.


"My child lost his innocence because a friend of his, at a young
age, was done so wrong, and now you have to explain what happened,"
says Kelsey Hall, whose son was Cantu's classmate at Melville S.
Jacobson Elementary School. "They aren't dumb and they want to know."


On Monday, media attorneys will ask the judge to lift a
wide-reaching gag order and unseal court documents, including the
transcript of the secret grand jury hearings – the only time witnesses
have testified in the case.

Cantu family members say
the documents should remain sealed because their release would be too
painful.


"We cannot carry any more weight in our lives and if the
photographs and forensic examinations of my daughter are disclosed, I do
not know how we would be able to cope," Sandra's mother Maria Chavez
says in a document filed by her attorney, Archer Bakerink.


If the judge refuses to release the documents, the matter will
likely again come up at Huckaby's sentencing on June 14, where at the
very least the gag order would likely be lifted.


Huckaby, a 29-year-old Sunday school teacher, is expected to be
sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. As part
of her plea deal, she won't get the death penalty, and all other charges
– including rape, lewd acts with a child and poisoning another child
and a man – have been dropped.


The Cantu family backed the plea deal because it avoided a
trial and because they oppose capital punishment. "We're happy that the
judgment came down like this," Joe Chavez, Sandra's uncle, tells PEOPLE.


So far, even the most basic information about the case has been
kept under wraps. Community members say they're still baffled by the
murder – and angry.


"We're all pretty sad all the time, thinking about what
happened. It's not right," says Brandon Harris, 10, who stays with his
grandmother after school at the mobile home park from which Sandra was
abducted. "What grudge did Melissa Huckaby have on [Sandra] anyway? Why
would she do something like this? We don't know."

A judge has denied media requests to release details of the murder of
an 8-year-old Northern California girl whose body was found in a
suitcase.San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Linda Lofthus on
Monday denied requests from several news organizations. Lofthus said
she wanted to "preserve the integrity of the case."Defendant
Melissa Huckaby has pleaded guilty to killing her daughter's playmate,
Sandra Cantu, last year. A gag order in the case prevents court records
from being unsealed.

Several news organizations, including The Associated Press, argue
that Huckaby's guilty plea removes the need for a gag order. They argue
that court records may help the public understand the plea agreement.Cantu's
family opposes the request, which Lofthus says will be revisited after
Huckaby is sentenced on June 14.

Melissa Huckaby, a 29 year old former Sunday school teacher from
Tracy, is facing sentencing in the murder of 8 year old Sandra Cantu.
Cantu disappeared from her Tracy mobile home park in March of 2009.
She was sexually abused and murdered. Her body was later found in a
suitcase in an irrigation pond.
Huckaby later pleaded guilty to murdering Cantu, avoiding a possible
death sentence, and facing a term of life in prison without parole.
Several media organizations have asked for the gag order, issued by
San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge Linda Loftus, to be lifted, so
details of the case and the plea bargain can become public.
Attorneys for the Cantu family have argued that Marsy's Law, passed
by California voters in 2008, should protect the family from having the
grisly details of the case made public. "The victim extends to Sandra's
whole family. All the people that we represented there today, they are
all victims of what happened to Sandra," said attorney Stewart Tayback.
Attorneys for three media outlets have argued the information belongs
in the public domain. News10 legal analyst and former federal
prosecutor Bill Portanova said the gag order is likely to be lifted.
"The problem is, the United States constitution has as its primary
right, a free press, and that means the public has a right to know. And
it takes a lot to overcome that," Portanova said.
The gag order was originally issued to prevent too much gruesome
publicity before the trial from making it too hard to find an impartial
jury.
San Joaquin County Judge Linda Lofthus has said she will reconsider
the gag request after tomorrow's sentencing.

Melissa Huckaby was sentenced to life in prison without parole
Monday. Huckaby, who pleaded guilty to the kidnap and murder of
8-year-old Sandra Cantu, expressed remorse in the courtroom. She told
Cantu's mother, "I should not have taken her from you."
The former Tracy Sunday School teacher went on to say, "I owe you an
explanation. But I still cannot understand why I did what I did."
Huckaby originally faced an additional charge of rape. But the
sexual abuse charge was dropped as part of a plea deal. Huckaby told
the court Cantu was not molested, and she claimed the child did not
suffer.
Cantu's remarks were contradicted by San Joaquin County Deputy
District Attorney Tom Testa. He described the discovery of Cantu's
body, which had been stuffed into a suitcase, dumped in an irrigation
ditch and found a week and a half after her disappearance.
Testa said a piece of torn cloth had been tied around Cantu's head.
Quoting from a pathologist's report, Testa said the cloth was soiled
with blood and knotted into "a noose." He said the cause of death was
determined to be "homicidal asphyxiation."
According to the pathologist's report, Cantu also suffered a cut to
her lip, an abrasion to her elbow and injuries to her genitals.
Testa said toxicology tests also found the drug alprazolam, which is
used to treat anxiety disorders, in Cantu's body. Bottles of
alprazolam were found in Huckaby's home and purse, Testa said.
In a surprise move, Huckaby, 29, pleaded guilty in May as part of a
deal with prosecutors to avoid the death penalty.
Huckaby and Cantu lived at the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park in
Tracy where Cantu and Huckaby's daughter were friends. Cantu was
reported missing from her home on March 27, 2009.

