The Misery Machine - Sandra Cantu: Taken Too Soon By An Unlikely Suspect [TRUE CRIME]

Episode Date: May 24, 2021

This week, Drewby and Yergy travel to Tracy, California to discuss the tragic case of Sandra Cantu, a spirited 8 year old girl that was taken from this world far too soon by an incredibly unlikely suspect, in the place where she felt the safest.  A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Levi's Adoption Fundraising Page: https://gofund.me/d658a3a7 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine Join Our Street Team! https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1HfRUPQhB6LOqVupZm92OdV5rLDQcIMpHudmUZwt0C24/edit?usp=sharing Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Sandra_Cantu https://abc7news.com/archive/6747604/ https://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/new-documents-give-gruesome-details-on-cantus-death/2091727/ https://abcnews.go.com/GMA/story?id=7356264&page=1 https://abcnews.go.com/US/Media/melissa-huckaby-confessed-murderer-year-girl-sentenced-life/story?id=10910285 https://murderpedia.org/female.H/h/huckaby-melissa.htm https://www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/05/22/california.slain.girl/index.html https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=8348664 https://abcnews.go.com/US/story?id=7344342&page=1  

Hi, the Missouri Machine. I'm Yergy. And I'm Drewby. And this week we're doing a child case out of Tracy, California. That's a Sandra Cantu case. This is another listener's suggestion. This one came from Cassie from South Dakota. So thank you so much, Cassie.

Thank you, Cassie. And if you two would like to suggest an episode, feel free to email us at Misruemachine Podcast at gmail.com. Or if you're listening on YouTube, go ahead and drop a suggestion in the comment section below. And if you are listening on YouTube, if you could hit like and subscribe, we should be, by the time this drops,

almost 7,000 subscribers. If you want to help get us there, press that red button below. But without further ado, Sandra Cantu. Tracy is the second most populated city in San Joaquin County, California, with just under 83,000 residents. It is located inside a geographic triangle, formed by Interstate 205 on the north side of the city, Interstate 5 to the east, and Interstate 580 to the southwest. Tracy's motto included on the city's web site, site is, think inside the triangle. Both MC Hammer and Steve Perry of Journey hail from the city.

And up until recently, I thought Journey was a British band. Oh my. The city was also the site of the infamous Altamont Speedway Free Festival, which was a rock concert held on Saturday, December 6th, 1969. Approximately 300,000 attended the concert, and some anticipated that it would be a Woodstock West. The event is best known for considerable violence, including the stabbing death of Meredith Hunter and three accidental deaths, two caused by a hit-and-run car accident, and one by LSD-induced drowning in an irrigation canal. Many people were injured. Numerous cars were stolen and then abandoned, and there was extensive property damage. By some accounts, the Hells Angels were hired as security by the management of the Rolling Stones on the recommendation of the Grateful Dead in Jefferson

an airplane. The city had cooled down in recent years, but was shoved back into the media spotlight in 2009. Sandra at Renee Cantu was born on March 8, 2001, as the youngest of four children to parents Daniel Cantu and Maria Chavez. Sandra's parents split when she was very young. She has been described as a friendly, caring, and adventurous girl that had no trouble making friends. She was well known around where she lived at the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park in Tracy, California and had many friends in the area. She could strike up a conversation with everyone and was always smiling and had a very bright energy to her. Besides being a very active and energetic child, she also left a garden with her mother and grandparents and often helped her mother cook.

On Friday, March 27, 2009, the now eight-year-old Sandra had arrived at her home around 4 p.m. having just gotten back from playing at a friend's house and later left home saying that she was going to play at another friend's house. This was a typical day for Sandra, who was allowed to play outside and walk to friend's houses provided she never left the trailer park. Her mother knew everyone there and generally felt it to be a safe place for her daughter. However, when 7 p.m. came around, Sandra was nowhere to be found. Her mother Maria called every neighbor she could and none of them had Sandra at their house. In fact, none of them had even remembered seeing Sandra for the past couple of hours. Every parent's biggest fear was beginning to come true for Maria.

