Melissa Huckaby Charged in Sandra Cantu Death

Melissa Huckaby, 28, of Tracy, Ca., a Sunday school teacher and mother of a 5-year-old girl has been charged with murder. She is accused of the gruesome killing of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu, her daughter's playmate. She made her first appearance in San Joaquin County court where the charges against her were made public.

Melissa Huckaby is charged with one count of murder with the special circumstances of rape with a foreign object, lewd or lascivious conduct with a child under 14 and murder in the course of a kidnapping. She could be eligible for the death penalty or life in prison if convicted.

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It all began when Sandra Cantu was reported missing from her home on March 27, 2009. She was last seen heading to Huckaby's house to play with Huckaby's 5-year-old daughter, just 5 houses down the road. When she did not return home, a massive search party was organized with volunteers searching through a landfill, rivers, homes and fields all over the Tracy area where Sandra lived.

Posters of the little girl were widely distributed throughout northern California and a reward of $26,000 was offered for information leading to Sandra's whereabouts. Many people were questioned by the police including Sandra's father who lives in Mexico and a 60-year-old man who admitted he kissed Sandra on the lips two years ago.

The search for Sandra Cantu came to a tragic end on April 6, when a suitcase was found by farm workers who were draining a pond to water a field at a dairy farm about two miles away from her home. Inside the suitcase police discovered the remains of the 8-year-old little girl.

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Further investigations led the police to zero in on Melissa Huckaby. She was booked on suspicion of murder and kidnapping early Saturday morning, April 11, 2009, after a five-hour interview with Tracy police, during which she wept and indicated that she deliberately killed Sandra Cantu on March 27. Police offered no motive for the murder.

"Finding out, one, that it's a woman, and that it was a member of the community was one blow," said Tracy police Sgt. Tony Sheneman, referring to the suspect. "But then finding out it was someone the family knew was a double blow. This case has been hard on everyone. The fact that there's been an arrest will never reverse what happened. There is no joy in this."

Melissa Huckaby lives in a mobile home with her 5-year-old daughter and grandparents, Lane and Connie Lawless. Investigators spent several days searching that home and the nearby Clover Road Baptist Church where Lane Lawless, 77, is a pastor.

Huckaby had been in trouble with the law before. She pleaded no contest in January to a burglary charge in San Joaquin County and has a 2006 theft conviction in Los Angeles County.

What is so shocking about this case is that women are rarely sexual predators - only about 5 percent to 15 percent, according to experts - and when they do molest children, they are more often accomplices.

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Is Ninio The Elephant Gay

Officials at the zoo in Poznan, western Poland, claim to have built the largest elephant house in Europe at a cost of 37 million zlotys ($11 million). However one of the residents, Ninio - a 10-year-old male African Bush elephant - has caught the eye of  Michal Grzes. He thinks Ninio is gay.

Michal Grzes, a counselor from Poznan, is a member of the Law and Justice Party. Two of the party’s most high-profile members, the identical twin brothers Jaroslaw and Lech Kaczynski, have been outspoken in their homophobic views. Lech is the current president of Poland.

'We didn't pay 37 million zlotys for the largest elephant house in Europe to have a gay elephant live there. We were supposed to have a herd, but as Ninio prefers male friends over females how will he produce offspring?'

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This is not Ninio's first time at the Poznan zoo. He has been making the rounds. Nino was sent to Warsaw Zoo, where he lived for three years, until his aggressive behavior led to his transfer to a zoo in Budapest before he once again returned to Poznan.

He seems to have a problem with female elephants displaying very aggressive behavior towards them. He hits them and even pushes them into pools. However his attitude to male elephants is described as "affectionate."

"He only liked his buddies and hit the cows with his trunk, and was very disrespectful on the whole," Michal Grzes said.

Grzes said that if Nino does not alter his behavior and breed, he will become "dead weight" for the zoo. He is currently being kept separate from the other animals.

Not everyone shares Grzes' opinion. Male elephants do engage in same-sex bonding and mounting. Such encounters are often associated with affectionate interactions, such as kissing and trunk intertwining.

Male elephants, who live apart from the general flock, often form 'companionships', consisting of an older individual and one or sometimes two younger, attendant males with sexual behavior being an important part of the social dynamic.

According to the head of the Poznan zoo Ninio may be too young to decide whether he prefers males or females as elephants only reach sexual maturity at 14. He is still young and will soon be introduced to a female from the Netherlands to try and tempt him into breeding.

All this fuss over Ninio has had one good side effect for the zoo - visitors are now said to be flocking to the zoo the catch a glimpse of Ninio, Polish media reported.

