just routine. nothing out of the ordinary. reporter: tina was trying to catch up with cathy that day before she went to work, but just missed her at home, only to see her moments later in traffic. we saw each other and she gave me the biggest smile that i will always remember. she saw me. we looked at each other. it was a beautiful smile. reporter: that smile, that moment, burned into her memory. cathy s shift ended at about 8:00 that night. she was supposed to come straight home. but mary didn t see her. so 9:00, 10:00 comes, you re not worried? no, i wasn t worried. reporter: saturday night she probably went out after work. yeah. reporter: but then sunday morning came, and still no cathy. cathy s family launches a search.
cathy had so much to live for and was a very happy person, a people s person. reporter: that was armando lopez speaking back in 1994. armando was cathy s brother-in-law, tina s then husband. but that wasn t the only connection between the two families. it turned out cathy had dated armando s younger brother, sam, off and on. and the families lived right down the street from each other. you can see one house from the other. exactly. reporter: and she s going out with sam. uh-huh. reporter: you marry his older brother. uh-huh. reporter: so that house wasn t just another house on the street. right. reporter: it was family. right. right. reporter: police spoke with members of the lopez family. sam knew cathy the best. how long have you known cathy? jeez, i ve known her for over five years. reporter: they interviewed him down at the station. yeah, i really had fun with her. like i said, that person, i m serious, would always have a smile.
but they had nothing connecting him to the crime. no witnesses. no dna. 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 going to use my daughter s murder as publicity for their program, by all means they re going to 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
asked her what she knew about him, what she thought about him. and that s when she told me that he they were he was the one that they suspected. reporter: in the murder of cathy torrez? yes. reporter: he hadn t told you that? he hadn t told me that. that was in the first couple of weeks that i was dating him. reporter: sam emphatically denied any involvement in cathy s murder. but just the idea spooked tina. so she made up a lie. i met him and i told him that i was dating somebody else. reporter: which was not true? which was not true. reporter: you were a little freaked out by that? well, yeah. reporter: but the spark that drew her to sam was too strong, and though tina had only known him a few short weeks, something in her heart said sam was innocent. so i gave him a call. and i started dating him again. reporter: okay. i mean, you re an attractive woman. i have trouble believing that there were not guys available who weren t already suspects in a murder
parking lot. the other for failing to stop at a stop sign. the cop who pulled sam over for not stopping said sam flew through the intersection, and when he approached the car, the cop said it looked as if sam and cathy had been arguing. but he did say cathy looked fine. nobody was quite sure what happened after that, except they apparently parted company. sam in his car, cathy in hers. then cathy arrived home, too out of it to realize she d been driving on slashed tires. tina saw the tires the next day. i just kept saying, who what happened to your tires? who slashed your tires? reporter: and she d say? and she d say she didn t know. she she just knew that she had gone out with sam that night. reporter: daron wyatt now believed sam drugged cathy, possibly assaulted her, and slashed her tires. the next day, cathy called tina with more details about her strange night with sam. he had told her let s run off, let s get married. let s run off and let s elope. and she told