Anatomy of Murder - The Note (Sandra Cantu)

Episode Date: July 25, 2023

A missing 8 year old has the community frantic to find her. The missing persons case soon becomes a homicide. A note is discovered during the search that will prove pivotal to this crime. For episode information and photos, please visit https://anatomyofmurder.com/ Can’t get enough AoM? Find us on social media!Instagram: @aom_podcast | @audiochuckTwitter: @AOM_podcast | @audiochuckFacebook: /listenAOMpod | /audiochuckllc

She was last seen around 3 p.m. I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff. I'm Anastasia Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation Discovery's True Conviction. And this is Anatomy of Murph. We have covered many horrible crimes, but obviously there is something particularly difficult about cases that involve very young children,

and this is no exception. In today's episode, we're revisiting the heartbreaking case of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, who went missing from her home in Tracy, California in 2009. The search for Sandra captivated the American public, and the news of her case and the bizarre circumstances behind its tragic ending would be part of the national headlines for weeks. The city of Tracy lies between San Francisco and Sacramento. Most of the city is a commuter town during the day.

Probably 60% of the adults that live in our city commute to the Bay Area, so we don't have a big daytime population. That's the voice of Lieutenant Tim Bauer, who was an investigator on this case, a case that would test his skills as a detective and challenge the common wisdom of even the most veteran investigators.

We're smack dab in the middle of Sacramento and San Francisco. We're one hour either way. One of the things they fortunately don't have is a lot of murder. Our agency does not have a high volume of homicides. The town of Tracy is considered a safe place to live and grow up and certainly not the type of place that you might expect the shock of a major violent crime or the national media attention that sometimes comes with it. Tracy, please, do you have an emergency or can you please hold?

Well, I have a missing daughter. Okay, how old is she? She's eight. She's eight years old? What is your address? And is that where she's missing from? Yes. When's the last time you saw her?

About three. That is the mother of eight-year-old Sandra Cantu, who left her family's home to play with friends in the neighborhood and never came home. The neighborhood where Sandra lived was a community of about 100 mobile homes, so obviously people are living in close proximity to one another. And it was not unusual to see children playing outside, unaccompanied by adults. But typically, Sandra was always home in time for dinner. She told me she was going over to this one girl's to play, and she hasn't been home. And I went looking all over.

Sandra had gotten home from school about three that day, picked up routinely by the grandpa, brought home from the local elementary school. Right when she got in, she changes clothes typically and then goes out and plays with her friends. She typically played within the mobile home community. And on that day, she went to a mobile home on the northwest side of the community and played with one of her friends. That's where they believe that she was at the entire time when she left out the house about 3 p.m. that day. Then when it was time for dinner, she's usually rounded up. Well, when mom went to round her up and have the siblings round her up, they couldn't find

her and she was no longer at that house. And so they were dumbfounded by that. And so then they checked with other friends and other locations in the trailer park that Sandra would go play at, and she wasn't at those locations. So that's kind of when the panic set in. What was she last seen wearing? A pink shirt with a Hello Kitty face on the front with a dress. Okay, and what color dress? It's striped with different colors. Striped dress? Yes. Patrol officers were dispatched to the girl's home where she lived with her grandparents, her mom, and her three older siblings. And you could just imagine the emotions when she failed to return home.

It is a big family, a busy household, and then suddenly someone realized, wait, where's Sandra? So the police immediately began canvassing the neighborhood, knocking on doors, talking to neighbors. But after several hours of searching, there was still no sign of Sandra. So the police immediately began canvassing the neighborhood, knocking on doors, talking to neighbors. But after several hours of searching, there was still no sign of Sandra. When I got this call in the evening, it came from the patrol sergeant. They were concerned because of the age of the victim, how long she had been gone, and they really didn't have any clues. Typically, when we get a call on a missing person, we can resolve that case really, really fast, and we'll usually find the person. But I was told that the gut feeling from the swing shift sergeant whose team was taking this case, their concern was that they

just kind of were hitting a wall, and they didn't kind of know what direction to go in with the case. Sandra's family was certain that she would never leave the park on her own. That was the family rule, and she had always stuck to it. So at least in the early hours, that really helped narrow down the search. The biggest concern was when the family started to look for their daughter, there was a gap of when she was last seen to when they started looking for her. They didn't start looking for her until about 7 p.m., but she was last seen around 3 p.m.

So four hours is an extremely long gap of how long a person could be missing and how far they could be. Every idea or every lead that the victim's mom and grandparents provided to the patrol officers had been checked, and they were striking out. We knew she wasn't a chronic runaway. The suicide sergeant just felt like it was important to involve the investigative team at that point and let us jump on it. So Sandra had been missing for about six or seven hours.

