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The Murders of Sam Herr and Julie Kobayashi · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: So picture this. It is the evening of May twenty first,
• 0:04
  twenty ten, and Daniel Patrick Wozniak is standing center stage.
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: Under these bright, hot community theater lights in Orange County, California.
• 0:15
  Speaker 1: Exactly. He is starring in the lead role. He's playing
• 0:17
  Guido in the musical nine. And the crowd is just captivated.
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: Yeah, they're laughing at his jokes, leaning into every line.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Right, and when the sinal curtain drops, the place erupts,
• 0:27
  I mean roaring applause. Yeah, and he's soaking it all in, bowing, smiling.
• 0:32
  He looks like the picture of a charismatic local star.
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: But what that audience didn't know, What the other actors
• 0:38
  on that stage didn't know either, was that just hours earlier,
• 0:40
  this exact same man had committed a double murder, a.
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: Double murder so calculated and frankly, so incredibly gruesome that
• 0:48
  it would completely shatter that community.
• 0:50
  Speaker 2: It really redefines the whole concept of you know the
• 0:53
  monster next door. It's the ultimate paradox, it really is.
• 0:56
  We are talking about a man who could seamlessly transition
• 0:58
  from literally slaughtering his friends in cold blood right to
• 1:02
  singing and dancing for an audience.
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: Within the span of a single afternoon.
• 1:06
  Speaker 2: Exactly, all in one day. It forces us to ask
• 1:09
  some truly terrifying questions about human psychology and really the
• 1:14
  absolute limits of deception.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: And that is exactly what we are tearing apart today.
• 1:19
  So welcome to the deep dive. We are looking at
• 1:21
  a massive stack of source material for this one.
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: A really dense stack.
• 1:26
  Speaker 1: Yeah, we're focusing heavily on excerpts from the final act
• 1:29
  the Wozniak double murder case, but we're also pulling from
• 1:33
  thousands of pages of court records, police interrogation transcripts, trial coverage,
• 1:38
  and these incredibly moving interviews with the families of the victims.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: Which are so tough to read.
• 1:43
  Speaker 1: Honestly, they really are. And our mission here isn't just
• 1:47
  to tell you, you know, a standard true crime story.
• 1:49
  We want to really deconstruct the mechanics of this nightmare.
• 1:53
  Speaker 2: We're looking at how community theater, glamour, unfiltered greed, and
• 1:56
  just psychopathic deception all collided.
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if you are listening to this right now, I
• 2:01
  want you to think about your neighbors, like, really think
• 2:03
  about the people you share.
• 2:04
  Speaker 2: Wall with, the people you wave to at the mailbox.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: Exactly because this case is fundamentally about how everyday trust
• 2:11
  was just completely weaponized, which.
• 2:12
  Speaker 2: Is why, you know, we cannot just settle for a
• 2:14
  timeline of what happened. We have to dig into the
• 2:16
  why and the.
• 2:17
  Speaker 1: How, right, Like how does someone with no violent criminal
• 2:20
  record wake up and plant a double homicide just to
• 2:24
  pay for a honeymoon?
• 2:25
  Speaker 2: We are going to examine the psychological framework of a
• 2:28
  predator who used his own charisma as a cloak for
• 2:31
  unprecedented cruelty.
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: Okay, let's unpack this. We need to go back to
• 2:35
  the morning after that theatrical performance I just mentioned. It's
• 2:39
  May twenty two to twenty ten, Costa, Mesa, California.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: Down at the Camden Martinique apartment complex.
• 2:45
  Speaker 1: Right, and it's your classics southern California morning, sun and shining.
• 2:49
  People are walking their dogs, you know the vibe. But
• 2:52
  for a man named Steve Hrr, this morning is a
• 2:55
  living nightmare.
• 2:56
  Speaker 2: He has been trying to reach his twenty six year
• 2:59
  old son Sam for days. At this point.
• 3:01
  Speaker 1: Yeah, calls are just going straight to voicemail. Texts are
• 3:04
  sitting there unanswered. And look, if you're a parent listening
• 3:07
  to this, you know that feeling oh, absolutely, that gnawing
• 3:10
  physiological instinct that tells you something is deeply fundamentally wrong.
