Up until this point, public sentiment had been largely sensitive to the struggles of the victims’ families and disparaging of the accused murderer. Even Rachel’s supporters had reviled Dan for pulling his fiancée’s name into the plot. Then, in January 2015, a blogger began writing about her fondness for Dan and, at times, questioning whether he truly was guilty of his crimes. Eventually, she would name her page Daniel Wozniak Is My Friend.
“I have a new friend,” she began her first post. “Actually, I met him for the first time in 2010, but he really only became my actual friend … a few months ago when I first wrote him a letter. He is in jail. He is ‘awaiting trial.’ He’s been waiting a long time, too—four years and seven months so far.… It’s especially a long time if you sit inside a cell 22 hours a day … and the prosecutor is asking for the death penalty.”
Initially, the blogger used a pseudonym to describe Dan. But anyone who’d been following the case could immediately identify him. The woman wrote about meeting the suspect in 2010 when she was working at the Hunger Artists Theatre and he was appearing in Nine. Although she wasn’t particularly impressed with his acting abilities, she said, she liked him personally, and he was a consistent crowd pleaser. “He seemed like a nice guy. He was good-looking and personable. He was funny and polite. He was even engaged to one of the actresses in the show.… He seemed like he had his life pretty organized.”
Because Dan was the only man in the play, he used the theater’s office as a dressing room. A curtain separated him from the blogger, who was selling snacks at the front end of the office. Whenever he heard someone order a soda, he’d produce the item by extending his hand through the curtain.
“He made me laugh,” the blogger said. Then, several days after the play closed, Daniel Wozniak was arrested.
If, like so many others who knew Dan, the blogger was attempting to mine her memories to come up with a sign of the imminent violence, the passages would not have stood out. But in subsequent posts, the writer elaborated on her fascination with both Dan and his crimes. Her bookcase was peppered with true-crime books, she said, including biographies of “Son of Sam” killer David Berkowitz, Milwaukee “cannibal murderer” Jeffrey Dahmer, and the LA “Night Stalker” Richard Ramirez. “So I have this (possibly unhealthy) obsession with crimes and killers,” she explained, “and bam, here is a possible killer who I’ve already met!!”
After reading about the crime, she believed that Dan was “probably guilty” and admitted that she was “enthralled” by her short-lived tie to notoriety. Her children were no longer young, she said, and she found herself with time on her hands. Among the hobbies that she’d decided to pursue was writing. Because of her interest in serial killers, she contemplated a true-crime book. “It was close friends who kept telling me that it would be more interesting to write about my own involvement with Daniel. Anyone could report, but I had a connection.”
As tenuous as that was, she sent a letter to Dan, hoping “our brief meeting years earlier would entice him to write me back.”
The first letter arrived at the Orange County Jail in August 2014. The blogger reminded Dan of their interactions but said nothing about her intended project. In fact, five months later, she’d reveal, he’d yet to learn about the blog devoted to him.
“When I began writing to this man who is in jail, I had one goal in mind,” she said. “I saw him only [for his crimes]…, and I saw myself as the next Truman Capote.” However, as they continued to correspond, she said, an actual friendship developed. “There are probably tons of people who would think I’m ‘nucking futz’ for calling an accused murderer my friend. I wonder about it myself, so I don’t blame them.”
The difference, she pointed out, was that she knew Dan.
“I think I do,” she added. “I sure as hell hope I do. I really want to believe I do.”
In his first letter, she said, Dan talked about his sadness over the recent death of Robin Williams and about his appetite for theater. “He talked about depression and suicide attempts.… He wrote about his fiancé [sic]. Now, she was his ex-fiancé [sic].” In Dan’s version of his life, the blogger claimed, Rachel had been his only friend.
“His life revolved around her,” the post continued. “He was devastated when, after he’d been in jail for three months, she cut off all communication with him.”
Recently, he claimed, he’d helped his cellmate earn a GED. This was consistent with Dan’s life philosophy that centered on “making a difference, and doing what you can to make things better, no matter your circumstances,” the blog read. Dan also mentioned his faith in God, asking the blogger not to judge him by the details of the crimes. “He hopes that I can see that he is not an evil man.”
At the time of the murders, Dan allegedly told the blogger, he was consuming drugs and he had only “foggy” recollections about the period. When she brought up their conversations at the theater, Dan admitted that he wasn’t sure if he remembered her. He urged her to send a photo to jar his memory.
“I immediately went looking for pictures of me where I look cute.”
Since she couldn’t recall the color of her hair at the time she met Dan, the blogger sent out three separate photos. “I wanted him to recognize me,” she said. She also mentioned that she “thought it was cool to get mail from an inmate.”
Dan replied with musings about his lack of freedom. “Your life is what you make it,” he apparently said, “and if you philosophically break it down, everyone is confined and limited in some aspect.”
But he appeared to place his captivity in context, writing that, although he was incapable of driving to a fast food restaurant to order a meal from the drive-through window, she couldn’t “fly to the moon to get some cheese.”
