00:00:04
[intense music] [gun popping] - When a murder's committed,
it's always a race against time
00:00:10
to find the truth, to
separate fact from fiction, to catch the killer, and to make sure that
justice is served.
00:00:17
[intense music] But what happens when the
truth vanishes with the victim? I'm Dr. Richard Shepherd,
00:00:26
and I've spent my entire career
as a forensic pathologist performing nearly
23,000 autopsies.
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[intense music] I've learned that the
dead don't hide the truth and they never lie.
00:00:41
Through me, you'll be hearing
directly from the victim. With the aid of a
state-of-the-art laboratory,
00:00:47
using groundbreaking technology, I'll be investigating a
series of intriguing crimes,
00:00:54
where, from the victim's bodies, I'll reveal to you the
truth behind these murders.
00:01:00
[camera clicking] On the 22nd of May, 2010,
in Costa Mesa, California, the body of a young woman
was found in the apartment
00:01:13
of war veteran Samuel Herr. The victim was 23-year-old
Julie Kibuishi, and she'd been
brutally murdered.
00:01:21
[intense music] Costa Mesa in Orange
County, California, concerned father, Steve Herr,
00:01:35
was trying to
reach his son, Sam. - Sam was supposed to
come over that weekend and he never came.
00:01:44
So on Saturday, I
went to Sam's place. I wanna check, make
sure everything is okay.
00:01:50
- So he went to his
son's apartment. Steve had a key. They were basically
best friends.
00:01:55
So he is very, very
close to his son Sam. - I walked into the apartment
and everything was neat.
00:02:03
And then when I walked
into Sam's bedroom, I turned on a light,
then I saw a body.
00:02:09
- [Richard] Steve immediately
called police on 911. - [Steve] There was a
body by son's apartment.
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- [Operator] There's a what? - A body, a dead body.
- A dead body. - Body was kind of half on
the bed, kinda half off,
00:02:25
clothes, kinda disheveled,
pants off, underwear down. - Her sweatshirt was on, but
her pants were ripped off
00:02:41
and she was fully
exposed on her bottom. - She may have been
sexually assaulted.
00:02:45
Her jeans had been cut
off of her lower body. Her buttocks were exposed. - [Richard] A
message was scrawled
00:03:10
across the young
woman's sweater. - Words, "All yours, fuck you" were written on the
back of her sweatshirt.
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[intense music] This looked like,
on the surface, every other domestic
violence murder.
00:03:26
- [Richard] And
Steve's son, Sam Herr, was mysteriously
missing from the scene. - [Richard] Police
raced to Sam's apartment
00:03:47
- Costa Mesa police
arrived within minutes and they walked in. Responding officers
walked into the apartment,
00:03:53
and to the left
was Sam's bedroom. And at the time, all
they could see was blood
00:03:57
and bent over Sam's bed,
face down was the body. - Police look at the scene,
they find a driver's license
00:04:06
that identifies women as Julie. [intense music] - [Richard] Julie Kibuishi
was a friend of Sam Herr
00:04:13
and an initial search
of Julie's phone pointed towards
Sam as a suspect. - When police looked at her
phone, they saw a series
00:04:22
of text messages from the cell
phone of Sam Herr indicating that he was having
problems with his family.
00:04:30
- These texts make it
sound like Sam is having this kind of crisis. Like, "I need
someone to talk to.
00:04:35
I'm having these problems. You know, please come," you
know, begging to come over
00:04:39
to Sam's apartment. - There are messages
in there saying, "I need a friend to talk to.
00:04:45
Can you come over tonight?" - [Richard] Julie Kibuishi and
Sam Herr had met at college.
00:04:52
- Sam was a veteran
of Afghanistan. He was at a place
called Camp Keating in the Nuristan
Province of Afghanistan
00:05:00
and saw at one point 83
days of constant combat. I think there was three
different medals of honor
00:05:06
that were awarded. So Sam Herr came back, truly
a war hero in every respect. - A lot of activity,
a lot of action.
00:05:16
And when he got out, he signed up for college. He started his college. His plans were to get
a four year degree.
00:05:26
Once you have a
four year degree, you can apply to
become an officer. - His goal is to go to
officer candidate school
00:05:34
and go back into the
army as an officer. So he's going to OCC in
order to get his degree
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so that he can rejoin the
army and be an officer and a better leader of men. [intense music]
00:05:47
- Julie had studied dance and she was going to Orange
Coast College at the time to study design, basically.