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: It's an anxiety that completely overrides logic. You start imagining
• 3:18
  the worst, right, But even the worst case scenarios in
• 3:21
  a parent's mind usually involved like a car accident or
• 3:25
  a medical emergency. You do not anticipate what Steve Hurr
• 3:28
  was about to walk into.
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: No, so he drives over to Sam's apartment. He walks
• 3:33
  up to the door, opens it, and steps inside. And
• 3:36
  the scene he finds in the bedroom is I mean,
• 3:39
  it's so meticulously horrifying it practically paralyzes.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Him because on the bed is the body of a
• 3:45
  twenty three year old woman.
• 3:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah, a vibrant, beloved college student named Jerry Kibuishi, though
• 3:50
  everyone called her Julie. She's been shot twice in the head, and.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: The way she is positioned is clearly designed to send
• 3:55
  a message it's awful.
• 3:57
  Speaker 1: Her pants have been pulled down and cut with scissors,
• 3:59
  and there is a deeply vulgar, aggressive message scrolled directly
• 4:03
  onto her sweatshirt.
• 4:05
  Speaker 2: In black marker.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Right, it reads fu, She's all yours And just.
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: Stop and consider the psychological impact of that specific visual
• 4:12
  on a father who is looking for his son.
• 4:14
  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: The scene is screaming a very specific narrative. It is
• 4:20
  screaming sexual assault. It is screaming rage, jealousy, like a
• 4:24
  crime of absolute passion.
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Right, But the most glaring part of this scene isn't
• 4:28
  just what's there, it's what isn't there?
• 4:30
  Speaker 2: Sam?
• 4:30
  Speaker 1: Sam is gone. And it's not just that he's physically missing.
• 4:33
  His passport is missing, his wallet is gone, his ID,
• 4:36
  his car all missing.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: So Steve Hurr calls the police.
• 4:40
  Speaker 1: Yeah, they arrive, they see a dead young woman, a
• 4:42
  stage sexual assault, and a missing twenty six year old
• 4:47
  Afghanistan war.
• 4:48
  Speaker 2: Veteran who happens to have combat training exactly.
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: So the police instantly launch a massive man hunt for Sam.
• 4:54
  They think they have their guy.
• 4:56
  Speaker 2: And this is where in the field of criminology we
• 4:58
  look very closely at the concert.
• 5:00
  Speaker 1: Of staging Staging the scene.
• 5:02
  Speaker 2: Right. Staging is the deliberate, purposeful alteration of a crime
• 5:06
  scene before law enforcement arrives, and it usually serves one
• 5:09
  of two purposes.
• 5:10
  Speaker 1: Okay, what are they?
• 5:11
  Speaker 2: Well, Either the perpetrator is trying to protect the dignity
• 5:14
  of the victim because they feel remorse, like covering a
• 5:18
  body with a blanket, for example. Sure that makes sense,
• 5:20
  or as in this case, it is an aggressive misdirection.
• 5:24
  The killer here was actively weaponizing the prejudices and the
• 5:28
  standard operating procedures of the police.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, let me make sure I'm wrapping my head around this.
• 5:33
  You're saying the killer basically designed a movie set like
• 5:37
  they knew the police would walk in and instantly recognize
• 5:40
  the quote unquote troubled veteran Snap's trope.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: Exactly that human beings, including seasoned homicide detectives, rely on heuristics,
• 5:50
  mental shortcuts, exactly, shortcuts based on past experiences and recognizable patterns,
• 5:55
  and the killer banked on that flaw.
• 5:57
  Speaker 1: Wow.
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: By creating this specific graphic tableau, he provided the police
• 6:02
  with a fugitive ghost to chase.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: A fugitive ghost. I like that term.
• 6:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he gave them a story that made superficial sense.
