Sandra Cantu: Closure, But Many Unanswered Questions

by Stacy Dittrich

Sandra Cantu (left) died a horrific, slow, agonizing death, according to San Joaquin County Coroner Dr. Bennet Omalu. Melissa Huckaby’s shocking guilty plea on May 10th, and her sentencing on June 14th, finally ended the battle over a gag order that had been in place for more than a year. I felt somewhat relieved; I could resume writing my book on the case, tentatively titled Searching for Sandra. Actually, I've been on a brief hiatus from Women in Crime Ink, working furiously on this book. Immediately after Huckaby’s sentencing, the excruciating details of Sandra Cantu's death, which would nauseate any human being with a soul, were revealed in the almost 2,000-page grand jury transcripts.

On March 27, 2009, Sandra Cantu, eight years old, was last seen on surveillance video, skipping toward her home in Tracy, California. For the next 10 days, an exhaustive search ensued; national media captured every minute of it. On April 6, 2009, Sandra's body was found inside an Eddie Bauer suitcase in an irrigation pond just two miles from her home. On April 10, 2009, police arrested Santu's 28-year-old neighbor, Melissa Huckaby. Huckaby, a Sunday school teacher, was charged with murder, kidnapping, and sexual assault with a foreign object. News analysts worldwide were mystified. Huckaby was a statistical anomaly.

Much of the argument in favor of the gag order was essentially that the gruesome details of the crime are unnecessary for public consumption. I agree with that—to an extent--and I'll refrain from writing about them here. However, I warn you, there are many aspects of this case that raised my eyebrows more than once, and some of it needs to be discussed. Therefore, continue reading at your own discretion, with warning of some graphic content.

I am simply going to break it down into key points and let you, the readers, formulate your own conclusions. I expect to take a significant amount of criticism for my points, but I'm writing what was factual testimony. Period. Let me stress, no matter how families conduct themselves, there is no parent on this earth who should have to endure the emotional trauma of losing a child. What I touch on below is sure to be controversial, but it needs to be addressed:

*Melissa Huckaby asked Sandra’s sister, 11-year-old Miranda, to babysit Huckaby's five-year-old daughter Madison while Huckaby took some items to the Clover Road Baptist Church. So Miranda actually stood by and unknowingly watched Huckaby load the suitcase containing Sandra into her SUV.

*On the night of Sandra’s disappearance, as police were searching, Huckaby sent Maria Chavez (Sandra's mother) a text message, asking her to tell police that Huckaby's suitcase had been stolen. Huckaby had already reported this to the park manager as she drove away from her trailer with Sandra. Maria Chavez had never received a text from Huckaby before and found it odd.

*The day after Sandra’s disappearance, Huckaby handed investigators a note that read: “Cantu locked in stolin (sic) suitcase. Thrown in water on Whitehall and Bachchetti. (signed) Witness.”

*Twenty-four hours after Sandra’s disappearance, Huckaby sent Maria another text, asking if Miranda could spend the night with her. Maria allowed this. During her testimony, Maria testified that Miranda had stayed at Huckaby’s trailer before, so she didn’t find the offer unusual. But when Miranda testified, she said she had never once spent the night at Huckaby’s, and found the request odd. Miranda testified that Huckaby asked if the police had any “evidence or leads.” Huckaby (right) left that night and was not seen until the next afternoon; she claimed she had stomach pains and went to the hospital. It would clearly appear that Maria gave false testimony during grand jury testimony. Why?

*During the autopsy, Dr. Bennet Omalu said that it was likely that Sandra Cantu may have endured prior sexual abuse (Grand Jury Testimony_Page 363.) Family members claimed they were unaware of this.

*Sandra had been suffocated, strangled and sexually assaulted with a rolling pin. One end of the rolling pin held Sandra’s DNA, the other end mixed. Just assume Huckaby didn’t hold the rolling pin in her hands while she was holding Sandra down—that’s my opinion. (I added this so that if you haven’t by now, you can clearly see Huckaby as the sick and evil entity that she is.) Sandra had bruising on her back, indicative of being hit in the back—or held down.

*Dr. Omalu also testified that two puncture wounds on the left side of her head could have either been due to blunt force (her head hitting something) or, possibly, a kitchen fork police found. He couldn’t confirm this. Needless to say, one true fact he could confirm was that Sandra was alive when all these injuries occurred. We can only hope that the generic Valium (a benzodiazepine) in her system, or the rubbing alcohol that had been placed over her mouth, rendered her semi-conscious while she was enduring this horror. Mercifully, Sandra Cantu was not conscious, and most likely not alive, when she was placed in the water.