Panicking, she started running around the trailer park calling for Sandra to no avail. Finally, she called the police to report her daughter missing at 7.53 p.m. Sandra Cantu was last seen wearing a pink Hello Kitty t-shirt in black leggings. Police arrived to the trailer park to speak with neighbors but weren't getting any useful information. Sandra's grandfather told police that he had installed security cameras on the front of their house in case anything were to happen. Having access to something like this in 2009 definitely wasn't as common or accessible as it is nowadays. Police collected the footage which showed Sandra crossing the street in front of her home before moving out of frame. It wasn't long before this was broadcast on the evening news.

A search of the mobile home complex proved fruitless and the Federal Bureau of Investigation was called in for assistance. The first immediate suspect was Sandra's father, Daniel Cantu. It was during this time that Daniel and Maria were going through divorce, proceedings and the police thought that the idea of Daniel taking Sandra made the most sense in relation to her disappearance. However, Maria didn't think that this was something Daniel was capable of at all. And sure enough, Daniel was cleared as a suspect after providing an alibi that confirmed that he wasn't anywhere near Tracy, California, during the time of Sandra's disappearance. Police realized the urgency of the situation, and by the following day, they employed police dogs, equestrian teams, all-terrain vehicles, and a California Highway Patrol, helicopter to try to find Sandra as quickly as possible. The search lasted all weekend. Sadly,

she did not turn up. It was quickly announced that a combined $22,000 reward was offered for information concerning Sandra's whereabouts. The family asked police to check out a local man they had suspected could be responsible. This man was witnessed brushing Sandra's hair and then kissing her on the lips two years earlier at a community swimming pool when she was only six years old. He was brought in by the police where he readily confessed to the kiss, dismissing it as harmless affection. But after being further pressed by the police, he admitted that he had an attraction towards girls between the ages of 9 and 10. Despite this, the interview cleared him of any involvement, and he had a strong alibi during the time of Sandra's disappearance. He's still a

creep. Still very much a creep. An ice cream truck driver was interviewed who had been in the area on the afternoon that Sandra vanished. He was suspected as he hadn't been in that trailer park before and was confronted by the park manager after he was seen talking with young kids near Sandra's home. This lead, however, unfortunately went nowhere. The profile that FBI experts were pursuing in this case was a white male age between 25 and 40 and specifically looked into registered sex offenders in the area that fit this criteria. This was until Melissa Huckabee, a 28-year-old single mother and Sunday school teacher, entered the scene. Melissa also lived in the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park with her grandparents and her daughter, who was a friend of Sandra's.

Huckabee taught Sunday school at the nearby Clover Road Baptist Church, where her grandfather was a pastor. On the day that Kantu disappeared, Huckabee sent a text to Sandra's mother, Maria Chavez, that said, and I quote, tell the police that I had something stolen today around 4 p.m. I don't know if that makes a difference or not, end quote. The following day during Sandra's candlelight vigil, A hysterical Huckabee approached police and FBI agents to report she had found a note on the ground. It was reported she was, quote, very agitated, crying, hyperventilating, end quote. The note read, Kansu locked in a stolen suitcase, thrown in water arm, Barchetti Road and Whitehall Road, witness. It should be known that the note contained egregious misspellings, and it appeared that the author was trying to disguise their handwriting.

