shift brought him to this park just across the street from where cathy had grown up. daron was about to bust a drug suspect when the guy started talking. he s playing the game of, you know, i ll tell you whatever you want to know, just you know, ask the right questions and i ll tell you and then you won t take me to jail. so, you know, just almost as a flippant remark, i tell him, okay, so tell me who killed cathy torrez. reporter: it was a shot in the dark. a tactic he d picked up at a seminar for cultivating informants. and the patrol officer that is next to me starts kind of kicking my foot. and he s got an explorer scout who s riding with him a young hispanic female. and i look at her name tag and it was d. torrez. turned out it was debbie torrez, cathy s youngest sister. reporter: who just heard you ask that question. correct. reporter: you had no idea it was her? i had no idea. reporter: debbie torrez cathy s baby sister was now 14 years old. eager, he
8:00. then, shoo shoot, what i d do that day? oh, somebody paged me, i think. oh, i picked my cousin up again. so if we had to contact everyone that you mentioned, you know, you could get the names and addresses, phone numbers. sure. they could confirm where you were on saturday night? reporter: and sure enough, they did. police spoke with javier who corroborated sam s story. javier told investigators that he was with sam, that sam had picked him up at his house in anaheim and driven him to another friend s house in fullerton during the time that we believe cathy was contacted and ultimately murdered. reporter: so if you believe sam s alibi, he couldn t have been the thing that interrupted cathy when she was writing that note. right. reporter: nevertheless, they pressed sam for more details. the clothing you were wearing saturday? i think it was a guess sweatshirt. reporter: sam readily gave
reporter: you didn t see that coming and police didn t tell you? right. that was part of their investigation, and we had no knowledge of that. reporter: but they were relieved. at last the case was moving forward. daron wyatt was confident he had enough evidence to prove javier lopez had killed cathy torrez. but once again, the orange county district attorney did not agree. the d.a. decided not to charge? correct. reporter: and so javier s set free? javier walks. a detective who refuses to quit now has another good reason not to. my first daughter was born. and i remember going to mary shortly after that looking in the eye and saying i know. i know now how you feel. when the promise continues. s month after month, the clock is ticking on irreversible joint damage. ongoing pain and stiffness
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.
shea might have missed. they have the help of an eagle eye detective. known the the evidence whisperer. prosecutor matt murphy thought daron wyatt s investigation of cathy torrez s murder was compelling. but he knew that making the case against sam lopez wouldn t be easy. the d.a. s office had declined to try it twice before. so murphy called for help from a detective whose legendary skill with cold cases has earned him a reverential nickname. larry montgomery is the real deal. i mean, the guy is the evidence whisperer. another nickname for him is st. larry. reporter: larry sees things other people don t see? larry sees things that many people don t see, yeah. and he looks at it from a different perspective. reporter: they both felt the key to the case lay in sam lopez s own words, his taped interviews with the original detectives. and they thought the perfect man to listen to those interviews was the evidence whisperer.