The Final Performance - The Murder of Sam Herr and Julie Kibuishi

July 22, 2024

In this episode, Payton and Garrett dive into the case of Sam Herr and Julie Kibuishi. When Julie is found dead in Sam’s room, police scramble to find who did it and are shocked by what they find.

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AUDIO TRANSCRIPT

You're listening to an Oh No Media podcast.

Hey everybody, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with My Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.

And I'm Garrett Moreland.

And he's the husband.

I'm the husband.

Well, another week, another Murder with My Husband. Everything's good in the world again, isn't it?

Yeah, kind of. All I got.

What do you got?

I think I'm ready to hear your 10 seconds.

There's probably, there's a couple more merch, there's still some merch, so if you haven't gotten your merch, go and check it out. It's really cute, it's really fun, it's different than some of our other merch, and it's, again, limited. It's a limited drop.

Yeah, I love it. I think it's really cute.

Okay, what are you going to hit us with your 10 seconds this time?

I Naired my legs again, and I think I am, maybe like, two times a year. I'm like a Nair, um, I feel like Nair should sponsor me two times a year, to be honest, because about two times a year, I use about a whole bottle of Nair. And I Nair my legs and my thighs, a little bit higher than my thighs, but that's none of your guys' business. And I Nair everything, not from head to toe, just from legs to toe, I guess. And it just all comes wiping off, it's crazy. I actually don't even really get any rashes or irritations. It feels weird in the sheets at bed, like at night time, at bed, I have purses. It feels weird at night time for a couple of days, like when I'm sleeping, my legs feel like they're sweating for no reason, but they're not sweating.

Mine feel like that when I shave sometimes.

Oh yeah, so mine feel like that when I Nair. And it works, though. I'm not going to recommend that you Nair, because I hear a lot of people have bad reactions, and they don't sponsor me, so don't go Nair. But it works for me, and I love it. I don't love it, I just have to do it twice a year because I grow a lot of leg hair. I'm kind of like a little grizzly bear. But it's nice because in the winter, I stay nice and warm. And that's what I got for my 10 seconds today.

If you're a guy and you haven't tried Nairing your legs or shaving your legs ever, I didn't until about, I think, two, three years ago was one of my first times, and it's kind of nice to have some smooth legs for a little bit and just change things up. That's all I got.

So, you know, let's hop into today's case.

Wait, if you were an animal, you would be a grizzly bear? Or like, what would your animal be?

No, I don't think I'd be a grizzly bear.

What would you think you would be?

My animal?

Yeah, like, I can pick an animal, or it's an animal I think I am?

It's an animal that you think you are, not one you want to be, one you think you are. What animal represents you?

I don't know, maybe an elephant?

I can see it.

I feel like I could be an elephant. Like, reason: if I need to throw down, I'll throw down, you know? But majority of the time, I'm just kind of walking, chilling, doing my thing, swinging my trunk around. Not in an inappropriate way, but, you know, just swinging my trunk around. Just stomp, stomp, stomp, stomp. But if I needed to throw down, I'll throw down. So don't upset me, I'll hit you with my trunk.

On that note, again, do you want to talk about what animal you are or should we do that next week?

It's fine. You can talk about what animal you are if you want, real quick. We can make this a longer 10 seconds. What do you think you are?

I think that I'm a black cat, but I wish I was a bat.

I could see a black cat. I feel like that's pretty on par. Any reasons why?

I just think I can be sassy. I feel like I can be, you know how sometimes cats demand attention in an annoying way? I feel like I'm kind of like that.

In an annoying way, like yeah?

Yeah, but at the same time, I feel like I can just go into my own little world and survive. You know what I mean? And just hunting mice, mouse, yeah, mice, mouse.

I have purse. I have purse. I have hat on head.

Okay, I could see that. It's a good one.

But I wish I was a bat because I like to fly. Like, I wish I could fly.

You don't need to fly to be a bat. They fly and they hang upside down and they sleep.

Yeah, you don't sleep as much as you used to.

True.