And obviously from a parent's perspective, the moment you can't find your child, well, it's an emergency. But from the police perspective, when does all this become an all-hands-on-deck situation? So let's talk about the perspective of the responding officers. The fact that she is an eight-year-old immediately raises the stakes. And questioning the family as the officer, you'd want to know a couple of things. Is this very unusual behavior for the child? And then you would begin to map out this neighborhood. Show us the homes that she often visits, and then begin to exclude locations that she could

possibly be. And when it comes to children, why we all know, obviously, police are going to look right away and we know, well, that should be a given. What are the reasons? Obviously, their age makes them so much more vulnerable to so many things. Even just think if they're lost, well, right away that child might be confused or frightened and reacting in a different way than if it was an adult that had lost their way. So for every reason, they are more susceptible to elements and really everything is much more heightened when it comes to a child. We don't want to panic them, you know, and use words like abduction and stuff like that. But also, fear and concern is going to set in the longer this goes.

And as daylight turned to dark, that's when kind of the siblings started really getting concerned because there's more risk for the kid at that point, you know, being out. The hope, of course, is that Sandra will turn up somewhere unharmed. Maybe she is hiding. Maybe she just got lost in a wooded area nearby. But as a detective, you have to start thinking about the worst case scenario. Because if this is a kidnapping or possibly even homicide, every minute counts. So it's normal to be looking at two potential paths.

One hopefully does not involve a criminal matter. You bringing in assets to widen out your search from the air. You bring in a bloodhound to see if any tracks can take you outside of the community. And you also begin to look at nearby bodies of water. And the second path begins to ask those uncomfortable questions. So if it doesn't look like it's going to be something like the child wandered away or got lost or had some sort of medical emergency, well, then police are going to have to start to look at the adults or the people in her life. Remember, you always start the closest and then work your way out. So they know off the bat that Sandra's parents aren't together.

So is there any sort of custody issue or any sort of problem between the parents at play? We know from Sandra's mom, she's the one that called the police, she was divorced from Sandra's dad. He lived in Southern California. And so, of course, police quickly zeroed in on that. They looked and they could very easily account for his whereabouts. And according to Tim, her father was never a suspect. But in talking about potential suspects, they had to consider every possibility, no matter how frightening. When I was talking with the mom and the grandma and grandpa at the table the first night we started this case, one of the questions we asked was, you know, hey, does she have any inappropriate

relationships? Or is there anybody that you believe suspicious or she had a relationship with any males? Because typically when you have a missing female your knowledge and experience tells you that you should be looking at a male subject she talked about an encounter she had a previous year at the little community pool with the karate instructor so grandma had mentioned that when she was getting out of the pool he approached her and kissed her they couldn't tell us if he kissed her on the lips or on the cheek but they just said when you pose a question to someone hey was is there any weird activity involving someone of the opposite sex with an eight-year-old their response was well there's this guy he teaches karate and last year at the pool I remember him kissing her I don't

know how it wasn't some long kiss or nothing like that but it just it was kind of one of those actions that caught them off guard so for us we're we're like red flag. Let's who is this guy? Let's learn about him. We need to contact him. You know, maybe he's someone that desired some inappropriate relationship with this female. So he was our person of interest. Number one, in this case. Remember, no one had seen Sandra with this karate instructor. She did not visit his house frequently, nor did he have any criminal record or history of endangering children. That would obviously be a few big red flags. However, when you cast a wide net, you have to start crossing these possibilities off of the list. And anybody who would have any contact that can be considered off in the slightest would have to be checked out.

So on this one, we assigned it to our CASA detective. And we said, hey, you need to dig into him. You need to search his residence. You need to find out where he works. You need to search his place of business. What does he drive? And we need to timeline him for the last 24 hours. So detectives go knock on the karate instructor's door and it is clear

that he knows why they're there. By the time I got to the trailer that evening, late that evening, everybody in the trailer park knew this girl was missing. He consented to a search of his trailer. He consented to a search of his karate studio, which was about a mile from his residence. And we searched that that evening. His car. he came down and interviewed with us that evening and also consented to a polygraph test the following day. In other words, he was cooperative, and it was clear to investigators quite quickly that from his demeanor to the timeline of his whereabouts

that he had nothing to do with Sandra's disappearance. Which in missing persons cases is always good news and bad news. Because the search must continue. And with every passing hour, the threat to her health and safety increases. A secondary canvas was done the next morning when we knew everybody was home. You're talking about, let's say, 98 to about 100 trailers at the time. And the canvas for video is in full motion by another detective at that point for any commercial video because we're trying to capture vehicles. We're trying to capture our victim, either whether it be on foot or on a car or on a bike. So that search was in full motion the second day.

