reporter: you think about that a lot? i did. especially if it was a beautiful day. reporter: those sunny days turned dark. months passed. seasons changed. and still the torrez family was left wondering who had killed cathy. something that never changed was mary steadfast in her resolve to get justice for her daughter. early on, a friend gave her some advice. she said, remember, mary, the squeaky wheel gets the oil. don t let anyone tell you different. you keep going. and that s what i did. reporter: mary and her family sought the attention of the media. they marched in rallies, lobbied officials for greater victims rights, and spoke with then-california governor pete wilson about cathy s murder. they even contributed to reward funds, some of it by selling tamales at the local fair. you were doing just about everything you could think of, weren t you?
his suicide attempt. because of his relationship with cathy and the fact that she wasn t as serious about him as he was with her. so that had to be examined, it had to be looked at. reporter: so the investigation continued, as people in placentia paid final respects to the friendly cashier they knew from sav-on. more than a thousand people attended cathy s funeral. pretty impressive. the kind of person cathy was. she touched a lot of people, and they remembered her. reporter: she left her mark. she did. reporter: cathy had hoped for a dozen red roses that february. instead her family remembered her with a headstone. your smile will shine forever. that wasn t the only promise cathy s mother made. i didn t know how long i d be i would have to wait. but i knew that we had to do everything that we could to get the answer.
side of cathy s car. she says in the letter it s a little after 8:15. it s yeah. it s 8:15, just finished my shift. today was crazy. everybody was all buying v and the v was for valentine s day. reporter: and that s as far as she got? that s as far as she got. so she s interrupted mid-sentence. reporter: just who had done that? detectives weren t quite sure. daron believed the letter was intended for albert, who at the time of cathy s murder was lying in a coma in the hospital after a suicide attempt. he never woke up, and died almost two years later. obviously you have to look at all of that, and you have to ask, is there something that s involved in that? reporter: it was almost too strange to imagine. except to police. there were rumors within the community that that may have been the motive for her disappearance and murder, was that, hey you need to look at the rangel family. reporter: members of albert s family, the rumors said, were angry with cathy, t
reporter: tina montelongo remembers it clearly. when i opened the door, there was about five police officers there. the one in the middle was wyatt. he put us against the wall and patted us down. reporter: what was sam s demeanor while all that was happening? he was calm, you know. he really was. i was freaking out. reporter: he wasn t worried? no. no. reporter: maybe he had no reason to be. police didn t find anything in the house linking sam to cathy s murder. they even sprayed his truck with luminol looking for signs of blood. we took the seats out, we did everything we could. and there was nothing. reporter: police briefly detained sam, but he was back home by morning. now daron wyatt focused on javier. and we really approached it very low key. we think that you can really provide some great information for us. would you mind coming down with us and talking. reporter: they brought him down to the station and listened
how long have you guys been dating? it s it s an off-and-on thing. on-and-off thing. okay. reporter: tell number one, how sam talked about his relationship with cathy. see, i was going out with 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.