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Se wanted to be kind
of a clothing designer. Those who knew were described
she was a very friendly,
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bubbly, outgoing person. He and Julie met 'cause
they were in the same class. And it was a class that Sam
was kind of struggling in,
00:06:09
and Julie kinda
stepped in as a tutor and they became friends. - There were certain clues
left around the crime scene
00:06:20
from which the
detectives believed that Sam Herr had
committed a sexual assault of Julie Kibuishi.
00:06:28
- [Richard] But Julie's
autopsy raised questions about the scene
presented to detectives.
00:06:35
Julie's body was
found on the bed, and because she was partially
clothed, it was assumed
00:06:40
that she'd been
sexually assaulted. But intriguingly, the
postmortem didn't support that.
00:06:47
What you sometimes see
with a sexual assault are physical injuries
like bruising to the arms
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or the wrists, or other
signs of a struggle. Now, the absence of
injuries like this
00:06:57
doesn't rule anything out, but in Julie's case,
there was no evidence of any injuries
anywhere on her body
00:07:04
to suggest she'd been the
victim of a sexual assault. [intense music] Internal swabs confirmed
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that there had been
no sexual activity. Friends and family
of Sam and Julie also believed this was unlikely.
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- From the beginning,
Steve was adamant with the investigators that
this could not have been him.
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This could not have been
his son that did this. You know, he did not have that type of
relationship with Julie.
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They were not in a
sexual relationship. They're not in a
dating relationship. - They were just, you know,
a platonic relationship.
00:07:40
She looked to Sam like a her
big brother, a big teddy bear. That's how she described
him to her parents.
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And Sam described Julie to
me as like a kid sister. - [Richard] So outwardly
there appeared no motive
00:07:55
for Sam to carry
out such an attack. And there were more
clues from Julie's body
00:08:01
that puzzled police. The post-mortem also
revealed something else. On Julie's buttocks,
00:08:09
investigators could see a
process called blanching. This is where the
skin goes white,
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because the blood is
literally squeezed from that part of the body
by some kind of pressure.
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- When somebody dies, for
example, on their back, it's very common that you will
see like on their buttocks,
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where the buttocks would have
the most pressure on them. They'll be blanching. - [Richard] But the
position Julie was found in
00:08:35
didn't tie in with what
her body told detectives. - Julie was bent over
face down on the bed,
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but on her buttocks, which
were up, there were a blanching where you could see the
imprint of her jeans.
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That didn't make sense. - [Richard] This told police Julie's jeans were ripped
off long after she was dead.
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- Blanching doesn't
set in usually for at least 30 if not hours. So the scenario where Sam
freaks out and murders Julie
00:09:05
and cuts off her jeans as a
part of some sexual assault was contradicted by that.
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That made no sense. - [Richard] The evidence showed
no sign of a sexual assault.
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So perhaps the scene
had been staged to make it look like one. But detectives were faced
with clues left behind
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that still implicated
the brave war veteran. - There's also a bizarre sketch that had been left at the
scene with what appeared
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to be an Asian woman naked. And there had been the
imprint of a hand on that and the words, "I'm done."
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And it also, there
appeared to be maybe hell or like flames of hell on it. - [Richard] Police knew
they had to investigate
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the most likely scenario. - They had some sort of quarrel
or perhaps over another man,
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and that he lost it,
murdered her, and then fled. - [Richard] Sam Herr's father
was now left protesting
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his son's innocence. [intense music] - So police were
now looking for Sam. Everybody who knew
Sam, not just me,
00:10:10
everybody who knew Sam
said Sam didn't do that. [intense music] So you could see a big guy
getting into a fight in a bar
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or something like that. But he would never
wantingly ever hurt a woman. The police suspected it,
the media blurted it out
00:10:30
that Sam was this prime
suspect in the murder. But we all knew it was wrong. [intense music]
00:10:48
- In Costa Mesa, California, the body of 23-year-old
Julie Kibuishi was found in the apartment
of war veteran Samuel Herr.
00:10:58
Having recently finished a
tour of duty in Afghanistan, 26-year-old Army private Samuel
Herr was a trained killer.
00:11:07
So for police, he was
their number one suspect. - This looked every bit
like your traditional,
00:11:15
run of the mill
bread and butter, domestic violence homicide. His passport was gone,
his car wasn't there.
00:11:22
So there was a big
hunt on, for Sam. - [Richard] Julie's
autopsy pointed towards
00:11:28
the identity of the killer. Julie had an entry wound
in the back of her head that could only have
been caused by an object
00:11:37
with a high enough
velocity to penetrate through the thick
bone of the skull. The wound suggested
that this was caused
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by a bullet measuring around
nine millimeter in diameter, probably fired by
a small handgun.
