Yahoo News – Sat Apr 18, 2009:

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.

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.

Researchers say the Huckaby case does not match the typical profile of sex crimes by females.

“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.”

I thought the same thing when I first heard about this horrendous crime. I naturally assumed it was some guy in the neighborhood and was shocked to find out it wasn’t. Of course we don’t know what evidence the police have, so we can’t really make up our minds at this stage. But I agree with this article, I’m suspicious, especially that she acted alone.



  1. SparkyOne says:

    These guys were surprised?  They are from the state that brought us Charles Milles Manson

  2. SN says:

    These guys were surprised?  They are from the state that brought us Charles Milles Manson

    And he convinced women to do his killing, which apparently is the opposite from what happened here, where the woman acted alone.  In other words, Manson’s case followed the pattern, while this case does not. So what’s your point?

  3. MikeN says:

    Sounds like the 80s child sex abuse cases are going to be happening again.  The Amiraults in Massachusetts, Grant Snowden in Florida, Wenatchee Wisconsin, and others.

  4. Jägermeister says:

    She’s probably just taking the fall. The priest did it.

  5. Greg Allen says:

    I’m not going to assume she’s categorically incapable of it because she’s an attractive woman.

    That a main reason why police profiling causes more problems catches criminals. It gives cover to non-typical criminals. letting them go.

    And here we go again. Because this woman does not fit the profile, thousands of people assume she’s innocent.

  6. SN says:

    The priest did it.”

    But of course, the priest did it in the library with the candlestick.

  7. faxon says:

    Uh…. We don’t do trials by opinion polls. The evidence points to her doing it, and we have a nice little trial to decide by a jury. Not a bunch of windbags on a forum.

  8. Floyd says:

    If you think this sort of thing almost never happens, look at this
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gertrude_Baniszewski:

  9. skipjack says:

    As someone who lives out in Tracy, the rumors are that she said things to the police that only the perpetrator would know. Plus several days before the suitcase was found she started making statements that her suitcase was stolen to the news papers.

  10. fw says:

    It may be rare, but hardly unheard of at all.
    Heck the only thing that really suprices many is the sex part, and that she may have staged to throw off suspicion from herself.
    Probably with a strappon, or more likely a dildo.
    The strappon is more likely if she was after the sex, as it is more of an intimate thing.

  11. geofgibson says:

    Oh, but it is obvious … George W. Bush did it.

  12. Jennifer says:

    I’m thinking something happened, maybe the kid got into her drugs or something, and the ‘rape’ may have just been a creative coverup. I can’t think of anything else that makes sense.

  13. NancyDisgrace says:

    Well at least Nancy Grace will tear into her every night like she did with the appropriately named PATSY Ramsey


0

Bad Behavior has blocked 3795 access attempts in the last 7 days.