CrimeWatch

TRACY (CBS 5 / AP) ― CBS News has learned that police in Tracy believe 8-year-old Sandra Cantu was murdered in the Clover Road Baptist Church by her accused killer, Sunday school teacher Melissa Huckaby.

Huckaby, 28, was arrested on Saturday morning and charged with the girl's kidnapping and murder. She spent Easter Sunday in an observation cell where jail staff monitored her mental health, officials said.

Huckaby's grandfather is the pastor of the church, near the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park where Sandra Cantu's family lives. Police searched the church Friday evening in the hours before Huckaby was arrested, filling a van with evidence bags.

The church was also searched by authorities right after the girl's body was discovered. Her remains were found in Huckaby's suitcase in an irrigation pond nearly a week ago, police said.

Several of Huckaby's relatives, including her minister grandfather Clifford Lawless, appeared before reporters on Sunday. They said the charges against her are "completely out of character" and do not sound like the person they know.

Huckaby's family said jail officials had denied their repeated requests to visit her, and that they had not spoken to her since the arrest.

Huckaby's father, 48-year-old Brian Lawless of Cypress, said he did not believe his daughter was capable of what police accuse her of doing.

"I just can't comprehend. There are no words," he told reporters outside the Clover Road Baptist Church. 

Her father said Huckaby lived for her 5-year-old daughter, Madison.

"She just always had an extra patience with her. Never raised her voice. Never yelled. Never struck her," Brian Lawless said. "She was that same way with other children. She loved other children."

Madison played often with Sandra, who lived down the street from where Huckaby lived with her grandfather.

About 20 parishioners and an equal number of reporters filled the Lawless' church on Sunday. Pastor Clifford Lawless and others offered prayers for the Cantu family.

Some churchgoers cried as Huckaby's uncle, 45-year-old Brett Lawless of Lakewood, gave a sermon preaching that faith was the only way to weather hardship.

"How can you look at a circumstance like this and have any hope for the future? I tell you, because I know who God is," he said.

Meanwhile, the family of the slain girl attended a separate Easter church service, also struggling to cope.

Members of the Cantu family were among 400 parishioners who packed into the cafeteria of a local high school to hear Journey Christian Church Pastor Scott McFarland's Easter sermon.

Journey was one of more than a dozen local churches that mobilized its members on Sunday to pray and fast for the Cantu family. McFarland sent a special message to the Cantu family that, like Christ, Sandra's spirit had risen to heaven.

"Jesus is out of the tomb and Sandra is too," McFarland said. "She's not in a grave, she's not in a suitcase. She's in heaven and celebrating the best Easter ever."

Residents in Tracy are still trying to comprehend how the suspect in the girl's murder could be a woman they knew: Sunday school teacher, the granddaughter of a minister and the mother of the slain girl's best friend.

"I was in shock that, number one, it was a woman and, number two, a member of our community," Tracy police Sgt. Tony Sheneman said. "This was an anomaly in the murder of a child."

FBI statistics show women are involved in just 7 percent of murders of any sort. Solo killings of children by women are even more unusual.

"A review of data from the 2007 Uniform Crime Report confirms that the arrest of Melissa Huckaby in the Sandra Cantu murder investigation is uncommon," said FBI spokesman Steve Dupre in Sacramento.

Sandra disappeared on March 27 and hundreds of volunteers and law enforcement officials turned out to search for the girl with dark brown eyes and light brown hair. Police said they received more than 1,500 tips in the hunt for Sandra and her killer.

"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. But this was not a sexually motivated crime."

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

On April 6, farmworkers draining an irrigation pond found the suitcase.

Sheneman said investigators have no motive for the slaying, which drew national attention. Police declined to say how the girl was allegedly killed, though investigators told CBS News they believed the murder took place inside the church.

Tracy's police chief has said Sandra died very soon after she was last seen. Autopsy results were not yet available, and investigators declined to indicate whether they thought slaying was accidental or deliberate.

Inconsistencies in Huckaby's story led to her arrest, Sheneman said. She was arrested about five hours after she drove herself to the Tracy police station at the request of officers.

San Joaquin County Sheriff's Deputy Les Garcia said Huckaby was in an observation cell at the jail under suicide watch and the mental health staff had not cleared her to have visitors.

Huckaby has also turned down media requests for interviews, Garcia said.

She was scheduled for an arraignment on the murder and kidnapping charges in court on Tuesday afternoon. It was not immediately clear if Huckaby had hired an attorney.

There were no other suspects and no other arrests were expected, police said.

Huckaby lived with Pastor Clifford Lawless and his wife in the mobile home park that also was Sandra's home.

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 had 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.

Huckaby grew up in Orange County and was a "pretty normal kid," he said. As the eldest of nine grandchildren, she played "mother hen" to the younger children when the family got together for the holidays.

After graduating from high school, Huckaby's path appears to have become rockier. She married, had a daughter and was divorced in a few short years. She had difficulty finding and keeping a job, partly owing to the challenges of single motherhood, Hughes said.

"She's had her struggles," he said. "But there's no way (her grandparents) or anybody would be fearful that anything this horrifying could possibly come from that."

Huckaby 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 for a petty theft charge to which she pleaded no contest.

Some on Sunday laid blame on Huckaby's pastor grandfather for allowing the troubled young woman to care for children.

"Knowing that his granddaughter had a past history why did the pastor put her in the position to teach Sunday school?" said Mary Brawley, 50, of Tracy, who attended the Easter service at Journey with her daughter, and participated in the search for Sandra's body.

"I'm blaming him. Doesn't he know that she's not fit to take care of kids?"
 
Sandra's uncle, Joe Chavez, said he found it difficult to contain his rage toward Huckaby's family.

"I want to go over there and beat the crap out of those people, but I'm not going to do that," he said as he stood at the entrance to the mobile home park where the little girl lived with her mother. "I just want to vent my anger but it's not in me."

"How would you feel if somebody took your daughter like that?" asked Chavez, referring to Huckaby's own 5-year-old daughter. "Why would you do that?

He said Huckaby should face the death penalty if convicted.

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