Page 9 - Torrez Case News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Shock waves through her hometown. and caused a rift between the torrez and lopez clans. they had been neighbors and inlaws for years. police suspected cathy's laws for years. they didn't have the evidence they needed and the case went cold. sam married and ha had a child. now a rookie investigator armed with an intriguing new clue was about to turn up the heat. 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 ...

Weed? but. >> there was no indication that any of that was true. >> which calls into question his story. >> it does. as detective digs deeper into the case. he spots some telling behavior from sam in those old interview tapes. coming up. >> he never shows any emotion about the fact this girl is brutally murdered. no emotion whatsoever. >> that's a big red flag. >> huge. >> he learns that kathy and sam's relationship was anything but straightforward. when the promise continues. julie! hey... guess what day it is?? ah come on, i know you can hear me. mike mike mike...mike what day is it mi...

>> reporter: people would want those memories to come back. >> yeah. if he had a memory that he killed her, that certainly is a memory he doesn't want to relive. >> reporter: after listening to the interviews time and again, the evidence whisperer had no doubt sam killed cathy. but could the team prove it beyond a reasonable doubt? >> ultimately in cold case murders, time becomes one of our friends, because technology changes. >> reporter: at the time of the murder, dna tests could only be done on big samples like blood spatter. but in the years since, analysis became possible for touch-dna, t...

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...

Up straight. >> it did. >> reporter: there was more. the guy whose car had been repossessed had recently been released from state prison and was now in custody for threatening someone with a knife. >> reporter: and what you wanted to know first was, "where were you on the night cathy torrez disappeared?" >> correct. >> reporter: and where was he? >> he was in state prison. >> reporter: so whatever's going on with this guy, he's not your guy. >> he -- well, he's not personally. but is he related to -- does he know? what's the connection? why is this stuff in the trunk of his car? >> reporter: w...