Murderer sentenced to death
Daniel Wozniak of Costa Mesa had been convicted of two killings and a gruesome cover-up.
Convicted double-murderer Daniel Wozniak looked toward the front of the Santa Ana courtroom, his expression void of emotion as an Orange County Superior Court judge on Friday affirmed his death sentence.
The courtroom fell silent. The victims’ family and friends wiped away tears as Judge John Conley sentenced the former Costa Mesa community actor, 32, to death for killing Irvine resident Juri “Julie” Kibuishi, 23, and her Army veteran friend Samuel Herr, 26.
A jury had recommended in January that Wozniak be put to death for the two killings and gruesome coverup that included beheading Herr and staging Kibuishi’s body to look as if she had been sexually assaulted.
Wozniak will be taken to San Quentin State Prison, where he will remain until his execution date.
Kibuishi and Herr’s families embraced one another as they exited the courtroom after the sentencing. Conley’s decision gave them some resolution, they said, after six years and four months of court hearings and delays. But they said the pain of having their children ripped away will never cease to haunt them.
“This will never heal and go away,” Kibuishi’s mother, June Kibuishi, said. “Julie will never come back to us. All our family can do is try to move forward one step at a time.”
In 2010, Wozniak was so desperate for money to cover his rent and fund his upcoming wedding and honeymoon that he hatched a plot to kill Herr, his neighbor.
Wozniak sought to steal $62,000 that Herr had saved from his military service in Afghanistan. He was able to acquire only $2,000 before his arrest.
Wozniak was convicted by a jury in December of first-degree murder for killing Herr and Kibuishi.
Conley said Friday that instead of having an inexpensive wedding and postponing a honeymoon, Wozniak researched and carried out the two gruesome killings.
Prosecutors said that on May 21, 2010, Wozniak lured Herr, an Orange Coast College student, to an attic in the Los Alamitos Joint Forces Training Base under the guise of needing help moving furniture. In a recorded police interview presented during the trial, Wozniak described shooting Herr in the back of the head as he knelt.
Later, Wozniak used an ax and saw to remove Herr’s head, hands and a tattooed forearm from his body before dumping the parts in a Long Beach park, an act Conley called a “coldblooded execution.”
As part of his ploy to throw off detectives, Wozniak used Herr’s phone to send messages to Kibuishi, who was tutoring Herr. Shortly after midnight on May 22, hours after killing Herr, Wozniak used Herr’s cellphone to lure Kibuishi to Herr’s Costa Mesa apartment, where he shot her twice in the head. He then partially removed Kibuishi’s clothes and staged her body to look as though Herr had sexually assaulted her and fled, prosecutors said.
Police arrested Wozniak on May 26, 2010 — two days before his wedding — in Huntington Beach. ATM withdrawals from Herr’s account had led police to him.
Wozniak’s ex-fiancee, Rachel Buffett, was arrested in 2012 and charged with being an accessory after the fact. She is accused of lying to police and has pleaded not guilty.