A bill by Senator Anthony Cannella, R-Ceres, was voted down in the Senate Budget Committee on Tuesday. SB 144, or the Realignment Reinvestment Act, intended to redirect some funds from the state prison system into jails and programs at the state’s 58 counties to help with the increase of inmates and probation clients. The bill died in the committee by a 5-9 vote.
San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Ron Indran’s team of Tracy High School students finished at sixth place in the state’s 32nd annual Mock Trials.
Tracy High made it to the state finals after winning the county mock trial competition in February.
Indran volunteers to help the students prepare for the events.
Sixth place is the farthest the county has ever gone at the state level, according to Indran. The state finals were held March 24 in Riverside.
After the book “Searching for Sandra” by Ohio deputy and author Stacy Dittrich was published, I spoke to San Joaquin County Deputy District Attorney Thomas Testa about the murder of 8-year-old Sandra Cantu.
Most of the interview didn’t fit into the story http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130327/A_NEWS/130329904/-1/a_special0263, which was published Wednesday.
Here’s more on it.
When Sandra was reported missing from the Orchard Estate Mobile Home Park in Tracy, it was pretty evident that there was foul play, Testa said.
Testa requested to be assigned to the case, having successfully prosecuted a number of murder trials in the past in which there was no body found, including the cases of serial killers Wesley Shermantine and Loren Herzog.
Sandra seemed to just have “disappeared from the face of the earth.”
Circumstantial evidence can be offered to prove who did it, Testa said, in what is referred to as habit evidence. In other words, looking at her habits and seeing if anything is out of the ordinary.
Nothing was missing from her room. If she had run away, she would have likely took some of her belongings.
“You put that kind of evidence together and you make a case that they’re dead,” he said.
Testa said he feels the case was properly resolved with a plea deal in which Melissa Huckaby admitted to the murder, receiving life in prison without the possibility of parole. (She did not admit to the rape, however). The family approved the deal and they were spared from reliving the case in a trial.
It’s “somewhat dissatisfying” to Testa, however, that many of the facts couldn’t be more carefully scrutinized in a trial where witnesses would have been cross examined.
“A trial answers questions because all the facts come out,” Testa said. “So there are still some nagging questions.”
Like did anyone aid Huckaby in hiding anything or in protecting her?
There’s a good chance Huckaby would have taken the stand and therefore prodded for those answers.
Nonetheless, Testa emphasized that he believes the plea deal was a “good resolution.”
About a week into the investigation and a daunting search that drew hundreds of volunteers, Sandra’s body was found stuffed inside an Eddie Bauer black suitcase in an irrigation ditch just north of the mobile home park.
There were so many people investigators were looking at, including sex offenders who lived at the mobile home park, “that they did not look at a female let alone Melissa Huckaby,” Testa said.
But that changed when Huckaby started doing suspicious things.
He believes they started suspecting her when she claimed to find a note – the note ultimately pinpointed the location where Sandra’s body was found and mentioned Huckaby’s supposed stolen Eddie Bauer suitcase – the day after Sandra disappeared. She was hyperventilating as she told them about it.
Then, when she was questioned, her demeanor changed to being calm and collected. It was strange how she could turn it off and on.
Then, the finding that Sandra’s rape by a foreign object was more grounds to suspect a woman rather than a male, Testa said.
“It was an extremely unusual fact pattern,” Testa said.
“I do from time to time think about it,” he said.
Testa’s timeline of events: DOC (1)
Lodi attorney Russell Humphrey is in the running for the Northern California Golf Association’s Player of the Year after him and golf partner Jeff Hoffman won the association’s second annual granite Bay Four-Ball Championship in Granite Bay two weekends ago.
“Hoffman and Humphrey, who won the NCGA Master Division Four-Ball Championship less than six months ago, proved why they’re a formidable team to be reckoned with, posting a 36-hole score of 135, seven-under par at the par-71 layout,” the association said on its website.
View the full report: Click here
After we published the story on Rebecca Mendoza — a woman who alleges she killed her husband Michael Bradford because he had told her he helped Loren Herzog and Wesley Shermantine in a killing spree and that he would do the same with her — people close to the husband called to defend him.
Michael Bradford’s ex-wife, Sandra Parker said she didn’t leave him because he was abusive, as Mendoza alleges.
Parker said she left him because he was doing drugs at the time.
Parker said Michael Bradford did not take part in the Herzog and Shermantine killings but that he was a friend.
She said Shermantine had beat up Michael Bradford before.
She also said that on the day Shermantine was arrested, he was with Michael Bradford fishing.
His sister Patty Bradford also denies that Michael Bradford had anything to do with the killings. She said he also was not the abuser.
On the day Mendoza shot him, Patty Bradford said “My brother was going over to give her money. ”
They got into an argument and Mendoza shot him on the back, Patty Bradford said.
Patty Bradford said Mendoza had tried to set him on fire in bed before; that she had drugged him before.
Michael Bradford woke up in the hospital incapacitated — only able to move his eyes and lips.
“We had to keep telling him what happened, because he couldn’t believe it,” she said. “He didn’t want to live anymore.”
Michael Bradford died in the hospital five months after he was shot.
“He never beat her,” Patty Bradford said. “She was more of the person doing the beating. He just wanted to make her happy.
“She is just crazy.”
For more read: http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20130227/A_NEWS/302270319/-1/A_NEWS
A criminal grand jury has returned a murder indictment for two members of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang in connection with the 2011 murder of 26-year-old Danny Martinez.
Brandon Gann, 31, and David Splan, 42, were arrested Thursday, and booked into San Joaquin County Jail.
Prosecutors had moved forward with the grand jury investigation prior to their arrest, and jurors had already returned the indictment Dec. 21.
It means the defendants will not have a preliminary hearing in which a judge would have decided whether there is enough evidence to send Gann and Splan to trial.
Martinez, a member of Modesto’s Most Envied Motorcycle Club, was shot and killed at his brother’s business, an auto shop in the 17000 block of Ideal Parkway in an unincorporated area of Manteca on Aug. 15, 2011.
The shop owner, Isaac Martinez, was injured but survived the shooting.
The incident was an apparent act of retaliation investigators have said.
Gann and Splan are scheduled to be formally arraigned on murder, weapons and gang charges Jan. 11.
Monsignor Richard Ryan and Sister Barbara Thiella prepared a chronology of the events involving misconduct by former father Michael Kelly. This is the document: Notice Documents Re Father Kelly.
For more on the latest child sex abuse lawsuit against Kelly, view the story at: http://www.recordnet.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20121108/A_NEWS/211080325
Galgiani sent a letter Nov. 6 to Special Agent in Charge Herb Brown of the FBI’s Sacramento office asking him to verify statements he made regarding the recovery effort of remains from victims of serial killers Loren Herzog and Wesley Shermantine.
San Joaquin County Sheriff Steve Moore said that same day he plans to ask the FBI to take over the excavations.
Here’s the: Letter
