Another Woman Named Melissa Huckaby Says She's Been Unfairly Harassed

April 16, 2009— -- Melissa Huckaby can't wait for the media firestorm surrounding 8-year-old Sandra Cantu's murder to blow over so she can go back to teaching Sunday school and raising her young daughter in peace.

That's because another woman named Melissa Huckaby, now sitting in a nearby California jail cell, grabbed headlines last week when she was accused of raping and murdering the Tracy, Calif., second-grader.

On paper, the similarities are spooky -- both women have lived in Tracy, where Sandra was murdered, both have 5-year-old daughters, both are divorced, both teach Sunday school, and they are the same age. And of course, they share the same name.

"We thought maybe it would blow over," Melissa Huckaby told ABCNews.com in one of a series of interviews she's conducted to clear her name. "The more serious it got with her charges, it kind of scared me a little bit."

Huckaby, 28, lives with her parents and two small daughters in Manteca, Calif., about a 10-minute drive from Tracy, where she lived until four years ago and where much of her family still resides. She said she has never met the Melissa Huckaby accused of murdering Sandra and never even knew she existed before seeing the news of her arrest last week.

Her mother, Cyndi Huckaby, said the case of mistaken identity started even before any arrest was made.

On Friday, April 10, the day before the other Melissa Huckaby's arrest was announced, "I had a news van pull in front of my house, and 45 minutes later, I started getting calls," Cyndi Huckaby said.

Some of the local media, tipped off that a newspaper's interview with the Tracy Melissa Huckaby was likely leading to her arrest, had mistakenly zeroed in on the other family's Manteca home.

Terrified that the wrong woman, his daughter, might be picked up for the crime, Cyndi Huckaby said her husband immediately contacted Tracy police to make sure they knew there was more than one Melissa Huckaby in the area and their daughter had nothing to do with Sandra's murder.

A private funeral was held Wednesday for the second-grader whose body was found stuffed into a suitcase in an irrigation pond in Tracy 10 days after she disappeared from the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park, where the accused Melissa Huckaby also lived with her grandparents and daughter.