Tracy, police deploy every search and rescue resource at their disposal. But in the nearly 24 hours, there is still no sign of the missing eight-year-old. Neighbors rally with prayer and private search parties, all to no avail, while news cameras and reporters gathered waiting for any word of her safe return. We had exhausted all our search methods that we do with grid searches and bloodhounds and planes and helicopters. And we at that point decided that it was best for us to get the public's help. And so we did a release with our public information officer. 80,000 eyes are better than, you know, a set of 10, right? So we on day two started a tip line and created a separate phone line from our Crime Stoppers normal tip plan that we have. And we took in over 1500 tips that had to be

looked into. And as much as that is helpful to you to get tips, a lot of the tips are people that are just trying to get media time. A lot of the tips are from psychics. A lot of the tips are from maybe people of the public or community that truly want to help. There's a segment of people that just want the reward money if it's out there. And that is one of the risks in any high profile investigation. There are so many good intentioned people that want to help, but there are also people that are drawn to it for other reasons. The drama, getting involved, maybe even that are drawn to it for other reasons. The drama, getting

involved, you know, maybe even seeking a bit of attention for themselves. But for police, that means that obviously they cannot afford to ignore any of the information they receive. Yeah, and that's the problem right there. You have to look down every path. Even as off as that tip may be, it could lead to something else that could be viable. So it's a risk and a reward situation when people come in thinking they're helping, but as you said, Anasigar, drawn to the drama. But you have to look at all these tips, which is extremely time consuming to the point where we had to employ an investigative team just to go through these tips and prioritize them. But it's a technique that you have to do and you have to try because there might be that one tip in there. I can tell you that the tips that came in through our tip

lines, not one of those tips saw this case. In fact, the first real break in the case would come from much closer to home. So I ended up speaking to one of my friends who was an evidence technician and she says, hey, did you hear about the note? And I go, no, remember I was off last night resting and she goes, oh, they found a note. Some woman presented a note to an officer and it says the victim's name, her last name, locked in a stolen suitcase, thrown in a body of water, and it gives two street names. And they go, well, that's kind of big. In Tracy, California, nearly 48 hours have passed since eight-year-old Sandra Cantu was last seen.

But with the entire community mobilized to help find Sandra, police think they may have finally gotten a big break in the investigation. Some woman, as she was walking up towards the vigil from where she lived, the same street. She sees this piece of paper sitting on the ground face down, and she just grabs the paper and turns it over and reads it and panics. It's like, oh my God. And then runs up totally frantic to the patrol officer that's manning the front entrance and says, I found this, I found this, I found this. The cryptic note appears to reveal the fate of young Sandra, claiming that her body is in a suitcase and that suitcase had been tossed in a nearby pond.

So I go, did you get any prints? She goes, nope. I go, so we don't know who actually wrote the note. It is the first strong lead that the police have received and needless to say, they jump into action. This note's found at dark, I think around 9 p.m. on day two of the investigation. So immediately, that was priority number one to search that area. That was not in our city limits.

It was just under three miles outside of our city limits, just north of the city of Tracy in a very rural area. Now, the body of water mentioned in this note is actually a kind of agricultural runoff collection pond, meaning it's contaminated with cow manure, which, as police learn, wreaks havoc on their typical search methods. We attempted to use cadaver dogs to search for remains, but because of the chemicals that were put off by these ponds, I was told from the search and rescue lieutenant that cadaver dogs were ineffective. And they got nothing. They got nothing.

You know, Scott, we know that police have been tracking down tip after tip, and some of that, unfortunately, was these false senses of hope. But now they have this bit of information that is very specific, but also they have to consider, you know, is this yet another hoax or ploy for attention? That's true. I mean, by this time, 1,500 tips at Asiga had come in to police. So while some had some more validity to them and they were chasing those down on a priority basis, this one just felt real to them because where it was found and when it was found. And in all these cases, time, every moment above the essence. But the police have another factor working as well, and that is the incredible amount of press attention. There are

news cameras and reporters literally staked around these areas. So they're watching everything that police do basically under a microscope. So they have to now check out this tip, which again, very specific. They have an actual note, very detailed, which at least on its face, could it be too good to be true? They also had no way of knowing who wrote the note, but they did know who found it. And that was a start. So the FBI started looking into this woman, and they actually did the first interview with her that night and got some historical information for her and what her relationship was with the victim and her daughter's relationship was like with the victim.

