reporter: and where was he? he was in state prison. reporter: so whatever s going on with this guy, he s not your guy. he well, he s not 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 w
ignore it. reporter: i mean, was this like the hatfields and the mccoys? what happened? there was no communication, no associations with them, you know. that that was basically it. that they became estranged. reporter: which made it difficult for tina, who was still married to sam s older brother, armando. police continued to work the case, but the fact was, they had no solid leads. they weren t even close to arresting anyone. but then two years after cathy torrez was murdered, an unexpected meeting put this investigation in the fast lane. an explorer scout with a familiar last name inspires a renewed search for a killer. that is a weird convince coincidence. we don t believe in coincidences. alright, off you go.
reporter: soon it wasn t just the torrez family searching for cathy. we know god s there for you. reporter: police did jump on the case, and it seemed as if all of placentia did too. we had strangers, people coming to the house asking, what can we do? where can we take the flyers? can we have some flyers to pass out flyers. reporter: tina drove to the school where cathy worked. all the while, mary s mantra echoed thru her mind find the car and you ll find cathy. when i drove into the parking lot, i said, let me just see her car. let me just see her car. because i knew a lot of things were going on in her life, you know you know, in that week prior. reporter: a lot of things was an understatement. cathy s family was very worried about her state of mind after a strange and terrifying series of events that had happened the week before she vanished. first, she d come home the previous saturday in a bizarre state incoherent, unable to stand up. she couldn t get out
i have three little kids, my baby s seven years old - i can t have cancer. we really wanted a cancer team, that would care about not only my cancer but you know, how is my husband doing through all of this? and what about your three kids? so we thought that we would travel to cancer treatment centers of america and see what they had to offer. i think the hope for us came in the form of knowing that these doctors were experts, and that they would help us decide the best course of action in the hopes of beating it. so when amy came to us, the first thing we did was discuss her case with the surgical oncologist, the radiation oncologist, the genetic counselor and came up with a treatment plan. the plan for her was to begin with preoperative chemotherapy, thereafter proceeded with surgery. one of things that we loved about ctca was that they give you a series of options. and you do what s best for you.
reporter: to daron wyatt, it felt more like fate. and just months later, in january 1997, his lieutenant suggested daron apply to the homicide unit. so i ended up putting in for that job and being selected. reporter: it wasn t long before he cracked open the doors that housed the homicide files. and i open the cabinet and i see the torrez case. and i remembered the incident with debbie from about a year earlier. so i pulled it out and i started reading just on free time, just reading it a little bit. reporter: by then, the cathy torrez case had been cold for a good three years. and essentially no work had been done on it for at least the last two years. reporter: from the beginning, police had suspected cathy s one-time boyfriend sam lopez had something to do with her murder. but they had nothing connecting him to the crime. no witnesses. no dna. and sam had that solid alibi.