Yeah, okay. All right, good one.

Our sources for this episode are abc.com, people.com, yahoo.com, latimes.com, oxygen.com, abcnews, insideedition.com, dailymail.com, CBS News, and Wikipedia.

All right, so we all have that one thing that we're good at, whether that's dancing, golf, hosting a podcast. It really is nice to have something that you pride yourself on, something you can hang your hopes and dreams on. But there will always be that one goal that we just can't quite reach. Knowing that is what keeps us humble, honest, human. But that's not what the predator in today's story believed. He was a man talented enough to be on the path to Hollywood, an actor who believed he could take on any role. And when it came time for him to prove his innocence, he acted his butt off. Only no one bought his performance because, as it turns out, playing an innocent man is a challenging role to take on when you are actually a monster.

So it's May 2010. We're in Costa Mesa, California. Twenty-six-year-old Private First Class Sam Herr is back from his tour in Afghanistan. After doing some additional traveling through Israel, Prague, and Germany, he is ready to slow the pace, put that chapter of his life behind him, at least for now. He's taking classes at Orange Coast College, using the $60,000 he banked in combat pay, because Sam knows the best way to spend it is by investing in his future.

Good for him, man.

However, anthropology, one of his studies, isn't his strong suit, and he's having a tough time in the class, which is when he recruits his friend Julie Kibuishi to help him out. Sam's been tight with the 23-year-old Julie for some time now, but their relationship is totally platonic, more of like a brother-sister scenario. Just two friends that are going to college together and that study together and hang out. They're so close that she's actually even met some of Sam's fellow war buddies, and they all say that she's an absolute angel. She's a dancer, she's an aspiring fashion designer, and she's a bit of a goofball, just like Sam. They both love to have a good time, keep things light and fun, and they both would do anything for the people they care about, including helping the other one out with their classwork when needed.

So not only does Julie help Sam with his anthropology studies, she actually gets him an A. Julie and Sam are in a really good place when she gets a text from him on the night of May 21st, 2010.

Peyton did some of my homework when we were in the same class together in college.

That I did.

Did you get an A?

I don't remember. I don't think so. I think I got a B.

So Julie is out to dinner that night with her brother. It's a special evening because he's just asked her if she'll be in his wedding, and he's even given her a little tiara as a gift along with it. But when that ding comes through, that celebratory night sours a bit because the message from Sam that gets on her phone is a little bit alarming. It reads, quote, "Can you come over tonight alone? Going out for a bit. Very upset. Need to talk." But it doesn't quite sound like Sam because it's followed up by, quote, "Please, no sex. I need to talk to someone, OK?" Now, got it?

Naturally, Julie finds this strange because she and Sam are not like that. They have never crossed that line before, so why would he assume that tonight they're going to have sex? I mean, maybe he's just putting it out there. You got to respect him for that. Still, she replies, quote, "Yeah, that's fine, Sam. I'm here for you like family."

So Julie tells her brother that she has to cut the evening a little short that night, and within the hour, she is heading over to Sam's apartment, still wearing the tiara that her brother gave her from dinner. But the next morning, when Julie still hasn't come home from Sam's place, her family starts to worry. So they begin calling all of her friends, but no one has seen or heard from her since last night. And it's completely out of character for Julie, who is constantly checking in with her family. By the afternoon, it's a major cause for concern, so they decide to call the police.

But at the same time, another family is panicking, and that is Sam Herr's family because all morning his dad Steve has been calling his cell phone, which is going straight to voicemail. This is unusual for him too, so Steve says to his wife (and remember, Steve is Sam's dad), "I'm going to drive over to Sam's apartment and just make sure that everything's okay." So he goes there. He gets there. He knocks on his son's door, but there is no answer. So he uses the spare key that Sam gave him, and he lets himself inside. Everything looks clean; it's in place. He's calling Sam's name out; still no one's answering. So then he walks into Sam's bedroom, and this is when he sees something.

