Raffle for Pray For Aidan

The raffle benefit for Pray For Aidan has started! You can read all about the prizes and see close up photos here, on my sewing blog.

Betsy Ross Linens July Events: Market Bag Sale & Raffle Benefit for Pray For Aidan

Market Bags on Sale in July.

July Market Bag Sale

There are two big events I've planned for the entire month of July. The first is a sale on my Market Bags. These bags will go on sale at a significant savings. The 18 bags you see pictured above are either one-of-a-kind or limited edition bags. They all have the added bonus of a free muslin liner. Some bags come with matching fabric straps and some have metal feet. There will also be several discontinued Market Purses and Mini Market Bags. If you can't find a premade bag you like, you will be able to order a Market Bag or a Market Bag Euro at a significant savings. I'll have detailed photos and descriptions of all the bags pictured above when the sale starts on July 1st.

Raffle for Aidan

The second event is a Raffle Drawing for three prizes. Betsy Ross Linens is donating to a raffle that will be occurring throughout the month of July to benefit a sweet little four-year-old boy, Aidan. On February 16, 2008, just 5 days short of his 2nd birthday – Aidan nearly drowned in a pond near his grandfather's house. It is unknown how long he was under water before he was revived.

I first learned about Aidan from my friend Sharon Zambito, and her company SugarEd Productions when she made a donation for a raffle to benefit the family. I was so touched by Aidan's story and the family's struggle that I immediately wanted to do the same. So I went to work and started sewing. The Raffle Drawing will coincide with a Market Bag Sale.

What Betsy Ross Linens is donating:

This photo shows the Grand Prize.
Total value is $263.00 and consists of:

1 Fleece & Patchwork Flannel Baby Throw Blanket ~ Value $75.00
1 Fleece & White Panne Throw Blanket ~ Value $45.00
1 One-of-a-kind Market Bag with liner and metal feet ~ Value $54.00
1 One-of-a-kind Market Bag Euro with liner and metal feet ~ Value $54.00
1 Standard Hot/Cold Pack ~ Value $27.00
1 Mini Hot/Cold Pack ~ Value $8.00

The Second Prize is a Market Bag or Market Bag Euro with metal feet
in the fabric of your choice. Value: $54.00

The Third Prize is a Standard Hot/Cold Pack and Mini Hot/Cold Pack
in the fabric of your choice. Value: $35.00

For those of you who are not familiar with my work, you can read what people are saying about my Hot/Cold Packs, Market Bag Line and throw blankets here.

Raffle Tickets will be sold through the Pray For Aidan website, and I will provide you with the specific link to the Raffle before it starts along with close up photos and details on each item.

You will be able to purchase as many chances to win as you want, but only one prize per person. A single entry will cost $5.00, three tickets for $10.00 or seven tickets for $20.00. The Raffle will start at 12 am EST on July 1st and end at 12 am PST on July 31st. The winners will be chosen a few days later and notified by E-Mail.

I'm really hoping you will look into your hearts and help little Aidan.

Melissa Huckaby: The Grand Jury Transcripts

Sandra Cantu ~ murdered by Melissa Huckaby

GUEST ENTRY FROM JUSTIN LAFFERTY!

T&T is honored to have seasoned journalist, Justin Lafferty, contributing this guest entry. Sprocket

On Friday, nearly 2,000 pages of grand jury transcripts in the case against former Sunday school teacher Melissa Huckaby were released to the public, giving people a glimpse for the first time of what really happened to 8-year-old Sandra Cantu.

San Joaquin County chief medical examiner Bennet Omalu told the grand jury that Huckaby was a “calm, calculating mind at work.” Sandra’s body — which had been drugged, choked, beaten, molested and killed — was found in a black Eddie Bauer suitcase on April 6, 2009, north of town in a dairy lagoon that the farm owner said holds the waste of farm animals.

The girl was killed on the same day that she went missing, March 27, 2009.

Sandra lived in the same mobile home park as Huckaby in Tracy, Calif., a town of about 80,000 and a popular choice for many people who commute to the San Francisco Bay Area for work.

Suspicious activity

The transcripts show that Huckaby, 29, didn’t exactly keep quiet about the crime, which kept her in the eye of authorities.

Huckaby, who said that someone had stolen her suitcase when Sandra was reported missing, was arrested on suspicion of homicide on April 11 last year after the statements she gave officers and detectives didn’t match up.

Huckaby even talked to my colleague, Tracy Press reporter Jennifer Wadsworth, over the phone about her suitcase.

