SANTA ANA – For the families of Samuel Herr and Juri “Julie” Kibuishi, it was the end of a six-year wait for justice.
Daniel Patrick Wozniak, a 31-year-old former community theater actor from Costa Mesa, was sentenced to death on Friday for killing the two in an attempt to fund his 2010 wedding.
Dozens of those close to the victims filled the courtroom. They hugged and wiped away tears after Judge John D. Conley handed down the death sentence in a case delayed for years after it got swept up in an Orange County informant scandal.
“It’s a relief,” said Julie’s mother, June Kibuishi. “We’ve been waiting more than six years for this day to come.”
A jury on Jan. 11 deliberated for one hour, 14 minutes before recommending the death penalty, one of the shortest death penalty deliberations in Orange County history.
Jury forewoman Jenny Wong was one of several jurors who came for the sentencing.
“I’m just glad we were able to in some small way provide closure for the family,” she said.
Sitting quietly next to his attorney, Wozniak stared straight ahead as the judge read the sentence. He will join more than 740 other inmates on San Quentin’s death row.
“We’re happy for the family that justice was finally done,” said Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy, who prosecuted the case.
THE THEATER ACTOR
Herr and Kibuishi met in anthropology class at Orange Coast College and became good friends.
Kibuishi was a bubbly dancer from Irvine who loved music and fashion. Herr was an Afghanistan war veteran working to earn his college degree so he could re-enlist in the U.S. Army and become an officer.
Herr, an only child, was close to parents Steve and Raquel Herr. When Steve Herr couldn’t reach his son all day on May 22, 2010, he drove to the young man’s Costa Mesa apartment and let himself in with a key.
In the bedroom, he found Kibuishi’s partially clad body and called 911.
Police initially believed Sam Herr was a fugitive. But they grew suspicious when they saw $400 ATM withdrawals from his bank account and charges to a Long Beach pizza parlor.
Days later, they caught a 16-year-old boy using Herr’s ATM card. The boy told police that Wozniak had put him up to it.
Wozniak, an out-of-work community theater actor, was Herr’s neighbor and friend. Police arrested him at his bachelor’s party, at a sushi restaurant in Huntington Beach, two days before his wedding.
Under intense questioning from Costa Mesa detectives, he unraveled a grisly story.
Broke with no money to pay for his wedding and honeymoon, he hatched a plan to kill Herr and drain his $60,000 in savings from combat pay.
On May 21, Wozniak lured Herr, 26, to the Joint Forces Training Base in Los Alamitos, where he shot and killed him. He later cut off his head, hand and forearm and tossed the body parts in Long Beach’s El Dorado Park. Herr’s body would be identified by a chest tattoo: “Mom & Dad.”
That evening, Wozniak performed as the lead in the musical “Nine” at the Hunger Artists Theatre Company in Fullerton.
In an attempt to throw police off of his trail, Wozniak went to Herr’s apartment and used Herr’s cellphone to lure Kibuishi, 23, pretending to be in need of help. He then shot and killed her and staged the crime scene to try and make it look like Herr had killed Kibuishi in a jealous rage.
Rachel Buffett, Wozniak’s ex-fiancee, was arrested and charged with being an accessory after the fact for allegedly lying to police. She has pleaded not guilty.
A LEGAL BATTLE
With evidence and a video-taped confession, family members thought it was a black-and-white case. Wozniak led police to Herr’s body at the Los Alamitos air station, then told investigators about the body parts at the park; it took a lengthy search to find them.
Still, it it took more than five years for the case to reach trial.
The case was delayed as Wozniak’s attorney, Assistant Public Defender Scott Sanders, alleged systemic misconduct by Orange County prosecutors and sheriff’s deputies involving the use of jailhouse informants.
In another one of his cases, involving Scott Dekraai, who pleaded guilty to fatally shooting eight people and critically injuring another at a Seal Beach salon in 2011, Sanders persuaded a different judge to remove the entire Orange County District Attorney’s Office from the penalty phase. That decision has been appealed.
Sanders had contended that authorities conspired to place Wozniak next to a prolific jailhouse informant to gain incriminating evidence. But Conley found that the allegations of misconduct raised by Sanders had no bearing on the Wozniak case.
The sentencing was delayed for several months this year when it was revealed that Orange County Sheriff’s deputies over five years kept hundreds of pages of notes on informant activities in a secret “Special Handling” log buried in a jail computer system. The notes had details on interactions between Wozniak and an informant.
In a last effort to convince the judge to dismiss the death penalty, Sanders on Friday said the Sheriff’s Department has yet to turn over information on what replaced the jailhouse log after it inexplicably ended in 2013.
“Before you end this case, there is no reason not to demand an answer from the Sheriff’s Department,” Sanders told the judge. “A culture that devalues (the turning over of evidence) is one where the death penalty should not be allowed to live.”
Conley, however, denied the motion to dismiss the death penalty and a motion for a new trial, noting that informants were never used as witnesses in the case and that the sheriff’s notes were not relevant to the trial.
“The defendant got a fair trial, and that’s the bottom line,” the judge said.
A FAMILY’S JUSTICE
In the courtroom on Friday, June Kibuishi, standing next to her husband, Masa, addressed Wozniak for the first time.
“On May 22, 2010 you took my beautiful, caring daughter’s precious life to cover up your heinous crime for a pathetic reason for wanting money for your wedding?” she said. “For six years and four months I sat behind you, seeing you come out smiling for the cameras and audience, enjoying being the center of attention. Did I ever see you show any remorse? Not even once.”
Julie, her third of four children, was born on Valentine’s Day: “My Valentine girl,” June Kibuishi calls her.
Flanked by eight U.S. Army veterans, some of whom served with his son in Afghanistan, Steve Herr also addressed Wozniak in court.
“You, Dan, are a coward and a poster boy for the need for an effective death penalty in California,” he said.
The families noted that the two victims were kind and caring people who died while believing they were helping a friend. Sam Herr was lured to the Los Alamitos air station under the guise that he was helping Wozniak move boxes. Kibuishi was lured to Herr’s apartment thinking Herr needed emotional support.
An ex-Marine from New Jersey, Steve Herr, 68, has now attended 192 court hearings for his son’s killer.
Wozniak’s Long Beach parents never attended a hearing and his father recently died, Herr said.
Looking for answers, Herr even visited Wozniak three times in jail. He said Wozniak has apologized to him but doesn’t show real remorse for his actions.
“I’ll never forgive you, but I might hate you less,” he told Wozniak at the jail.
Sam Herr’s mother is also relieved that the years of court hearings are over. She finds comfort through her faith in God.
“I know my son is in heaven,” she said. “I feel like he went for a long trip, and one day I’ll see him again.”
Contact the writer: kpuente@ocregister.com