It's not Sam, his son, who is missing. It's Julie, his son's friend who came over the night before. She is dead on the edge of Sam's bed. She has been shot in the back of the head. She's still wearing the tiara, and her jeans are pulled down around her knees. Plus, it looks like something has been scribbled in marker on the back of her gray sweatshirt. In sloppy writing, it reads, quote, "All yours. F you." But the real word is horrible, very, very demeaning, very derogatory, dehumanizing, 100%.

Steve, heart pounding, searches the rest of the apartment, expecting to find Sam because this is Sam's apartment—this isn't even Julie's apartment. But there is absolutely no sign of his son, so Steve knows what he has to do and dials 911.

When detectives arrive, they say they've never seen anything quite like this before—someone graffitiing their victim in this way. Remember, we're in Costa Mesa, and wait, I'm remembering—I know what this is.

I was waiting! I was waiting. It took me a second. I know exactly what this is. So, for those who don't know, on Thursdays, we haven't done it in a while, but we stream on Twitch, and we watch interrogation footage. Not the whole background and all this that you're telling me, but we watched interrogation footage in this case.

I was waiting to see when you would pick up on it. Oh crap, okay. I know where this is going.

Okay, yep. So, Garrett actually has watched the interrogation footage. I don't really remember a lot of it, so this is good.

Yeah, okay. I'm actually impressed you caught on that fast.

I caught on like a minute before that. You kept saying Sam, and I was like, "Wait, I feel like I know a case with a Sam."

So, they're seeing Julie, and they're like, "This is awful," the detectives are. Then they find Julie's phone, and that's when they read the texts from Sam the night before. They see how Sam got her over to the apartment, telling her he was having family issues and needed to talk. But this comes as a shock to Steve. So, the detectives see this and then they go to Steve and they're like, "Hey, Sam asked her to come over last night, your son who's still missing by the way, because he said he was having family problems and needed to talk." And Steve, his dad, is like, "I don't know what he's talking about. There are no issues between the family and Sam."

So, the police at this point feel like maybe they have an idea of what's happened here. They believe that Sam has killed Julie and that he is now on the run because his car is missing, his phone and wallet are gone, and his passport is missing. When police look into Sam's past, they actually find another reason to believe he is the one who committed this crime. It turns out Sam has been arrested and charged with murder before going into the army.

This was back when he was just 18 years old. During this chapter of his life, Sam had gotten mixed up with some local gangs. When one of their members was killed, Sam and 23 others were accused of luring the guy out to a parking lot and murdering him in retaliation. That's not okay. Here's the thing—while some of those men were convicted of the crime and sent to prison, Sam was actually found not guilty. After he was acquitted of those charges, he said that he needed to turn his life around. That's when he enlisted in the army, went to Afghanistan, and then he never looked back.

So, changed man or not, with this kind of record, police are like, "Okay, it's just weird." They know one thing—they need to find Sam Herr, which is easier said than done because Sam's phone is off and there's no sign of him or his missing vehicle for days after this. Until there's a transaction on his debit card.

It's a withdrawal from an ATM in Long Beach, California. Then, there's another charge a few minutes later—a purchase at a pizza place not too far away. So, the police move fast. They pull the surveillance footage from the ATM during the time of that transaction, but the guy withdrawing from Sam's account is not Sam Herr, who is missing—it's a teenager.

They take some screenshots, head over to the pizza place, and show one of the employees the photo. He's like, "Yeah, I know that kid. He comes in here all the time." He even offers up the kid's address and name—it's 17-year-old Wesley Freilich. So, that same day, police rush over to the Freilich home where teenager Wesley is still eating the pizza he bought with Sam's card earlier that day. They sit him down for questioning.

Wesley says he knows he was using a guy named Sam Herr's credit card, but he has no idea who the guy is. He says the card was actually given to him by his theater mentor, a 26-year-old actor named Daniel Wozniak.

The police are like, "What the heck?" They find Julie because Steve is looking for missing Sam, who is still missing, by the way. Then, they track Sam's credit card, which leads them to this teenager named Wesley, who says, "Yeah, I know it's Sam's card, but I don't actually know Sam. I was just given this card by my mentor Daniel Wozniak."

