MELISSA HUCKABY: SUNDAY SCHOOL TEACHER CHARGED WITH KILLING SANDRA CANTU

San Joaquin County Seriff's department shows the booking photo of Melissa Huckaby taken Saturday April 11, 2009. Huckaby, a Sunday school teacher, has been arrested and charged with kidnapping and killing a California girl whose body was found in a suitcase. Tracy Police Sgt. Tony Sheneman says 28-year-old Melissa Huckaby was arrested late Friday night after voluntarily going to police for questioning about the death of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu. (AP Photo/San Joaquin County Sheriff) (AP)

A girl places a stuffed animal at a memorial for Sandra Cantu in Tracy, Calif., Thursday, April 9, 2009, near the home of Cantu. The body of Cantu, 8, was discovered inside a suitcase in an irrigation pond on Monday, April 6, 2009 after she was last seen at her home on March 27, 2009. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma) (AP)

Calif. Sunday School Teacher Booked in Child Death
Police: Motive unknown as Sunday school teacher arrested in killing of girl found in suitcase
By TERRY COLLINS Associated Press WriterTRACY, Calif. April 11, 2009 (AP)

Police said Saturday they do not know what motivated the Sunday school teacher they arrested on suspicion of kidnapping and killing an 8-year-old girl whose body was found in a suitcase dumped in an irrigation pond.

Melissa Huckaby, 28, a local minister's granddaughter, was arrested late Friday about five hours after she drove herself to the local police station at the request of officers, said police Sgt. Tony Sheneman. She was being held without bail in connection with the death of Sandra Cantu, the San Joaquin County sheriff's office said.

Sandra disappeared on March 27 and hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officials turned out to search for her. On April 6, farmworkers draining an irrigation pond found the suitcase.

Huckaby walked into the police station Friday and started a conversation with officers, Sheneman said at a news conference.

"She was calm, cool and collected, then she became very emotional .... She went back and forth from being calm to emotional."

READ MORE ABOUT THIS BIZARRE CASE OF SANDRA CANTU...
http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=7313247

TRACY,CA: WAS SANDRA CANTU FOUND IN NEIGHBOR'S SUITCASE?

Police guard entrance of the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park where Sandra Cantu lived. Glenn Moore/Tracy Press

Tracy, California: Police found Sandra Cantu's body in an Eddie Bauer suitcase. They have not released a description of the suitcase.

Tracy Woman Claims Someone Stole Her Luggage
April 10, 2009

TRACY, Calif. -- A Tracy woman who lives in the mobile home park where eight-year-old Sandra Cantu lived claimed Friday she had a large, dark suitcase stolen the day the young girl disappeared.

Melissa Huckaby, 28-year-old, told the Tracy Press and sources told KTVU that someone stole her waterproof, charcoal-trimmed Eddie Bauer suitcase from the park two weeks ago. She said she had inadvertently left the suitcase in her driveway and it was taken from there.

She had filled with items to decorate a classroom where she teaches Sunday school at her grandfather’s church, but forgot her keys and cell phone. Huckaby went into the home to retrieve them and then drove off without the bag.

Cantu’s body was found Monday stuffed in a large, dark colored suitcase submerged in a Tracy irrigation pond.

“It’s not my grandfather’s,” Huckaby told the paper of the missing suitcase. “It’s mine and someone took it.”

At an afternnon news conference, Police Sgt. Tony Sheneman said he did not have any information about the kind of suitcase in which the girl's body was found.

She also admitted that Cantu had come over to her mobile home the day the girl disappeared to play with Huckaby’s daughter. Huckaby said she told Cantu that her daughter had to clean her room and the little girl left to go to another unnamed friend’s home.

Huckaby said police had interviewed her at the hospital earlier this week, but at Friday's press conference Sheneman would not confirm that the woman had been interviewed. She spent several days in the intensive care unit being treated for what she said was “internal bleeding.”

Local investigators and FBI technicians had seized Huckaby’s Kia SUV earlier in the week and meticulously searched it. Evidence teams had also searched the grounds of the church where her grandfather, Lane Lawless, is the pastor.

EVIDENCE: WHAT DO THE TRACY POLICE KNOW?
http://www.ktvu.com/news/19144730/detail.html

SANDRA CANTU: FAMILY GRIEVES FOR THEIR BEAUTIFUL CHILD

Last time that Sandra Cantu was seen alive!

Sandra Cantu's Family Crushed By Death as Police Continue to Hunt Her Killer
Local News Reports Indicate Sandra's Mother Hospitalized After Girl's Body Found
By SARAH NETTER and LAURA MARQUEZ / April 9, 2009

The family of the 8-year-old California girl whose body was found stuffed in a suitcase this week is "holding up as best they can," according to the girl's aunt, while police continue their intensive search for the killer.