In response, the blogger said that she still felt more liberated than her new pen pal, since she could go to the supermarket to purchase cheese, if she craved it.
As the blogger studied the letters, Dan’s “crazy, neat printing” stood out. She claimed to have asked the accused murderer if he’d always had such perfect penmanship and he replied that incarceration had helped him perfect his talents.
Eventually, she said, she informed him about her blog, noting that the average person—upon reading reports about the deaths of Sam and Juri—would automatically assume that Dan was “a monster.” Yet she believed that people who didn’t look beyond the surface were missing important details. “The man I met four years ago did not appear to be a monster,” she wrote the inmate, “and these well-written and thoughtful letters you’ve sent me have only made me even more aware of your humanity.… Who is this man accused of such heinous acts, and how is he the same creative, funny and seemingly kind person who is writing to me about helping a fellow inmate get his GED?”
Over time, she began to question whether Dan was a murderer at all. She speculated that he might have been manipulated by detectives during his interview, since no lawyer was present and Dan was likely drunk after his bachelor party. She also wondered if police had threatened to imprison Rachel if he didn’t confess.
Nonetheless, she also conceded that Dan “was young and cocky, and believes he is smarter than anyone else.” Did that mean that he tried to outwit detectives, even though he was guilty of the double homicide? Or did they exploit his talkative nature to get him to say things that indicated culpability?
During a jailhouse visit with Dan, the blogger learned that Steve Herr had also come to the facility to speak with the suspect. Surprised, the writer asked about the grieving father’s motive.
“He really wants to know the truth,” Dan reportedly answered, “and I don’t think he trusts the justice system because of what happened in Sam’s own murder case.”
It was then that Dan told his companion about Sam’s arrest and acquittal. “Daniel went on to surmise that possibly Steve Herr was worried that Daniel would ‘walk free,’” she wrote, “just as his son did years earlier.”
More than any defense attorney had done so far, the blogger was impugning the victim’s character.
Still, she insisted that she wasn’t becoming brainwashed. “On Facebook, I was accused of being a ‘Manson girl,’” she said. “For the record, that comparison is not entirely accurate, since it was actually the ‘Manson girls’ … and two male followers of Manson who committed the murders. I am just writing about a murder case. I didn’t murder anyone.”
While she kept her identity hidden online, her fixation with Dan took a conspicuous turn when she turned up at a court hearing and exchanged smiles with the defendant. “I didn’t want my friend to smile at me, or to smile period,” she wrote. “I want him to look serious and contrite or something that doesn’t resemble happy. I feel that’s the way to go when you’re being accused of murder.
When she overheard two reporters in the courtroom conversing about Dan’s upbeat demeanor, she became worried that his smile would be misinterpreted as a “smirk.” She said that deputies warned Dan about looking at people in the gallery. “I don’t think Scott Sanders was pleased, either. Daniel didn’t mean anything by it, but that doesn’t matter, does it?”
As problematic as her presence may have been for the defendant, the blogger was gratified when a producer from the TV show 20/20 noticed Daniel mouthing, Thank you, to his follower and invited her to lunch. “This was exciting,” the blogger wrote. “I love 20/20!
“… She told me that any program they might do on Daniel’s story will try to give a complete picture of him. I would hope so. I guess that includes talking to his friends and maybe even reading their blogs.”
Beyond the exhilaration, though, the blogger claimed to feel sympathy for the victims’ families. “I’m guessing they wouldn’t like me very much,” she contemplated. “Not that I would blame them. I am his friend.” Her goal, she stated, was not to hurt them, but look into Dan’s soul and see the goodness that she knew was there. But she also harbored doubts about the way law enforcement was addressing the case.
“Does that make me crazy, naïve?” she wrote.
“No matter what Daniel Wozniak may have done, I don’t believe he should die for it.
“I understand why the families of the victims do, though.”
During one hearing, she worked up the nerve to speak with Steve after he held a door open for her. “I thanked him,” she said, “and could swear he smelled like Old Spice, a scent that reminds me of my father and of loss. Maybe it was just my imagination.”
It turned out that Steve was aware of the blog and had been reading it to see if Dan had uttered anything that shed additional light on the crimes. After the initial exchange, Steve occasionally communicated with the blogger on Facebook. Unlike some of her readers, she noted, Steve did not make any value judgments about her decision to befriend Wozniak and write about it. “If I were asked to come up with an adjective to describe Steve’s tone, it would be ‘frustrated.’”
In reality, Steve’s behavior toward the woman reflected his genuine attitude. He viewed her as a courtroom buff who may have been misguided in the character she chose to follow. But he also understood that she spoke to Dan and was thus in a position to pass on a message to him. So he made a simple request to the blogger.
“Ask Dan one question,” Steve wrote. “Did he murder Sam and Julie? Then, post his answer. Everything you have posted is conjecture, which is your right. However, just ask him that one question. His response, whatever he says, should make great reading!”