If the authorities were going to parcel out information in cautious doses and some of Dan’s associates continued to show trepidation when certain topics were broached, Steve had his own plan about gleaning details about the case.
He intended to go directly to the source.
“I decided to just go to the jail and request to see him,” Steve said. “The old adage is ‘Get it from the horse’s mouth.’ The worst he could say was no. I had nothing to lose. But at least, I gave it a shot.”
Arriving at the Orange County Jail, Steve filled out the necessary applications, then waited about thirty minutes until he was ushered to a room in which Dan was seated behind Plexiglas. The two were making eye contact as they each lifted a telephone receiver to communicate. According to Steve, Dan immediately said, “I’m sorry.”
“I saw you on MSNBC,” Steve said. “And you said that you were reading the Bible and were into Jesus. So you know what? I’m never going to forgive you, but I might hate you less if you tell the truth.”
Dan stared back. “I respect you,” he said with apparent sincerity.
Steve remembered being at the jail for forty-five minutes. Since the arrests, he’d been pondering how Dan secured access to Sam’s PIN. Now Dan promised to provide the answer.
“He said that a few days before, he went to the bank with Sam. He said he watched Sam put in his PIN number and saw how much money was in the account.” That’s when Steve claimed that Dan told him about coming up with the concept of robbing Sam of his savings.
While Dan explained his motive, Steve contained himself, knowing that if he revealed anger or even disbelief the suspect might stand and ask a deputy to take him back to his cell.
“I don’t know what made me do it,” Dan allegedly said.
Steve tried not to shake his head. But he didn’t accept Dan’s version of events. “Two things don’t jibe,” Steve said later. “Number one—Sam wouldn’t let anyone get that close to him when he was putting in the PIN number. Number two is your balance comes out on a small sheet. It doesn’t come out on the screen where everyone can see it. Sam would look at the sheet, rip it into little threads, and throw it away. He wouldn’t let Dan look at that.”
In an effort to rationalize his actions, Steve said that Dan then outlined his financial issues. He was insolvent, he said, repeating what had become something of a mantra, to the point that when Sam gave him hundred dollars as a wedding gift Dan converted it to a cashier’s check to use for the rent.
“He told me, ‘I owed a lot of money. I did it for the money,’” Steve said.
Despite his not guilty plea in court, Dan apparently was willing to confess to his victim’s father about behavior that could lead to the death chamber. But Steve had become convinced that others were involved in the conspiracy. “My guess was that somebody else—maybe someone who’d been tight with Sam—might have known the PIN number. Maybe Sam was drunk one night and said the number out loud while he was withdrawing money. I don’t know this. It’s just a theory. But I wanted to know who else was involved.”
On three separate occasions, he maintained that he asked Dan about cohorts in the plot. “He said, ‘I can’t tell you,’” Steve said. “He didn’t say, ‘Nobody helped me.’ He didn’t say, ‘I did it myself.’ It was, ‘I can’t tell you.’ So that, to me, is covering something.”
Straining to identify the co-conspirator, Steve mentioned the arrest of Dan’s brother Tim for being an accessory to murder after the fact—hoping the discussion would stir something in the suspect. In a tone that sounded frank, Dan, looking over at the victim’s father, purportedly declared, “Tim had absolutely nothing to do with this.”
Looking back on the conversation, Steve would conclude that Dan was either attempting to protect his brother or actually revealing a snippet of truth. “Maybe he was telling me, ‘Other people had something to do with this, but not Tim.’”
Dan also wouldn’t provide particulars of the murder, Steve said. Indeed, at one point Steve alleged that the actor asserted that he’d forgotten certain aspects of the crime. “Why did you kill Julie?” Steve claimed to have asked.
“Sometimes, you just black out. I don’t remember certain things.”
Steve struggled not to raise his voice. Nonetheless, he felt compelled to let Dan know that his story was less than convincing.
“I looked at him and I said, ‘Dan, I’m a Marine from New Jersey. I was in the service during Vietnam. There are certain things in my life I’ve done. I remember everything. Don’t bullshit me.’”
In reality, it was Steve who was toying with the truth. “I never went to Vietnam, but Dan doesn’t know that,’” Steve said. “So I was just telling him that he was full of crap.”
One of the few things that Dan apparently did concede was his disappointment with Wesley. “He was pissed off because this kid was using Sam’s ATM card to buy pizza, and he was even driving Sam’s car around,” Steve said. “The way I interpreted it was Wesley wouldn’t listen to him. Dan wants to be the Alpha guy, the one making plans. ‘Don’t drive the car. Don’t do this.’ Obviously, Dan didn’t want to get arrested. And the kid was doing things his way.”
At times, Steve thought about crashing through the Plexiglas and pummeling Dan, meting out justice without the intervention of detectives and district attorneys. “I wanted to kill the fucker,” Steve admitted. “But I’m not stupid. If I start ranting and raving, they’re going to come and take me away. What’s most important to me is finding out the whole story.”
In fact, when Dan referred to his visitor as “Mr. Herr” he was told, “Just call me ‘Steve.’”
“I fear you the most,” Dan apparently said, without elaborating.
Steve wanted Dan to keep talking. “You have nothing to fear from me,” Steve responded, “as long as you tell me the truth.”
Indeed, the actor’s reverential tenor was disarming. It appeared that, in some way, Dan was attempting to atone for his crimes. But Steve did not believe that Dan was legitimately penitent. The suspect’s main regret, Steve presumed, was getting caught.
* * *
How could someone sit calmly across from the father of the person he killed, respectfully calling the man “Mr. Herr” while claiming to have blacked out on details of the double homicide? If everything described in the indictment was true, he suffered from some type of anti-social personality disorder. According to the American Psychiatric Association, the world’s largest psychiatric organization, both sociopaths and psychopaths fall into this category and share a number of traits, including a disregard for the rights of others, failure to feel remorse or guilt, and a tendency for violence.
Sociopaths—known for emotional outbursts and fits of rage—are able to form attachments to individuals or groups but have no consideration for society’s rules. Their crimes are said to be disorganized and impulsive, rather than carefully planned out. But under certain, uncommon circumstances, the sociopath can feel compassion for other people.
By contrast, psychopaths are described as charming and manipulative and able to gain people’s trust. Because of this, some can thrive at jobs, marry, and raise families. However, they are unable to form real emotional attachments or feel empathy. As a result, they observe how the rest of society behaves and imitate the emotions that others expect them to show, exhibiting signs of sadness when informed about a tragic situation or expressing sympathy over a death.
In the business world, psychopaths have been known to conceive elaborate swindles, using their personable qualities to convince their victims to make debilitating investments. When the psychopath commits a violent act, it’s often meticulously planned, down to the alibi. Experts describe psychopaths as the more dangerous of the two groups. To the psychopathic serial killer, for instance, human beings are perceived as objects to be sacrificed for entertainment and pleasure.
Another difference between a sociopath and a psychopath involves the cause of the anomaly. Experts define psychopathy as a neurological disorder, involving a defect in the part of the brain responsible for emotions and impulse control. Psychologists have described sociopathy as a learned condition, sometimes brought on by abuse or other childhood trauma.
Was Dan Wozniak a sociopath or psychopath? In some ways, his alleged actions appeared to fit both classifications. In other ways, he seemed to be in a category all his own.