The woman who found the note was 28-year-old Melissa Huckabee, a single mom who was living with her grandparents not far from the Cantus. She had recently moved out from Southern California and was working as a Sunday school teacher at a local church where her grandparents served as the ministers. Sandra was three years older than her daughter at the time of the case, but they did know each other. Sandra would routinely go to the house to play at Melissa's house. Not only did Melissa's daughter and Sandra play together, Sandra was said to be in and out of Melissa's home nearly every day. So clearly, she was someone the Cantus knew and trusted. Now, while finding the note was something that definitely made this woman peak police interest,

remember, she's a Sunday school teacher, she's a woman, and just on their face, those were not the type of generalities that police may have been looking for when first thinking about who may have harmed Sandra. The FBI flew in their BAU folks from Quantico, and I sat down with them pretty early on, and they give you a profile of what you're looking for. We were told we were looking for a white male between 25 and 34 who may be single, has had probably inappropriate relationships, may be a sex registrant, may be not. She didn't fit the mold at all. She didn't fit the description from what was recommended by the FBI. But she had found the only significant piece of evidence.

So far, Melissa agrees to sit down with investigators. It happened to be one of the Child Abduction Response Unit, highly trained FBI agents that gets assigned to talk to her after the note's found. And he takes her back to her trailer and interviews her very informally and ask her the same questions we asked the victim's family.

Who do you think would have done this? You know, what's your relationship with her? Anybody in your house have a relationship with her? And she was very pleasant, very forthcoming. But the FBI agent just kind of had a weird gut feeling about her. And he was the one who I would converse with throughout that first week.

That would tell me, hey, you're going to want to talk to her. You need to get your read about her and see what she's all about. He didn't necessarily think she was lying. But, you know, anybody that finds a note like that and kind of inserts himself in an investigation at that point in day two, based on his experience, then any investigator's experience is going to think that's weird. So he just felt like she needed a second look. According to Tim, the thought from investigators that this note was probably not legit, just some sort of ploy for one reason or another. So now what seemed like a pivotal piece of evidence

might just now be another setback in the investigation. The thought was, here we have this female who's a neighbor, whose daughter's friends with our victim, who's kind of just trying to insert herself in this case and maybe get a little bit of TV time because there's so much media involved in this case. But there is just one coincidence that keeps gnawing at detectives. On the same day Melissa found the note, she just happened to also report her own suitcase

had been stolen. She alleges to the park management that her suitcase, a black suitcase, was stolen from outside her residence as she was preparing to go to her church to prepare for her Sunday school class. It could be nothing, but as they talk about in law enforcement circles, if it looks a lot like something that's been made up, then the right evidence just might surface to prove it. There's three or four ponds. They're drainage ponds that exist out in a cattle area on the north side of our city, about three miles or so outside the city limits. That area is staffed by the same farmer that had been out there for years that works for the family that owns that land. And unbeknownst to us, those ponds are drained twice a year.

And so on the 6th, he drives out to the far east bank of the ponds, and he gets to the third pond, the most eastward pond, and he parks his truck, and he walks the embankments of the ponds. And on the far east pond, he sees an object floating towards the middle of this pond, and he's like, there shouldn't be anything floating in this pond. And little by little, the suitcase floats over to the west bank of the east pond. And so he grabs like a little pitchfork and just gets it to the side. So he ends up calling 911.

And so the sheriff's office immediately calls our dispatch center and speaks to our supervisor and says, hey, we got this weird event going on out here on Whitehall Road. We have a farmer that's calling in saying he found a suitcase. So their first thought at this moment must have been, whoa, like, could this note that this woman found be legitimate after all? And if it was, and this suitcase did in fact contain the remains of Sandra, they would have to approach the retrieval of the suitcase with the utmost care and treat this like a crime scene, even before they knew for certain what was inside. But given

all the immediate attention in this case, that might prove very, very difficult. Things were about to take a dramatic turn for the worse. Police were investigating a farmer's observations at a local pond in hopes they might be getting closer to finding Sandra when Tim gets a heads up that things are quickly heating up. I get a phone call from my friend who's the dispatch supervisor, and she goes, where things are going on right now. Like, everybody just ran out of the center,

jumped in their undercover rides, the media's following them, and they're all driving northbound on Tracy to this area. And I go, give me the location. So I drive out to the pod in my personal vehicle, and there's just cops everywhere. They got our command posts out there. There's FBI agents everywhere. I'm like, what's going on? And they're like, they found a suitcase. And I go, well, what are we doing with it? They go, well, we don't know what to do. And I go, call the coroner, call the pathologist, see how they want to tackle this. If we believe she's in it and we have a deceased body, then we got to treat this in preparation for the autopsy. So we consulted with our pathologist, who's brilliant, and he came out to the scene.