Now the police are like, "Okay, now we have to go find Daniel because we're chasing our tails around trying to figure out where Sam is, who they believe is the top suspect who killed Julie in his apartment."

Daniel was a community theater actor who was always landing the starring role in the local productions. In May of 2010, he was performing as the lead in the musical "Nine" alongside his 23-year-old fiancée, Rachel Buffett.

Daniel and Rachel were basically like the prom king and queen around the local theater. Rachel, who formerly worked as a princess at Disneyland, first met Daniel through the theater company, and in late 2008, he proposed to her. Other players at the theater described Daniel as boisterous but fun—someone who was friends with everyone, and ironically, that included Sam Herr.

So, the connection is real. Sam and Daniel were actually neighbors back in that Costa Mesa apartment complex where Julie was found in Sam's bedroom. In fact, Steve Herr had spoken to Daniel the night of Sam's disappearance when he was calling all the friends. Steve, the dad, actually called Daniel to say, "Hey, have you seen Sam?" The conversation definitely stuck out to Steve. He said that Daniel did seem nervous on the phone, and he repeated a weird detail from the case—that Sam had told him he was having family problems.

So remember when Steve shows up to the apartment and the police are like, "Hey, he texted her saying yes, no, there's no family problems?" Steve's like, "I've heard this before," because Daniel said the same thing to me on the phone the night before when I was looking for Sam. Steve knows it's untrue, but it's a lie that has come up twice now in the case, which is why the police begin wondering why Sam was even saying that, and more importantly, why did Daniel Wozniak have Sam Herr's debit card?

Who is Daniel at this point, and why did he give it to 17-year-old Wesley? Well, according to Wesley, Daniel had come to him with a favor. He told Wesley he was working for a bail bonds agency and needed him to take out money for the card's owner to pay for his bail. Daniel goes to the 17-year-old and says, "Hey, Sam, the owner of this card, is in jail. I need you to withdraw money so I can pay the bail." Wesley said it seemed strange, but he trusted his mentor Daniel. Daniel even showed him paperwork that looked legitimate, so he did as he was told. Daniel gave him a little kickback as promised.

Now the police realize they need to get to Daniel Wozniak. They think that maybe he's covering for Sam Herr, doing him some sort of favor to help him get out of town, or maybe he's even being blackmailed in some way. Five days after Julie's murder, they track down Daniel Wozniak. When they find him, he's out celebrating his bachelor party because he's getting married in two days to Rachel, his fiancée, on May 28th.

So the timing of all this could not be worse for Daniel, who's juggling the final touches of the biggest day of his life while also starring as the lead in this local production alongside his future bride. Now he's been pulled from his bachelor party and into the station to talk to police about Sam, who's missing, and Julie, who's dead in the apartment. He thinks the last thing he needs right now is to be the key witness in a murder investigation, but here he is. Because of how much is on his plate, he is seemingly willing to cooperate with the police.

Daniel tells them, "Look, I will help you out in any way as long as you make sure that I make it to my wedding this weekend. I cannot push my wedding—Rachel will kill me. I will help you out, I will talk to you, but you need to let me out of here in time for my wedding." When they start questioning Daniel, he offers up the following: he says Sam Herr showed up at his door the other night and asked for help. He said he needed Daniel to follow him to a parking lot so he could leave his car there. Daniel said, being the friend he was, he didn't ask many questions; he just followed through with the favor. But when Sam got back into Daniel's car after the drop-off, Daniel could tell that something was wrong. He was panicked, and when he asked him what was wrong, Sam admitted, "Okay, I have done something terrible." This is when Sam tells Daniel, his neighbor and friend, that there is a dead body in his apartment and that he killed his friend Julie in a drug-induced haze.

