The Sunday School Teacher

Sandra Cantu was eight years old and lived with her family in the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park in Tracy, California. Melissa Huckaby, 28, lived in the same park. She taught Sunday school at a local church, and her young daughter was one of Sandra’s playmates.

On March 27, 2009, Sandra left home to visit a friend and never came back. For ten days the town searched. During a vigil, Huckaby told police she had found a handwritten note claiming the girl had been put in a suitcase and thrown in the water near Bacchetti and Whitehall roads. On April 6, workers draining an irrigation pond found a suitcase holding Sandra’s body. Security video showed Huckaby’s purple SUV near Sandra’s home that afternoon, a witness placed her at the pond, and a rolling pin from the case tested positive for Sandra’s DNA. Investigators also found the same anti-anxiety drug in the child’s system and in Huckaby’s home.

Huckaby was arrested on April 10, 2009. To avoid a possible death sentence, she pleaded guilty in Stockton on May 10, 2010, to first-degree murder and kidnapping, and the other charges were dropped. In June 2010 she was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, so she will never go before a parole board.