Sandra Cantu

Daniel Cantu

But if one had been paying attention, Huckaby wasn't so squeaky clean. In January, she had been convicted of petty theft in Los Angeles County and pleaded no contest to another petty charge in San Joaquin County Superior Court for shoplifting at a Target.

Her sentence included three years probation and she was ordered to attend a county mental health program. She also had a history of dating troubled men; her father said that she had a history of depression and had been having trouble with her divorce. Still, murder? Rape? Of a child?

Prior to her arrest, she had voluntarily called the Tracy Press and offered strange information. She told a reporter that she indeed owned the rolling suitcase in which the body was found, but explained it had been stolen from her house on the day Sandra went missing. She said she had reported the suitcase being stolen. She inserted herself further into the investigation by trying to deflect attention away from her grandfather, the pastor, with whom she lived. "It's not my granddad's. It's mine, and someone took it," she said.

And the more she talked, the odder she seemed. Inconsistencies in her story began to trouble police when they questioned her. After she revealed enough information to give them probable cause, they arrested her.