But when Daniel hesitated, he said Sam threatened him, telling him he knew where he lived and if he didn't help him, he would kill Daniel too and his bride-to-be, Rachel. Eventually, Daniel said he gave in out of intimidation and fear, which is how he even ended up with Sam's credit cards in the first place. Later that evening, after returning to the apartments, Daniel said he watched Sam get into a car with a man in a black hat, and after that, he hadn't seen or heard from Sam again. Daniel keeps insisting to the police that he has no idea where Sam has gone—this was his role in this story and that was it.

Daniel has just implicated himself, and police definitely have enough to arrest him for being an accessory to murder after the fact. He helped a murderer get away, but while Daniel's putting on a pretty good performance, their gut instincts tell them they believe Daniel knows more than he's letting on. Still, four hours into the interrogation, Daniel sticks to what he's been saying, insisting he has no idea where Sam is.

The police figure two can play this game, so they turn up the heat by telling Daniel they're going to need him to do a cheek swab for a DNA sample to rule out his involvement in the crime. This threat actually works because that's when Daniel changes some parts of his story. He panics and blurts out in the interrogation, "Okay, fine! He came down and said help me, I went upstairs and yes, I saw the body! Is that what you want to hear?"

"We want to hear the truth," the detectives respond.

"That is the truth! I saw the goddamn body, okay? Is that what you want to hear?" When they ask him what he saw when he laid eyes on Julie, Daniel says he saw two gunshot wounds to the back of her head. This is a colossal mistake on Daniel's part because when detectives first surveyed the scene, they only believed there was one gunshot wound to the head. The second wound wasn't visible due to how large the first wound was.

It was only during Julie's autopsy that they discovered there had been two gunshot wounds. Daniel couldn't have just seen the wound; he must have been there to hear two gunshots go off or at least witnessed the murder to know there were two wounds. Before they can get more out of him, the police try another angle. They decide to bring in Daniel's fiancée, Rachel, to see if she offers them something that could implicate her soon-to-be husband.

They bring Rachel into a different room and begin talking to her. By this point, it is now Thursday, May 27th. Rachel is literally supposed to walk down the aisle and marry Daniel Wozniak the next day.

So when police sit Rachel down and tell her that her fiancé has been arrested as an accessory to murder, she freaks the F out...you would think so, right? Not only might her wedding not happen, but the man she's supposed to marry is in jail, and he's probably going to be there when guests are arriving at their wedding. But no, Rachel seems calm, composed, and oddly unfazed by the entire situation. It makes no sense. She insists she has no idea about the crimes until they became public and she has no involvement whatsoever. She does, however, repeat one similar detail to Daniel's: on the night of Julie's death, she also saw Sam drive off with a man in a black hat. It's something that police will remember later on.

While Rachel maintains her innocence, Daniel spends the rest of the day in jail awaiting bail. That afternoon, he makes a call to Rachel. You have to listen to this call because it is one of the craziest things. It is not about postponing their nuptials or alerting guests and caterers. During the call, they talk about a backpack. Rachel claims to have spoken to Daniel's brother, Tim, earlier that day. Tim mentioned that Daniel had given him a backpack full of evidence and asked him to get rid of it. Rachel confronts Daniel, saying, "Hey, I spoke to your brother, he said you gave him a backpack of things to dispose of." Daniel tells her yes, and if his brother never got rid of this backpack, he's doomed.

Rachel starts panicking on the call and reminds Daniel that they're being recorded because he's calling from jail. She says she's going to have to tell detectives the truth. Before hanging up, Daniel says to her, "I have to tell the truth on what I did, and I think you now know what it is. It's that you imagine the worst, I'm not what I did."

After he says this to Rachel, minutes later, he's telling the jailer that he needs to speak with detectives immediately. Fourteen hours after he was first brought in for questioning, Daniel Wozniak is now ready to tell police the entire story. While they think Daniel's finally about to give them Sam Herr's location, he delivers something completely different. Daniel says, "I'm crazy and I did it."

"You did what?" the detectives ask.

"I killed Julie and I killed Sam," Daniel confesses.

He says he killed Sam just hours before he then killed Julie.

So the detectives are like, "Wait, you killed them both?”

