On May 22, 2010, Steve Herr walked into his son’s apartment in Costa Mesa, California, expecting to find Sam ready for their weekend together. Sam never showed up. Steve had a key—they were best friends, father and son, close in a way most families only hope for. When he turned on the light in Sam’s bedroom, he saw a body half on, half off the bed.
It was a young woman. Her clothes were disheveled, her pants cut away, her lower body exposed. She was freezing cold. Steve called 911, barely able to keep his voice steady.
“There’s a body in my son’s apartment. ”
“There’s a what? ”
“A dead body. ”
The dead woman was 23-year-old Julie Kibuishi.
She and Sam had met in college—she tutored him in a class he was struggling with, and they’d become close friends. Julie saw Sam as a big brother, a teddy bear. Sam called her his kid sister. She was studying design and dreamed of becoming a clothing designer.
Everyone who knew her described her as bubbly, warm, and outgoing. Sam was a decorated war hero. He’d served in Afghanistan at Camp Keating, surviving 83 days of constant combat. He’d earned multiple commendations and was planning to return to the Army as an officer.
When he got out, he enrolled in college to earn the degree he needed. He was 26 years old. But now Julie was dead in his apartment, and Sam was gone. His car was missing.
His passport was missing. Text messages on Julie’s phone, sent from Sam’s number, appeared to show a man in crisis—begging her to come over, saying he needed someone to talk to. Police saw a motive forming: a sexual assault, a murder, a flight from justice. The media quickly branded Sam a prime suspect.
But the autopsy told a different story. Julie had been shot twice in the back of the head. The first bullet was hidden by her thick black hair. The second was fatal.
Internal swabs showed no evidence of sexual activity. There were no signs of a struggle—no bruising, no defensive wounds. And then there was the blanching: white marks on Julie’s buttocks where blood had been pressed away from the skin. She’d been found face down, bent over the bed, but the blanching imprints matched the pattern of her jeans.
That meant her clothes had been removed long after she died—likely more than 30 minutes after. The scene had been staged to make it look like a rape. Police began to question their theory. Sam’s father Steve was already convinced his son was innocent.
He’d been calling Sam’s friends, desperate for answers. One friend told him he’d called Sam’s phone and someone answered—but it wasn’t Sam. The line went dead. Then Steve checked Sam’s bank account and saw activity: ATM withdrawals in Long Beach, a pizza purchase.
He passed the information to police, who set up surveillance teams at the ATMs. They captured footage of a young man using Sam’s card. It wasn’t Sam. It was a teenager.
When SWAT teams raided the address to which a pizza had been delivered, they found a group of 16-year-olds with Sam’s ATM card. One of them quickly confessed he’d been given the card by Daniel Wozniak—Sam’s neighbor, an actor. Meanwhile, Steve had spoken to Wozniak himself. Sam’s neighbor claimed he’d seen Sam and said Sam had been nervous, dealing with “girl problems” and “family problems.
”
Steve knew immediately it was a lie. “Sam doesn’t have family problems,” he said. “We are so close. ” He told police, “That bastard knows something.
”
At the crime scene, detectives had found a wedding invitation addressed to Rachel Buffett and Daniel Wozniak—Sam’s neighbors in the same apartment complex. They’d hung out socially, used the jacuzzi, attended the same parties. Wozniak had already been interviewed once and said nothing about the ATM card. When police tried to interview him again, he said he was going to his bachelor party.
They arrested him there, at a sushi restaurant in Huntington Beach. In the interrogation room, Wozniak’s story shifted. First, he claimed he and Sam were involved in bank fraud. Then he said Sam had confessed to killing Julie and asked for help getting money from his account.
Then he said he’d seen “the goddamn body” but hadn’t pulled the trigger. Detectives weren’t buying it. One told him, “You’re not that good an actor, man. ”
Then Wozniak made a slip that would unravel everything.
He said he’d stood over Julie and seen two bullet holes in her head. But investigators knew that was impossible. The second bullet wound was hidden by her hair. Only the killer could have known about it.
The detective sergeant monitoring the interview interrupted and confronted him. Wozniak was rattled, struggling to explain. The interview ended shortly after. Wozniak’s fiancée, Rachel Buffett, went to his family’s home to tell his mother that Dan had been arrested and the wedding was off.
