he doesn t want it to be horrendous because he did it. reporter: tell number three. and then larry caught something else in the interview sam did before cathy s body was found. listen carefully. so you went out with her the saturday before the thursday? right. okay on, and where did you go? in other words a week before she was she disappeared. reporter: did you hear that? a week before she was she disappeared. reporter: before she was. what? dead? murdered? either way, larry thought sam knew more than he was telling. the guilty person knows a lot. cannot forget all that he knows. so when he s talking, all that information is in is in his brain, and it can slip out. reporter: another reason to think sam knew much more than he was saying? in his second interview after cathy s body was found, police spoke with sam for 90 minutes
so call your state senator. ask them to support ab 1505 and ab 1507. prosecutor matt murphy thought daron wyatt s investigation of cathy torrez s murder was compelling. but he knew that making the case against sam lopez wouldn t be easy. the d.a. s office had declined to try it twice before. so murphy called for help from a detective whose legendary skill with cold cases has earned him a reverential nickname. larry montgomery is the real deal.
i died. or he died, i guess. daron was absolutely dedicated to this. reporter: the truth was, if murphy declined the case a third time, the cathy torrez file would almost certainly go from cold to dead. what would he decide? no one understood the stakes better than cathy s mom. daron had told me that we were going to meet with the d.a. my interpretation of it was that he was going to tell me that there was nothing they could do. reporter: a key piece of evidence arrives, better late than never. how long had they known that? a couple of months at least. reporter: and they forgot to call? but is it the smoking gun? great news! the no added hormones in land o frost premium sliced meats have moms buying in. in bulk. boom! what a beefsteak. gotta love it. land o frost premium. a slice above.
from me. someone had done something horrible to her and they someone needed to be accountable. reporter: no one could have imagined at the time just how long mary s quest for justice would take. detectives have a few questions for one of cathy s closest friends. the minute i said no to her, she blew up. she started cussing me out. here s your buick sir. actually, that s my buick. your buick doesn t have a roof rack! this is my buick. how are we gonna fit in your mom s buick? easy.
matter of at least a couple of days, trying to get him to contact her because he s so close to cathy and she s missing. reporter: montgomery noted a key detail about those pages. mary s home phone and cathy s home phone are the same number. they re the same numbers. reporter: so, seeing that number on his pager, how did sam know it wasn t cathy? if he knew she was alive, he would know he got 20 or 25 pages from cathy, or at least think that. if he s guilty and he killed cathy, he knows those 20 or 25 pages were not from cathy. reporter: that was tell number two. then montgomery noticed how, in his second interview, sam referred to cathy s murder. you know? but then this happened and shoot. he doesn t use the word murder, doesn t say anything like that. it s like, this happened, as if it s small. it s not that big of a deal, it s not horrendous.