Daniel Wozniak's Basic Instinct

We can imagine the options that ran through Daniel Wozniak's desperate mind in May 2010 before he committed a double murder as a way to steal money for his upcoming wedding and honeymoon. Broke and unable to find a steady job, Wozniak faced eviction from his Costa Mesa apartment, unaffordable matrimonial expenses, plus the steep costs associated with a DUI arrest. The one bright spot for the 26-year-old Long Beach native was Orange County's community-theater world, a place where his acting won him backslaps as well as free six-packs of Bud Light.

Living with one foot comfortably in a land of make-believe and the other stuck in a sinking, ugly reality must have been frustrating. His defense lawyers won't let him talk to journalists, but it's likely Wozniak, a movie buff, pondered film plots for ideas about how to kill neighbor/pal Samuel Herr, steal his $62,000 nest egg, outfox homicide detectives and begin a new life with money in his pocket. Four days before the May 21, 2010, murder of Herr, Wozniak typed these phrases into the Google search engine on his laptop computer: “how to hide a body,” “quick ways to kill people” and “making sure a body isn't found.”

In Throw Momma From the Train, two strangers meet, discover each wants somebody in their lives dead, and—inspired by Alfred Hitchcock's take on Patricia Highsmith's Strangers On a Train, conclude they can commit the perfect, fool-proof murder by killing the other's target. In Hitchcock's Dial M for Murder, a husband aims for his wife's inheritance by first hiring a killer and, when that plan fails with the intruder's death in the couple's home, getting his spouse convicted of murdering the would-be assassin. In Primal Fear, a killer fakes multiple personalities and sexual victimization to orchestrate a stunning courtroom victory.

None of those plots worked for Wozniak, but Basic Instinct may have provided a road map. Film critic Gary Susman described the 1996 film starring Sharon Stone this way: “Screenwriter Joe Eszterhas came up with a so-stupid-it's-brilliant notion: the killer who's so blatantly obvious that it can't possibly be that person—could it?”

Wozniak's trial ended last week with quick, easy convictions underscoring that the defendant mastered the first prong of Eszterhas' plot (the stupidity) but failed to incorporate even a hint of genius. As proved by Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt Murphy, phase one of Wozniak's plot went like this: Watch an oblivious Herr, a security guard and Orange Coast College (OCC) student who fought in Afghanistan as a paratrooper, enter his ATM code; lure him to the Liberty Theater at the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base on a pretense; shoot him twice in the head; dismember him with a saw; scatter portions of the corpse in Long Beach's El Dorado Park; and raid Herr's bank account.

Phase two: Use Herr's cell phone and fake text messages—”can you come over tonight at midnight?” and “please, no sex . . . need to talk”—to entice Herr's buddy Julie Kibuishi, an OCC student who dreamed of a future as a fashion designer, to Herr's bedroom at the Camden Martinique Apartments the following night; shoot her twice in the head; and stage a scene to imply an abandoned sexual assault that explained Herr's missing status not as a murder victim, but as a fugitive. He ripped Kibuishi's underwear and with a black marker wrote, “All yours fuck you” on her sweat shirt. The Nazi lightening-bolt-style S in “yours” matched not Herr's handwriting, but rather the scribble on a wedding invitation also found at the crime scene and penned by—wait for the drum roll—Wozniak.

“Nobody can find Sam,” Murphy told jurors during his outline of the case. “His car is missing. His phone is off. But his banking is still active. . . . [The police] think or at least suspect at this point Sam committed this murder and he is on the run.”

But Wozniak's plan, riddled with 18-wheeler-sized holes that would anger Hannibal Lecter, never had a chance even if the Three Stooges ran the police investigation. For example, two people saw Wozniak and Herr together the day he went missing. The eventually recovered murder weapon, a 380-caliber pistol, was registered to Wozniak's father. Wozniak's discarded backpack was found containing his own clothes with Herr's shirt, a bloody saw and spent shell casings. Though scavenged by animals, the scattered corpse (head, arm and a hand) still carried identifying DNA.

Prosecutors aren't required to declare a motive, but Herr's sizeable savings were irresistible to the penniless Wozniak. The person he assigned to use Herr's ATM card, a 16-year-old boy living with his mom, also ordered pizza with that card when detectives were conducting a vigorous manhunt, a traceable move that was the equivalent of activating a spotlight and shouting, “Here I am!”

Additionally, the boy, while wearing a hat-and-sunglasses disguise, withdrew about $2,000 from Herr's account via ATMs in Long Beach. Images of the person making the transactions didn't match Herr's, causing cops to wonder who knew Herr and had connections to that city: Wozniak. Even Columbo hampered by his constant head cold wouldn't have needed an entire show to solve this case.

Yet there is an unsolved mystery: What role, if any, did Wozniak's then-22-year-old fiancee, Rachel Buffett, play? Buffett, who was also a theater actor, is free on bail but faces charges as an accessory after the fact. In one of the more notable parts of the trial that went unmentioned in daily-newspaper accounts, Costa Mesa Police Department Lieutenant Ed Everett volunteered on the witness stand that he thought Buffett should be Wozniak's co-defendant facing death row inside San Quentin State Prison.

The comment likely irked Murphy, who had been enjoying a flawless presentation, because the prosecutor quickly tried to get the lieutenant to back off his stance only to have Scott Sanders, the assistant public defender representing Wozniak, revisit the issue. Turns out that Everett isn't just the stereotypical gruff, hard-nosed cop. He's also a perfectionist, testifying how he critiques his interrogations and noting in frustration he'd once accidentally interrupted a suspect on the verge of confessing.

Everett, a no-nonsense veteran, testified that his “gut” tells him Buffett, who insists she was duped by a clever boyfriend, is also guilty, in part, because she told numerous lies after the crime. He readily acknowledged he can't prove that assertion legally at this point, but, though he considers her a better actor than Wozniak (not a compliment), she did give helpful information to nail her then-fiance. Oddly, Buffett spiced one of her on-the-record interviews with the tidbit that she considered Wozniak's penis inadequate, a head-scratching outburst for police.

Superior Court Judge John Conley ordered punishment discussions for Wozniak to begin on Jan. 4, 2016. Murphy wants the death penalty. Sanders hopes to convince jurors a term of life in prison without parole is just. While the defense has been mum about its strategy, there's no secret what emotions the prosecutor will stroke.

On Dec. 16, Murphy reminded the jury that a cash-craving Wozniak explored committing murder or, as a Google search revealed, stealing a car and selling it. “What happened to that?” the prosecutor asked. “None of us would be here today [if car theft had been the choice].”

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