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yeah, we found javier s profile on her sock, on the back of her knee, and under her right armpit. reporter: did we tell you? no, we didn t tell you. how long had they known that? a couple of months, at least. and they, what, forgot to call? i think the examiner who had been doing it was waiting for additional results and didn t realize that she hadn t notified us. so the idea of touch-dna paid off? it did. reporter: but not quite the way they had all hoped. unbelievable that you would get touch-dna evidence back that long after the fact. right. but bad news, it doesn t have sam lopez s name on it. right. that s right. reporter: so the strongest physical evidence was still against javier. but it was sam who had the motive, and he was the first one going on trial, even without a trace of his dna anywhere. it had taken 13 years to arrest sam lopez, it would take another eight to bring him to trial. ....
she never regained full memory of what had happened, but she was able to tell everybody who she had been with that night. reporter: the person cathy had been with that night? sam lopez. when police asked sam about that night, he remembered something very specific. a hickey. on her neck? on her right here. covered up with her bra. you mean way down here on her shoulder? right here. right here. reporter: sam claimed it was no big deal. i didn t want to hit her up, like, tell her, hey, you know, who were you with last night? whatever. reporter: but that night, police records showed sam received two traffic citations, both while driving cathy s car. one was an open container ticket for drinking alcohol in a 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 looke ....
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 where from my mom s kitchen, she could see the tree. reporter: sam lopez could see it too. he was still living in the same home p ....
Samples from javier, they d never had those tested. they had sent all of the evidence related to sam lopez to the crime lab, his fingerprints, his hair, his blood. but they hadn t sent anything related to javier lopez to the crime lab. reporter: daron sent javier s samples, now three years old, to the crime lab. two months later, the phone rang. they had positively identified a fingerprint on the trunk of cathy s car, left there by somebody closing the lid of the trunk. reporter: javier s print was on the trunk of cathy s car? yes. reporter: weeks later, another call from the lab. a bloodstain on the car had tested positive for both cathy s dna and javier s. and the detective found there was something else another major piece of evidence investigators had initially overlooked. when you look at the crime scene photos in the trunk of the car, something jumped out at me. ....
Back in 1994, police suspected sam lopez of killing his sometime girlfriend, cathy torrez, but they couldn t make the case. one big reason sam s cousin, javier, who told detectives he was with sam the night of the murder. javier was sam s alibi. so he wasn t suspected of being part of the murder, or even being at the crime scene. that s right, yeah. they were looking at javier solely as an alibi witness who was lying to cover for sam. reporter: that s why, as detective daron wyatt now discovered, even though investigators in 1994 took blood, hair and fingerprint samples from javier, they d never had those tested. they had sent all of the evidence related to sam lopez to the crime lab, his fingerprints, ....