4-18-2009 California:
Callers have inundated the phone lines of Tracy police, saying it can't be. Veteran homicide and sex-crime researchers say they cannot recall a case quite like it. Even the investigators themselves looked at the evidence and initially said "no way."
A woman was accused not only of killing someone else's child, but of raping her
Law enforcement officials and other experts say the allegations against Melissa Huckaby in the slaying of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu are remarkably rare over decades of U.S. police work.
Huckaby was charged Tuesday with murdering her daughter's playmate, with the added special circumstances of rape with a foreign object, lewd or lascivious conduct with a child under 14 and murder in the course of a kidnapping. The 28-year-old divorced mother is due back in court Friday, when she is expected to enter a plea.
Sandra's body was found on April 6 — 10 days after she went missing. It was stuffed in a suitcase that was pulled from an irrigation pond near Tracy, a small town where San Francisco's suburbs meet California's farm belt.
Tracy police Sgt. Tony Sheneman said dozens of callers a day have insisted that Huckaby could not have acted alone, that no mother would rape another's child, that the scenario was too improbable to be true. The case is so striking that police initially shared the public's reaction.
The investigators themselves, when first confronted with the evidence that pointed to Huckaby, were inclined to look for another suspect.
"When investigators were first looking at this they went 'Huh, no way... Who did she work with?'" Sheneman said. "We got that info and said 'there's no way, that doesn't happen.'"
"After this case, I'll never say never again," Sheneman said, adding that police remain confident that Huckaby acted alone.
Department of Justice data on U.S. homicides dating back more than 30 years highlight the unusual nature of this crime, said James Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University.
Of the more than 600,000 cases recorded — more than 90 percent of U.S. homicides since 1976 — only one comes close to the alleged circumstances of Sandra's killing, said Fox. The data did not include names and some other details; the Associated Press was unable to locate the case.
Researchers say the Huckaby case does not match the typical profile of sex crimes by females.
Women represent only 1 percent of all adult arrests for forcible rape and 6 percent of all adult arrests for other sex offenses, according to a Department of Justice report.
When they do commit sex crimes, women often are acting as accomplices to men, and their victims tend to be teenagers, said David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire Crimes against Children Research Center.
"It's very, very rare for women to molest children, and when they molest children it's very unusual for them to molest a child of this age," Finkelhor said. "It's unusual for women to kill children who are not their own."
Police have declined to publicly state where and how Sandra was killed, but they have said they do not have a motive.
"I find it really hard to speculate on the motivation," Finkelhor said.
Court documents and interviews with family members show Huckaby had a rocky personal life. She went through a divorce and bankruptcy and fought depression as she tried to hold down a job and raise a child.
In 2002, she won a restraining order against a boyfriend who had an extensive criminal record and a restraining order from a previous marriage, according to San Joaquin County court records.
She married John Huckaby in 2003, separated a year later and divorced in 2005. In divorce papers, Melissa Huckaby accused John Huckaby of child abduction, domestic violence and alcohol abuse — allegations he denied in an interview with ABC's "Good Morning America" on Friday.
Records show she was arrested in November and charged with burglary and petty theft from a store. The judge suspended the case and appointed a doctor to assess Huckaby's mental health. She was found competent to stand trial. In a deal with prosecutors, she pleaded no contest in January to the petty theft charge and the burglary charge was dropped.
Huckaby's attorneys could use the sheer statistical improbability of the murder case to cast doubt on the allegations, regardless of the evidence, legal experts said.
"Instinctively it doesn't feel like a good fit," said William Portanova, a Sacramento defense lawyer and a former state and federal prosecutor.
"It's an extraordinarily rare circumstance to have an adult female commit a sexual assault and murder on a female child alone," Portanova said. "So right off the bat, any attorney is going to be looking to disprove that theory."
..News Source.. by Marcus Wohlsen
April 18, 2009
CA- Public skeptical that woman killed, raped girl
April 15, 2009
CA- Weeping suspect accused of girl's rape, murder
Just a gut feel, she is protecting someone, maybe a boyfriend or other person in her life. This entire case is just too weird, no mold for it.
4-15-2009 California:
Softly crying, her feet chained and her hands shackled to her waist, Melissa Huckaby was arraigned Tuesday on charges that she kidnapped, raped and murdered 8-year-old Sandra Cantu of Tracy - allegations that could send her to the death chamber.