Huckabee had a history of mental health disorders, including major depression, borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, and schizophrenia, and took medication for these conditions. Keep in mind, Melissa Huckabee was never a prime suspect. She was interviewed on multiple occasions, but her behavior was assumed to be attention-seeking rather than evidence of involvement. So, do you know of anyone that always needs to make themselves the center of attention anytime somebody dies? Even if they have no connection to them, this exactly is what police were regarded. that Melissa Huckabee was doing. A search of Huckabee's home led police to find a notepad hidden under a dresser with the words, quote,

cute but psycho, written on the cover. Inside the notebook it was discovered a page had been obviously torn out, and inside the notebook there were indentation marks that matched up with the words written on the note she had found. It was clear to police that Huckabee had written this note, but due to her past history of attention-seeking behavior, they believe that this was a hoax purely invented to try to make things about her. The note Huckabee wrote pointed to an irrigation pond that was used by a local dairy farm. This basically was wastewater and was very thick and heavy, very poor visibility.

Searching there was definitely going to take time, and the police weren't exactly sure if this was worth the resources because this was likely a lie that Huckabee had made up to bring attention to herself. In their mind, there was absolutely no reason. reason that Huckabee would have taken Sandra Cantu. She didn't even come close to fitting their profile. Regardless, Huckabee inserted herself into the investigation was brought in for another interview, where she immediately gave two suspects for the police to look into. Among these were a father-son duo who she claimed had pictures of young girls on their phones, including Sandra,

as well as another man who was past convicted of drugging a child multiple times. How the latter was still out in the public given it was multiple times as beyond me, but these men were looked into. After having their phones confiscated, the father and son duo did actually have pictures of young girls. They weren't technically illegal, but they were definitely inappropriate. One of these pictures included Sandra, whom they had sitting on their lap smiling. All of these men were giving polygraphs, and all of them failed their polygraphs. The problem was that all these men had alibis, and a polygraph isn't admissible as evidence in the state of California unless both parties agree to admit it as evidence.

Police thought all of these people could potentially be linked in some sort of crime ring. But how would Melissa Huckabee have known about the pictures on their phones? Police thought that maybe she was involved in some way in this, but it wasn't clear. Regarding Melissa Huckabee's prior criminal record, I've seen one source who's a really big YouTuber, claim Huckabee has a lengthy criminal record. But I couldn't find any evidence of this. She was, however, a person of interest in two 2007 arsons in La Palma, California, which is roughly 350 miles from Tracy.

Police were puzzled by this discovery until they ended up getting a call they were hoping not to receive. So around 10 a.m. on Monday, April 6, 11 days into the search for Sandra Cantu, a farm worker named Jose Luis Franco, discovered a suitcase in the irrigation pond we mentioned earlier. which had been reinforced with a length of cord. It was just two miles away from Sandra's house at the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park. Farm workers told police it was not there when they drained the pond two weeks ago. Police say they searched the same area twice before,

but the suitcase was submerged at the time. The suitcase was taken from the water and transported to the San Joaquin County morgue where it was then opened. Inside of the suitcase was the body of Sandra Cantu curled into a fetal position, still wearing the pink Hello Kitty T-shirt that she was last seen in. After Sandra's body was located in the suitcase Huckabee had reported stolen, investigators began taking a closer look at Huckabee's behavior.

They took notice of, quote, the unusual fact that a woman who reported losing a suitcase should be the one woman out of everyone in this complex who should happen to find a note that reports the stolen suitcase was used to hide the child's body. end quote. Me personally would like to mention that the note specified that the suitcase was stolen. You think if somebody was going to leave a note, they would just say suitcase, not stolen suitcase. She's not very bright. No, she is not. Absolutely not. I mean, we might be foreshadowing here a little bit. Yeah. The police received another tip when a retired U.S. Marine and his wife notified authorities that they had spotted Huckabee and her SUV at the irrigation ponds on their property at Bacchetti. Road and Whitehall Road between 5.30 p.m. and 6 p.m. on March 27th. The witness described her as distracted and hurried, and she told him, I just had to pee really quick when they saw her. Police continued to review the footage from the surveillance camera installed outside Sandra's home, which showed her walking in the direction of Huckabee's residence at 3.54 p.m. in March 27th.