Now, on to the police investigation…

On January 17, 2009, a mother reported that Huckaby had taken her seven-year old without permission. After the child began acting “drunk,” she was taken to the hospital, where toxicology testing found a benzodiazepine (anti-anxiety medication) in her system.

According to San Joaquin County Prosecutor Tom Testa, “…mother is really upset and wants something done. But the police don't do anything because the mother is into drugs and she's from the wrong side of the tracks and Melissa speaks really well, Sunday school teacher, so on, so forth. And the officer, the detective who was investigating it, decides not to do anything about it, which still burns up the mother to this day. She is still upset that they didn't do anything about it. Well, the detective said, 'Well, we can't prove it,' so it never went anywhere, no one was ever arrested. The mother just made sure her daughter never hung out with Melissa again or Melissa's children."

On March 2, 2009, Huckaby provides her ex-boyfriend, Daniel Plowman, with “vitamin water.” He is conscious of the fact that it tastes like aspirin. Known to all as a non-drinker and non-drug user, the next thing Plowman recalls is waking up in jail for DUI after passing out at a fast food drive-through. All he can utter is, “I was with Melissa Huckaby.” He tested positive for benzodiazepines. Same as the case in January, same as Sandra Cantu.

On March 27, 2009, Sandra Cantu disappears. Huckaby sends Maria Chavez a text about the missing suitcase. Surveillance shows Sandra headed towards the trailer of Huckaby, who has been accused twice in police reports of drugging people—including a child--within the last three months.

The next day, Huckaby hands officials a “note” she claimed she found (on a very, very windy day) that said Sandra Cantu was in a suitcase in a pond off Bachetti and Whitehall Roads. Investigators looked at the pond, but dive teams never searched it. Media rumors said police wrote her off as “an attention seeker.”

I am going to stop here, because it gets much worse. Needless to say, Huckaby’s criminal record and activities were blatantly thrown into investigators' faces from Day One. Though investigators deny it, they never looked at her. They claim they began considering her as a suspect when she "found" the note. Documents prove their claim, but still, they made no arrest until the day a local reporter posted an online article about an interview with Huckaby. The article said that during the interview, Huckaby admitted the suitcase containing Sandra's body was hers. Power of the press -- or coincidence?

I interviewed this reporter, former Tracy Press journalist Jennifer Wadsworth—for hours, and she offered her take:

Jennifer spoke with Melissa Huckaby for upwards of an hour, then quickly wrote an article about the conversation and posted it online. It was breaking news, and other media outlets had the story within hours. Tracy police held twice-daily news conferences, morning and afternoon. On the afternoon of April 10, investigators had wrapped up their search warrants and cleared the area. As Jennifer arrived at the mobile home park for the 3 p.m. press conference, crime-scene trucks and law enforcement personnel came rushing back into the park and to the church, putting crime-scene tape back up and blocking off the area.

Jennifer’s article had only been online for two hours. This led her to believe police saw it and realized they’d erred. Until then, rumor was that investigators were looking into Huckaby’s grandfather, Lane Lawless. No one had mentioned Huckaby’s name until Wadsworth’s article appeared. Law enforcement had, in fact, focused on Huckaby for days. It could be that her admission that she owned the suitcase was the break they'd been waiting for.

There is a spectrum of reasons police might commit such an oversight. I will stop short of shouting out any wrongdoings. Why? I have spoken to them, and they put their heart and souls into this case. Not to mention the Tracy Police Department is rather large. It wouldn’t be uncommon for lines of communication to cross. I stand firm in my opinion that Huckaby should have been criminally charged in the January case, but hindsight is 20/20. Monday morning quarter-backing will do absolutely no good. The men and women in this department took this case home every night—and it ate them whole. They are parents too.

As for Maria Chavez’s testimony, she was probably scared—understandably. Seated before a table of strangers, a prosecutor, and others can be intimidating. She let her other daughter spend the night at the home of the woman responsible for her youngest daughter’s murder. She couldn’t have possibly known, and most likely was embarrassed by her decision. Her inconsistencies should be ignored. I have spoken to the Chavez family (and those close to them), and can assure you, their lives will never be the same. They aren’t doing well at all. I implore you to keep this family in your prayers.

