of it to realize she d been driving on slashed tires. tina saw the tires the next day. i just kept saying, who what happened to your tires? who slashed your tires? reporter: and she d say? and she d say she didn t know. she she just knew that she had gone out with sam that night. reporter: daron wyatt now believed sam drugged cathy, possibly assaulted her, and slashed her tires. the next day, cathy called tina with more details about her strange night with sam. he had told her let s run off, let s get married. let s run off and let s elope. and she told him, you re joking, this is not you know, what are you talking about, are you serious? reporter: remember, cathy was seeing another guy. albert. who, only days later tried to kill himself. tina says cathy thought about sam s proposal all that week. ultimately, cathy decided, says tina, that she was so broken up about albert she was going to tell sam the answer was no. she s crying, and then she said, i m goi
in his second interview after cathy s body was found, police spoke with sam for 90 minutes before he asked them a single question. and when he finally did so did you do you guys know how she was killed? uh, yeah, we do. reporter: larry noticed a telling statement. thought you were never going to ask. well, i didn t want cause i don t want memories to come back, you know? well, that s an interesting statement, i don t want memories to come back. what memories does he have that he doesn t want to remember? if he s innocent, he has memories of cathy, good times, what they did. reporter: people would want those memories to come back. yeah. if he had a memory that he killed her, that certainly is a memory he doesn t want to relive. reporter: after listening to the interviews time and again, the evidence whisperer had no doubt sam killed cathy. but could the team prove it beyond a reasonable doubt? ultimately in cold case murders, time becomes one of our
department. we go in there. you know, we just want to let you know that we represent cathy torrez, and we have not forgotten, and we just want to make sure that her case is still being worked on. reporter: we have not forgotten and we want to make sure that you don t either. right, right. reporter: the city of placentia didn t forget. the community learning center was dedicated in cathy s name. the cathy torrez learning center. yes. reporter: you ve got to leave your mark on the world. and she did, huh? reporter: and a tree was planted in cathy s memory across the street. they planted it in a way where from my mom s kitchen, she could see the tree. reporter: sam lopez could see it too. he was still living in the same home police had searched after cathy s murder. a search that had turned up nothing. and sam was also moving on with his life. in may 1994, just months after cathy s murder, sam walked into a local restaurant. he walked in with his friend.
pressed sam for more details. the clothing you were wearing saturday? i think it was a guess sweatshirt. reporter: sam readily gave those clothes to the police. he let them search his house too. and he willingly gave samples of his hair and blood. but something about sam s behavior the week cathy was missing bothered her family. mary said she d repeatedly paged sam looking for cathy, but he was slow to respond. he call you back? not at first. reporter: but eventually he did? eventually, yes. reporter: and he said what, he hadn t seen her? he hadn t seen her. reporter: to all appearances, that was true. and the physical evidence seemed to confirm it. sam s dna was not found anywhere on cathy or her car and his clothes, the ones he gave voluntarily to police, had no dna of cathy s on them. but that behavior of sam s which bothered cathy s family, also bothered police, and they
personally. but is he related to does he know? what s the connection? why is this stuff in the trunk of his car? reporter: when you say to him, why would you have articles about cathy torrez s murder and receipts from sav-on in the trunk of your car, his answer s what? that s all my wife s stuff. he disowns it. he separates himself from it, which now raises a little bit more suspicion. reporter: could you tell if he was connected to anyone in the case? not initially. i really had to dig a little bit deeper to see what the connection was. reporter: daron finally located the convict s wife. she was uncooperative at first, which again, now, this is raising suspicions again. ultimately she did come in and talk to us, and her explanation was that she went to valencia high school with cathy. and then upon closer examination, we were able to see that the receipts from sav-on were from a different sav-on than the one that cathy worked at. and this was basically, like, her kee