He's like, no, no, no. He's all, leave everything intact. We're not doing anything. He goes, you put that thing on this material that the FBI ERT team had, directed us how to remove it from the water. So the suitcase, which was zipped and secured with a nylon cord, is carefully transported to the medical examiner's office. They didn't want to risk

losing any crucial forensic evidence. So time was of the essence to get it there. Now at autopsies, there aren't many people usually in the room. There's the medical examiner, there's the lead detective, and maybe a partner or another detective. But that's usually it. But this one, it was very different. I'd never seen so many detectives. There was just so many people invested in this case at that point. It was like, now we're going to be going from missing person abduction to homicide? The medical examiner carefully opens the suitcase, and there inside is the lifeless body of eight-year-old Sandra.

And it is clear that she had been dead for several days. The subsequent medical examination would slowly and meticulously piece together the details of her death. Exactly as she was last seen on that video, but the clothes had been repositioned so you knew that her leggings had been taken off at some point because the way that her leggings were on her when she was placed in the suitcase, it's not how the leggings were on her in the last seen video of her. We knew that she was suffocated. They were also able to determine that she had been sexually assaulted with an object and we'll leave it at that. And the toxicology also proved that she'd been drugged.

An eight-year-old, drugged, sexually assaulted, suffocated, and stuffed into a suitcase. Just this level of cruelty is pure evil. We needed to know whether she was alive or dead, and so we had that answer. And then for me and my partner, now it lets us transition to a homicide investigation, right? So while they didn't get the answers they'd been hoping for, at least now they had an answer about what happened to Sandra.

And now the homicide investigation could begin. As a former member of law enforcement, I can relate. Because while the result is certainly tragic, the uncertainty of not knowing what happened to Sandra and the agony and anguish of wondering if she's lost somewhere, hurt, or in danger, and you're running out of time to save her, that can be torture. And for some families of missing children, that torture can go on for years. You're sad, but if this wasn't it, these cases can go on forever, right? I mean, look at all the cases nationally that they never find anybody.

So now Tim has to bring the news to Sandra's family that the search for their eight-year-old child, their daughter, is over, and with the unhappiest of endings. When you show up with your chief in a Class A uniform and a chaplain in a chaplain's uniform, there's not really much that you have to say. I mean, the minute we walked in the house, they just knew it was bad. When you sit there as a detective

and you're talking to the victim's family and you're telling them whether victim's family and you're telling whether it's alive or dead, I will bring home your kid to you at some point and I will find out what happened and all that. That's the closure part that they need, right? Not necessarily the arrest. They need the closure of being able to go through the process of grieving and have the funeral. So now that's allowed to happen. And unfortunately, you have to bring that bad news to them. But then for us, it shifted gears. But then it's like, okay, now we're going to go catch a killer. As investigators, we don't stop and pause and take in the gravity of what's going on. I got

to get all of our team focused because we're digging in now. To me, this is when the clock starts for us. Investigators need to start trying to figure out who would have dumped the suitcase in the pond, because it is likely that is the person who is also her killer. In several of our episodes, we've talked about just how valuable the media can be, especially in a missing child case. As a street reporter, I've responded to several, and when getting the information out was critical, we knew it was important to do that. But I've also seen how the instant exposure of a live news report following police gathering evidence, at a time that information is so important, and even the location of where it's being gathered,

is information that investigators may not want to be released. It's a difficult balance between the public's right to know and also the investigation. They were unfortunately able to get their helicopters up before we were able to get law enforcement helicopters up and push them out of our airspace. So they were able to get photos that they were able to put on the news,

I think, that night of the suitcase sitting in the body of water. So with this information basically on the news in real time, it also means that any potential suspect also likely knows that Sandra's body has been found and that the police are now in possession of key evidence that might identify who killed her. Luckily for investigators, they get a huge break in their hunt for any potential witnesses that could help them identify the person that disposed the very suitcase

containing Sandra's body. So we have one of our detectives and they go down and they find this big farmhouse and they knock on the door and this husband and wife answers the door and they said, hey, can't tell you a lot, but we're investigating this disappearance of this young girl. And they're like, yeah, we know. We've seen it on the door and this husband and wife answers the door and they said, hey, can't tell you a lot, but we're investigating this disappearance of this young girl. And they're like, yeah, we know we've seen it on the news.

And they're like, well, have you seen anything suspicious out here? And he goes, wait, wait. I do remember a couple of Fridays ago, my wife and I were going to dinner at Olive Garden in town. And he goes, I remember we were going to dinner around five ish. And I was driving westbound on our road on Whitehall. And I see this small, like, I can't remember if you described it as purple, but a small SUV with a spare tire on the back. The driver's side door of that SUV is open, but the driver is nowhere to be found. So that was suspicious to me. So he goes, I told my wife,

I'm going to stop the car. So I have my kid in the back. He goes, I stopped the car, get out. And I'm looking around like who's associated this car. As I walk around to the driver's side of this car with the door open, I hear some persons moving around in these like bushes that are by these ponds. Lo and behold, I see this female in a sweatsuit come out of the bushes. And I said, what are you doing? And she says, I'm going pee. And so I talked to her and I look at the back of her car. I noticed she has the yellow support your military ribbon. He goes, I was a Marine. And then she has above her tire,

my brother is a US Marine, this little logo. And he goes, so we kind of connected over that. He goes, and I got back to my car and I went to dinner. He goes, but I thought it was odd. But police know it's more than just odd because Tim has a distinct memory of the car that was in the driveway of Melissa Huckabee, who remember is the woman who found that note.

