somebody. and then she would call me up. and we would just, like -- calling each other, going out to eat, places like that. nothing serious at the time. >> sam definitely was trying to limit his connection with cathy, give the impression that it's not that big of a deal. >> reporter: remember cathy's sister tina had told detectives sam had proposed to cathy just days before she disappeared. but when police asked sam about that, he denied it. >> you didn't ask her to marry you, then? >> no. >> reporter: later he changed his story but seemed to say getting married was cathy's idea. >> a lot of people hit me up already. they said that -- that -- that we were supposed to elope, okay? this is what she -- okay, but look. she had a crazy idea to go to mexico, okay? just the two of us. >> reporter: then there was sam's claim that cathy never tried to contact him after she disappeared. >> i thought she was going to page me on friday. she goes somewhere, and she never paged me on friday. >> we know that cathy's mom paged him 20 or 25 times in a