00:11:52
With gunshot wounds to the head, we expect to see crushed
and lacerated brain tissue
00:11:58
along the trajectory
of the bullet. But it's not just the
bullet that causes damage.
00:12:04
If you look carefully,
you can see what happens when a bullet hits the skull. The sheer force and velocity
00:12:10
cause dozens of tiny
shards of bone to move out and cause massive damage
to the soft brain tissue.
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For police the lethal shot
to the back of Julie's head put combat trained
army veteran Sam Herr
00:12:25
clearly in the frame. - From their
perspective, you know, this guy's the suspect
and he's on the run.
00:12:32
He's a fugitive at this point, and they wanna track him down. At the same time they
realize that there's things
00:12:37
that don't seem right
about this crime scene. There doesn't appear through
the autopsy to be any signs
00:12:44
of a sexual assault. There's no indication
that Sam had a gun. And there's all these things
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that just aren't
really adding up. - [Richard] Sam's father, Steve, also had his doubts
his son was the killer.
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He too was on the desperate
hunt for Sam to find answers. - That night I got home
00:13:07
and I've had a few of
Sam's friends' numbers, and at one, two o'clock I'm
calling these people up.
00:13:15
- [Richard] One friend
had interesting news. - He said, "I called Sam and
somebody answered the phone,
00:13:22
but it wasn't Sam." He said, "What's going on?" Then he got hung up. So I knew somebody
had Sam's phone.
00:13:29
[intense music] Then Monday is when I was able to get into Sam's account. There was movement
on his ATM card.
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The first few times it was at
the ATM machine in Long Beach. - [Richard] This
was barely 20 miles
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and just a 30 minute drive
from Sam's apartment. - And then there was activity
that pizza was purchased
00:14:01
in Long Beach. And I googled it and there were all
within close proximity. So Monday evening
00:14:12
I went to the pizza joint. Let me see if I see Sam's car. So I stayed there
for about two hours.
00:14:20
There was nothing there. - [Richard] But Steve
passed on this significant new lead to detectives.
00:14:27
- He told the police, "Somebody keeps
withdrawing money from my son's bank accounts."
00:14:33
So the police then set up
a group of different teams to monitor ATM machines where these withdrawals
were being taken.
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[intense music] - They had teams
ready to go, you know, just waiting for
this card to be used.
00:14:50
- So the initial breakthrough
was they got the image of somebody withdrawing
money, which is great.
00:14:57
Now we're gonna find
out where Sam is because you know, Sam's gonna
be withdrawing his own money.
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And the problem
was it wasn't Sam, it was a young man
that nobody recognized. - They're continuing to keep
an eye on these withdrawals
00:15:18
and they match to see
one that's a pizza order to a home in Long Beach. [intense music]
00:15:29
- [Richard] Armed response units raced to the Long Beach address. - So they come in
helicopter overhead,
00:15:37
"Get down, get down, get down." The police are walking in, I think they had MP5s, which
are automatic machine guns
00:15:43
that SWAT teams use here
in Southern California. And it's a bunch
of 16-year-old kids
00:15:49
who in fact had Sam's ATM card. And they had a lot
of explaining to do. - [Richard] Police started
Interrogating the youngsters.
00:16:03
In the meantime, Steve had
been calling his son's friends. One in particular
claimed he'd seen him.
00:16:10
Sam's neighbor, an actor, Dan Wozniak. - And I said, "Dan, can
you tell me about Sam?
00:16:21
Yeah, because you
said you saw him." He said, "Yeah." He said, "Sam was really
nervous that time."
00:16:27
I said, "Do you
have any idea why?" He said, "No, he did tell me he had girl problems and
he had family problems."
00:16:35
And let me call you
in on something. The one thing there is
no problems with Sam
00:16:40
is family problems. We are so close. So as soon as he told me
that in my head is I said,
00:16:47
"That bastard knows something. Okay, he's dirty." - He was interviewed
by the police
00:16:54
and he said that he'd asked Sam to help him move
some stuff that day. And he essentially provided
information to the police
00:17:04
that didn't appear to be
of much use initially. - [Richard] Meanwhile, police
had turned up at Steve's home.
00:17:13
- Sam's still their prime
suspect at the time. They wanted to know if he had
a gun, he wanted to do this,
00:17:19
or if he had this or that. And I said, "I've got
information for you guys." - [Richard] Steve told
them about his conversation
00:17:27
with Dan Wozniak. - And then when I told him, he's telling me Sam had told
him he had family problems.
