Sam Herr and Julie Kibuishi | Truth About My Murder | FilmRise True Crime | Forensic Files

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

Dr Richard Shepherd investigates the murders of Sam Herr and Julie Kibuishi, both shot for financial gain by a former theatre actor who was planning an expensive wedding despite being deeply in debt.

In The Truth About My Murder, Dr. Richard Shepherd showcases a state-of-the-art digital autopsy table featuring digitally scanned sample bodies to investigate a series of intriguing murders where the victims' bodies help reveal the truth behind horrific crimes.

For More FilmRise Check Out Our Other Channels: FilmRise Television: https://www.youtube.com/⁨@FilmRiseTelevision⁩ FilmRise Movies: https://www.youtube.com/@FilmRiseMovies Highway to Heaven - Full Episodes: https://www.youtube.com/@HighwaytoHeavenFullEpisodes

Brief Summary

Daniel Wozniak murdered Julie Kibuishi and Sam Herr, attempting to frame Sam before being caught and sentenced to death.

Key points

A Race Against Time. When a murder occurs, it’s a race to find the truth and catch the killer.
The Discovery of Julie Kibuishi. The body of 23-year-old Julie Kibuishi is found in the apartment of war veteran Sam Herr.
Unraveling the Mystery. Julie’s autopsy raises questions about the crime scene and the suspect, Sam Herr.
The Arrest of Dan Wozniak. Dan Wozniak is arrested for withholding information during the murder investigation.
The Gruesome Discovery. Police discover Sam Herr's dismembered body, revealing the horrific nature of the crime.
Wozniak's Arrest and Confession. Daniel Wozniak is arrested and confesses to the murders of Sam Herr and Julie Kibuishi.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

The dead don't hide the truth and they never lie.

Dr. Richard Shepherd introduces his work as a forensic pathologist.

0:32WatchFeb 11, 2026

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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