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Even when he arrested xavier in 1997 for the murder of cathy torrez, he thought xavier's real role was helping the prime suspect -- xavier's cousin sam lopez. tina montelongo, sam's then-wife and xavier's friend, wasn't buying it. can you conceive of xavier 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 xavier, but we h...

Against sam. remember, from the beginning, ja javier was sam's alibi. the prosecutor argued if they were together and javier's dna put him at the scene of the crime, then sam had to be there, too. >> his alibi is at the murder scene. and for sam lopez, i think that's just devastating evidence. >> and he told the jury it was the first of many instances where the most powerful evidence of guilt came from sam's own words. >> sam's actions and it's sam's statements. >> he gave you the case against him. >> the best evidence that we have in this case and that we had was sam lopez himself. >> sam was...

>> not at first. >> but eventually he did? >> ethwe'll, yes. >> he said he hadn't seen her? >> he hadn't seen her. >> to all appearances that was true, and the physical evidence seemed to confirm it. sam's dna was not found anywhere on cathy eor her car. >> the clothes, the ones he gave voluntarily to police, had no dna of cathy's on them, but that behavior of sam's, which bothered cathy's family, also bothered police. they focused on him. however, when investigators took their suspicions to the orange county d.a., it the outcome was not what they expected. >> coming up, sam has a new woman in...

Tina says cathy thought about sam's proposal all that week. ultimately, cathy decided, says tina, that she was so broken up about albert she was going to tell sam the answer was no. >> she's crying, and then she said, "i'm gonna tell him this saturday that i'm not gonna take off with him, that i will not elope." that was wednesday. and then saturday she never came home. >> reporter: sam's admitted jealousy, cathy's doting on albert, a rejected proposal. all of it seemed to add up to motive. but motives don't prove murder. there was still no physical evidence tying sam to the crime. all the blo...

Ultimately, cathy decided, says tina, that she was so broken up about albert she was going to tell sam the answer was no. >> she's crying, and then she said, "i'm going to tell him this saturday that i'm not gonna take off with him, that i will not elope." that was wednesday. and then saturday she never came home. >> reporter: sam's admitted jealousy, cathy's doting on albert, a rejected proposal. all of it seemed to add up to motive. but motives don't prove murder. there was still no physical evidence tying sam to the crime. all the blood on the car had been tested, and it was all cathy's. bu...