Huckaby, 28, shuffled into San Joaquin County Court in Stockton just before 1 p.m., the first time she had been seen in public since her arrest last week. Her lower lip quivered while she stood waiting for the proceeding to begin. Then she regained composure briefly.
But as Judge Richard Vlavianos read off the key charge, Huckaby broke down.
The judge read that she "did willfully and unlawfully and intentionally and with malice aforethought murder Sandra Cantu, a human being," and as the words left his lips, Huckaby wept quietly and closed her eyes.
She cried again as the judge read off the charge of "rape by instrument."
The only time Huckaby spoke was to say, almost inaudibly, "Yes," when asked if she wanted to be represented by a public defender. She did not enter a plea.
The hearing lasted just four minutes, after which Huckaby - by now looking morose and worn - was led by bailiffs out the same side door through which she entered. The next court hearing was scheduled for April 24.
Deputy Public Defender Ellen Schwarzenberg asked the judge for a gag order on all parties in the case, which would prevent them from talking publicly. The judge did not immediately rule on the request.
Huckaby is accused of killing Sandra after the girl went to her house to play with Huckaby's 5-year-old daughter March 27. Sandra was dead before her parents knew she was missing, investigators say. The criminal complaint filed Tuesday gave no details of how she was killed.
The girl's disappearance triggered a 10-day search throughout Northern California. Her body was found in a suitcase 2 miles away on April 6 by farmworkers draining an irrigation pond. Huckaby told a reporter for the Tracy Press before her arrest that the suitcase was hers, but had been stolen out of her driveway.
(eAdvocate Post)
Prosecutor says little
Outside the courthouse, county District Attorney James Willett made a few terse comments after the hearing, offering little information about where he intends to head in the case. He said he has not decided whether to pursue a death sentence if Huckaby is convicted.
"We'll have no comment with regard to the evidence obtained," Willett said. He noted that Huckaby is already undergoing mental evaluation for a petty theft conviction this year, and "obviously any mental issues will have an effect on this case."
Schwarzenberg asked during Tuesday's hearing for "further medication evaluation" of Huckaby, but the defense attorney did not explain her request.
The formal charges facing Huckaby are kidnapping and murder, with three special circumstances added to the murder charge that make her eligible for execution. Those allege that the killing was committed during a kidnapping, involved a lewd or lascivious act on a child and involved rape with a foreign object.
Among the 100 people who filled the Stockton courtroom were Sandra's aunt and uncle, Angie and Joe Chavez, who wept during the hearing - particularly as the rape charge was presented. Sandra's father, Daniel Cantu, also came to court, but Sandra's mother, who was sedated after being told of her daughter's death, apparently did not.
The rape allegation was particularly difficult to accept for a family already in mourning, Angie Chavez said.
"This is terrible, just terrible," she said, crying, before the hearing began.
Huckaby's father, Brian Lawless, and several other relatives of the Sunday school teacher left the courtroom as soon as the arraignment ended and declined to comment.
Before the hearing, they said they were mystified that she could be the killer described by investigators.
"My daughter is a loving mother," Lawless said as he arrived at the courthouse. "I never saw her raise her voice to her daughter. ... She loves children."
Authorities have not gone into detail about how they believe Sandra died.
Focus on church, home
However, sources close to the investigation have told The Chronicle that the girl was deliberately killed at the Clover Road Baptist Church, where Huckaby teaches Sunday school and her grandfather is pastor. The church is two blocks from the mobile home park where Sandra lived and where Huckaby resides with relatives, and police and FBI agents searched it several times before Huckaby was arrested.
Investigators with search warrants went back into the church and Huckaby's home Tuesday evening but did not say what they were looking for.
If Huckaby is convicted and sent to Death Row, she will join just 15 women there among 680 condemned prisoners in California.
In fact, instances of women committing crimes such as the ones Huckaby is accused of are so uncommon that criminologists interviewed Tuesday struggled to come up with similar examples.
Only 5 percent of pedophiles in America who abuse girls are female, said David Finkelhor, director of the University of New Hampshire Crimes Against Children Research Center, and the victims are almost always older than Sandra was.
"There are cases of a woman acting alone, but more frequently you get a situation where it's a woman working in cahoots with a guy," he said. "What's being described here is very rare." ..News Source.. by Demian Bulwa,Kevin Fagan, Chronicle Staff Writers
