Melissa Huckaby, seen here during a 2009 court hearing, pleaded guilty Monday to kidnapping and murdering 8-year-old Sandra Cantu in exchange for a sentence of life in prison without parole. Press file photo
It remains to be seen whether the public will soon know what police, prosecutors, defense attorneys and the killer herself already know: how it was done.
What no one but Huckaby may ever know is this: Why was Sandra killed?
Huckaby had little to say in court Monday, and a gag order continues to bar those familiar with the case from speaking about it.
Huckaby agreed to plead guilty to the kidnapping and murder of Sandra, whose body was found in a suitcase at the bottom of a drained dairy lagoon 10 days after she disappeared March 27, 2009.
With the plea, Huckaby avoided the death penalty and will spend the rest of her life behind bars without the chance of parole. Prosecutors dropped charges that Huckaby raped Sandra and poisoned another girl months before Sandra’s death.
Her guilty plea took the public by surprise, and as news crews descended upon the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park, where both Huckaby and Sandra had lived, people there and others who knew the murdered girl seemed relieved by the turn of the events.
“It helps a bit, but it doesn’t bring her back,” said Susan Alley, 51, who has lived in the mobile home park for three years.
Huckaby is due back in court June 14 for what is shaping up to be a gut-wrenching sentencing hearing. The family will have a chance to speak directly to Sandra’s killer.
And if Huckaby chooses, she, too, can speak.
She spoke briefly Monday, only when asked by Judge Linda Lofthus whether the medication she now takes was recently changed. The judge wanted to check to see if Huckaby was impaired when she decided to give up her right to a trial.
“No, I am currently stable on medication, thank you,” Huckaby said.
Experts are unsure how many of the details of the murder will be revealed once court records of the case are finally unsealed. It could be that investigators’ reports will be left out of the case file.
“In many cases, the details just simply go unreviewed by the public” because they are kept out of court files, said former Sacramento prosecutor-turned-white collar defense attorney Bill Portonova. “In cases where facts are too terrible, defense attorneys are motivated to keep them hidden.”
Huckaby was indicted by a grand jury that heard witnesses and saw all the evidence against her. If the transcript is made public after Huckaby is sentenced, the disturbing details will emerge at last.
For some families of murder victims, it helps to know exactly how their loved ones met their demise, however gruesome.
“I’ve seen families that want to know every detail of their daughter’s death,” said San Jose attorney and occasional media pundit Steven Clark. “I’ve seen other ones where the details are too difficult.”
It’s unclear whether Sandra’s family, the Chavezes, will want to know the minutiae of Sandra’s murder. The gag order still applies to the Chavezes, and they have been off-limits to the media for about a year.
Portonova said the plea agreement certainly saves Sandra’s relatives “the horror of the ordeal” of a trial, “which is not insubstantial.”
Though Portonova and other lawyers said the cost to prosecute a death-penalty case plays no role in whether a district attorney tries to negotiate a plea, the fact that Huckaby will spend her life in jail will save about $7 million in tax money for appeals that usually last about 20 years in California.
But whether Huckaby will try to apologize for her crime remains to be seen. Clark said an expression of remorse by a convicted killer can somewhat help victims’ families begin to put the loss behind them, but he thinks it’s almost pointless for Huckaby to explain herself.
“There’s no motive that anyone could comprehend,” he said. “This is just one of those ones where no one would understand.”
• Contact Tracy Press City Editor Eric Firpo at 830-4223 or efirpo@tracypress.com.
This is the very reason the gag order should be lifted after sentencing.
Tha is naive at best. The planning and the steps she took to cover up what she had done proves she was aware of the ramifications of what she did, before, during and after the crime.
Most of the more notable criminals in the news are CLEARLY aware of the ramifications of what they do and do it anyway.
Side Note: I remember reading in the Press that the FBI sent the Behavioral Analysis Unit to Tracy when we were searching for Sandra. They complied a profile that described both the suspect and area where the body would be found. The BAU was correct on everything they profiled....except the gender of the suspect. This was so out-of-left-field for them, they came back to Tracy to interview her and learn what they could from this case. Eventually, their findings will come out to the public. I am confident that much was learned from this case and it is already being disseminated through law enforcement channels.
The gruesome details of this case are, unfortunately, going to come out. The release of this information truely serves no useful purpose, and will be needlessly painful to Sandra's family and all of those close to her. The news media, armed with the public's 'right to know' will charge ahead. Confident that they 'can', they will not for a moment question whether or not they 'should'. The day they release this information will be a dark day here in Tracy. The images will haunt most...particularly parents...for a long time to come. Hopefully, everyone will learn and move on.
They can fool everyone. Seem like the most upstanding individual. Helpful, caring, trustworthy.
This murder, rape is not just an isolated incident for this person.
Those were not the only kids assaulted. Any children in contact with that woman are possible victims. At whatever level. Nobody will want to admit they are a victim, or, that their children may have been victimized.
Normal folks can't comprehend the motivational force that drives this kind of person to do what they do.
The why of it. It makes no sense at all.
The details of what happened, how the child was killed is not the issue.
Prevention, damage control. Amber alerts, the Pauli Klaas foundation. Personally, I don't want the details. Take whatever scenario a person could put together in their own mind and, it still wouldn't be as bad as what actually happened.
Get this woman out of my face.