In her driveway was a small purple SUV with a Marine sticker on the back window. And he's pretty much describing our suspect's car and her to a T. And we're like, we got her. And that's what we knew. Police in Tracy, California, have a prime suspect in the kidnapping and murder of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu.

Melissa Huckabee, the 28-year-old neighbor and mother of Sandra's friend, who was seen in the vicinity of the pond where Sandra's remains were found. The local Sunday school teacher was also the one that just happened to find the note that described where to find Sandra's body, a coincidence that is starting to look a lot more like a failed attempt to deflect suspicion away from herself. But when investigators go to her home to question her, she's not there. She had checked herself into a local hospital. It was reported that she had swallowed several razor blades,

and so of course now police are starting to think about the why. So many of you may have the same questions that we do. Is this an attempt to die by suicide because she has an overwhelming sense of guilt or fear of being caught by police? Or is this another tactic to potentially avoid police? And, you know, Anastasia, obviously, police know where she is and know how to get to her. But it's interesting behavior. She thinks if she's in the hospital that she's going to be unavailable to law enforcement. And so she swallows a razor blade.

She checks herself in the hospital. And again, without being able to actually get into her mind, it could be for various reasons. It could be like you said, Scott, like, is it that if she is the one who did this, that she is overcome with guilt? However, remember, if she is the one that did this, did she also write that note, which is somehow bringing attention to herself? You know, again, just in my own experience,

I have had other people try to do what looks like death by suicide by cutting their wrists in the courtroom and other things are expected to potentially cause death. But in the end, it was either to get out of the trial or for some other motive that is trying to deflect that accountability that they think might be coming their way. And the decision was not to move on her quickly as she was in the hospital,

but to keep an eye on her. We immediately put our narcotics surveillance team on her. We had a team of detectives that were undercover in the hospital watching her nonstop. Right after the 10 o'clock news cycle hit, we went to the hospital and I did an audio interview with her. So Tim knows that he doesn't have all the pieces of the puzzle yet in place to be able to absolutely walk into a courtroom saying that they have proof beyond a reasonable doubt. But he's trying to put those pieces together, even just to get to the point of arrest. And so at this moment, if he can develop rapport and start to talk to her in some basic ways,

well, then maybe she'll say something that he can use to get him further down that road. So Tim visits Melissa in the hospital. He's at her bedside, and he tells her the reason why he's there. He's there to follow up on her report that her suitcase had been stolen. I used it as an opportunity to tell her, hey, let me help you find your suitcase. I knew I already had her suitcase, right? I knew Sandra was in the suitcase. And I was going to play her little game with her because she loved attention.

And she talks to me that day. She describes her suitcase as being purchased from a local Target when she purchased it shortly after moving here from L.A. And she described it as a black suitcase with gray trim. It was an Eddie Bauer suitcase. And that was the one that was taken from her porch, she said on that day, she was preparing to go to her Sunday school class. So Anastika, it's obvious that she has likely seen the reports that police have discovered Sandra's body in a suitcase. Now, does that mean in your mind that she's

toying with police? Or could she be potentially setting up an alibi for herself by saying, you know what, I reported a suitcase stolen, so that can't be me? Or is it a combination of both? Because I think absolutely, if you say that your suitcase was stolen and then the body of this child is found in that suitcase, well, it's just that, right? Well, it's putting it one step away from her. So that's alibi. But also by doing this, it is, again, it is bringing attention to herself, getting herself in the mix. So I kind of look at it, Scott, like a bit of column A and column B. So she's basically incriminating herself here with the possession at a certain time of a black suitcase because she's admitting that she owned one at one time. And here we have Sandra's body found in a black suitcase. And time will tell if the two suitcases are connected.

The following day was the six hour interview we did with her. So we're about halfway through the interview, about three hours in, and I start confronting her with different pieces of evidence. I need your help to tell me. Tell me, Melissa, what happened. I don't know. I just know that I did not kill her. But you're arresting me for murdering her. I don't understand. Can you tell me what evidence you have? I think she realizes she's starting to struggle and can't really explain that kind of stuff away. So a detective walks in the room, tells her to turn around, stand up, turn around.

