CrimeWatch

TRACY (CBS 5 / AP) ― Tracy police arrested Melissa Huckaby early Saturday and charged her with kidnapping and murder in the death of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, whose body was found stuffed in a suitcase that was dumped in an irrigation pond.

The 28-year-old Huckaby is a Sunday school teacher and the granddaughter of the pastor at Clover Road Baptist Church, which was searched by authorities for a second time Friday in connection with the case.

Huckaby's arrest came after she drove herself to the police station and was voluntarily questioned by police detectives for several hours on Friday night.

CBS 5 obtained exclusive video of Huckaby leaving the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park, where both she and the girl lived, and driving away. She signaled that she had to leave.

She later sent a text message, telling CBS 5 that she was on the way to meet with police detectives.

At 2:25 a.m., police drove Huckaby out of their headquarters in an unmarked car, headed for the San Joaquin County Jail, where she was booked on charges of kidnapping and murder. Huckaby began crying as she was handcuffed and led away for finger-printing, police said.

She was on suicide watch in an observation cell away from other inmates for her own safety, though there have been no incidents, said sheriff's Deputy Les Garcia. Huckaby was refusing visits, he said.

Huckaby was being held without bail, with a court arraignment set for Tuesday.

"We have information that by the time (Sandra Cantu) was reported missing to us, she had already been murdered," Police Chief Janet Thiessen said at an early morning news conference.

Investigators worked the case tirelessly, she said, but they were too late to save Sandra.

"It has helped us to bring Sandra home, again not in the way that we would've hoped, but that was out of our hands shortly after she went missing," Thiessen noted.

Authorities would not say how Sandra died or give a possible motive. There were "no other suspects" and no more arrests were expected, police indicated.

"I couldn't begin to even theorize what her motive was," said Sgt. Tony Sheneman. "Sandra was very close friends with Melissa's daughter. They used to play together."

Huckaby had even attended the second of several vigils for the slain girl, Sheneman said.

"This is a terrible terrible tragedy," the police chief added. "An act against a child that has wide-reaching implications."

A massive search for the missing girl had included hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officials. Pictures of her with dark brown eyes and light brown hair were posted all over Tracy, a city of 78,000 in the Central Valley. Police said they received over 1,500 tips.

The search ended April 6 when farmworkers who were draining the irrigation pond to water fields found the suitcase containing Sandra's body.

The slain girl's aunt, Angie Chavez, said Saturday that she was happy to learn of the arrest.

"I want to know why she did it, if she did it," Chavez said. "It's not over. This is just the beginning of a horrible nightmare."

"Why?" wondered Angie Chavez' husband, Joe Chavez, shaking his head. He said Huckaby should face the death penalty. 

Angie Chavez said she had no indication that Huckaby could be a suspect and her family had been avoiding the news because it was too painful to follow. She said Sandra's mother, Maria Chavez, remained devastated despite the arrest.

In a phone interview on Friday, Huckaby had told CBS 5 that Sandra visited her home March 27, the day she disappeared, to play with her 5-year-old daughter.

Huckaby also claimed that she had left a suitcase in the driveway that day, and said it went missing. Police confirmed Saturday that the suitcase Sandra was found in belonged to Huckaby.

Huckaby is the granddaughter of Pastor Clifford Lawless, whose church was the subject of police searches on Tuesday and Friday in connection with the investigation into the girl's death.

In talking with CBS 5, Huckaby repeatedly denied any involvement by Lawless in Sandra's disappearance and police previously said he was not at the center of their probe.

Investigators spent so much time at the nearby church, Sgt. Sheneman said, because Huckaby was a Sunday School teacher there.

It was after Friday's second search of the church that police requested Huckaby come in for questioning.

"She gave enough information to us during the course of the interview that probable cause was there to arrest her," according to Sheneman.

He said Huckaby simply walked into the police station when she arrived and started up a conversation with officers.

"She was calm, cool and collected, then she became very emotional. She went back and forth from being calm to emotional" he said, adding that eventually, she became "resigned."

The sergeant noted that inconsistencies in interviews with Huckaby had prompted police interest in her as a suspect, but he wouldn't go into specifics.

