i was yelling, not my cathy. not cathy. reporter: mary bennett had been right all along. cathy s toyota corolla had been spotted in a hospital parking lot. 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.
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reporter: and they did. a year later came a baby girl. and sam embraced his role as dad. he was like mr. mom, you know. he stayed home and took care of the baby while i worked. reporter: if sam had anything to do with cathy s murder, he certainly didn t act like it. he stayed put. living with his wife and baby right down the street from cathy s mom, mary. she would sit outside and stare at us, and i felt like she was doing it to make me uncomfortable, and probably him, too. but i m sure she didn t want him to be happy if she thought that he had anything to do with what happened to her daughter. reporter: sam say anything about mary? no. no. he would try to tell me to ignore it. reporter: i mean, was this like the hatfields and the mccoys? what happened? there was no communication, no associations with them, you know. that was basically it.
you had to leave your mark in this world so that people would remember you when you moved on. reporter: you have to leave your mark on the world. did you teach her that? no, that was just her. reporter: seems like an admirable thing for a kid to come up with. well, cathy was different. reporter: beautiful, smart and social. and popular. you knew more about her dating life than maybe your mom and dad did. yes, i believe to some extent, yes. reporter: cathy dated a few guys in high school, but no one she was terribly stuck on. and then in 1994, out of high school and a young woman of 20, cathy started to see a boy named albert. a boy she d played with as a child, and was now interested in romantically. reporter: were they boyfriend or 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
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? yes, absolutely. reporter: and now you really are back to square one? yes. reporter: is that the end? to some people. reporter: but not to him. and not to mary. you put a lot of faith in daron. i put a lot of faith in god. daron was his tool.