for the torres family, but for all those in placentia that had been searching so tirelessly for cathy. she was a vibrant, very intelligent young girl. this is truly a tragedy. detectives went to work trying to find cathy s killer. she set up a hotline. do you have any information regarding the homicide of cathy torres? and scoured plavcentia for clues. by studying her cars and her body, investigators got a sense much what happened? first, cathy was completely clothed. no sign of sexual assault. and one more thing also seemed clear. most likely the attacker started in the car. there were pieces of the gear shift that were broken, pieces of the center console that were broken. as if a struggle had occurred. then there was blood within the interior of the car. orange county prosecutor matt murphy later reviewed the case. he noted blood on everything the killer must have touched.
soon it wasn t just the torres family searching for cathy. you know god is there for you. 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? tina drove to the school where cathy worked. all the while mary s mantra echoed through her mind. find the car, and you ll find cathy. 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 if her life, you know, in that week prior. 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 had come home the previous saturday in a bizarre
when i went forth and said, hey look, i need time to concentrate specifically on this case. reporter: daron pored through the files and hunted down new leads. and then a tip came in, seemingly out of nowhere. so a guy from a repossession company calls the police and says, hey repo d this car earlier today, and there was a folio in the trunk of the car. and i m going through the folio, there are articles in there about this murder in placentia from 1994 and there are receipts from sav-on. reporter: sav-on. the drugstore chain where cathy was working at the time she was stabbed to death. that had to make everybody sit up straight. it did. reporter: there was more. the guy whose car had been repossessed had recently been released from state prison and was now in custody for threatening someone with a knife. reporter: and what you wanted to know first was, where were you on the night cathy torrez disappeared?
in a coma in the hospital after his suicide attempt. he never woke up and died almost two years later. obviously you have to look at all of that and ask is there something that s involved in that? it was almost too strange to imagine, except to police. there are 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. maebz of albert s family, the rumor said, were angry with cathy, thinking that she might have been the cause of 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 and looked at. so the investigation continued. as people in placentia paid final respects to the friendly cashier they knew from savon. more than 1,000 people attended cathy s funeral. pretty impressive. the kind of person cathy was.
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,