According to the newspaper, Huckaby said she called police with the intention of reporting her missing suitcase, but decided to make a report online instead and hadn't gotten around to it when police started questioning neighbors in the mobile home park about Sandra's disappearance. She said she told police then that her suitcase had gone missing, the newspaper reported.
But before her interview Friday with the Tracy Press, police were not sure whether the suitcase belonged to Huckaby, Sheneman said.
As police questioned her Friday night, she was initially "calm, cool and collected," Sheneman said. Then she "became very emotional, then was calm again and then became resigned to what was happening."
Sheneman declined to disclose how or where Sandra was killed. There are no other suspects.
Huckaby, who is 5 feet 3 and weighs 125 pounds, was being held at the San Joaquin County jail and is not eligible for bail, police said.
"Nothing we can say can return Sandra to her family," Sheneman said.
Investigators spoke to Sandra's family at 2:15 a.m. Saturday, spending 45 minutes with them.
"They were in disbelief," he said.
Sandra was "very close friends with" Huckaby's 5-year-old daughter, Sheneman said. The two girls lived on the same street -- just five doors from each other -- and played frequently at Huckaby's home.
Angie Chavez, Sandra's aunt, said in a phone interview that she was happy that a suspect had been caught "but then shocked and in disbelief that it was a woman." She said the family wants to know why Sandra was killed.
She said Sandra's three older siblings -- two sisters, ages 20 and 11, and a brother, 15 -- were taking their sister's death hard.
The usually talkative 11-year-old sister, she said, "has been quiet and crying a lot."
Angie Chavez described Sandra as a spunky, giggly, cute second-grader at Melville S. Jacobson Elementary School who loved doing cartwheels and enjoyed reading children's books aloud.
Police said autopsy results and warrants related to the case are sealed.
"There's still a lot of work left to be done over the next several weeks to ensure that Ms. Huckaby pays for what she's done," Sheneman said.
By late Saturday, the road where Sandra had lived on the edge of a busy freeway was empty except for a crush of TV news trucks parked in front of Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park. A police car blocked the entrance.
