At the California Superior Court building, Det. Mike Delgadillo was telling the Grand Jury about what Dan Wozniak did after he shot Sam twice in the attic of the Liberty Theatre at the Joint Forces Training Base at Los Alamitos.
“I believe at that point, he went home,” Delgadillo testified, “went on with his business … However, the following day, he came back to the … base.”
“What did he do there?” the senior deputy district attorney, Matt Murphy, asked.
“Well, the first thing he did is he said he went to the [base] barbershop, and asked the barber … to borrow a pair of scissors. The scissors that he was borrowing from the barbershop, he took them up to the attic, where Sam was at. I should say prior to doing that … he went to his future in-laws’ house.”
“And what did he say he did there?”
“He went into the backyard and got an axe and a saw, which he brought back to the … base with him.”
Fully prepared for the next phase of the crime, Delgadillo maintained, Dan used the scissors to cut off Sam’s clothes. “Then, he proceeded to sever the head with the axe. He sawed Sam’s head off. He sawed one of his arms … and he sawed the hand off the other arm. I asked him why he sawed the arm off. He said it had an identifying tattoo.”
In fact, Sam had a number of recognizable tattoos: a skull, a lone wolf, and a parachute with the 173rd Airborne emblem. But Dan missed the heart and rose—and the words “Mom” and “Dad”—etched on Sam’s chest. Although the head and portions of both arms had been cut, police would immediately spot that tattoo when they discovered Sam’s torso and legs at the theater, identifying him before a scientific match could be made through forensic testing.
“At that point, he wrapped all the body parts that he had severed from Sam’s body into … plastic bags,” Delgadillo said. “He used Sam’s backpack, and put all the body parts inside the backpack, wrapped.”
From there, the detective said that Dan admitted to transporting the body parts to El Dorado Park. “He discarded Mr. Herr’s head and hands,” Murphy told the Grand Jurors, “for the purposes of trying to conceal his identity. Which is kind of silly in a lot of ways because he had distinct tattoos and, of course, was a member of the U.S. military and would have had DNA anyway.”
At the time, though, Dan apparently fancied himself as an astute criminal, who was about to cast suspicion on Sam by murdering his good friend. “He didn’t intend on us ever locating Sam,” Delgadillo testified. “He intended to get rid of the rest of the body, and he wanted us to believe that Sam was the killer. And the only way he could do that was by killing Julie.”
What the investigator didn’t mention to the Grand Jury was that the search for Sam’s body parts occurred on the day that the victim would have turned twenty-seven. “Saturday, May 29, was Sam’s birthday,” Steve Herr told the Orange County Register. “And I’ll never forget that on my son’s birthday, I was praying that they would find his head.”
After Delgadillo described his interrogation of the suspect, lead detective Jose Morales testified about what he witnessed at Juri Kibuishi’s autopsy. “The pathologist, after the body was prepared, was washed down for the examination of the skull,” he said. “We could see that there were two bullet holes to the head.”
“All right,” Murphy responded. “And did you actually see bullet fragments being removed from her skull?”
“Yes, I did.”
The image, when compared to the photos of Juri’s kind face and mischievous smile, was a difficult one for Grand Jurors to disregard. But Murphy wanted to further accentuate how the congenial, trusting student had been robbed of her life and asked that Juri’s death certificate be entered into the record. “The official cause of death,” he emphasized, glancing at the document, “was contusion, laceration of brain with skull fracture and gunshot wounds to the head. And she was twenty-three years old.”
Without Dan in the room—perhaps looking concerned for the victim he claimed to have never harmed or dramatically dabbing his eyes—it was easy to arouse the wrath of the Grand Jurors. The fact that Juri had allegedly been sacrificed just to form an alibi for the actor’s warped story line was equally infuriating.
While questioning Delgadillo, Murphy asked about the way that Juri had been stripped and defiled with profane slogans—all because, authorities claimed, Dan hoped to divert police into believing that she’d been sexually assaulted. “He said he tried to orchestrate it to make it look like it was Sam who had done it out of a rage of jealousy,” Delgadillo said. “He got some scissors and cut open the back of her … [clothes]. She was still wearing a tiara that her brother had given her before she left Long Beach earlier that night. He had also written on her back with … a Magic Marker, a black writing instrument. I believe it said something like, ‘Fuck you. You can have her.’”
According to authorities, Dan was hoping to convince police that Juri was the focal point of a bitter love triangle—involving Sam and Juri’s online boyfriend, Corp. Mark Johnson. “Over the course of your investigation,” Murphy asked, “you determined that it was not, in fact, a love triangle? Is that right?”
“That is correct.”
“And specifically, during your interview with Mr. Wozniak, what did he tell you about this love triangle? Did he say that was real or fake?”
“… I asked him if he had anything, any type of relationship, going with Julie, or there was any jealousy motive here. And his words to me were, ‘I’m not into yellow fever,’ meaning that he didn’t have a preference for Asian women.”
Murphy still wanted to spell out Dan’s purported strategy for the Grand Jurors. “Okay. So based on your involvement in the investigation, as well as your interview with him, the love triangle was something he faked to make it look like Mr. Herr was involved in the murder?”
“Yes.”
It was a testament to Dan’s cunning that, for several days, police and the public suspected that Sam was guilty of murdering his friend. However, detectives believed that Dan’s decision to conscript a teenager who immediately led them to the perpetrator was a statement about his ineptitude—as both a criminal and a member of society.
* * *
The process of determining whether a suspect deserved to be indicted was something that the authorities took seriously. In order to allow the Grand Jurors to consider their decision in isolation, witnesses were cautioned not to “discuss or repeat at any time outside of this jury room the questions that have been asked you, or your answers in respect to this matter.” Failing to adhere to this rule could result in contempt of court charges.
But the detectives who’d come to bolster the district attorney’s position had heard this admonishment before. Like the prosecutors and the families of the victims, their goal was to see Dan tried for the double homicide in the very near future. There’d already been so many obstacles in simply determining the facts, as law enforcement saw them. No one intended to do anything else to weaken the case.
As the proceeding neared its conclusion, Murphy thanked the Grand Jurors for their patience and elaborated on the nature of the charges. “We have two counts of murder,” he said. “Murder for financial gain, which was established during the interview with Mr. Wozniak. And based on the autopsy information as well as the confession, and seeing some of the [crime scene] photographs, the use of a firearm. So I would ask that the Grand Jury indict on those two counts of murder.”
He asked the foreperson of the Grand Jury if anyone had any questions about the evidence. No one did, and the panel gathered to consider the charges.
When the group filed back into the jury room, the foreperson formally announced the result that the detectives and members of the district attorney’s office expected: “May it please the court, the Grand Jury of Orange County in its deliberation has returned an indictment in the People of the State of California v. Daniel Patrick Wozniak.”
Officially, Dan was facing two counts of murder, as well as the “special circumstances” charges of committing multiple murders and killing for financial gain.