00:17:34
I absolutely knew he was lying. So when I told the cops
that, I'll never forget,
00:17:39
one of them said, "We might
be looking for the wrong guy." - [Richard] At the murder scene,
00:17:46
there was another
clue leading to Dan. - Among the items that they
find inside the apartment,
00:17:52
there was a wedding invitation to a woman named Rachel Buffett and her marriage
to Daniel Wozniak,
00:18:01
their neighbors
inside the building. And there were a bunch
of college students.
00:18:05
So they would hang
out, they would party, they'd spend time in the
jacuzzi and in the pools.
00:18:09
And Sam and Wozniak had had
at least one conversation in the jacuzzi. So they knew each
other sort of socially
00:18:18
within Camden Martinique
apartment complex. - [Richard] One of the boys
found holding Sam's ATM card,
00:18:26
had an interesting
story to tell. - He immediately cooperated. He said, "Yes, it was me.
00:18:35
I was taking money out." And then there was
the $20,000 question. And some of us were expecting
to tell us where Sam was.
00:18:45
And instead he said, "I got
the card from Daniel Wozniak." - Said that he had met
Wozniak six years earlier.
00:18:56
They'd both been acting
in the same production. And then out of the blue
Wozniak had had called him up
00:19:02
and asked him to do this,
asked him to use this card and go to these ATMs
and withdraw this money.
00:19:10
- So this is now the
second or third time that Daniel Wozniak's name has
come up in relation to this.
00:19:15
Dan Wozniak had already
been interviewed, and he didn't say anything
about getting Sam's ATM card.
00:19:21
At the very least, he withheld
information from police during a murder investigation
00:19:27
that is a crime
in and of itself. They reached out to him, I believe they called
him on the phone
00:19:32
and he said, "Yeah, I
can't meet with you. Sorry, I'm going on
my bachelor party."
00:19:36
Which as you can imagine,
is not something that when you've got potentially a
crazed murderer on the loose
00:19:44
and you have the murder of a beautiful innocent
23-year-old woman, that's not something
that the police
00:19:50
are going to care about. [intense music] - So the police, they
track Wozniak down,
00:20:04
they find him at his
bachelor party, actually, at a sushi place in
the Huntington Beach,
00:20:08
which is not far
from Long Beach. And they arrested him. And it caused quite
the kerfuffle among
his party guests.
00:20:16
And I think they might
have, even if I recall, I think they handcuffed
a couple of guys
00:20:21
that were protesting his
arrest, if I remember. But anyway, they
transport Daniel Wozniak
00:20:26
to the Costa Mesa
Police Department for a very formal interview. - Initially, Wozniak
tells detectives
00:20:35
that he was involved in some
sort of bank fraud with Sam. Then he changes his story.
00:20:42
- What he essentially
says in a nutshell is, "Okay, okay, okay, I
lied to you before.
00:20:47
I'm sorry, I lied. What really happened was
Sam came to my apartment and said he needed my help
00:20:53
and that there was a
body in his apartment and he needed my help to get
money out of his bank account."
00:21:00
- He tells him, "Well,
you know, Sam had told me that he had killed Julie because, you know, she
wouldn't have sex with him
00:21:08
and he was in this drug-fueled
rage," is what he claimed. - "And he threatened me.
00:21:13
And so I agreed to help him get money out
of his bank account, okay?" So there are about 20
things in that story
00:21:20
that made absolutely
no sense to detectives. - As detectives are kind of
poking holes in these stories,
00:21:26
he's not kind of
holding up very well under this questioning. One point, you know, one
detective tells him, you know,
00:21:31
"You're not that
good an actor, man." - And when they start saying, "Well, hey, what about this?"
00:21:36
And they begin confronting
him, Wozniak's story begins to change and says,
"Okay, I'm sorry.
00:21:41
I saw, quote unquote
'the God damn body.' I saw the God damn body. Is
that what you want to hear?
00:21:46
I saw the God damn
body. I didn't kill her. You know, Sam killed her. But then I helped
him afterwards."
00:21:53
- [Richard] But the
discovery on Julie's body undermined Wozniak's testimony. In Julie's case, the
postmortem confirmed
00:22:02
that the cause of death
was a gunshot wound to the back of her head. But there's something
else her body revealed.
