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On May 21st, 2010, Dan Wozniak murdered his neighbor, Sam Herr at a Los Alamitos theater. In an effort to throw the police off his trail, he murdered Julie Kibuishi and staged the crime scene to make it look like Sam had sexually assaulted her and went on the run. Dan dismembered Sam's body and left some of his body parts in a park. He was apprehended at his bachelor party, just two days before his wedding. Dan was eventually convicted on two counts of first-degree murder, and he was sentenced to death.
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RECAP: On May 21st, 2010, Julie Kibuishi left her brother’s place, and headed to her friend, Sam’s apartment after receiving some strange text messages. Her body was discovered the next day. She had been shot in the head twice and the scene was staged to look like she had been sexually assaulted. The police believed Sam Herr was the one that murdered her, but they couldn’t find him. His neighbors, Dan Wozniak and Rachel Buffett told the police that they saw Sam the day before Julie’s murder, and he got in a vehicle with a man in a black hat. They said he was upset and acting weird because he was having family problems.
On May 26th, 17-year-old Wesley was seen on surveillance footage, pulling $400 from Sam’s bank account, but he said he got the card from Dan Wozniak, so investigators picked him up later that night at his own bachelor party. Dan originally said that he and Sam came up with a conspiracy to commit fraud with the ATM card, but the plan was ruined when Sam murdered his friend, Julie. The investigators pressed Dan harder, and his story began to unravel as he put himself closer to the murder scene. He eventually called his fiancé, Rachel, to let her know he was being charged and they would need to call off the wedding. She told him his brother, Tim had evidence and they were going to tell the police about it. Dan said he was going to tell the truth and it was bad. Imagine the worst and that’s what he did.
When Dan was done with the call, he asked to speak with the detectives, and he was led into the interview room. He said, “I’m crazy and I did it.” They asked him what he did, and he said, “I killed Julie, and I killed Sam.” Dan said he went after Sam first. They drove together to a theater because Dan told him that he needed help moving some heavy items from the attic. When Sam was crouched down, lifting something up, Dan shot him once, but he was still alive. Sam was talking and saying, “I need help.” He was begging for help and had no idea that he had been shot by Dan. He said that it felt like something hit him and it felt like an electric shock. Dan reloaded the gun and fired again.
Once Sam was dead, Dan took his phone and drove to another theater. He and his fiancé, Rachel, were performing in a show called Nine, and Dan played the starring role, flawlessly. He certainly didn’t look like a man that had just committed a murder a few hours earlier. Kara Kessner was the stage manager and she said he seemed just like any other day, he did a great job. Dan told the investigators that during the show, he went backstage to use Sam’s phone to text Julie those odd text messages that she got when she was at her brother’s place. After the performance was over, he drove to Sam’s apartment and waited. Julie arrived, wearing the tiara her brother had given her. Dan told her that Sam had just called him, and he was going through some stuff, and she said yeah, me too. Dan told her he had a key, so they should just go in. He went to the bathroom, loaded the gun, and then he walked into the hallway. He told Julie there was something on Sam’s bed that she should see. She asked what it was, and Dan said, he was really freaking out over it.
He told her to lean over and read it. Once she leaned over, he put two bullets in the back of her head. He said he cut her pants with scissors and wrote a nasty message on her shirt. The next morning, he went back to the theater where Sam’s body was, and he had an axe and a saw. He dismembered Sam’s body so it would be harder to identify him, then he scattered some of his remains in a local park. He left his torso in the attic of the Liberty Theater at the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base. The detective asked what was going through his mind when he was dismembering Sam’s body and Dan said, “I was actually smiling and laughing.” He was flipping back and forth between laughing and crying during the interview as well.
Sam was very frugal, and he saved up more than $60k from his combat pay. Dan said that the motive for murdering Sam was money and insanity. He killed Julie to frame Sam and cover his tracks. Dan didn’t have a job, he didn’t have money, he was getting married, and he was close to being evicted from his apartment. Dan had met his fiancé, Rachel, when they were cast in a play together. She said he was jovial, and he had a booming voice on stage. Since they were both actors, money was really tight, but her parents were going to pay for their wedding. Rachel said Dan had been acting weird, saying he borrowed money and he owed bad people. Detectives spoke to Rachel after Julie’s murder and she asked them if they had investigated whether Sam had killed Julie or not.
This was the story Dan had been trying to push them towards, so it almost seemed like she was helping with that. She also made comments that Sam was having family problems and the only other person who had ever mentioned this was Dan. When investigators had Dan and Rachel in the room together and he was laying out the story, she was asking him questions and it felt very scripted. She was very calm and didn’t get upset when he talked about the murder, which she said she had only learned about when Dan called her from his jail cell. Besides Dan confessing to the murders of two of their friends, her brother had also been arrested, and she was supposed to be getting married the following day. Her entire world was crumbling around her, but she was completely emotionless as she listened to Dan’s side of the story. A year after his arrest, Dan did an interview with MSNBC’s Lockup and his story was wildly different. He said he was not the one that murdered Sam and Julie.