My gosh, dude! Can you imagine sitting there as a detective and you're just like, 'What? We were totally off!' They thought Sam killed Julie. What the f-word! Everybody, I want to say it, but this is a family-friendly podcast, so what the f-word!

So here's what Daniel says happened on the evening of May 21st. Daniel texted his friend and neighbor Sam to say he needed some help moving supplies down at the Los Alamitos Theater, where he was performing that night. Sam, always willing to go above and beyond for his friends, was happy to help. So Daniel texted him the address and time, and Sam showed up as promised. When he got there, Daniel brought him up to the attic of the theater and asked him to help with a heavy box. When Sam turned his back, Daniel fired a gun into his friend Sam. Insane!

But Sam, the war veteran, is still alive and completely unaware of what had just happened. He began asking Daniel for help, saying he felt like something had hit him, like an electric shock had just gone through his back. He doesn't realize that his friend had just shot him in the back. That's how out of the blue and for no reason this was. Just as Sam was trying to piece together what happened, Daniel fired the gun at him again, and this time it was fatal.

Daniel, horrible man, then left Sam's body in the attic, went downstairs, and just a few hours later, he performed in that evening's musical production of "Nine." After just killing his friend in the attic, he goes down and performs an entire production. He doesn't even miss a beat. Scum of the earth, man. Literal scum of the earth. In fact, we'll put up some footage of him acting. He's like screaming on stage and acting like he's full-blown performing:

"Should I settle for less? Came here because I know you better than any other person. The last days of a director's once glorious career. Here's a place where I have never been."

In fact, other actors recalled his performance that night, saying he was better than usual, that he gave them goosebumps. He brought the crowd to their feet. But as soon as the curtains went down, Daniel was ready for his next act. He's a complete monster because there's absolutely no reason to do this. Using Sam's phone, he goes back up to his dead friend, grabs the phone, and Daniel texted someone he knew was very close to Sam, and that was Julie. That was Sam's friend. He told her he was having family problems and needed her to come over to his apartment. He's pretending to be Sam.

But why? Because Daniel had thought this entire thing out. He needed to make it look like Sam had raped and killed Julie and then went on the run in order to cover up his own crime. So he thinks, "I'm just going to kill someone else to try to make this first crime make sense." I don't understand how a human being can do these things and just not think twice. It's just, I can't, he's just acting like he's committing these insane, horrible acts.

So it was around 10:30 p.m. that night when Julie showed up at Sam's apartment, expecting to console her friend who was having family problems. But when she got there, it wasn't Sam who opened the door; it was Sam's neighbor, a friend she had met a few times before, Daniel.

Daniel invited her in and said there was something he needed to show her in Sam's room. She followed him in, and he told her to lean over the bed, saying there was something on the other side. As she did that, Daniel shot her too. Not once, but twice, like he told detectives. He then staged the scene to make it look like some crime of passion committed by Sam. He even wrote a message on the back of her sweatshirt and left her body there to be discovered later.

At the end of the night, Daniel walked back over to his apartment and slept beside his fiancée, Rachel Buffett. But the show wasn't over yet. The following day, Saturday afternoon, Daniel went back to the theater's attic, where Sam's body was still lying on the floor. In order to continue the narrative that Sam had fled, maybe to be never found again, Daniel dismembered Sam's body.

To Daniel, it felt like he was playing a part. This part of his interrogation has gone pretty viral, and I'm going to play it here. The police ask him, "What did you feel like while you were dismembering the body?" And this is what he says:

"Um, what was going on in your mind when you were dismembering Sam's body? It reached a point to where I couldn't even believe that I was doing this. I... I... I don't know. I don't know."

He told the police, "I was actually smiling and laughing. It reached a point to where I couldn't even believe I was doing this."

But over the next day or so, Daniel's diabolical scheme was coming to a wrap. He spread Sam's remains around town, hoping they'd never be found. Dude, I just, I don't have words, man.

