they had this long, on-again off-again relationship in which what, he couldn t let go of her? or she couldn t let go of him? i i think a lot of it was mutual. reporter: even after cathy started dating albert and sam had another girlfriend too. they continued to see each other. and daron found evidence that in sam s mind, his relationship with cathy was far from casual. mary gave me a shoe box full of letters that were written between sam and cathy, and the content of these letters showed a very jealous guy. a guy who would get angry any time somebody flirted with cathy. reporter: sam didn t try to hide the fact that he was prone to jealousy. she knows, every time she mentions some guy s name, i get pissed off, ok? reporter: that led the detective to take a fresh look at those bizarre events the week before cathy disappeared when she came home impaired and then had her tires slashed.
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. he doesn t want it to be horrendous cause 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, and where did you? 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
and it just it hit me like i got punched in the face, was there was arterial spurt on the sidewall of the trunk panel. reporter: meaning only one thing cathy was still alive when she was placed in the trunk of the car. so, if xavier put her there, he could be charged with murder. why not grab xavier up that day and say, okay, your dna and fingerprints were at the scene. we didn t know that until just now. you re going away for murder unless you start talking. ? well, let s say that we did that and we bring him in and he says, well, yes, my fingerprint was there because i helped her push her car out of the street a week before. or when i was helping her change a tire. i cut my finger and i bled on it. reporter: so instead of approaching xavier, daron wyatt spent nearly five months carefully watching him and sam. he learned the two cousins were unusually close. sam lived in a one-bedroom little bungalow with his wife and his baby at the time, yet xavier was there all the t
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, ok? 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
reporter: it was 1996. two years had passed since the gruesome murder of cathy torrez in placentia, california. i had been to several places, had knocked on many doors. and all i ever wanted was the truth to come out as to what had happened to cathy. reporter: the case had gone cold, but its memory still clung to the breeze in this small town. daron wyatt was a patrol officer back then, and one afternoon his shift brought him to this park just across the street from where cathy had grown up. daron was about to bust a drug suspect when the guy started talking. he s playing the game of, you know, i ll tell you whatever you wanna know. just, you know, ask the right questions and i ll tell you and then you won t take me to jail. so, you know, just almost as a flippant remark, i tell him,