Dan Wozniak was charged with two counts of first-degree murder. His older brother, Tim and Tim’s girlfriend were arrested and charged with accessory because detectives believed they helped hide evidence, including the murder weapon. Wesley, the teenager that used Sam’s bank card was not charged with any crimes. In 2012, two years after the murders, Rachel Buffett was arrested and charged as an accessory. She posted bail and was released, and she publicly announced her innocence.
When Sam first went missing, Dan and Rachel both told the police that they last saw Sam with a guy wearing a black hat, but Dan admitted this was a lie. When Rachel was confronted with this, she changed her story and said she didn’t see that guy with her own eyes. She heard about this person from Dan, and she trusted him. The police say that Rachel’s statement was that she SAW this person and that’s the major reason why she was charged as an accessory. Dan and Sam did leave in a car together, but there wasn’t a third person. Rachel said that when Dan came back to the house that day without Sam, he was frantic, and it looked like he was having a heart attack. Dan was pacing around the house, then he had his hand over his heart, and he was leaning against the wall.
They had a show that night because they were both performing in a show called Nine, but Dan said he needed to stop by his parent’s house to get his things. He left for a while and he got home in time for the two of them to get to the theater for their show. It was recorded that night and both of them put on an amazing performance and investigators wondered if it was too good? Rachel had a scene where she cried and some of her cast mates said that crying on cue was very unusual for her. Was she crying because she already knew her friend Sam was dead? She claims that she just had a stressful day, that’s why she was able to cry on cue.
After the show, Dan needed to lure Julie to Sam’s apartment, so he went home around 10:30 PM, and continued texting her from Sam’s flip phone, which is very different from his own phone. Rachel said she never noticed that he was using a flip phone that night. On the couple’s shared computer in their apartment, there were some odd Google searches for things like: “how to hide a body”, “quick ways to kill people”, “how loud shotgun” and “how to fake thumbprints.”
Rachel told the investigators that she never saw Dan leave the apartment on the night that he left to murder Julie. She said that after the show, they went home and went straight to bed, but the police discovered that Rachel sent a message to Julie on Facebook around the exact time that she would have been meeting Dan at Sam’s apartment. When they confronted Rachel with this, she said that she sent the message, then watched a movie and fell asleep on the couch.
The police were able to find all of Sam’s body parts except for one of his hands and his head. The next day, on May 29th, it was Sam’s 27th birthday and his father had to pray that they would find his son’s head. His head was found later that afternoon, on his birthday, under some scattered leaves in El Dorado Park, but his hand was never found. Dan had cut off Sam’s forearm to hide the airborne tattoo he had earned in the Army. He was given a hero's burial with full military honors.
On November 20th, 2012, the main detective in this case called Rachel and she met him at a shopping center, and she was arrested. She spent 3 weeks in jail, and she was charged with 3 felony counts of accessory to murder after the fact. They were saying that she withheld information or lied in 3 separate interviews to help Dan.
In December of 2015, the trial began, and Dan pleaded not guilty. It took 5 ½ years for this to go to trial. The families blamed defense attorney Scott Sanders for filing numerous motions accusing Prosecutors and the Sheriff of misusing informants to elicit damning evidence against his client. Dan’s older brother Tim testified against him as part of a plea deal offered by the prosecutors. In exchange for cooperating with investigators, he was sentenced to 10 days in jail, time already served and mandatory enrollment in an anger management program. He said Dan gave him a black backpack, but he claims he had no idea that a gun was inside, and he also didn’t know about the murders. Inside the backpack was the shell casings from Julie’s murder, Sam’s wallet, Sam’s checkbook, and his bloody clothes. Tim pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and he was sentenced to 3 years of informal probation and his then girlfriend was also charged, but her case was dismissed. When Wesley testified about the ATM card, Dan was smiling at him. Wesley said it was very disturbing. Six people testified on behalf of Sam and Julie. Not one of Dan’s family members showed up to support him and the only person that spoke about his character was a convicted felon who was a friend he made in jail.
