was in the park that afternoon, and how she heard daron mention cathy s case. that is a weird coincidence. we don t believe in coincidences. reporter: to daron wyatt, it felt more like fate. and just months later, in january 1997, his lieutenant suggested daron apply to the homicide unit. so i ended up putting in for that job and being selected. reporter: it wasn t long before he cracked open the doors that housed the homicide files. and i open the cabinet and i see the torrez case. and i remembered the incident with debbie from about a year earlier. so i pulled it out and i started reading just on free time, just reading it a little bit. reporter: by then, the cathy torrez case had been cold for a good three years. and essentially no work had been done on it for at least the last two years. reporter: from the beginning, police had suspected cathy s one-time boyfriend sam lopez had something to do with her murder.
chief every. reporter: would get a meeting with you? yes. i would actually go into their office and talk to them and tell them see what they could do. reporter: you were a pest? i was a squeaky wheel. reporter: your mom was relentless with the police. yes, she was. i went with her a couple times to meet the the new chief that would come into the police department. we go in there. you know, we just want to let you know that we represent cathy torrez, and we have not forgotten, and we just want to make sure that her case is still being worked on. reporter: we have not forgotten and we want to make sure that you don t either. right, right. reporter: the city of placentia didn t forget. the community learning center was dedicated in cathy s name. the cathy torrez learning center. yes. reporter: you ve got to leave your mark on the world. and she did, huh? reporter: and a tree was planted in cathy s memory across the street. they planted it in a way
the seat moved closest to the steering wheel. but when police found the car, the seat was racked all the way back. suggesting that somebody taller than cathy was operating the car. not only operating the car, but did that before the murder itself took place. because that was touched, and that seat was moved without any transfer of blood at all. so the seat was moved back before the killing started. reporter: and, if so, perhaps it was because cathy knew her killer and opened the door for him or her. investigators also found cathy s right shoe on the floorboard of her car and her sock covered in dirt. she got out of the car? yes, absolutely. cathy had fled from the vehicle on foot, had most likely been caught and attacked again before she was ultimately placed in the trunk of the car and died. reporter: she fought pretty hard to get away. she did. she ran for her life. reporter: to detectives, this was not a sex crime or a robbery.
headquarters in new york. she was a mom looking for her baby, and her baby hadn t come home. reporter: cathy s week had been nothing but trouble. she couldn t tell me what happened. she was so upset. reporter: it was about to get much worse. my mom would say if you find the car, you ll find cathy. you didn t want it to be dark because you wanted to keep looking. she was stabbed multiple times. there was blood within the interior of the car. she was a targeted victim. reporter: who killed cathy? we had no witness. we had no confession. we had no dna. reporter: 20 years went by. i still had to keep looking for what i had lost. reporter: but cathy had her. and she had him. i put a lot of faith in god. darren was his tool. and the killer? he never had a chance.
alone. even when he arrested javier in 1997 for the murder of cathy torrez, he thought javier s real 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.