Inside the Investigation
The prosecutor issued a statement Monday that revealed details of the
investigation for the first time.
Testa said a surveillance tape from the mobile home park showed Cantu
skipping toward her home on March 27 when something caught her eye.
Testa said Cantu "looks over in the direction of Melissa Huckaby's
residence. Then she drops off the face of the earth."
The videotape then shows Huckaby, eight minutes later, driving out of
the mobile home park in the direction of her grandfather's church,
Clover Road Baptist Church.
Testa said about the time Huckaby was leaving, she phoned the trailer
park manager to report her black suitcase stolen in front of her
trailer.
The prosecutor said another surveillance tape showed Huckaby driving
away from the church and then returning to the church 30 minutes. Testa
said during that 30-minute window, a retired marine and his wife saw
Huckaby and her SUV at an irrigation pond at Bacchetti and Whitehall
roads in Tracy.
When she was questioned by police, Huckaby said she stopped at the
pond in order to urinate.

Gag order lifted
In another development on Monday, San Joaquin County Judge Linda
Loftus lifted a gag order in the case, to the distress of Cantu's
family.
Cantu's family says they've been traumatized by the murder, and they
did not want additional details, including autopsy reports and search
warrants, made public.
With the gag order lifted, the Tracy Police Department plans to hold a
news conference one hour after the sentencing hearing concludes.

A judge agreed Monday to
unseal files in the case of a Sunday school teacher who was sentenced to
life in prison for murdering a young girl whose body was found in a
suitcase. The files were not immediately made available, however,
because the family of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu was considering whether
to appeal the ruling. If no appeal is pursued, the documents
will likely be released later this week. The Associated
Press, Bay Area News Group and The Record newspaper of Stockton sought
to have the material unsealed in the case against Melissa Huckaby. The
29-year-old single mother pleaded guilty last month to murdering the
Tracy girl in 2009. San Joaquin County Superior Court Judge
Linda Lofthus sentenced Huckaby Monday o life without the possibility of
parole then ruled the court would unseal search warrant affidavits and a
grand jury transcript. Earlier in the day, Loftus lifted a
gag order in the case, and authorities released their investigative
report. Loftus said autopsy photos introduced into the court
record would remain under seal. She cited the California crime victims'
bill of rights in making that decision. Lofthus expressed
concern that Sandra's younger siblings might see the photos if they
appeared on the Internet. The content of the photos was detailed in
grand jury transcripts, she said.

Following today’s sentencing of Melissa Huckaby to life in prison
without parole for the murder of Sandra Cantu, the prosecutor in the
case released a timeline and details about Sandra’s kidnapping and
death.
San Joaquin County pathologist Dr. Bennet Omalu reported
that Sandra died between 4 and 6 p.m. the day she first went missing by
“homicidal asphyxiation,” and was found with a cut on her lower inner
lip, an abrasion on her left elbow and other injuries, according to a
release issued by prosecutor Thomas Testa. Omalu also noted that Sandra
was found with a torn cloth that had been “knotted into a ‘noose.’”
Testa's
timeline points to Clover Road Baptist Church, just a few addresses to
the west of Orchard Estates, as the likely scene of the murder.
Huckaby’s grandfather was a pastor there, and Huckaby had also taught
Sunday school at the house of worship.
According to prosecutors,
by the time Sandra’s mother, Maria Chavez, called police to report
Sandra missing at 7:53 p.m. March 27, 2009, the 8-year-old girl had
already been killed and her body disposed of by Huckaby.
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 Orchard Estates Mobile Home 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 Sandra’s body, which
was stuffed inside a black Eddie Bauer suitcase, was pulled 10 days
later from the same irrigation pond where the man and his wife reported
seeing 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 received a handwritten note that
read: “Cantu locked in stolin suitcase thrown in water onn Bacchetti Rd.
& Whitehall Rd witness” (sic). 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 a rolling pin with blood on it
that contained Sandra’s DNA, according to Testa's report. Investigators
also found that one of the church’s window blinds was missing a draw
cord, and the cord that was used to tie shut the Eddie Bauer suitcase
was later determined to be a match for the cords on the other church
blinds.
Alprazolam, a form of the muscle relaxant 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.