00:22:11
She'd been shot not
once, but twice. The second wound was
hidden by her hair. And so at first, that second
gunshot wound was known only
00:22:22
to the pathologist who
performed the examination. And of course, to the person
who pulled the trigger.
00:22:28
[gun popping] - Wozniak said, "I stood
over her and I looked at her. All I saw was two bullet
holes in her head."
00:22:37
Julie was a young woman
with a beautiful head of thick black hair. You couldn't see the
bullet holes in her head.
00:22:46
This is a .380 caliber handgun. So this is a very small bullet, and you couldn't see that,
it was impossible to see.
00:22:52
One of the detective
sergeants actually, who was monitoring
this interview, interrupted the
interview at that point
00:22:58
and came in and
said, "Wait a second. Did you say you saw two
gunshot wounds in her head?
00:23:03
You couldn't see that." So they caught him
in a gigantic lie. [intense music] - [Richard] May 2010,
Costa Mesa, California
00:23:23
police were investigating
the discovery of a body in the apartment of
war veteran Sam Herr.
00:23:29
The body was that of
23-year-old Julie Kibuishi. Julie's body was
found on the bed
00:23:35
and she'd been
brutally murdered. 26-year-old Sam
Herr was missing. Nobody knew if he was
alive, dead, or on the run,
00:23:45
but detectives had now
arrested his neighbor, an actor, Dan Wozniak, for
withholding information
00:23:52
during a murder investigation. - Wozniak tells,
you know, police that he saw two gunshot wounds
in the back of Julie's head.
00:24:01
Detectives realize, you know, there's no way he
could have seen that. So they're pushing him on this
00:24:05
and they can tell he's rattled and he's struggling to kind
of come up with explanations.
00:24:09
- The interview ends. He then goes back
to his holding cell. - [Richard] Meanwhile,
Wozniak's bride-to-be,
00:24:18
Rachel Buffett, had begun
canceling their wedding plans. - Rachel, his fiance, went
to Daniel's parents' home
00:24:28
and she informs his mom that Dan has been arrested and doesn't appear that he's gonna be out
in time for the wedding.
00:24:36
And while she's there,
she has contact with Tim, who is Wozniak's older brother,
00:24:41
who begins to
freak out and says, "Oh my God, oh my
God, I have evidence." [intense music]
00:24:47
- [Richard] Unwittingly
Wozniak's brother, Tim, had been given a backpack. It contained Sam's
clothes covered in blood,
00:24:55
his mobile phone and his wallet. In a call Wozniak
made from jail, his fiance asked him about it.
00:25:06
- [Rachel] Tim says he
has evidence with him. - She says, "Hey, I'm about
to tell the detectives
00:25:10
that Tim has evidence. You can't do that. If you do, I'm done for. Baby, baby, baby, no,
no, no, don't do that.
00:25:29
Don't do that." And she says, "Well, I'm
going to, I have to." And by the way, this
is a recorded line
00:25:35
and you're being a complete ass if you're gonna
continue to lie." Wozniak then informs the jailer,
00:25:43
I want to talk to
the detectives. [intense music] - [Richard] Wozniak
then revealed
00:26:25
how he led Sam to his death. [intense music] - Wozniak says he goes to
Sam, he asks him for help
00:26:38
moving boxes at this theater on the Joint Forces
Training Base, which it's this military
base in Los Alamitos.
00:26:45
[intense music] - He says he lured Sam
into the attic of a theater called the Liberty
Theater under this guise
00:26:55
of helping him move some stuff. - Wozniak had been
in a production out
there, so he knew it.
00:27:17
- Wozniak rifles
through Sam's pockets, grabs his cell phone,
grabs his debit card,
00:27:24
and takes off. [intense music] - [Richard] With this news, police raced to the
Liberty Theater.
00:27:35
They finally found Sam
Herr's body in the attic. It revealed he'd
met a gruesome end.
00:27:41
[intense music] When the police first found
the body, the head was gone, the right hand was missing,
and the left forearm
00:27:56
and hand were missing. Now, the first thing you want
to do with a body like this
00:28:01
is to work out who
it belonged to. It was impossible to
use either fingerprints or dental records,
00:28:08
but this body could
still reveal the truth. On the chest was a distinctive
tattoo of a heart and a rose.
00:28:17
And using that, the police
were able to identify him as Sam Herr. For Sam's father, Steve, his
worst fears had come true.
00:28:29
- The police called and said
they identified Sam's body from the tattoo. It was a heart and
a rose big one.