Colorado DMV rejects ILVTOFU Plate

Thanks to the Huffingtonpost.com for this little gem. Kelly Coffman-Lee is a vegetarian and loves her tofu. So she thought it would be a great idea to have her license plate reflect this. She applied to the Colorado Department of Motor Vehicles to have a personalized license plate with the letters ILVTOFU inscribed.

To her surprise the DMV rejected her application because they felt that the combination of letters could be considered profane. Spokesman Mark Couch in explaining department policy put it this way:

"We don't allow 'FU' because some people could read that as street language for sex."

Officials meet periodically to ensure state plates stay free of letters that abbreviate gang slang, drug terms or obscene phrases.

Personally, I didn't get it right away but after being coached to think about it "their way" - I finally got it! Maybe this video clip will help you get it also (if you haven't already!!)

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Jiverly Wong - The Letter

A letter and personal information about Jiverly Wong was delivered to a TV station. The letter starts with: "I am Jiverly Wong Shooting the people" and ends with "Have a nice day". But did Jiverly Wong really write the letter? See the NBC TV report below:

Read the  rambling letter that Jiverly Wong wrote here: wongletter1

Kids Murdered and Dad Commits Suicide

James Harrison, 34, of Graham Wash. was found dead from an apparent rifle-shot to the head in his car, with the engine still running. His five children were also found dead - four of them in their bedrooms and one in a bathroom - from gunshot wounds. Neighbors identified the children as Maxine, 16; Samantha, 14 or 15; Jamie, 11; Heather, 8; and James, 7. The police are calling it a murder, suicide.

"This was not a tragedy. It was a rotten murder," said Pierce County Sheriff Paul Pastor. "This appears to be the terrible work of the biological father. If that doesn't break your heart, I don't know what does."

Police were called to the mobile home of James Harrison on Saturday, April 4, after a visiting relative found nobody answered the door and saw a child's body through a window.

Angela Harrison, Mr. Harrison’s wife, was not in the home at the time of the shootings. She had told her husband the day before that she was leaving him and she had left the house. Harrison and one of his daughters, Maxine, were able to track her to a convenience store in Auburn. Angela Harrison was there with the other man.

Both her husband and daughter confronted Angela and they began to quarrel. Angela refused to return to her family, saying that the man with her was her new boyfriend. James Harrison and his daughter returned home.

According to Detective Ed Troyer of the Sheriff’s Department, Mr. Harrison shot his children early Saturday. He then drove to an area near the convenience store in Auburn, where he shot himself. Sheriff Paul Pastor said late Saturday that the shooting was the worst in the history of Pierce County.

Ms. Harrison worked at a smoke shop and Mr. Harrison at the Emerald Queen Casino in Tacoma, possibly as a security guard. Neighbors said that the Harrison's largely kept to themselves but argued frequently and loudly, and that Mr. Harrison could be heard threatening his children.

Carolyn Bader, who said she lived a few houses down from the Harrison's until January 2008, said she and her husband, Raymond, called the police and state child protection officials more than once because they were worried that the children were being abused.

“We’d be in our home with the doors and windows shut,” Ms. Bader said, “and they would be inside their house and we could hear him yelling at the kids. It was out of control,” she added. “We would hear kids screaming in the house. I don’t mean playing screaming. I mean screaming.”

A neighbor, Ryan Peden, 16, said he had exchanged text messages with Maxine Harrison up until about 11 p.m. Friday. In the last text message he received from Maxine, Ryan said, “Maxine told me, ‘I’m tired of crying. I’m going to bed. I’ll talk to you in the morning.’ ”

Ryan said he knew Maxine from talking with her at a school bus stop. He said they were not particularly close but had been in contact more frequently recently. He said that she was a good student but that neither she nor the other children appeared to have been involved with many activities beyond school.

Another neighbor, Trisha Lund, said that her son, Robert, 8, sometimes played with James and that the two were in the same second-grade class this year at Orting Primary School. The boys also shared a regular session with a speech therapist at school. Ms. Lund said she and her parents had struggled to explain the shooting to Robert.

“I asked him how he felt about it,” Ms. Lund said. “He said, ‘I’m mad at his dad.’ ”

Both the State Children’s Administration and the police were investigating charges of child abuse against James Harrison. Spokeswoman, Sherry Hill, said Sunday that Mr. Harrison had been found to have physically abused one of the children in February 2007. She said it was not yet clear who had called the agency to the house or whether the state had taken action against Mr. Harrison, but none of the children were removed from the home.

This latest episode in Washington State caps off a week of extraordinary violence with gunmen committing mass murders in New York, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and California.