She's placed in handcuffs and she's told that she's charged with the murder. Then she starts crying and she leaves and she goes down to her booking area. Within about five minutes of her being in the booking area, I get a call that says from the detector saying she wants to talk. I think in her mind that the game ended, the whole, whether it be, you know, hey, I did this, I got all this attention and all this, but gosh darn it, you guys caught me. You guys figured it out. I started to think of this portion of the investigation a bit like fishing and that this first conversation, which was pretty short, almost like that first tug of the line, you know, of your rod. But the next day, Tim goes back and now it's going to see if he can reel in that fish slowly. And listening to what you were saying, Anasiga, about the fact that she may have been looking for attention, you know, to me, it sounds like she's almost playing a role, the role of a potential murder suspect.

And she knows that this is the part where she has seen the damning evidence against her. And she's beginning to spin a new story. The fact is that an incredibly important piece of evidence was stolen from her. So Tim is starting to make a list of the pieces of evidence that investigators have at that point. So he got the note that she found. We recovered the notebook that we believed that the note came out of. We matched the paper to the notebook. The suitcase that she described is the same one that we recovered in the pond. We found a blue sticky note that we found in the glove compartment of the car that had the words, handwriting Whitehall and Bacchetti crossed out that we recovered.

And those are the two words with the same exact handwriting sample and spelling for the two street names on the note that she found on day two of the investigation. Melissa was also known to take a medication called benzodiazepine. And according to toxicology reports, that is the very same chemical which was found in Sandra's system. And so what is this medication, benzodiazepine? Well, it is a medication that is prescribed all the time for things like severe anxiety, severe insomnia, panic disorders. Let's just suffice it to say it is given for various mental health conditions. And of course, there was that perfect witness who spotted Melissa at

the pond just a couple of hours after police believe the homicide likely occurred. Investigators also searched Melissa's home and the church where she worked. And it was inside that church that police found some of the strongest, albeit most horrific, pieces of evidence. They found a set of blinds that the cord had been missing. And they also found something that we will suffice it to say they were able to show that was the instrumentality used to sexually assault Sandra. Now, we will never know whether that was before death or after, but it is heinous and tragic all the same. So now it's time for Tim and his team to sit down with Huckabee to see if she was willing to tell them the events that all of the evidence is pointing to. We rebrandize her and confirm she understands her rights and she gives me her version of the rest of the story

for the next three hours. I have those rights in my mind. Do you want to go ahead and talk to me now? Yes, I do. Okay. I'm here to in my mind. Do you want to go and talk to me now? Yes, I do. Okay. I'm here to talk to you. I'm here to understand. So Melissa does offer an explanation through lots of tears of what she describes as a terrible accident. Like I told you before, she likes to hide and play hide-and-go-seek. She hid inside

in there and I didn't know. I told her I had to go into the house. She got in your suitcase? Huckabee claims that Sandra was playing hide-and-seek and snuck into that suitcase that Melissa had in the backseat of her car where she claims Sandra suffocated. And then when I came out 15 minutes later, she wasn't there. Sandra wasn't there. Sandra wasn't outside? She wasn't outside. Where was she?

I didn't know. And so I drove to the church. Then I got out of my car and I took all my stuff out of the truck. Not all of it, but part of it. And I went to the church. I was there. And when I came outside, I looked at my suitcase. And I went to take it out, and it was heavy.

And she was in there, and she wasn't breathing or anything. What did she look like? She looked pale. I tried to wake her up and she wouldn't wake up. And yes, I'm a cynic. But I also, you know, just think about these tears. You know, is it that she is crying as she claims for Sandra at that point? Or is it more, and this is what I think, is that because she knows she's been caught? Over the course of the next several hours, Huckabee comes up with every excuse she can think of for why Sandra ended up dead in her suitcase. She describes voices in her head that she suffers from blackouts. But time and time again, investigators believe her story just does not hold up. I hear voices.

Mm-hmm. They told me. What did your voices tell you? That I killed her. I can't live with myself. I deserve to just die. But she leaves out the key components of why she dumped her in the water, how she secured the suitcase.

Doesn't say anything about the sexual assault. Doesn't say anything about the drugging. Then I tried to give her mouth to mouth. I don't know how to do it. She couldn't breathe and she wasn't waking up. She didn't have a pulse or nothing. Did you take her out of the suitcase? Well, I just took her out.

How did you give her mouth to mouth? I took her out. And what did you do? So, you know, Scott, I think a looming question for everyone when they hear about this case is beyond the brutality, why? You know, there are so many different things at play that just don't make sense or that are not the type of things that we are used to hearing as motivators for homicide. Yeah, I think a lot of people, when they get to the end of this episode, will be thinking the very same thing,

is what would motivate this mother who had a child at a very similar age, a child that her child played with all the time in this very small community they lived in, what would drive her to do all these things and then make all of these various different attempts on Asika to cover it up. And, you know, not very well.