“She told me repeatedly that it was a very large suitcase that could fit the body of a child inside of it and that's why she was so upset,” FBI special agent Adrienne Sparrow told the grand jury last year.

She pleaded guilty to the murder of the girl after the death penalty and sex charges were taken off the table on May 10, and was sentenced to life in prison without possibility of parole. Omalu said the official cause of Sandra’s death was “homicidal asphyxiation.”

Huckaby frantically ran to police the day after the murder, saying she found a note one day that read (sic), “Cantu locked in stolin suit case thrown in water onn Bacchetti Rd. & Whitehall Rd. Witness.” This surprised investigators, as Huckaby claimed she found the note on the ground on what they knew was a pretty windy day.

In the press conference after Huckaby’s sentencing, prosecutor Thomas Testa said Huckaby was “hyperventilating” as she gave the note to officers, but that her breathing quickly became normal when they questioned her.

Investigators found a notebook during a search of Huckaby’s home that had indentations matching the poorly spelled note.

Two days before Sandra’s body was found, Huckaby was admitted to the hospital after swallowing a razor blade. Though she claimed she was sleepwalking, Testa said this act showed “the consciousness of guilt.”

“Why do people hurt other people?” Huckaby asked a hospital social worker. “Because they are sick in their head, disgusting.”

The cell phones of Huckaby and her grandmother, Connie Lawless, were seized during the investigation, as well. A few text messages from Huckaby to her grandmother raised suspicion.

“They are having an 8:15 news briefing on the suitcase. That was fast. I hope they didn't find anything,” Huckaby texted to Lawless on the day the suitcase was found. “I hope she wasn't sexually assaulted.”

About a half hour before Tracy police spokesman Sgt. Tony Sheneman eventually announced in an emotional 9:15 p.m. press conference that the suitcase contained Sandra’s body, Huckaby sent a text message to Lawless — “It is her.”

While many people had suspected before the press conference that they had found Sandra’s body, there was no confirmation until then.

What happened?

When FBI agents interviewed Huckaby on March 28, she told them that she was headed to the nearby Clover Road Church to get some crafts for her next Sunday school class and that the only thing in the suitcase was a pair of flip-flops. She originally told authorities that on the day Sandra went missing, she went to the church and then went back to her residence.

Investigators found another story, grand jury transcripts show. Testimonies say that Sandra, who was last seen on a surveillance tape happily skipping toward Huckaby’s home, was taken to the church down the road from the trailer park, beaten with an object, smothered and violated with a rolling pin before dying.

Omalu’s testimony is fairly gut-wrenching. The doctor, who performed Sandra’s autopsy and was the first to see her out of the suitcase, said that the girl was smothered with some sort of cloth soaked in rubbing alcohol. Omalu found strings tightly entwined in Sandra’s hair and found evidence of blunt trauma to her head, as well as bruises on her back.

Though Huckaby told Sandra’s family on the day she was sentenced that Sandra did not suffer (she also denied the rape), Omalu said that these wounds all happened before she died.

He told grand jurors that the injuries on Sandra’s genitals were consistent with that of the bloody smudge on the rolling pin found at the church, and said that the molestation happened at or around the time of death.

Omalu also said that he found traces of Xanax, a prescription drug similar to Valium, in Sandra’s body. Huckaby had also previously drugged a boyfriend and a 7-year-old girl who was friends with Huckaby’s daughter.

The girl was dressed back up again and placed in a fetal position in the suitcase. Huckaby placed the suitcase in her car and drove to a dairy farm north of Tracy, putting it in the dairy lagoon.

“It was not something that was done in a hurry,” Omalu told grand jurors. “It’s possibly something that may have been premeditated.”

Transcripts show a former Marine saw Huckaby out there and asked what she was doing. Huckaby told the man, who noticed a “My brother is a Marine” sticker on Huckaby’s car, that she was urinating. The Marine, thinking this was pretty peculiar, alerted police and was able to give a description of Huckaby.

Shortly after the suitcase was discovered, investigators locked onto Huckaby as a prime suspect.

While the “how” has now been uncovered, no one may ever know the “why.”

“I still cannot understand why I did what I did,” Huckaby said in her sentencing hearing. “This is a question I will struggle with for the rest of my life.”

Justin Lafferty is a freelance journalist and former reporter for the Tracy Press. He has also written for the San Diego Union-Tribune, Rivals.com and the Bay Area News Group. For more information, see www.justinlafferty.com.