alone. just as prosecutors now believed he wasn t alone the night he stabbed cathy to death. sam s cousin xavier 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. betrayal of her, betrayal of you. exactly, everything. your family. my family. trust, betrayal, everything s broken beyond belief. reporter: sam and his wife had also separated by this
and sam had that solid alibi. tina was still married to sam s brother, armando. the two families intertwined, as cathy s family continued to search for answers. and then in april of 1997, i got a phone call from mary bennett. reporter: cathy s mom. it would be their first conversation of many. mary told daron how she d seen reports about a new program in orange county centered around investigating cold cases. cathy s case had specifically been mentioned. and mary said, if they re gonna use my daughter s murder as publicity for their program, by all means they re gonna work it. and it s your job to make sure that that happens. reporter: there were no new murders in placentia in 1997, allowing daron to focus his full attention on this old one. and because you have you have mary bennett and the family, who s persistent, who are very well known and very well liked within the community, it did give me a lot of leverage
and mccoy? what happened? there was no communication. no association with them. . that was basically- they beca estranged. 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, and they weren t even close to arresting anyone. then two years after cathy torres was murdered, an unexpected meeting put this investigation in the fast lane. coming up, an explorer scout with a familiar last name inspires a renewed search for a killer. that is a weird coincidence. we don t believe in coincidences. and then a tip that catches one investigator s attention. that had to make everybody sit up straight. it did. when dateline continues. n,
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