I mean, the letter, admitting to a suitcase and then reporting the suitcase stolen and then texting the family about it, it just didn't seem like a very thorough way to get away with murder. She was, in my opinion, a manipulator, prolific liar, jealous person, desired to be the center of attention. So after everything Melissa eventually admits to,

and from all the evidence that they have collected, we asked Tim what does he actually think happened on the day that Sandra was killed. So we know that Sandra was walking home from that friend's house that she went and played with after school. And as Sandra's getting to go into her house, I want to say around 3.50 that afternoon on that Friday, something clearly catches Sandra's eye on the video surveillance that we have. And we believe Melissa Huckabee is outside at that point waiting and getting Sandra's direction because they live on the same street.

About three or four trailers separate them on opposite sides of the street. And Sandra is a very, very social kid. And so Sandra, knowing Melissa, knowing Melissa's daughter, I believe that Melissa at that point invited Sandra over to the house. And Sandra was allowed and only would leave the trailer park with someone that she knew or trusted or family members. Well, knew and trusted was Melissa Huckabee because she had been in that house before and played with her daughter. And so I believe Melissa Huckabee convinced her to ride in her car and go to the church. And then that's where we believe everything took place in the church based on the evidence that we found. This investigation has seen so many uncertain turns, pivoted on so many crucial and sometimes incredibly fortuitous events, like finding that perfect witness and the stroke of luck that a farmer just happened to be draining the pond that day.

And we would be remiss not to note the incredible job done by the investigators in this case in recognizing how important the most minute of clues and to slowly, methodically collect the evidence they needed to solve this case. Killers make mistakes and it's our job to find the mistakes that they make. We kept telling ourselves that all the time. We just got to find the mistakes and we have to be smarter than the killer. And her mistakes was the no that nobody knew about. Her mistakes was putting the victim in a body of water

and then the gases in the victim's body ultimately caused the body to rise to the top of the water. So you have to find those mistakes to get your evidence. And I believe persistence will yield results and I believe hard work will yield results. And sometimes you need a little bit of luck. Our luck was our perfect witness. But if you work hard, you'll get rewarded. And so we got rewarded at the end and we're able to put it all together. Huckabee is charged with the first degree murder and sexual assault of young Sandra Cantu. But even knowing everything that had been done

to their child, their sibling, their grandchild, their family member, Sandra's family, because of their faith, did not want Huckabee to be put to death. My goal is to get the sentence for what the family wants, what they think is fair. We always run our decisions and our plan for our sentencing by the victim's family in homicides.

And so when we ran that by them, that was acceptable by them. And they're a religious family, and they didn't want to see her put to death. Sometimes the sentencing is almost beside the point for a family. And it's clear the Cantus were not looking for vengeance. They just wanted justice. And that's why for most families, an important part of the trial is the reading of the family's impact statement in which they often address the accused. And that is the case here when Sandra's grandfather addressed the court.

You could hear a pin drop. It was really quiet. It was really, really important for the family foreclosure to finally say something. But the loss of their child, their grandchild, their beloved Sandra, that was going to change each one of them forever. Because no matter how many years separate from those first frantic days that Sandra went missing, or that unbelievably tragic day when they discovered her body, the feeling of loss, the grief, the pain must never go away. They still reach out to me periodically. I still see her older sister. They still live in town. And you still see how that death has destroyed this family and that they've never recovered from it.

During the family's impact statement, Sandra's aunt Angie told a PAC courtroom about seeing the photos and videos of Sandra in the courtroom as a happy and innocent eight-year-old girl saying, seeing these images of Sandra are bittersweet. The video of her skipping down the street will forever be etched in our minds, and the pain of knowing that she was so close to home and we couldn't protect her from Huckabee is unimaginable. To the residents of the city of Tracy, Sandra will always be known as Tracy's Angel. In thinking about this case, it showcases some of the worst of the worst and the best of the best. The worst of what one person is capable of doing to another. What Huckabee did to a child.

She murdered an eight-year-old that is gone from this earth forever. But also the best of the best, the best luck in finding that witness who tied Huckabee to the pond, this community that came together first for the search, but then to support Sandra's family throughout,

and all the members of law enforcement, Tim Bauer at the top, relentless in their pursuit of justice for this little girl. So in thinking about Sandra Cantu, let's just all hope that she is soaring in the sky and flying with the doves wherever she is, and that her family continues to find strength with their grief and gets the support that they will always, always need. Tune in next week for another new episode of Anatomy of Murder.

Anatomy of Murder is an AudioChuck original produced and created by Weinberger Media and Frasetti Media. Ashley Flowers is executive producer. So, what do you think, Chuck? Do you approve?