As the authorities prepared for upcoming hearings, the absence of investigator Mike Delgadillo was apparent to everyone.
On March 5, 2013, Delgadillo, the father of four children between fourteen and twenty, was returning from a night out in his Mazda 626 LX. He’d reportedly been at Mi Casa Restaurant, then moved on to Skosh Monahan’s, a bar and steakhouse owned by former Costa Mesa mayor Gary Monahan. At about 10:20 p.m., Delgadillo was on Newport Boulevard when he attempted to make a left turn at Bristol Street, jumped a curb, and collided with a concrete pillar. He was treated at the scene by his fellow officers and fire personnel, then loaded into an ambulance and rushed to the hospital. At Western Medical Center in Santa Ana—the same facility where Dan had been taken after his presumed suicide attempt—the thirty-two-year veteran was pronounced dead.
The unexpected loss of the fifty-seven-year-old detective had a dispiriting effect on the entire unit. After all, it had been Delgadillo who’d worked closely with Steve Herr at the beginning of the investigation and been in the room with Dan Wozniak when he confessed. Even more hurtful to the morale of the Costa Mesa Police Department were the results of the toxicology reports related to the accident.
After the crash, first responders had drawn blood from Delgadillo at the scene, as well as shortly before he died. There were small amounts of painkillers in his system, authorities determined, too minuscule to affect his driving. However, Delgadillo’s blood alcohol level was 0.14 percent, according to the Orange County coroner, nearly twice California’s legal limit of 0.08 percent. An investigation revealed that he was also texting and not wearing a seat belt.
If this weren’t bad enough, another traffic accident two years later claimed the life of seventeen-year-old Crystal Morales, the daughter of lead investigator Jose Morales.
With so much personal tragedy impacting the people at the core of the Dan Wozniak case, there were questions over whether they still possessed the will to assist the loved ones of Sam Herr and Juri Kibuishi.
The intentions were certainly there. Still, over time, the department changed. Det. Sgt. Ed Everett was promoted to lieutenant. The lieutenant at the time of the murders, Paul Dondero, retired. Detectives Mike Cohen and Carlos Diaz were shifted to other units.
All insisted that they hadn’t forgotten the families. Yet relatives wondered.
In 2013, Juri’s mother, Junko, addressed the court during one of Dan’s numerous pretrial hearings. “I can’t die without seeing justice being served,” she said. “I need to make sure I can tell my daughter in heaven that she can rest in peace.”
Junko had good reason to consider her mortality. Both she and her husband, Masa, had been diagnosed with cancer. As they fought the disease, she beseeched the judge, “Do we have to suffer any more? Please, please give us closure as soon as possible.”
Investigators hoped they were moving in that direction when, one day in 2013, Dan contacted the Costa Mesa detectives and said that he wanted to talk.
They rushed over to the jail and set up a video camera in an interview room. Daniel entered and shook hands. Then, he looked around. “Where’s my lawyer?” he asked.
“It’s not our job to contact him,” he was told.
“Well, I’m not going to talk if my lawyer isn’t here.”
Detectives tried calling Scott Sanders, but he was unreachable. They managed to find Tracy LeSage, the second public defender who’d been brought on specifically to handle the death penalty portion of the case. When Dan got on the phone, she advised him not to speak with authorities.
The suspect returned to his cell. Detectives never discovered what he intended to tell them.
Meanwhile, the process seemed to drag on indefinitely. “Julie’s grandmother has passed away,” Steve complained during a radio broadcast on KFI AM. “The longer the time goes, people forget.… Where are the rights for the victims? You kind of wish the justice system is for the victims, but it’s not.”
In a notebook, Steve kept a record of every hearing he attended, as well as a log of the excuses he heard for the delays. As of September 2014, he estimated that he’d attended forty separate proceedings for Dan. “Every delay hurts more,” Steve said. “The anger builds.”
He characterized the sluggish process as a “slap in the face” and told reporter Jeremiah Dobruck from the Daily Pilot that he was “starting to hate the justice system more than I hate Wozniak.”
Raquel’s sister, Miriam, usually joined the Herrs in court and contemplated shocking the authorities into speeding up the process by making poster-size images of the gory crime scene photos.
“We’re forgetting what happened here, the gruesomeness of the murder,” Miriam complained.
Added her husband, Mike Nortman, “We’re the only ones speaking for Sam.”
