Sam never could have fathomed how soon it was all going to be over.
One night, Raquel drove Sam and his cousin Joey to a TGI Friday’s chain restaurant. Joey was ten years older than Sam. They had spent time together when Sam was a child. But now they wanted to enjoy each other’s company as adults. Both intended to drink, and neither wanted a DUI. When they were ready to end the night, they’d either phone a relative or call a taxi.
At closing time, after Sam had consumed a number of Jim Beam shots, the pair stumbled out of the eatery. For some reason, Joey had it in his mind that he wanted to walk to his in-laws’ home.
“Where do they live?” Sam asked.
“About three miles from here.”
The two began their journey, but Sam noticed that Joey was weaving. “Hey, I have a good idea,” Sam suggested as they cut through a parking lot. “Why don’t I carry you there?”
Joey tried climbing onto his cousin’s back but slipped off. The two were laughing, and Sam threw a playful slap at his relative. Joey crouched down and tried to snatch Sam around the waist.
“The police stopped them,” Steve said. “They thought they were fighting. Then, they realized they were cousins who were just wrestling and having fun, cousins who were getting to know each other as men, cousins who loved each other.”
Steve received a call at 3:00 A.M. It was up to him to retrieve the duo and find the house where Joey’s in-laws lived.
Later, Joey would tell Steve, “I’m so glad we had that night.”
It would be the last memory he’d ever have of his younger cousin.
* * *
On Thursday, May 20—two days before Steve came upon Juri’s body in Sam’s apartment—Sam’s other cousin, Leah Sussman, was talking to her two-and-a-half-year-old daughter, Sonia, about safety. “You can’t let just anyone take you when you want to go across the street,” Leah emphasized.
Sonia seemed to understand.
“So who would it be safe to cross the street with?” Leah asked her daughter.
“Uncle Sammy. Because he’s nice to me. And he’s big and strong.” Sonia paused. “Can we call him now?”
Leah dialed Sam’s number, and he and Sonia had a brief conversation. Then, Leah got on the phone and she and Sam exchanged small talk.
As with Joey, it would be the final time that Leah would speak to her beloved relative. “I’m so happy that happened.”
That night, Sam and Juri were going out to dinner with Ruben Menacho and another friend named Lester McKinney. As they stepped off the elevator, they ran into Dan Wozniak and a friend named John Randolph. Because of Ruben’s aversion to Dan, he immediately zoned in on John’s dog, petting the animal while the others chatted.
“I wasn’t really paying attention to what they were talking about,” Ruben said. “I think they were talking about Dan’s wedding or something.”
Ruben and Juri were hungry, so everyone said their good-byes and Sam and his group continued to a nearby IHOP. It was a pleasant, jokey meal. As Juri went through her handbag, Ruben playfully grabbed it from her.
“What do you have in there?” he said as Juri laughed. “Makeup? Hair products? It must be really hard to be a woman.” He pulled out a small jar of cream. “Man, how can you put this crap on your face?”
When the waitress came, Sam insisted that he wasn’t hungry. However, after the food was delivered he began eating the fries off Ruben’s plate.
“Sam, you always do that,” Ruben complained. “Bro, if you’re hungry, I’ll buy you fries. You want me to get you fries?”
Sam chuckled. “No, Ruben, I like taking them from you.”
For Ruben, it was a typical night with Sam and his friends—a night he likely wouldn’t have remembered if two of the four people at the table didn’t lose their lives within the next forty-eight hours. “Everybody was laughing,” Ruben said. “We always had a good time. There was not one time when we hung out that we had a bad day.”
The next morning—Friday, May 21, 2010—Juri sent a Facebook message to another person she knew from Sam’s building, Dan’s girlfriend, Rachel Buffett: “Hello, darling. I miss hanging out with you and I saw your fiancée last night when I was hanging out with Sam, Ruben and Lester. I hear you are getting married next week. Congrats. How are you?”
Rachel wrote back quickly: “Ha ha. So busy you can’t imagine. We’ll hang out when everything settles in the summer sun.” She then alluded to meeting up at the complex’s pool.
Dan appeared distressed that morning, according to Rachel, so upset that he was hyperventilating. “She told us that Dan woke up that Friday and that he was acting very, very weird,” Det. Jose Morales would testify at a preliminary hearing. “He was stressed out. He seemed distant. And it seemed to her that he was acting as if he was going to have a heart attack.
“She had asked him what was wrong. He wouldn’t come out and tell her. He eventually told her that he had to go see Sam upstairs and … he left shortly after that.”
Rachel claimed that Dan was only gone a short time. He then returned with Sam. With an outsider as an audience, Dan appeared calmer as the two relaxed in the patio area outside Wozniak’s apartment. However, Dan did admit to feeling stressed about money, and Sam suggested the military as a possible solution. “They take care of everything,” Sam said. “Your housing is taken care of. There’s no landlord threatening to kick you out. They expect a lot from you, but it’s a way out of the financial situation you’re in right now.”
Sam had offered to help Dan move some items that day. As they prepared to leave, another friend of Dan’s stopped by. Chris Williams told police that he had met Dan and Rachel a few weeks earlier. Dan was so strapped for funds that, almost instantly, he asked Chris for a loan.
“How much are you thinking about?” Chris asked.
“Three thousand dollars.”
“That’s a lot of money.”
Dan explained how he was getting married and needed the cash right away. He also pledged to pay everything back—to the penny. Chris didn’t feel that Dan was being particularly pushy, just honest. And Dan and Rachel were so nice and fun to be around. Eventually, Chris lent them two thousand dollars. Dan was supposed to pay back the money that day.