"We want to find out what happened to our little girl," Sandra Cantu's aunt, Angie Chavez, told "Good Morning America" today. "She did have a full life ahead of her. She was full of life."

The death of Maria Chavez's youngest child has been extraordinarily devastating for her and the entire family, Chavez said. The family has taken some comfort in the vast swath of candles, balloons, stuffed animals and handwritten notes the community has left in support outside the Tracy, Calif., mobile home park where the family lived.

The San Jose Mercury News reported yesterday that both the girl's mother and grandmother had to be hospitalized after learning her body had been found.

She was going to visit a friend. Help find the killer? http://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7296312&page=1

TRACY, CA: SANDRA CANTU, 8, BODY FOUND IN SUITCASE IN POND

TODAY / Sandra Cantu, 8, failed to return home after visiting a friend’s house

Police tape surrounds Clover Road Baptist Church in Tracy, Calif., Tuesday, April 7, 2009, near the home of Sandra Cantu. The body of Cantu, 8, was discovered inside a suitcase in an irrigation pond on Monday, April 6, 2009 after she was last seen at home on March 27, 2009.(AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

Police to search church in slaying of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu
Tuesday, April 2, 2009 / CNN

(CNN) -- Police said they are pursuing leads in the death of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, whose body was found Monday stuffed into a suitcase in a dairy-farm pond near her Tracy, California, home.

We are heading in a direction," Tracy police Sgt. Tony Sheneman told reporters. "To comment on that would compromise the investigation, and I can't do that."

A search warrant was executed at the Tracy mobile home park where the girl lived, and a related search was to be conducted Tuesday at a nearby church, he said.

He implied more than one person may have been involved in the death of Sandra, who had been missing since March 27.

"Investigators are looking at additional information they received since yesterday and, hopefully, that will lead us to Sandra's killers," he said.

Asked if his use of the plural meant police were looking for more than one person, he responded, "We have no specific suspects, ma'am."

Sheneman also implied the killer likely was familiar with the location where the body was found.

He said he himself was unfamiliar with the location where the girl's body was found, despite having lived in the community for nearly 12 years.

(snip)

The autopsy was being conducted Tuesday, but it was not clear when the report would be available. "It's going to be some time before we hear from the coroner," Sheneman said. "I can't tell you when that's going to be."

More than 10 search warrants have been executed as part of the investigation and "a lot" of evidence has been recovered, Sheneman said.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH MEN WHO WANT TO MURDER CHILDREN?
http://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/04/07/california.missing.girl.dead/index.html

GRAHAM, WA: WIFE LEAVES, DAD MURDERS 5 KIDS

The home where the bodies of five children were discovered on Saturday is shown Sunday, April 5, 2009, at a trailer park near near Graham, Wash. Pierce County Sheriff's officials said they believe the children's father killed the children before committing suicide. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

AP / April 4, 2009 / A home is ringed with police tape at trailer park near near Graham, Washington

A message is shown in a notebook at a memorial Sunday, April 5, 2009, in front of a home where five children were discovered killed on Saturday, at a trailer park near near Graham, Wash. Pierce County Sheriff's officials said they believe the children's father killed the children before committing suicide. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)

Police Believe Man Killed 5 Kids Due to Marital Dispute
Sunday, April 05, 2009 /ASSOCIATED PRESS

GRAHAM, Wash. — Investigators believe a man fatally shot his five children in their home and killed himself after he found out his wife was leaving him for another man, a sheriff's spokesman said Sunday.

The bodies of James Harrison's children were found Saturday in the family's mobile home in Graham, about 15 southeast of Tacoma. Harrison had been found earlier in the day, dead of a self-inflicted gunshot, behind the wheel of his car in Auburn, about 18 miles north of Graham.

Authorities haven't released the family's name, but relatives have identified them as the Harrisons.

The man and his 16-year-old daughter had found his wife with another man at a store in Auburn on Friday night, Pierce County Sheriff spokesman Ed Troyer told The News Tribune of Tacoma.

Ryan Peden, the daughter's classmate, had said she told him Friday night that her parents had gotten into a fight and her mother had left. The father followed the mother and tried to get her to return, said Peden.

Troyer said the woman told her husband she was not going home and that she was leaving him for the man with her at the store.

"He was devastated," Troyer said.

Investigators believe the father later killed his children and returned to the area near the store looking for his wife. His body was found near the store, Troyer said. He left no suicide note.

Troyer did not immediately return calls from The Associated Press, but sent an e-mail confirming his account to The News Tribune.

Four of the children were shot in their beds and the fifth was shot in the bathroom, Pierce County deputies said. Auburn Police Sgt. Scott Near said their father had apparently killed himself with a rifle.

SADNESS IN A SMALL TOWN...WHY DOES A FATHER KILL HIS CHILDREN?

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,512581,00.html