It's been noted that Sandra seems distracted from her path looking in the direction of Huckabee's house. The camera had captured Huckabee's SUV driving in the opposite direction eight minutes later. At approximately the same time, Huckabee called the trailer park manager to report that a suitcase made by the manufacturer Eddie Bauer had been stolen from her trailer. 85 minutes later, a surveillance camera located outside the parking lot of the church at which Huckabee taught Sunday school captured her driving away from it. 30 minutes after that, she was captured returning to the church. It was during this 30-minute time frame that she was spotted at the irrigation pond.

Police obviously wanted to talk to Melissa Huckabee again, but she wasn't at her home. They found that she was currently in a mental hospital after attempting suicide by swallowing razor blades. I believe it was three of them. Yeah. The hospital wouldn't let the police talk to her in her current condition, and the police weren't convinced they had enough evidence to get a jury to convict Huckabee since she did not fit the typical profile of someone who would kill a child and had no. parent motive. On top of that, she was a Sunday school teacher and the granddaughter of a well-respected pastor in the community. What they needed was some sort of confession. And with Huckabee, unavailable for questioning, police took the opportunity to bug her house phone. They decided to watch Huckabee over a period of couple days and hoped she would make some sort of incriminating phone call. But the phone call they heard her make sent them on red alert.

The very next day after Melissa Huckabee got out of the hospital, she made a phone call to Sandra Cantu's mother, Maria Chavez, asking if she's Sandra's older sister, Miranda, wanted to come over for a play date. Police feared the worst and rushed over to Huckabee's trailer, hoping to stop a murder in progress. Detective Tim Bower of the Tracy Police drove as fast as he could to the home, shut his lights off upon entering the trailer park, and calmly knocked on the door, hoping not to alert Huckabee that the police were onto her. Detective Bauer was relieved to only find Melissa there with her daughter and not Miranda. Flustered from expecting the worst and not wanting to blow the cover of the wiretap, Detective Bauer said he was there to request Huckabee to come to the station to make a formal statement, to which she agreed. Huckabee initially maintained her innocence, but when Detective Bauer told her that they had an eyewitness testimony, that she was seen at the irrigation pond on March 27th, she completely broke down crying.

She told investigators she was trying to play hide-and-seek with Sandra and suggested she get into the suitcase and jump out to scare Huckabee's daughter and Sandra's sister. Huckabee said Sandra agreed, so she zipped up the suitcase but then forgot that Sandra was. inside it. She said when she got to the church and remembered what she had done, she unzipped the suitcase and found Sandra to be lifeless. Huckabee alleged she tried to do CPR, and she also took out a small towel, wet it, and placed it on her forehead to cool her off. Huckabee said she freaked out and didn't know what to do, so she decided to dump the suitcase in the irrigation pond. According to the pathologist's report, Sandra suffered a cut to her lip, an abrasion to her elbow and injuries to her genitals.

Toxicology tests found the drug El Prasalam, commonly known as Xanax in Cantu's body. Bottles of Xanax were found in Huckabee's home and in her purse. A piece of torn cloth was found tied around Sandra's head. It was swelled with blood and nodded into a noose. The pathologist in charge of the case listed Sandra's cause of death as homicidal asphyxiation. FBI agents searched the church and collected a rolling pin from the kitchen, which reportedly had a bloody smudge on it, as well as a bent handle. The rolling pin tested positive for Sandra's DNA and is believed to be the implement that caused the injuries to Sandra's genitals. They also discovered

one of the blinds was missing part of its draw cord, which an FBI expert determined to be consistent with the cord used to tie the suitcase shut. On April 10, 2009, Huckabee was arrested in charge with the murder of Sandra Cantu. Around this time, it came to light that she also allegedly tried to poison a 7-year-old girl and a 37-year-old man. The girl recovered, and I swear this is exactly what ABC News reported, the authorities did not know what happened to the man. I tried to find information about this man, and I could not find anything. I don't know how authorities could have known she poisoned a man, but not known what happened to him. But this is the information given, and apparently that was enough for a national media outlet to post. Wow. So in exchange for her guilty plea to murder

