just as prosecutors now believed he wasn t alone the night he stabbed cathy to death. sam s cousin javier was also arrested and charged with murder. police also arrested sam s older brother, armando, who was once married to cathy s sister tina, and had helped search for cathy. it s just a tragic loss. it hurts. everybody loved cathy. reporter: armando was charged with being an accessory after the fact for allegedly helping cover up the murder. we believe that he was telling people who had information that could help convict sam not to cooperate with the police. reporter: cathy s sister had to ponder what that might mean about her former husband. betrayal of the worst kind. reporter: betrayal of her, betrayal of you. exactly, everything. reporter: your family. my family. trust, betrayal, everything s broken beyond belief. reporter: sam and his wife had also separated by this point.
problems in the past with boyfriends. reporter: then there was the second interview, the day cathy s body was found. detective wyatt studied that tape, too. there was one thing that was important that sam didn t display that you would expect to see in a case like this. reporter: which is? emotion. he showed more emotion over the contents of a coke can. he picked it up when they left the room and reading the coke can and the ingredients and the number of calories. and at one point he puts that down and picks up a baseball hat he had been wearing, sees dirt and brushes it off and starts swearing about the fact that there s dirt on his hat. oh [ bleep ]. but he never shows any emotion about the fact that this gal has been brutally murdered, no emotion whatsoever. reporter: and that s a big red flag? huge. reporter: daron went deeper into sam and cathy s relationship. there were a lot of things that brought them together, they were in high school, lived across the stree
she was at work when her sister called her and told her police had once again come for sam. what d you think when you heard sam was arrested? the same that i always had. like, here we go again. nothing to it, and he ll be out soon. yeah. reporter: after all, they d detained sam once before and had to release him. but as daron wyatt now explained to sam lopez, this time was different. i ve told you before that we wouldn t give up until until we were able to bring resolution to this case, and that s where we re at now. reporter: but just when it seemed the case was buttoned up, daron got a surprising call. remember the request for touch-dna daron had submitted months earlier? the crime lab finally called back. and the crime lab says what? hey, did we tell you that we found javier s dna on cathy s body? what?
it was an early morning in 2007, 13 years after cathy torrez had breathed her last. i was having coffee at a mcdonald s before work and i was reading my bible. it was a little bit after 7:00 when i saw that i had a call from him. reporter: from daron wyatt. mary knew he was scheduled to meet with the d.a. my first thought was he was going to tell me that the meeting was canceled. again. reporter: but that was not the message. not at all. he said, i m standing here in front of sam s house and we are making an arrest right now. reporter: they re making an arrest. yes. and you thought? and i got up and i think i screamed there at the mcdonald s. reporter: years before, daron wyatt had made a promise. now, he felt, he was keeping it. that had to feel pretty good. yeah, there were tears of joy this time. reporter: sam lopez was arrested and charged with cathy s murder, but he wasn t alone.
where d you go from there? from there i went to my girlfriend s store. and i was there till, shoot, till they closed, which was around 8:00, a little bit after 8:00. then let me see, what did i do that day? somebody paged me, i think. oh, i picked my cousin up again. so if we had to contact everyone that you mentioned, you know, you could get the names and addresses, phone numbers. sure. they could confirm where you were on saturday night? reporter: and sure enough, they did. police spoke with javier who corroborated sam s story. javier told investigators that he was with sam, that sam had picked him up at his house in anaheim and driven him to another friend s house in fullerton during the time that we believe cathy was contacted and ultimately murdered. reporter: so if you believe sam s alibi, he couldn t have been the thing that interrupted cathy when she was writing that note. right. reporter: nevertheless, they pressed sam for more details.