So the police are completely baffled by Daniel's confession. Up until this point, they truly believed that Sam was the one to blame for Julie's murder and that Daniel was just an accomplice who helped this guy escape. But as they look closer at the evidence, it all starts to add up. That backpack he mentioned on the call with Rachel is found outside his parents' house, and inside it contains Sam's bloody clothes, his phone, his wallet, his checkbook. There are also shell casings from the shots fired during Julie's murder, casings that belong to a gun that Daniel's father says was stolen from his collection.

Right, I forgot about that. And even more incriminating are the Google searches they found on Daniel's computer that were made prior to the murders. I never understand why people do this, but it seems like he searched terms like "how to hide a body," "quick ways to kill people." Everyone always does it. It's almost as if this guy wanted to get caught.

So not only now do they have a confession, they have a whole lot of evidence. The only piece of the puzzle that's missing is why did Daniel kill Sam? Like, why in the first place? I'm pretty sure I remember the reason, and it was... I guess I'll just say if it's right. It was just for, they needed some money, right?

Yep, and it ended up being only for like a couple hundred.

Well, remember earlier how I mentioned that Sam had about $60,000 in combat pay? Yes, that's right. This was money he was using to fund his new chapter in life. He was going to go back to school; he was going to get a fresh start. Well, Daniel knew about that 60k. Sam had told him all about it, and Daniel believed he needed that cash more than Sam.

But when they went to take the card, it only let them withdraw a certain amount, and it only ended up being like 500 bucks, right? Yes. So Daniel believed he needed the cash more than his friend Sam because he was an unemployed aspiring actor whose only gig was in the local theater. He had almost no money to his name, was on the verge of being evicted from his apartment, and had a wedding to pay for that was only a week away. Not to mention, he wanted to take his bride on the honeymoon of their dreams at the Sandals Resort down in Mexico—apparently, this was based on his Google searches.

All right, man. So how does a starving artist afford to keep his blushing bride? By killing his friend, stealing his credit cards and checkbooks, pretending his friend committed a murder and left town, and then cashing out all of his accounts, killing somebody else as well. To Daniel, it seemed like a foolproof plan—one that he might have gotten away with had he stuck to the script he'd written for himself. But on that call with Rachel, Daniel broke character and let that mask down for a minute. It turns out Daniel just wasn't as talented an actor as everyone thought he was.

He later told police that he left Sam's torso in the theater attic, which was retrieved on the day of Daniel's would-be wedding. So on the day he's supposed to be walking down the aisle, they are pulling Sam's torso out of the theater. The following afternoon, May 29th, would have been Sam's 27th birthday. On that day, Daniel led detectives to El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach, where he revealed the burial location of Sam's head and other remains.

Daniel was then charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Despite the confession he made to the police, he was going to enter a not-guilty plea to both. Wow. Afterwards, Sam was given a hero's burial with full military honors. Good for him. But what the Hers really wanted was justice for their son, and unfortunately, it would take the system almost five years to try Daniel, who in the meantime milked his infamy for all it was worth, including making an appearance on the documentary series "Lockup," where Daniel joked to the cameras about being an Aries who enjoyed long walks on the beach.

But police didn't forget about Daniel's brother, Tim, who helped him hide that backpack of evidence. Remember, they got rid of the backpack. So after he was arrested, Tim pleaded guilty to being an accessory after the fact and was sentenced to three years of informal probation. In exchange for such a light sentence, Tim would have to testify against his brother during the trial.

Okay, that makes more sense now. This is where this story takes a turn, and I don't remember if you remember this, but there is a phone call that happens basically once Daniel has admitted to what he's done.

He calls Rachel. This call has got to be the craziest call I've ever heard because of what Rachel says. So you guys need to listen to this, and it's going to lead to years because Daniel says something, and you go, "What in the freaking world?" And then she says something, and you go, "Oh, they are more confused." Absolutely insane.