00:28:36
And had mom and dad. I knew it was my son. [intense music] - Like a lot of young
men who were in the army
00:28:46
during the wars in
Afghanistan and Iraq. He also had just a
series of tattoos that were reflective of
his military deployment.
00:28:57
So his tattoos were unique
and very easy to identify. Plus, we knew that it
was Sam Herr at that time
00:29:02
because we already had
Wozniak's confession. - It's a shock when you
find out your child is dead.
00:29:11
When they confirm it,
the shock is complete. However, I remember saying,
"Okay, they found Sam's body"
00:29:21
and I remember thinking, "Well, at least he's
not been dismembered." So the next morning the
police call and say,
00:29:31
"Steve, before you find
out from the media, we have to tell you
Sam was dismembered."
00:29:39
That's when anger, everything, and to this day, 13 years
later, it's there, it's there.
00:29:47
That's where I go.
That's the dark place. I don't want to go there.
So I try to avoid it.
00:29:54
[somber music] - [Richard] Police
needed to work out how and why Sam's body
was dismembered.
00:30:07
Was it a moment of madness
or part of Wozniak's plan? To remove the head and
two limbs from a body,
00:30:14
you have to cut through bones. And I can tell you that takes
a lot of physical effort.
00:30:19
A closer look at the edges of
the bones that are being cut can be very revealing
00:30:24
and can tell us what
was used to cut them. An ax would leave
a V-shaped trough, whilst the saw leaves
specific ridge patterns
00:30:33
on the cut ends of the bone, matching the sore tooth pattern
on the edge of the blade.
00:30:39
And in this case, the
telltale marks on Sam's bones revealed that the killer had
used a saw to decapitate him.
00:30:47
With this new lead, police uncovered the
tools the killer had used for his grizzly crime.
00:30:56
- He used a combination
of a hatchet and also a wood saw. Wozniak discovered that
it was far more difficult
00:31:03
to dismember a human body,
I think, than he thought. We believe that was to make
identification more difficult
00:31:08
by removing the head and hands, which is not very
well thought through because this is a former member
00:31:13
of the United States military, and there's DNA in a database. So eventually this body
is going to be identified.
00:31:20
The blood at the scene by itself would be probably run
through the system and would've identified him.
00:31:25
So I don't know exactly
what he was thinking. - [Richard] But
time was running out
00:31:30
to find Sam's missing body parts for the sake of his family. And for police to build
a watertight case.
00:31:38
- He had cut off the head
and hands and thrown them in this Long Beach Nature Park.
00:31:44
We have coyotes, we
have a lot of animals, and they use the storm drains
to access suburban areas.
00:31:51
So if a body is not
discovered quickly and it is off a fire road
or off a hiking trail,
00:31:57
you can guarantee
that it's gonna be what's known as scavenged. That's when animals
find the body
00:32:02
and they will
oftentimes eat anything of forensic value from that. So there was a grid
search conducted
00:32:07
of this Long Beach Nature Park. [intense music] - On May 29th, which happened
to be Sam's birthday,
00:32:19
they found his head. [somber music] That upset me, you know? Yeah, he was dismembered and
here it was on his birthday.
00:32:30
We should have been
celebrating his 27th birthday. I'm praying that
they find his head.
00:32:37
The police scoured
El Dorado Park. There was still a
hand they never. There's never forgiveness
for Dan Wozniak in my mind.
00:32:51
- [Richard] Back at the police
station, Wozniak revealed how just hours after killing
Sam, he murdered Julie.
00:34:00
- At this point, police
have Wozniak's confession. They have forensics that
puts him at the scene,
00:34:06
the backpack with the clothes
in it, the murder weapon. And Wozniak is formally
charged with the murder.
00:34:13
[intense music] - Daniel Wozniak was charged
with two counts of murder for financial gain, which
in the state of California
00:34:22
carries a potential
sense of death. [intense music] - In May, 2010 in Orange
County, California,
00:34:41
Daniel Wozniak was charged
with two counts of murder after confessing to killing
Julie Kibuishi and Sam Herr.
00:34:49
Wozniak had shot and
dismembered Sam Herr to steal his bank
card and his money, then gunned down
Sam's friend Julie,
00:34:58
so it seemed he had
fled on the run, but the law had caught
up with the killer. - The case enters
the court process,
00:35:07
and there was a lengthy delay between the charges
in the actual trial. There's motions,
there's many hearings.
00:35:16
It would stretch
out over months, more than a hundred hearings. For Sam's family,
for Julie's family,
00:35:22
they're having to kind of
wait through their pain, through their, you know, need
for some kind of closure.
