role was helping the prime suspect javier s cousin sam lopez. tina montelongo, sam s 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 xavi help him just because they re close family? i don t see that. reporter: neither did the d.a. who decided there was not enough evidence to file charges. how do you tell mary bennett, we had javier, but we had to let him go ? it was extremely difficult. there was a lot of crying on both sides. reporter: daron 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 name sam?
a plastic bag was peeking out of the trunk. officers opened it, and cathy torrez was missing no longer. she had been stabbed multiple times. all about the upper chest and neck. reporter: detective sergeant daron wyatt. you know, there s no way to time the death. but i think it s pretty safe to assume that she had been dead since she disappeared on that saturday night on the 12th. reporter: it was devastating not just for the torrez family but for all those in placentia who d been searching so tirelessly for cathy. she was a vibrant, very intelligent young girl. this is truly a tragedy. reporter: detectives went to work trying to find cathy s killer. they set up a hotline. if you have any information regarding the homicide of cathy torrez reporter: and scoured placentia for clues. by studying her car and her body, investigators got a sense of what happened. first, cathy was completely clothed.
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 were able to see that the receipts from sav-on were from a different sav-on than the one
and then in 1994, out of high hool and you woman, cathy starteto see boy named albert. a boy she d played with as a child, and was now interested in romantically. were they boyfriend and girlfriend? she said that they were, you know, seeing each other, but it wasn t anything serious or formal that i knew of. that s how she explained it to me, you know, he was a nice guy. reporter: cathy s plate was full that february of 1994. she was an honors student at cal state fullerton, holding down two jobs one at the local drugstore and another as a teacher s aide all to pay for college. and now she was also seeing a new guy. just a few days before february 14th, cathy told sister tina what she wanted for valentine s day. she said, tina, i would just like it if somebody gave me a dozen red roses for valentine s day. and i said, yeah, that s all you want? she said i would just like a
she was at work when her sister called her and told her police had once again come for sam. what d you think when you heard sam was arrested? the same that i always had. like, here we go again. nothing to it, and he ll be out soon. yeah. reporter: after all, they d detained sam once before and had to release him. but as daron wyatt now explained to sam lopez, this time was different. i ve told you before that we wouldn t give up until until we were able to bring resolution to this case, and that s where we re at now. reporter: but just when it seemed the case was buttoned up, daron got a surprising call. remember the request for touch-dna daron had submitted months earlier? the crime lab finally called back. and the crime lab says what? hey, did we tell you that we found javier s dna on cathy s body? what?