The jurors deliberated for less than 3 hours and he was found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder on December 16th. This was a death penalty case, so the jurors had to go back and decide on this as well. The Defense made no excuses for his client and said he was not challenging his client’s responsibility, but he asked the jurors to consider whether he should get the death penalty if someone else was running the show and influencing him. What if Rachel Buffett was pulling the strings? On January 11th, 2016, the jury was initially deadlocked on whether he should receive the death penalty and the jurors said it was an agonizing decision, they were very conflicted, but in a little over an hour, which is described as one of the shortest death penalty deliberations, the jury recommended that the be put to death. Before the judge could formally sentence him, Sanders demanded more time to go back and explore the informant issue and argue against the death penalty. The families had to wait 8 more months before they got a chance to address the court and Dan.
Steve Herr stood, surrounded by combat veterans who had served with Sam. “You, Dan, are a coward and a poster boy for the need of the effective death penalty in California. My only regret is that this state won’t let me kill this coward myself.”
Julie’s mother said, “You took her precious life and then you disgraced her. Why? What did she do to you? How could you do anything like that to my baby?”
Judge Connelly turned to Dan and read his decision “It is the order of this court that you shall suffer the death penalty.”
It may sound like we’re nearing the end of this, but Rachel Buffett decided to go on Dr. Phil to discuss the story as well. She wanted a chance to explain her side of things. She said that she first met Dan when they were doing a play together and her first impression was that he was nice, but fake and shallow. He was eager to please others. Rachel had previously played Ariel at Disneyland. They started hanging out on a daily basis and Rachel quickly fell for him. In late 2008, he proposed and gave her a vintage ring and said it was from his grandmother and the wedding date was set for May 28th, 2010. It was going to be a beachside wedding with the reception overlooking the water.
She later learned that Dan had told her numerous lies. He claimed he had jobs, but he didn’t, people he said he talked to on the phone, didn’t exist, there was a condo he said he owned, but he didn’t, he had overdrawn his bank accounts and the ring was not his grandmother’s. His parents had never seen it before.
During the interview with Dr. Phil, Rachel said that Dan confessed to her on the phone that he murdered Julie and Sam, and this happened after he confessed to the investigators, but she couldn’t remember if he told her how he murdered them or what he did. Which seems like something you might remember, but who knows?
According to the District Attorney, here are some of the inconsistencies in Rachel’s statements:
Dan has admitted that this person never existed, it was a lie.
Rachel claims that she heard Dan talk about this person, so she trusted him and backed him up, but she never actually saw this man. Dr. Phil called her out and said it feels like her responses are really coached.
According to the DA, she later said she went on Facebook and messaged Julie and watched a movie
Rachel claims that she never said she went to bed. She told them that she couldn’t remember, but she usually goes to bed quickly after a performance, but sometimes she watches a movie. She was giving them generic clues as to what she could have done.
The DA believes that her first statement about going straight to bed was used to give Dan an alibi.
According to the DA: Rachel allegedly fabricated Sam’s problems with his family to throw suspicion off Dan.
Dr. Phil asked her if Sam had problems in his family life and she said, “I don’t know, I didn’t know him that well.” She claimed he was over at their place, sitting on the patio with her and he seemed really sad. She mentioned to Sam that Dan told her he was having family problems and Sam said he didn’t want to talk about it.
It is interesting that the only two people mentioning that Sam had problems with his family are Dan and Rachel and they were not his closest friends. It’s not like he would be expected to only confide in these two if something was really going on.
Sam’s father, Steve Herr also appeared on the Dr. Phil show, and he said he is sick of Rachel acting like the victim. He says it offends him that Rachel went on TV to plead her case and he believes this should be done in the courtroom. He wants her to stop acting and tell the truth. He firmly believes that Dan did this, but he doesn’t think he acted alone. He says several factors came out in the preliminary hearing, including the man in the black hat, that made Rachel look guilty.
Steve says that anybody who knows Sam, knows that he had a huge tattoo on his chest of flowers and hearts with Mom and Dad on it. He didn’t have family troubles. They had to identify Sam by this tattoo since they didn’t have his head right away. He told her that this story about family troubles was fabricated by Dan, yet she has the same story and he wanted her to explain. Rachel said it could have been something as simple as girl troubles and he just didn’t want to talk about it. Steve said, no, we aren’t talking about girl troubles, you said family trouble. She did not provide a response to this.
The police and Prosecutors do not believe that Rachel is innocent, and they think that Dan is protecting her. The Prosecutors and the district attorney said that her story has changed many times and they believe she is responsible for helping Dan cover up the murders. Sam Herr’s parents also believe that Rachel has been involved from the beginning. The detectives performed a voice stress analyzer test which is used to measure deception and a retired Costa Mesa police investigator, Michael Cohen, told ABC News, “The entire testing process, she was very soft-spoken. Her answers were very mumbled, and she wouldn’t give me a full yes or no to the questions. I felt that she was deceptive and not telling us the truth.” At her sentencing, she read a statement. “I’ve always wanted to express my condolences to the Herr and Kibuishi family. I hope my silence has not been misinterpreted as callous. I wish I could have saved them. I wish Sam and Julie were still here. I wish I’d never met Daniel Wozniak. My heart goes out to the Herr and Kibuishi families. They will always be in my thoughts and prayers.”