I planted the earlier question in your minds only so I could give you a solution. I am confident other news media will raise these questions, if only to create controversy. I wanted to beat them to the punch and offer the answers most so desperately seek. The only person to blame here is the modern-day daughter of Satan himself—Melissa Huckaby. I can only hope that her time in prison is as horrific as the final moments of Sandra Cantu’s life. Based on my law enforcement experience, I don’t think she will last that long…

But I could be wrong. The murdering mother of two, Susan Smith, happily married her cell mate and is reportedly enjoying her incarceration. I just don’t see the same for Huckaby; she’s weak and unstable. If you think I was contradictory in adding some of the content in this post, believe me, this was light compared to what is actually in the transcripts.

There’s so much in the case of Sandra Cantu it will make your head spin. I couldn’t possibly include it in a blog, but I also have decided not to include graphic, irrelevant details in my book. I want Sandra’s life to be remembered with dignity, and those of the community of Tracy, California, who searched so tirelessly for her. Yes, many, many, questions remain, and I am seeking the answers. Searching for Sandra is currently slated for an early 2011 debut.

I acknowledge one thing: We may never get the answers in this case, especially to the question of why? Regardless, the citizens of San Joaquin County can rest easy now, knowing another monster is off their streets.

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Some Just Aren’t Wired Right: The Summer of Statistical Anomalies

by Stacy Dittrich

After the horrific case involving the brutal abduction, murder, and sexual assault of eight-year-old Sandra Cantu in which a local Sunday school teacher, Melissa Huckaby, 28 (pictured left), is charged, most of us came out screaming, “That’s a statistical anomaly!" It very rarely happens. To find that a woman who looks like a typical PTA mom is allegedly a rapist and child murderer makes even those of us with steel stomachs shudder. When it came to the Cantu case, I was as guilty as everyone else who assumed the murderer would be a male.

Shockingly, it was my own 13-year-old daughter who set me straight. While watching coverage of the Cantu case back in March, my daughter entered the room and paused. “Did they catch who killed that little girl yet?” she asked, quietly. “No,” I answered, “but they’ll get him soon, no doubt.” My daughter gave me a funny look and said in her young and authoritative voice, “How do you know it’s a him, Mom? It could be a woman who did that!” I simply raised my eyebrow at her and calmly explained, “That’s ridiculous. Of course it’s a man who did it! Women don’t sexually assault little girls, and rarely anyone, for crying out loud.” Getting in her last word, as teenagers like to do, she left the room, muttering under her breath, “I think you’re wrong…”

Imagine the "I told you so's" reverberating through my home when Huckaby’s arrest was announced. It was one of those moments where I paced back and forth, scratching my head and wondering how the hell I missed it while my teenager got it right. Ironically, the case stayed in the back of my mind; I didn't know I would be approached to write the book on Cantu's murder. I couldn’t have imagined, as my daughter and I had our exchange, that I would be flying to San Francisco at the end of September to face the “Statistical Anomaly,” i.e. the aforementioned Melissa Huckaby — to watch her in court and conduct research for the book. Because the case sent such a poignant and stark reminder to parents to be careful of everyone, not just strangers, I agreed to do it.

When Jaycee Lee Dugard walked into a Concord, CA., police department on August 26 accompanied by her two daughters, she also became one of the dreaded “statistical anomalies.” The chances of a child falling victim to a stranger abduction and surviving, then being found 18 years later after bearing her abductors children, are minuscule. Jaycee Dugard shattered the experts' predictions on such cases. God help us if she talks to investigators and leads them to other crimes, perhaps even murders, her captor, Philip Garrido, (pictured right) may have committed over the past 18 years.

Oh, but it’s not over yet. I came across this headline last week: “Michigan Mom Found Long-Lost Son Online, Raped Him.” I figured there had to be more to it so I pulled up the article. There was more to it alright—a nauseating and disturbing account of an attractive Michigan woman, Aimee Louis Sword, 35, (pictured left) of Waterford Township near Detroit who had given her son up for adoption over 10 years ago. For unknown reasons she decided to track him down online. She found him and made arrangements to meet. Prosecutors on the case maintain the meeting consisted of Sword seducing, and raping her teenage son.

I simply don’t know what to say.

Detroit Sinai Grace Hospital Dr. Gerald Shiener had a similar reaction: “I’m at a loss for words because it’s something we consider to be so out of the normal, so prohibited in every culture that it unnerves every man just to think about it…it’s an abomination.”