Rachel: "Why did you do this to me?" Daniel: "I thought it was the only way I could take care of you because I was a failure. I'm sorry I couldn't be the man that you needed." Rachel: "So, baby, why did you leave your family then?" Daniel: "I left them because I almost reached a point where I almost killed them." Rachel: "Did you almost reach your point where you killed me?" Daniel: "No, never. You're never going to see me again, and I'm never going to be with you." Rachel: "Baby, you're going to see me again. I'm going to come visit you all the time. I still love you very much, but I know in your twisted little mind, you were doing it because you wanted to be happy with me."

So, that's not the response you are expecting to hear from Rachel, right? Like, that is just not it. And there is more to Rachel. Once police hear this, they start learning about Rachel. We are going to go down a long road of Rachel Buffett.

Police were feeling confident that she'd lied to them repeatedly during interrogations. For example, Rachel failed to mention to police that a man named Chris Williams was at their apartment the night Julie was killed. He came to collect a loan that he'd given the couple. Now, when Daniel returned to the apartment that night, he gave Chris $400 in cash, but Chris said the couple was acting extremely anxious, indicating that Rachel might have also known more than she let on.

While Rachel insisted she had no idea her fiance was involved in the murders until after his arrest, there were witnesses who said otherwise. Like a detective named Michael Cohen, an ex of Rachel's, who also happened to be interviewing Daniel right before his arrest. According to Michael, there was a night when Rachel went out drinking with him and had a little bit too much. During that drunken evening, she supposedly confused Michael with Daniel and blurted out to him, "I told you to burn the body."

So then Detective Michael is like, "Wait, this is weird," and now he's interviewing Daniel, so it's a whole thing. Police also suspected that Rachel and Daniel had previously come up with the story about Sam leaving with a man in a black hat since that was proven to be a lie once Daniel confessed. But Rachel had also told the same lie, so why would she be in on the lie if she had no idea what was going on?

Her attorney comes forward and says, "No, Daniel was a master manipulator. He borrowed money from people without her knowledge. She knew nothing. He lied to her about everything." Regardless, in 2012, police had enough to arrest and charge Rachel for her involvement in the crime, and she was slapped with three felony counts of accessory after the fact.

Finally, in 2016, six years after the death of Sam Herr and Julie, Daniel's trial began. As 23 witnesses took the stand during his 4-day hearing, Daniel sat there smirking as he watched the fate of his future unfold before him. It was as if it were just some climactic scene in his own biopic, like he wasn't even taking it seriously.

What Daniel didn't realize was he was the antagonist in this story, the villain who would get the unhappy ending he deserved. When the jurors returned after only a 2-hour deliberation, they announced that Daniel Wozniak was guilty on all charges. In September of that year, Daniel returned to the courtroom to hear statements from Sam and Julie's family as well as his final sentence. It was decided that Daniel Wozniak's crimes deserved capital punishment. He was sent to death row to await his execution.

However, Daniel would dodge that fate in 2019 because that's when California Governor Gavin Newsom instituted a moratorium on the death penalty, sparing the lives of Daniel Wozniak and 700 other inmates who were awaiting the same punishment. So instead, Daniel's sentence was changed to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Two years after Daniel's sentencing, Rachel Buffett went to court. In September of 2018, she pled not guilty, but after a week-long trial, the jurors decided otherwise and found Rachel guilty of being an accessory to murder after the fact. She was sentenced to 32 months minus time served and good behavior, so she was actually released a year later in 2019.

Rachel told the press that she regrets it all, that she wished she had never even met Daniel Wozniak, a man she claimed manipulated her with his talent, lied to her, deceived her, and used his skills for evil. But no matter how good of an actor Daniel Wozniak might have been, he wasn't talented enough to act his way out of a life in prison charge.

And that is the story of Sam and Julie. The whole thing's crazy. I think more than anything, just to kind of end it, it's so sad for Sam and his dad and Julie. I mean, they didn't deserve it. And of course, no one deserves it, and it was just so pointless. It's just horrible. The whole thing is just crazy. It's horrible and diabolical. Let me just say this: Daniel Wozniak is where he belongs.

Alright, you guys, that is our case for this week, and we will see you next time with another one.

I love it.

I hate it.

Goodbye.

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