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It was 1996. two years had passed since the gruesome murder of cathy torrez in placentia, california. >> i had been to several places, had knocked on many doors. and all i ever wanted was the truth to come out as to what had happened to cathy. >> reporter: the case had gone cold, but its memory still clung to the breeze in this small town. daron wyatt was a patrol officer back then, and one afternoon his 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,...

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 -- that was basically it. that they became estranged. >> reporter: which made it difficult for tina, who was still married to sam's older brother, armando. police continued to work the case, but the fact was, they had no solid leads. they weren't even close to arresting anyone. but then two years after cathy torrez was murdered, an unexpected meeting put this investigation in the fast lane. an explorer scout with a familiar last nam...

>> 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. ...

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, t...

>> 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. >> reporter: but for the time being, it seemed daron's hands were tied. after all, the case had been rejected by the d.a.'s office twice before. this case getting a lot of baggage over the years? >> yeah, it did. >> reporter: and so if you go ahead with it, you're not only going ahead with the case, you're also kind of insulting the d.a.? >> yeah. >> rep...