00:35:30
- So you can see our frustration
with the judicial system. We finally went to trial
00:35:37
December of 2015. That was five and one half
years after the crime. [somber music]
00:35:54
- [Richard] As Wozniak
entered the dock, the families came
face-to-face with the killer.
00:36:01
- You could tell he kind of
had that air as an actor. You know, he kind of carried
himself in a certain way
00:36:09
you know, in the courtroom,
for the most part. - Wozniak at the very correct
advice of his attorneys
00:36:13
remained pretty stone
faced throughout. I'm sure they advised him
not to show much emotion
00:36:18
and he didn't. He showed almost no
motion the entire time. - [Richard] Despite the
evidence stacked against him,
00:36:24
Wozniak pleaded not guilty
to Sam and Julie's murders. Deputy District
Attorney, Matt Murphy,
00:36:31
led the case for
the prosecution. - We played his confession. We laid out all the evidence
so the jury understood
00:36:40
what he did, how he did
it, and why he did it. - Prosecution was
obviously coming in
00:36:44
with a very strong case. I mean, they had a confession and they had a
videotape confess.
00:36:48
It's hard to have kind
of stronger than that, you know, unless you get someone on video actually
committing the act.
00:36:55
Prosecutors painted a picture
of an actor who was hard up. Wozniak never
really broke through
00:37:02
to kind of move up the ladder above community theater to
become kind of a professional.
00:37:09
- [Richard] His fellow
actor and fiance, Rachel, was also penniless. - He and Rachel, I don't
think they were getting paid
00:37:15
anything and neither of
them had actual employment. - Community theater
is not something
00:37:21
that's really gonna
pay the bills. They would act together, but they were also always
struggling for money.
00:37:26
- And the problem is,
they didn't pay the rent. I think they owed several
thousand dollars in rent
00:37:31
and they were in the
process of being evicted. - And despite that,
they were also trying
00:37:36
to plan this wedding. They wanted to do a beachfront
wedding and reception, obviously a honeymoon.
00:37:43
And they're trying
to figure out ways to pay for all this. And Wozniak learns
that his neighbor,
00:37:53
Sam, had earned through
his military service more than $16,000 in combat pay. And he decides he's gonna
find a way to get that money,
00:38:04
no matter what it
takes to get it. - And that's where the plan, this horrific diabolical
plan begins to come clear.
00:38:14
- [Richard] Evidence from
Wozniak's internet browsing revealed plans to kill Sam Herr
00:38:18
in the weeks leading
up to his murder. - If you go through
their search history,
00:38:23
you can see what's going
on exactly in his head, his mind was focused
on the honeymoon
00:38:28
and being able to
pay their rent. And then 10 seconds later... There are searches on Google,
00:38:34
"Making sure a
body is not found," "How to hide a body," "Quick ways to kill people."
00:38:40
He's doing searches
for, you know, how to commit the murder. [intense music] So he took this antique
pistol, which is a .380
00:38:54
that I believe was actually
manufactured in the 1930s. I think it was used in
the Spanish Civil war
00:39:00
that his father had. God only knows the last
time this thing was cleaned. God only knows if Daniel
Wozniak has ever used it before.
00:39:08
- [Richard] The court
heard how Wozniak lured Sam to the Liberty Theater. But could Sam Herr's
body reveal more evidence
00:39:17
that Wozniak killed
in cold blood and not in a moment of panic. We know that Sam's body was
dismembered after he was killed.
00:39:27
But what was his
actual cause of death? The answer to that
lay in his skull. The wounds to his head show
us that like his friend Julie,
00:39:36
he was shot twice. The fatal shot was here. The bullet entered through the
left hand side of the skull
00:39:45
and continued its destructive
course right across the brain. The bullet ended here on
the other side of the head,
00:39:52
having caused
catastrophic injuries, there is no way he
could have survived this second lethal gunshot.
00:40:00
Not one, but two shots were
delivered from Wozniak's gun. There was no coming
back from that for Sam.
00:40:09
- The way he does
it is so ruthless. Wozniak shoots one
round into Sam's head that doesn't
penetrate his skull.
00:40:16
He has an opportunity still
after shooting him once to do the right thing. It was a survivable wound.
00:40:25
But Wozniak shoots
again and kills him. And right after
murdering Sam Herr, Wozniak went and acted
in "A Hunger Artist"
00:40:34
theater production of nine because they had a performance
that night, goes out, sings, dances, does his
whole routine, nails it,
00:40:42
gives quite a performance. Then at the end of
that performance,
uses Sam's cell phone
00:40:48
to lure Julie to
Sam's apartment. [intense music] - Dan is now texting as
Sam, "I need to see you.