Abomination? Statistical Anomaly? I have a better term: Evil — plain and simple. For me, these cases solidify the notion I’ve long held about certain people: We can blame upbringing, drugs, alcohol, years of abuse, and mental anguish but the bottom line with those who commit such crimes is that they were simply born bad.

These types of criminals weren't wired right at birth and have no acceptable place in society; they will never change, they will always be evil, and they can’t be re-wired no matter how skilled the mechanic is. Even more frightening is the fact that there are hundreds, if not thousands, out there roaming our streets and threatening our children. So, the questions society needs to answer: What do we do with them then? Where do we put them?

Obviously, I have strong opinions on these matters. What are yours?

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Criminal Profilers Don't Profile on TV

by Pat Brown

The Sandra Cantu case took a bizarre twist today with the arrest of a female suspect. A 26-year-old Sunday school teacher, Melissa Huckaby, (pictured left) has been charged with kidnapping and murder. I am more than glad there has been arrest in this case and that there will be some justice for the family of Sandra.

But, as I was reading comments posted about this morning's news story, I noticed quite a few haranguing criminal profilers and police experts who had appeared on television for theorizing the crime was committed by a male sex offender (A similar bashing occurred after some television talking heads (not me) said they thought that an angry white man was responsible for the string of shootings eventually linked to John Muhammad and Lee Malvo) This time, the posters are claiming the experts are sexist; always blaming men for violent crime and they also accuse profilers as profiling the crime incorrectly. Criminal profiling is said to be bunk, and talking heads are brainless morons.

Let me address the issue of being sexist first. Sorry, guys, but most violent offenders are men, and that is a fact. Yes, women do commit crime, and women do kill, but the majority of violent criminals are men. It is just biology-- get over it.

Now, to profiling the Cantu case wrongly.. No one on television profiled the Sandra Cantu case. Experts were asked questions about what they thought might be possible, based on publicly released information (and often this is misinformation). The experts responded with a 30-second answer--on a good day, maybe a whole minute. They addressed some probability based on what they heard five seconds ago from a reporter's update on the story. A good portion of the time, a talking head is unable to provide in-depth commentary, and so the viewing public only gets a quickly tossed out idea; a thought which can stir interest in the topic and add to the discussion, but can hardly be considered a scientifically derived, carefully analyzed explanation of the events.

The Sandra Cantu case is a perfect example of this. I did a lot of interviews this week for CNN. Not one time during the last seven days did I ever give a profile of the child's murder or a profile of the killer. How's that, you say? Didn't I hear you give an answer when the host asked you to profile the homicide or the offender? Yes, I gave an answer, but it wasn't a profile. It was commentary. A profile is something one spends hours working on, sometimes weeks, sometimes months. A profile require access to all the case files, all the crime scene and autopsy photos, all interviews and reports. One doesn't profile a case and hand over to law enforcement an analysis that isn't based on evidence and scientific methodology (well, one shouldn't anyway). The final criminal profile should have each inference explained carefully and supported by the facts. Investigative avenues are then suggested based on the conclusions the profiler has arrived at. The profile should never infer that investigators not pursue all leads-- even those not aligning with the profile. Any profiler's theory, like any detective's theory, can turn out to be wrong (which is why it is called a theory) because certain evidence was unavailable, a piece of evidence was tampered with, or because there could be two explanations for the same evidence. The profile is to be an aid, a tool, and not an absolute.

One cannot profile on television because one has such limited information, and a good portion of it often turns out to be untrue. Even when one is profiling a case for law enforcement, a new piece of information can completely change the theory of what occurred. So you can imagine how difficult it is on television to be one hundred percent correct with one's conclusions.

Here is what I said about the Sandra Cantu case:

The killer lived in the trailer park. I based this conclusion on the abduction, the body dump site, and the suitcase. Sandra was unlikely to have left the park on her own, so her killer had reason to be there. The body was dumped just down the road, meaning the panicked killer wanted to get rid of her body quickly, but didn't want to go to take too long to do it. The killer also wanted to be comfortable dumping the body in a familiar area. The killer did not abduct Sandra using his car because if she had been killed in the car or at some outside location, the killer wouldn't have needed a suitcase to transport her; he would have just opened the door and pushed her out.

The accused killer of Sandra did live in the park. Melissa Huckaby was living in a trailer with her grandparents, the pastor of a local church and his wife. Her daughter also lived in the trailer home and often played with Sandra. Sandra was not pulled into any car, but visited the Huckaby home. Melissa Huckaby was the last person to see her and told the police that Sandra had stopped by to ask to play with her daughter, but she had told Sandra her daughter had some chores to do and she couldn't play right then.

