she thought about sam s proposal all that week. ultimately, cathy decided, says, tina, she was so broken up about albert, she was going to tell sam the answer was no. she s crying and she said i m going to tell him saturday i will not take off with him and elope. that was wednesday. and then saturday she never came home. sam s admitted jealousy, cathy s doting on albert, a rejected proposal, all of it seemed to add up to motive. but motives don t prove murder. there was still no physical evidence tying sam to the crime. all the blood on the car had been tested and it was all cathy s. but then, while combing the case file, detective darren wyatt learned something shocking. there were blood and hair samples that had never been sent to the crime lab and when those samples were analyzed, they
he thought javier s real role was helping the prime suspect. javier s cousin, sam lopez. tina mont long owe, his then wife and javier s friend, wasn t buying it. can you conceive of javier going through with a murder or being involved in it because of his loyalty to sam? no. i don t see that if sam did it would javier help him because they re close family. i don t see that. neither did the d.a., who decided there was not enough evidence to file charges. how do you tell mary that we had javier but we had to let him go? it was extremely difficult. there s a lot of crying on both sides. darren knew exactly what releasing javier really meant. what walks out of the jail along with javier is any leverage you had to get him to
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. armando was charged with being an accessory after the fact for allegedly helping cover up the murder. we believe he was telling people who had information that could help convict sam not to cooperate with the police. 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. everything. your family. my family, trust, betrayal, everything. broken beyond belief. sam and his wife had also separated by this point. she was at work when her sister
talked about his relationship with cathy. she s always going out with somebody and she would call me up. we were always calling up 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. remember, cathy s sister tina had told detectives sam had proposed to cathy just days before she disappeared. but when police asked him about that, he denied it. asked her to marry you then? no. later he changed his story but seemed to say getting married was cathy s idea. a lot of people that we were supposed to ee open, okay? this is what she look, she had a crazy idea to go to mexico. okay? just the two of us. then there was sam s claim that cathy never tried to contact him after she disappeared. i thought she was going to
county jail. cathy s family was stunned when they heard the news. tina included. remember, she was still married to armando, sam s brother and javier s cousin. that was a shock. you didn t see that coming and police didn t tell you. right. that was part of their investigation and we had no knowledge of that. but they were relieved. at last the case was moving forward. darren wyatt was confident he had enough evidence to prove javier lopez had killed cathy torrez. but once again, the orange county district attorney did not agree. the d.a. decided not to charge? correct. so javier is set free. javier walks. coming up, a dee detective who refuses to quit. i have a cold case to look at. now another good reason not to. my first daughter was born