00:41:01
I have bad family crap." Dan acting as Sam
was very explicit and to say, "I need to see
you alone by midnight."
00:41:13
And Julie being sweet
and a friend saying, "Don't worry, Sam, I'm there
for you, we're family."
00:41:20
Dan goes up and meets her and then he lets Julie
into Sam's apartment. And she went to Sam's room,
00:41:28
and then he put two
bullets in her head and then he disproved her and made it look
like she was raped.
00:41:35
- [Richard] But the court
heard how Julie's body exposed the truth that
there was no sexual attack.
00:41:42
Prosecutors revealed how the
blanching of Julie's skin with an imprint of her jeans
00:41:48
showed Wozniak had removed
Julie's clothes after her murder to make Sam look
like the killer.
00:41:55
- He lured her in there
to her doom, to her death. She was thinking she
was helping a friend.
00:42:01
She was gonna be there for him. And then this guy just
destroys everything good.
00:42:10
- [Richard] Wozniak's
own brother Tim testified against him
about the backpack he was given containing
Sam's blooded clothes,
00:42:18
wallet and phone, and
even the murder weapon. It was an open and shut case. - [Juror] We, the jury,
find the defendant,
00:42:26
Daniel Patrick Wozniak, guilty of the crime of
murder in the first degree. - The jury found
Wozniak guilty of murder
00:42:36
in less than two hours. [intense music] - [Richard] In the new
year, Wozniak returned
00:42:46
to court to hear his fate. - The elected district
attorney decided to seek the death
penalty in this case
00:42:53
because it was so horrific. Danny Wozniak treated
him like trash. He treated Julie like trash.
00:42:59
So the question that
I ask you to answer in your verdicts, are they? - [Richard] Sam's father,
Steve, and Mother, Raquel,
00:43:08
were there to help the
jury make up their mind. - I addressed Dan Wozniak. What I did was Raquel on my side
00:43:18
and eight of Sammy's combat
buddies standing behind me. You, Dan, are a coward. I told Wozniak he was looking
at real men behind me.
00:43:28
I told his lawyer and the judge that Daniel Wozniak
was a poster boy for the death penalty.
00:43:37
My only regret
that in this state won't let me kill
this coward myself. - The thing I will never
forget the rest of my life
00:43:46
was June Kibuishi,
that's Julie's mom, who came in and she testified. - You took my beautiful, caring,
00:43:54
loving daughter's precious life to cover up your highness
and planned crime. Did I ever see you
any remorse? No.
00:44:07
Not even once. - That was a moment that
I will never forget. The jury has listened
to the family.
00:44:16
They go back to deliberate and they are back in a
little less than one hour. - [Juror] We, the jury,
determined that the penalty
00:44:24
to be imposed upon defendant
Daniel Patrick Wozniak to be death. - It was the shortest
death verdict
00:44:31
in the history of Orange County. - [Richard] Wozniak's
Bride to be Rachel Buffett
00:44:35
was later sentenced
to 32 months in jail for lying to police
to protect the killer.
00:44:43
- This was cold-blooded,
it was calculated. And the amount of grief
that this stupid plan
00:44:50
exacted upon those families
is morally wrong in every way. - There was kind of a very
tragic irony that, you know,
00:44:57
Sam had been in some of the
most dangerous places on earth. - Served heroically and
valiantly for his country
00:45:04
in the war in Afghanistan
without a scratch. - Only to come back and be
killed in Orange County.
00:45:11
Which, you know, is in
most people's estimation, an incredibly safe place. - Hopefully these families
can walk away from this
00:45:20
with some semblance of peace and know that justice
has been done. - So I don't want
them to be forgotten.
00:45:28
I don't want Sam
helping a friend, he paid his life for that. And Julie helping a friend,
paid for it with her life.
00:45:39
The villain of the
story is Dan Wozniak. The man doesn't
deserve to be alive. - Julie Kibuishi and Sam Herr
were lured to their deaths
00:45:48
by a man they trusted,
Daniel Wozniak. Not only did he shoot
them both in the head,
00:45:54
he also dismembered Sam's body. But despite Wozniak's
attempt to set Sam up as Julie's killer,
their bodies didn't lie.
00:46:03
The double gunshot to Julie's
head was evidence enough to put Wozniak in the frame
00:46:09
and help prosecutors
get justice. [intense music] [intense music continues]