Next, I said the killer likely killed Sandra within an hour of her going missing. I based my statement on two points. The first one is a general truism: when a child is abducted by a sexual predator they are almost always killed within an hour or two and sometimes within minutes. The assumption by almost everyone at that point in the news cycle was that Sandra had been abducted by a child predator because almost all little girls who go missing are killed by serial killers. The other reason I believed Sandra was dead within a short period of time was because she was fully clothed. I surmised the killer might have lost control of Sandra for some reason and tried to subdued her or lost control of his emotions and was too rough with Sandra. Sandra might have been killed without a sexual assault ever happening.

I felt the offender was not all that experienced and did not plan the crime. The offender was sloppy and careless and it seemed like the dumping of the body was out of panic and not particularly well thought out. It seems Ms. Huckaby possibly went off on Sandra for some unknown reason at her home, killed her, and then hurriedly got rid of her body.

The last answer I gave on Friday night was concerning the suitcase Huckaby claims she had left outside in the driveway and which was stolen. During the interview I was led to believe that a report had been made to the police concerning the suitcase theft on the day Sandra went missing. This bit of misinformation prevented me from considering Huckaby as a suspect. If Huckaby had used the suitcase to dump Sandra's body, she would NOT have reported it missing to the police. She did not expect the suitcase to be found, and she would not want to draw attention to her home. Until she thought the suitcase could be linked to her, she had no need to mention it.

So, based on the "fact" the suitcase had been reported missing and was the suitcase Sandra was found in, I surmised three things. One, Sandra definitely was dead quickly on the day she went missing (because someone needed a suitcase THAT day); two, the killer did not plan the crime; and three, the killer was inexperienced and not all that bright. I said something to this effect on CNN Headlines: "He probably grabbed her, something went wrong, he killed her, and now he had a body in his house and no way to get it out without being seen. He remembers seeing a suitcase out by the Huckaby house and thinks, yeah, okay, I will grab that (and psychopaths often do things impulsively because they see something or think something will be useful to them or because they find stealing not a big deal). So he jumps in his car, snatches the suitcase, comes back, puts Sandra's body in it, and zips out of the park to get rid of her body.

Well, that probably would have been the scenario IF the story about the suitcase theft being reported had been true. The next morning, I learned that Huckaby had been arrested, and that she had not reported the suitcase missing, or even mentioned it, until after the suitcase was found and the police were ripping apart the Huckaby home. THEN she realized (if she is guilty of this crime) that she needed a good story as to why Sandra's body ended up in her suitcase, so she came up the suitcase theft story. Huckaby also gave a number of stories with conflicting information in police interviews, which no doubt made them focus on Huckaby as Sandra's killer.

So this crime turns out allegedly not to have been committed by a male nor a sex crime (that we know of). The case is an anomaly, much like the Elizabeth Smart kidnapping in Utah in 2002. The Smart case created a monster: families of missing children now believe their children will be found alive because Elizabeth Smart was. Proof that a child can be found alive after such a long time has created a huge amount of false hope and expenditure. And after she was found, television got raked over the coals for believing she was dead. An anomoly like Elizabeth may be wonderful for that particular victim and family and an anomly like the Sandra Cantu case may be fascinating and eyeopening, but we shouldn't base our law enforcement and criminal justice decisions on the extremely rare cases rather than the overwhelming number of cases to the contrary. Television commentators, while they realize anomolies exist, cannot add a disclaimer on each and every statement they make on air (considering the fact they already have such a short window of time to speak). Even a profiler doing true criminal profiling of cases using specific individual case evidence (and not just general statistics), will encounter the occasional case where all the evidence points to a male and not a female, or to a husband instead of a stranger, or to one race and not the other. And because of these anomolies, we have a court system that requires us to prove through evidence that the suspect is absolutely guilty. Even then, sometimes the anomolies slip through.

If Huckaby is convicted, Sandra Cantu will be the poster child for children getting kidnapped and murdered by women. Even if she is only one out of a thousand cases, every time a child is abducted in the future, we are going to be reminded it could be a woman "just as much" as it could be a man. No, this is not true; in almost every case in the future where a child is abducted by a unrelated adult, it will be a male. Sorry, guys. Women may drown their own children in bathtubs, dump them into ponds to run off with their boyfriends, smother baby after baby following their births, kill their patients at the hospital, and steal little babies just because they want one, but abducting little girls is just not something that is a popular female crime.