According to Crime Junkie, a woman named Violet says she was with Dan and Rachel on the night that Julie was discovered. Dan was freaking out, saying he was the last person to see Sam alive, but no one knew Sam was dead yet. Violet says she overheard Rachel telling Dan that he was messing up her story.
One of Rachel’s castmates says that Rachel mentioned her friend was missing or had been killed and she was concerned that another friend was involved, but this happened before Julie’s body had been discovered. It was before anyone even knew Julie was missing.
Chris was a friend of Dan and Rachel’s and he says he was in their apartment, trying to get money from them on the day that Sam was murdered. He had given them a loan and they were supposed to be making payments on it. Sam was in the apartment as well. Chris said that it was obvious that Dan and Rachel did not have the money to pay him. At one point, Dan and Sam left the apartment and a few hours later, only Dan returned, and he handed Chris $400, but Sam was no longer with him. Chris felt that Dan was acting really weird and worried about something, but he didn’t think anything of it until he found out about Sam’s murder. This story matches up with the time that Sam would have been killed.
Neither Rachel, nor Dan, ever mentioned Chris during their statements. Rachel said, “Because honestly, I was afraid that if you knew Chris had seen us that day, I don’t know who Chris knows and, I don’t know if he knows anybody bad.”
If this really happened, it almost makes it sound more like Rachel knew what was going on. If Chris came over and neither of them had money to pay him, what did she think when Dan showed up a few hours later with $400?
In September of 2018, Rachel was found guilty of accessory to murder after the fact, and she was sentenced to 32 months in prison. It took so long to charge her because the investigators were hoping to find more evidence, but they realized that they didn’t have anything else, so their hands were tied, they could only charge her with accessory after the fact.
Steve Herr said that at the preliminary hearing, the judge stated there was enough evidence to go to trial and he was shocked the next night when he received a call saying Rachel was going on the Dr. Phil show. Steve believes she is playing the greatest role of her life, an innocent victim.
I wrote down a few observations when I watched the show, and this is just my personal point of view. Rachel appeared to be extremely calm, emotionless, very mild expressions, and she had no reaction when the murders were discussed.
Governor Gavin Newsom has stopped the executions in California and the last one was in 2006, so Dan currently remains on death row. He was originally at San Quentin State Prison until July of 2021, when he was moved to Salinas Valley State Prison. The transfer pilot program is open to any condemned inmate who doesn’t have recent disciplinary issues, even those who were sentenced to death. This means that he was moved out of San Quentin into a lower-security prison, but the family members of both Sam and Julie were angry and this lead District Attorney Todd Spitzer to send a letter to the families of Orange County victims of death row prisoners to warn them about this program. Sam’s father, Steve Herr, said that he learned about Dan’s move from the person who runs the “Daniel Wozniak is my friend” blog, but he should have been notified by prison officials.
He said, “It was a kick in the gut. It would have been nice for them to at least notify me. If I could, I would kill him myself. But that isn’t going to happen, so I want the harshest possible penalty.”
The program is described as a way for those previously confined to death row to participate in rehabilitation and work programs so they can pay restitution to their victims or their families. Steve Herr doesn’t like that Dan was moved from San Quentin to the Salinas Valley prison and he questions whether other victims’ families would want inmates to get a change of scenery and more freedom in exchange for restitution.
Matt Murphy, a former deputy district attorney who prosecuted Dan along with other death penalty cases, has questioned if moving the inmates without warning would violate victims’ rights. He said that in his experience, knowing an inmate will spend the rest of their life on death row is very important to victims' families. He said, “That has meaning to these families, the location, the restrictive setting, all of that matters. We are not talking about someone who stole a car stereo, we are talking about a man who ruthlessly murdered two people so he could go on a honeymoon. The victims don’t want his money.”
Prisoners on death row are kept in solitary cells, but that can be re-evaluated when they move to other facilities
Julie Kibuishi was described as a goofball, who was always singing. She was sweet, bright, snorts when she laughs too hard, and always had a passion for musical arts and dance. Her mom said she was the person that always took care of her friends. Steve said that his son, Sam Herr was his best friend, he was outgoing, easygoing, and just a fun-loving guy. He loved to help people and he was very trusting and protective. Veteran Miles Foltz asked Steve Herr to be the best man at his wedding in place of his best friend Sam, and he accepted.
Steve said he tries to focus on the good. Sam was a good man, and they have happy memories of him.
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