He said police began to narrow their focus on a suspect about the same time the girl's body was found.

"No one person pointed their finger," he said. "It was a compilation of evidence."

Huckaby's family had also been questioned at length during the investigation, and their homes and vehicles were all searched, Sheneman added.

Pastor Lawless did not respond to calls seeking comment Saturday.

Huckaby's uncle, John Hughes Jr. of Whittier, said his niece was from a good home, but had hit a rough patch in her life and moved in with her grandparents in Tracy to get past her troubles.

"They opened their home up to her to try to get her life back on track. I think a lot of families have problems like that," Hughes said.

Sheneman said investigators hadn't expected that the suspect would turn out to be a woman.

"It's unusual for it to be a woman statistically and according to the FBI," he said at a later news conference on Saturday.

Everyone who cooperated with police offered to help them locate "the monster, the man that did this," he explained. Discovering it was a woman and a member of the tight knit Tracy community who knew the family was "a double blow."

"Today's going to be a very difficult day for everyone to digest that. This was an anomaly in the murder of a child," Sheneman continued. "There's still a lot of work to be done in the next several weeks to ensure that Miss Huckaby pays for what's she's done."

FBI statistics from 2007 show that far fewer women than men are involved in homicides less than 10 percent of all U.S. murders were attributed to women that year.

When it comes to the murder of a child, it's even more rare.

"It's very unusual for women to be involved in an abduction and murder of a child," said Candice DeLong, a retired FBI profiler based in San Francisco. "Sometimes we see this when the woman is working with a male partner. It does not appear to be the case this time."

Sheneman said police knew where the girl was killed but couldn't disclose the location. Autopsy results were not yet available, he added. Sheneman declined to say whether police believed the slaying was accidental or deliberate. That will be an issue for Huckaby's arraignment and trial, he said.

The local newspaper, the Tracy Press, 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."

In a text message to CBS 5 before her arrest, Huckaby denied that her hospitalization followed a suicide attempt.

Huckaby was recently convicted for petty theft in San Joaquin County, and was scheduled to appear in court on April 17 to check in with a county mental health program as part of a three-year probation sentence.

According to court records, Huckaby had claimed she was not mentally competent to stand trial in the case. The judge ordered her to be examined by physicians. Later, it was determined that she was competent and she pleaded no contest.
 
Huckaby claimed to the local newspaper on Friday that someone else by the same name was charged for the November theft from a Target store.

Huckaby was also convicted by Superior Court in Los Angeles County in November of 2006 for a petty theft in Bellflower, records showed.

California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokeswoman Terry Thornton said Huckaby did not have a state prison record.

An attorney who represented Huckaby in the petty theft cases did not immediately return a telephone message left at her home. Jail records did not reflect if Huckaby has an attorney on the murder and kidnapping allegations.

Huckaby worked as a checker at a Food for Less grocery store in a strip mall just east of the mobile park for nearly four years, until she was fired sometime in 2004, said Matt Duncan, an assistant manager at the store now known as FoodMaxx.

"I wouldn't have anything bad to say about her, until now," said Duncan, who has worked at the store off-and-on for about 10 years. "I would've never suspected her to do something like this."

The slain girl's extended family said the investigation had strained trust in their community.

"You eye everybody with a great deal of suspicion. We're shell-shocked here," Joe Chavez, the girl's uncle, said as he stood Saturday at the entrance to the mobile home park. "Who can you trust at this point? Who do you know?"

Susan Levy of nearby Modesto, mother of slain Washington intern Chandra Levy, appeared arm-in-arm with Angie and Joe Chavez as they spoke with reporters.

Levy said she was there to support the family as they, too, dealt with the tragic loss of a child. Authorities recently issued an arrest warrant in the 2001 Levy killing.

Barbara Sokoloski, 69, whose home is behind Sandra's, said she was glad an arrest was made. She described Sandra as "a friendly sweet little girl who always went around trying to find somebody to play with."

"It's too bad that kids these days can't go out and play like we did when I was a little girl," she said.

(© 2009 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)