Finally, I repeat, profiling doesn't happen on television. Experts are just speculating based on the limited information thrown out, and commenting in the minuscule amount of time allotted. Comments are "for entertainment only" and are meant to educate and inspire the individual to want to learn more. Television is a sound bite world, and one should expect to get sound bite quality of information.

So why do I do television if I cannot really profile there and sometimes have to end up feeling like an idiot (and getting emails calling me such)? Because television, in spite of its flaws, is a great way to reach out to citizens. It is a wonderful tool for encouraging discussion about crime, sex offenders, safety, parenting, and, even though it is a bit risky, a way to show how criminals operate and cases are analyzed.

The Tracy PD did a fabulous job with this investigation. They got their man (oops...woman). They likely thought it was a male sex offender themselves in the beginning, but they focused on the evidence and when it led them to a different theory and a female suspect, they didn't ignore the facts. They changed their theory when new evidence came to light. They should be commended for their fine work.

Meanwhile, enjoy television for what it is: news and entertainment with a bit of education thrown in. But do not, I repeat, do not think you are being provided with true investigative and profiling analysis. Also, when you see me do my next television interview on the Sandra Cantu case, you will see me try to answer why I didn't "profile" the case correctly, and why I didn't consider the killer could be a female. I will try to explain it...in 30 seconds.

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A Community Responds the Way it Should

by Pat Brown

It might seem impossible to see any silver lining in the horrific abduction and murder of little eight-year-old Sandra Cantu, but I am actually ecstatic over one issue related to this case: family, community, and police response.

For once, we don't see a muted, shrug-shoulders, "stuff happens" reaction from anyone. I have been in this business for over a decade and I have been forever frustrated with the general acceptance of heinous crimes as passing sad events that we just have to accept. The answer is "WE DON'T!"

In 1998, biologist Christine Mirzayan was raped and murdered on a path near Georgetown University where Mirzayan was returning after a barbecue with friends. At the time, only a paragraph about her murder made the newspapers and no one at the university or the community made much of a ruckus about this crime. If you Google her name now, you will see a few articles, but only because reporters were criticizing the Chandra Levy case and her name was brought up because it was another unsolved murder of an intern. Of course, she had no family in the area and she was somewhat blamed for walking in the dark. I guess those are good reasons to ignore the fact innocent women are getting killed and a serial killer is on the loose.

Fourteen-year-old Nia Owens had a similar fate in 1996 (you won't find a picture of her on the Internet). She was strangled and left in some bushes near her school. She got two or three small stories. Perhaps the lack of concern had something to do with her being African-American and making the mistake of playing around with phone dating. But there still remained a serial killer in town.

Just a few miles down the road in Greenbelt, Maryland in 1995, seventeen-year-old Julie Ferguson (no picture around of her either), a very popular girl at the local high school, was abducted and found on the side of the road with her throat cut. She got a few more stories because she was white, local, and very pretty. Still, I don't remember citizens swarming about in protest of such a horrible crime in our community. Unsolved, a killer remained at large.

But, finally, we see the appropriate response to Sandra Cantu's murder. The community is furious. They are keeping the pressure up to find her killer. They are calling for "the monster" to be caught. Law enforcement has worked around the clock putting all the manpower they can into the investigation. They have put up roadblocks and checked cars and gotten search warrant after search warrant in an attempt to prevent Sandra's killer from getting away with his crime.

Finally, the mother of Sandra appeared on the Today Show (sitting on the right), and, for once, instead of the viewers seeing a parent struggling to stay composed and speaking calmly, a national audience got to see the depth of devastation the family experiences when their loved one is brutally murdered. Maria Chavez could get no more than a few words out as she choked up and hyperventilated. Her grief was so overwhelming that she gave the best interview I have ever seen; she couldn't put on an act, and just sat there unable to speak. I cried watching her and I am sure other viewers did as well. Ms. Chavez made people aware, even if unintentionally, of just how much damage these monsters in our society are doing.

I would like to see every community, family member, and police force go berserk when such murders are committed. I would like every jury to lose all sympathy for these son-of-bitches and give them the full punishment the law will allow (preferably the death penalty). These creatures deserve no sympathy, no breaks, no life. The killer gave Sandra Cantu, a totally innocent child, the death penalty without any trial or lawyer. He gave the family life in prison. He deserves the same response from us.

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