Rob Rinder’s Interrogation Secrets: Melissa Huckaby (S1EP1 Crime & Investigation UK Sunday 4 September 2022)

Melissa Huckaby: In the first episode, Rinder walks us through the case of Melissa Huckaby, a bipolar Sunday school teacher who was charged with Sandra Cantu’s murder and sexual assault.

Huckaby was employed by the neighbourhood church, whose Baptist minister was her grandfather. Sandra, who was eight years old at the time, was friends with her daughter, and the two frequently played together at Huckaby’s home in the same trailer park.

Huckaby drugged Sandra with prescription medication on March 27, 2009, and then strangled her to death with a torn rag. This shocking crime garnered widespread attention, sparking a ten-day search for Sandra after she vanished, which tragically resulted in the discovery of her body inside Huckaby’s suitcase in a nearby irrigation pond.

Police initially looked for a man using information from the suspect’s FBI profile. But it soon became obvious that Huckaby was involved when she claimed that her suitcase—which was later discovered to contain Sandra’s corpse—had been stolen and that she had discovered a note with information that could have directed the police to Sandra’s body. The main suspect in the case was Huckaby.

Airdate: Sunday 4 September 2022 at 22:00 on Crime & Investigation UK

Season 1 Episode 1

Rob Rinder’s Interrogation Secrets takes a unique look at the battle of wits between police and suspects in some of the most disturbing US and UK criminal cases of recent years. Criminal barrister and television personality, Robert Rinder, and a team of experts analyse police interviews. In each of these, the skilled work of detectives was key to cracking the case and securing a conviction.

With Rob as the expert guide, retired senior detectives from the U.S. and the UK, forensic and criminal psychologists, and body language experts examine the original police footage of interrogations at the heart of each case, to reveal the ‘tricks of the trade’ used to extract a confession and the tell-tale signs that a suspect is lying.