Tracy updates: Previous kidnapping, skeptical public

Huckaby tied to January missing girl report:

Melissa Chantel Huckaby, 28, is tied to a report that someone in January took a 7-year-old girl to a park for four hours and brought her back high on muscle relaxers.

The incident was reported on January 17 by a family in the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park. Huckaby lived in the same complex, also where 8-year-old Sandra Cantu lived before police found her dead body on April 10. Police arrested Huckaby four days later on suspicion on kidnapping, raping and killing Sandra.

The January report alleges that someone took a 45-pound blue-eyed dark-haired girl to a park. The woman and the child were gone for four hours, from about 1:30 to after 5 p.m., according to the police log. The woman who took the girl drove a purple Kia Sportage, according to the report.

Huckaby told friends she was raped:

A woman accused of kidnapping, raping and killing an 8-year-old Tracy girl told three of her friends separately that she was once raped herself.

At the time of the rape, Melissa Chantel Huckaby was 18, just out of high school and still living with her parents in La Habra, a city in Orange County, the friends said.

Public skeptical that woman killed, raped girl:

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."

Defense wants second autopsy:

On the same day that thousands mourned the loss of Sandra Cantu, the public defender of alleged murderer Melissa Huckaby asked to have the 8-year-old’s body exhumed for a second autopsy.

In a report filed yesterday from the San Joaquin County Superior Court, defense attorney Sam Behar called for a second autopsy so Huckaby can defend herself against allegations of rape. According to the report, Behar’s office hired Dr. Terri Haddix as its pathologist on Wednesday to perform the proposed autopsy.

All of my instincts are telling me there is more to this story. As I've said before, it's imperative that authorities outside the municipality and county get involved so justice can be done for Sandra and her family.

Millennium fans- tell me if you're thinking back on The Well-Worn Lock, Sacrament and Through a Glass, Darkly when you read up on this story- that is, if you can stomach it.

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