with a special circumstance, prosecutors dropped the drugging charges and agreed not to seek the death penalty. Huckabee was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. At her sentencing, Huckabee said, I still cannot understand why I did what I did. This is a question I will struggle with

for the rest of my life. The prosecutor in the case speculated that she killed Kantu for attention, but to this day, Huckabee's true motive isn't exactly clear. I've heard some people say this is a case of Munchausen's by proxy. It's not something that I'm familiar with Munchausen by proxy. Generally, it's when you say another party is sick or feeble in order to gain attention for yourself.

And in this case, killing somebody so that way she can be the center of attention. I really feel, and I know you're not supposed to put your personal opinion in it, but I'm going to do it anyway, that I mean, some people listen to us because of our personal opinions. I feel like she orchestrated this whole thing so that she could be the person that found the note and found the body and then was the hero. Yeah, be the savior. You know, the reason why Sandra was found, I feel, and this being solved. I mean, it might have gotten solved eventually, but in the speed of which it did, yes, some credit has to be given to the police and FBI, but I really think it sped up the process with Melissa incriminating herself as much she did. Oh, absolutely. She wasn't even

on their radar. Given where she threw the suitcase, I, know Sandra would have been discovered eventually, but I'm not sure if Melissa Huckabee would have ever been arrested and charged because she just didn't fit the description they were looking for. She really helped police because they had a wildly different idea in mind of who killed Sandra. And, you know, if you want to go down a rabbit hole, I almost wonder if they just would have pinned it to some random offender who had previously been arrested on child charges and just, you know, shut the book. I think you're probably right on that. And part of me thinks that she started giving that information as well just because it was going so far away from her and she wasn't the center of attention. Yeah, like, hey, this is supposed to be about me. What are you doing? If she didn't have this intention seeking behavior and actually, some people will think this is awful to say, but I'm just saying just how much she was able to lead police to arresting her. If she was somebody that knew to dump Sandra farther away, God, she very well could have gotten away with that. this, I feel, I think there's a strong possibility in another timeline that she could have gotten

away with this, because police did not even suspect her at all. Even when she was inserting herself, police didn't really suspect her. It just took multiple times of her being so sketchy that they're like, okay, all right, what's going on with this woman? And to this day, they still couldn't attribute a motive to her. I mean, eventually, I think maybe, maybe. She could have gotten caught because she started talking to that Marine at the irrigation pond. It was like, oops, I had a pee. Yeah, possibly. Yeah, for sure. It's quite possible. And what also helped out was the fact that they had so much surveillance footage. Right. This is the usefulness of surveillance footage. You know, they had it at the church. They had it in front of Sandra's house. And you can fill in so many gaps just by running the surveillance

footage together. And it was really easy to pinpoint exactly where Melissa Huckabee was. So that was obviously very useful. But at the end of the day, whether they would have caught her or not, whether they would have gone down some rabbit hole of offenders before exhausting that. Either way, this is an incredibly, incredibly sad and senseless case, just targeting Sandra just for no apparent reason, really. And here's this girl that was taken before the prime of her life. It's just, it's terrible. It's just so sad because the last footage of her is the footage that her grandfather had captured on the surveillance camera in front of their home. And she seems so happy she's skipping.

Yeah. I'm going to include it somewhere in the YouTube video for folks to see, but it's just so sad. She's so tiny. It is. She looks very, very tiny. And I mean, according to people that lived in the trailer park, this is exactly who she was.

She used to run from trailer to trailer knocking on doors to get kids to come out and play with her. Everyone knew who she was and appreciated just this big ball of positive energy that she was. It's always sad when this happens to a child, but it's incredibly sad, especially in this case, in my opinion. I agree. All right. Well, if you're listening on YouTube and you appreciate this, if you could like and subscribe, this is the best way to help our channel grow and ensures that we keep bringing you cases like this every week.

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