Because Chris was new to the social network, he didn’t know all of Dan and Rachel’s associates. He’d later tell police that he thought the other man in the apartment was Sam based on the description of the veteran’s tattoos. Ten minutes after Chris arrived, Dan and Sam abruptly left. Chris assumed that they’d return relatively fast. After all, Dan knew that Chris was waiting for the cash. In the meantime, Chris talked with Rachel while she sat at her computer and searched for items on Craigslist.
“For the next three hours, he remained in the apartment with Rachel,” Morales said. “It seemed to him that he stayed there for a very long time, and was wondering what was taking so long because he initially thought that he was there to pick up the money that … Dan was supposed to pay him back.”
Chris knew that Dan’s family lived in Long Beach and thought that maybe the two were going there to retrieve the two thousand dollars. But Long Beach was just thirty minutes away—maybe forty-five with traffic. Why weren’t Dan and his friend back by now?
Nonetheless, Rachel was an agreeable conversationalist, and she and Chris didn’t run out of topics to discuss. She was deeply passionate about acting but nervous about whether she could ever support herself that way and mentioned a couple of other moneymaking possibilities that could sustain her. Eventually, Dan returned alone.
He didn’t have the full two thousand dollars but handed Chris a wad of money as a gesture of good faith. Chris believed Dan when he said that the roll contained four hundred dollars; there was no need to count the money out. “While he was there, he noticed that there was some tension between Dan and Rachel that [Chris] … didn’t want to be a part of,” Morales said.
From a phone conversation they’d had earlier that day, Chris knew that Dan was beleaguered by debt and fretted about starting married life with so many creditors. When Chris slipped the wad of cash into his pocket without complaint, the burden appeared to be lifted, at least temporarily. “It looked like … he was relieved somewhat,” Morales testified. “He wasn’t as stressed out as he had been over the phone and when [Chris] … initially showed up.”
Yet the friction between Dan and Rachel hadn’t abated. Chris said that Rachel was staring angrily at her fiancé, as if she wanted to have a word with him in private. Satisfied that part of his loan had been returned—and not wishing to linger in the apartment any longer—Chris left.
A short time later, he looked at his cell phone and realized that he’d missed a call from Dan. When Chris called back, Rachel picked up.
“You left twenty dollars on the floor. You must have dropped it when Dan handed you the money.”
“Don’t worry,” Chris said. “I’ll pick it up later.”
Generally, Rachel had an upbeat manner. But she seemed troubled during the brief conversation. Chris asked if everything was all right.
“She said she wasn’t worried about his thing … referring to the money,” Morales said. “And she said she was worried about something new. He didn’t go into detail about what the something new was, and hung up the phone.”
* * *
After Sam vanished and police began looking for him as a suspect, Jake Swett—the neighbor Steve had encountered in Sam’s apartment—tried creating a timeline of his own. Jake discussed the worrisome circumstances with his roommate, Dave Barnhart, and suggested that they call Dan to gain perspective on what occurred that day.
Jake told police that Dan agreed to meet and arrived at the apartment with Rachel. “When’s the last time you saw Sam?” Jake asked.
According to Jake, Dan maintained that Sam had helped him with some chores. Then, when they returned to the building, Dan said that Sam went off with a man wearing a black baseball cap. “At first, he said that it was a short Mexican guy,” Morales testified. “And Mr. Swett said that he later changed that story to a short white guy.… And so Mr. Swett began inquiring even more, asking him what that person’s name was. And Mr. Wozniak was unable to provide any further information.”
The explanation didn’t make sense. How did this mystery man suddenly appear at the building—and why did Sam go away with him? Did Sam introduce his associate to Dan? Could he have been a friend, or was there something more nefarious about the relationship? As Jake continued his questioning, he told police, Rachel looked over at her fiancé.
“Let’s go,” she apparently said.
Over the next several days, police continued operating on the assumption that Sam was still alive—and somebody in the building knew where to find him. “I didn’t know if, at that point, [Rachel] … was harboring Mr. Herr or not,” Det. Sgt. Ed Everett would testify, “or Mr. Wozniak was harboring Mr. Herr.”
But Steve’s personal investigation was painting a different kind of picture. On the morning that he called Dan to ask what he knew about Sam’s disappearance, Steve was in Long Beach, still staking out locations where either money had been withdrawn from Sam’s account or his credit card was used. Out of all of Sam’s friends, Dan was the only one with a Long Beach number. It was too much of a coincidence. Although Steve was still uncertain about where his son might be, he was convinced that Dan knew the answers.
When Raquel called, Steve held on to the faint hope that she’d tell him that Sammy had been in touch. Instead, she said that Detectives Mike Delgadillo and Mike Cohen were at their house. Both were professional and as respectful as they could be under the circumstances. But Sam was their suspect, and they wanted Raquel to know that they were planning to hold a news conference, asking the public to help track down her son. Was there anything that the Herrs needed to tell them?
Steve rushed back to the house. Yes, he responded, there was a lot that he had to say. Dan had admitted to being with Sam on the day he disappeared—and offered the ridiculous story about Sam complaining about his issues with women, as well as “family problems.”
“And look at this,” Steve added, displaying a printout of Sam’s bank transactions. “Somebody’s pulling out money every day. And it’s all coming from Long Beach. I don’t care what you think—this guy Wozniak is dirty.”
If the police persisted in their belief that Sam killed Juri, Steve intended to continue his probe—and pass on the findings to authorities. “I’ll meet with Wozniak, and tell you what else I can find out.”
“Please—don’t meet him,” Delgadillo urged. He wasn’t sure what Steve was liable to do around Wozniak. Plus, the detectives wanted the chance to pursue this new information themselves.
The investigators promised the Herrs that they’d remain in contact and moved toward the door. But just before they left, Delgadillo turned to Cohen. In a voice loud enough for Steve and Raquel to hear, Delgadillo told his partner, “We might be looking for the wrong guy.”