While she was there, Wozniak’s older brother Tim began to panic. “Oh my god, I have evidence,” he said. Tim had been holding a backpack given to him by Dan—a bag containing Sam’s bloody clothes, his mobile phone, his wallet, and the murder weapon. In a recorded call from jail, Rachel confronted Wozniak.
She told him she was about to tell detectives about the evidence. Wozniak pleaded, “Don’t do that. Baby, baby, baby, no, no, no. Don’t do that.
If you do, I’m done for. ”
She replied, “I’m going to. I have to. And by the way, this is a recorded line, and you’re being a complete ass if you’re going to continue to lie.
”
Less than an hour later, Wozniak asked to speak with detectives. “I’m pretty sure you and I did it,” he said. “You did what? ”
“I killed Julie and I killed Sam.
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Wozniak confessed that he’d lured Sam to the Liberty Theater, a community venue on the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, under the guise of helping him move boxes. In the attic, he told Sam to bend down to help lift something. Then he pulled out his father’s antique . 380 caliber pistol and shot him in the back of the head.
Sam didn’t die immediately. Wozniak shot him again, execution-style. Then he took Sam’s phone, his debit card, and his money. That night, Wozniak performed in a theater production.
He sang, danced, “nailed it,” as police later described. After the show, he used Sam’s phone to text Julie, pretending to be Sam in crisis. “I need to see you. I have bad family crap.
” Julie, the loyal friend, replied, “Don’t worry, Sam. I’m there for you. We’re family. ”
She came to Sam’s apartment.
Wozniak let her in, guided her into Sam’s bedroom, and shot her twice in the back of the head. Then he cut off her jeans, arranged her on the bed, and scrawled a crude message across her sweatshirt to make it look like a sexually motivated crime. He wanted police to believe Sam had killed her and fled. Police searched the Liberty Theater and found Sam’s body in the attic.
It was a gruesome scene: the head was missing, as were the right hand and left forearm and hand. The body was identified by a distinctive tattoo—a heart and rose, with “Mom and Dad” written inside. Steve got the call. “I knew it was my son,” he said.
Wozniak had used a hatchet and a wood saw to dismember Sam, believing it would delay identification. It didn’t. The blood at the scene, the DNA in the military database—it was only a matter of time. On May 29, 2010, Sam’s birthday, searchers found his head in El Dorado Park in Long Beach.
One hand was never recovered. “He was dismembered, and it was on his birthday,” Steve said. “We should have been celebrating his 27th birthday. There’s never forgiveness for Dan Wozniak in my mind.
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Wozniak was charged with two counts of murder for financial gain, a crime that carried the possibility of the death penalty in California. The motive was simple and cold: Sam had earned more than $60,000 in combat pay. Wozniak was broke, facing eviction, about to get married, and desperate for money. His online searches before the murder included “how to hide a body” and “quick ways to kill people.
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The trial didn’t begin until December 2015—more than five years after the crime. Wozniak pleaded not guilty and showed almost no emotion in court. His former fiancée, Rachel Buffett, testified against him and was later sentenced to 32 months in jail for lying to police. The jury deliberated less than two hours before convicting Wozniak of first-degree murder.
At the penalty phase, Sam’s father faced him in court with eight of Sam’s military buddies standing behind him. “You are a coward,” Steve said. “You’re looking at real men behind me. Daniel Wozniak is a poster boy for the death penalty.
My only regret is that this state won’t let me kill this coward myself. ”
Julie’s mother, June, delivered her own victim impact statement. “You took my beautiful, caring, loving daughter’s precious life to cover up your heinous and planned crime. Did I ever show you any remorse?
No. Not even once. ”
The jury returned a death sentence in under an hour—the shortest death verdict in Orange County history. Sam Herr survived some of the most dangerous places on Earth, serving his country without a scratch.
He came home to be killed by a neighbor who wanted his money. Julie was murdered for being a loyal friend. Their bodies didn’t lie, even after Wozniak tried to stage the crime scene. The evidence held, and justice was done—though it will never undo the loss.
“I don’t want them to be forgotten,” Steve said. “Sam helped a friend. He paid his life for that. Julie helped a friend.
She paid her life for that. The villain of this story is Dan Wozniak. That man doesn’t deserve to be alive.
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