Before a typical hearing, the Kibuishis and the Herrs greeted one another warmly outside the ninth-floor elevators, near the courtroom. Junko had told detectives that, in some ways, she believed that the Herrs were hurting more than her own family. “They lost their only child,” she said. “I am lucky. I still have three.”
“That gives you an idea of the type of person she is,” one of the detectives noted, “and the kind of daughter she raised.” After dealing with malcontents, miscreants, and sociopaths on a day-to-day basis, authorities felt cleansed by the goodness that emanated from the Kibiushi family.
Steve paced anxiously in the hallway and rushed into the courtroom the moment that the doors opened, taking a seat near the front. Raquel, Miriam, and Mike sat beside him, along with Sam’s cousin Leah Sussman. The Kibuishis sat down directly behind them.
Dressed casually but neatly, in dark blue slacks, a collared pullover, loafers, and white socks, Masa fidgeted nervously, repeatedly driving a finger into his palm, then the arm of his chair. Then, he removed his silver wristwatch and scrupulously examined it.
Despite her hardships, Junko maintained a youthful presence. Her dark hair was cut short, almost in Japanese schoolgirl style. When acquaintances made eye contact, she politely smiled. Still, her face betrayed signs of weariness.
Alone in her car, Junko listened to a CD of songs that Juri had compiled for her mother’s birthday. It was a way to enjoy her daughter’s thoughtfulness, even after the young woman’s death. Around Junko’s neck was a ring on a chain. It was one of Juri’s few possessions that police returned to the Kibiushis—along with a pair of earrings and a blood-smeared hairpin.
Junko intended to wear the item for the remainder of her life.
After the families were situated, senior deputy district attorney Matt Murphy entered the room, took a seat in the gallery, and conferred with the Herrs and Kibuishis. Tall and photogenic, Murphy resembled a politician with statewide aspirations, or an actor portraying a prosecutor. At one point, Steve moved his seat close to Murphy and asked him to clear up a number of questions. Then, Steve returned to his spot next to his wife.
The Orange County District Attorney’s office also provided special victims’ advocates, who greeted and kissed the families and handed out parking validation slips. Noted Leah, “They cushion the blow.”
There were other cases on the docket, and Steve patiently sat through hearings for those defendants, rolling a pen between his palms. Raquel placed an arm around her husband while holding a copy of Pursuit of His Presence, a book billed as a guide to deepening one’s personal relationship with God.
“I don’t want anger,” she’d tell the Orange County Register. “I want to go on with life, and I see him, how it’s destroying him.”
At one point, Miriam stood, walked over to the empty row behind Juri’s parents, and placed a hand on each of their shoulders.
Meanwhile, a succession of defendants in orange jumpsuits paraded in and out of the courtroom—a woman from the Orange County Jail was clad in blue—the non–English speakers fitted with headsets. When Dan finally appeared, he was led to the defendants’ table and uncuffed. While a deputy stood behind him, hands on hips, Dan listened as the judge extended the trial date yet another time. Then, just as soon as Dan had made his entrance, he was gone from the place that had become his new stage.
“What a freakin’ waste,” Miriam commented. “They get more rights than I do.”
Junko Kibuishi released her clenched fist. Whenever Dan appeared, she’d ball up her hands and grit her teeth, holding in the tension for so long that, by the time the hearing was over, the cancer survivor was exhausted.
* * *
Until Dan was tried, the cases against Rachel Buffett and Tim Wozniak appeared to be on hold; the case against Tim’s now-ex-girlfriend had been dismissed. In the interim, Steve continued attending their hearings, as well. He noticed that he never saw Dan’s parents in court and wondered if they were torn over the fates of their sons. After one proceeding, as the Herrs were leaving the courtroom, Tim approached them and mouthed, I’m sorry.
Steve noticed that Dan’s brother had tears in his eyes.
The two continued to run into each other in court, nodding but keeping their distance. At the end of another hearing, Steve suggested that they speak outside. Fearing violence, the detectives in the courtroom followed. But the two men simply wanted to have a conversation.
“Tim said he knew Sam and liked him,” Steve said. “Dan and his brother went up to Sam’s apartment one night for some kind of get-together, and Tim got really drunk. Sammy told him, ‘Just stay here. Sleep it off. You can leave for work from my place tomorrow.’ Tim thought that was really nice, and he wanted to let me know he felt bad about what happened.”
Steve believed that the sentiments were genuine. But it did nothing to diminish his resolve about seeing Dan Wozniak strapped down in the death chamber.