• 6:08
  The volatile combat veteran, perhaps suffering from PTSD, gets into
• 6:12
  a jealous rage, commits a horrific crime of passion, grabs
• 6:16
  his passport, and flees the country. Right, It's a narrative
• 6:19
  that police have unfortunately seen before.
• 6:22
  Speaker 1: It's like a macab magic trick. The killer is standing
• 6:25
  there holding a neon sign, pointing at Sam Herr, saying,
• 6:28
  look over here, look at the flashy evidence chase the
• 6:31
  veteran yep. And while the entire police force is looking
• 6:34
  at that flashy hand, the hand that actually pulled the
• 6:38
  trigger is completely hidden in the.
• 6:40
  Speaker 2: Shadows, perfectly sad.
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: And the calculation of it taking a marker and writing
• 6:45
  that vulgarity on her clothing. It takes time. It takes
• 6:49
  a coldness to physically manipulate a victim's body like a
• 6:53
  prop just to solidify a false narrative.
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: It does, and initially the misdirection is highly effective.
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, the police initiate an Amber alert style dragnet.
• 7:03
  They're putting out bulletins for a highly trained military operative
• 7:06
  on the run. They are briefing officers to approach with
• 7:09
  extreme caution.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: But here's the vulnerability of staging. It rarely holds up
• 7:14
  to scientific scrutiny. While the initial visual tells one story,
• 7:17
  the forensic evidence eventually tells the truth.
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: And the autopsy is what completely unravels this fictionalized crime scene.
• 7:23
  Right the medical examiner looks at Julie's body and determines
• 7:27
  definitively that there was no sexual assault whatsoever.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: That is the pivotal moment in the early investigation. The
• 7:35
  autopsy strips away the fiction.
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: Because the physical evidence doesn't match the scene.
• 7:39
  Speaker 2: Right. Once you remove the sexual assault from the equation,
• 7:42
  the entire motive implied by the scene just collapses.
• 7:45
  Speaker 1: Yeah, if it wasn't a crime of passion, if she
• 7:48
  wasn't assaulted, then the pants being cut, the vulgar message.
• 7:52
  Speaker 2: It all becomes glaringly obvious that it was a theatrical
• 7:54
  prop There was a script written by someone else. And
• 7:57
  if you're listening, just think about how easily initial narratives
• 7:59
  can be cemented in our minds when evidence appears to
• 8:02
  fit a recognizable stereotype.
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: It's nauseating to hijack a person's identity and turn them
• 8:08
  into a villain post mortem while simultaneously using another human
• 8:12
  being as a literal prop.
• 8:14
  Speaker 2: It is incredibly dark, it really is.
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: And if you're listening and wondering how does a killer
• 8:18
  choose these specific people, we have to look at who
• 8:21
  Sam and Julie actually were.
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: Because the reality of their lives was the polar opposite
• 8:26
  of the ugly narrative painted in that apartment.
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: Exactly understanding the targets is crucial here. Let's start with
• 8:33
  Samuel Ilizer here, born in nineteen eighty three. He was
• 8:37
  an only child, and from everything in the source material,
• 8:40
  he was incredibly tight with his parents, Steve and Raquel.
• 8:44
  Speaker 2: Very close family.
• 8:45
  Speaker 1: But Sam's life wasn't a straight line to success. Our
• 8:48
  documents note a really dark chapter back in two thousand
• 8:51
  and two.
• 8:51
  Speaker 2: Yeah, when he was just eighteen.
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: Right, Sam is eighteen years old and he gets swept
• 8:56
  up in a gang related incident in Los Angeles County,
• 8:59
  was actually accused in a stabbing and beating death.
• 9:02
  Speaker 2: I want to pause there, because facing a murder charge
• 9:05
  at eighteen years old is a crossroads that destroys most people.
• 9:08
  Speaker 1: Oh, absolutely, the intense.
• 9:09
  Speaker 2: Scrutiny, the environment of the jail system, the weight of
• 9:12
  the accusations that usually hardens a young person into a
• 9:15
  life of crime.
• 9:16
  Speaker 1: Right, But Sam was acquitted, He was clear to the charges.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: And instead of coming out of that experience bitter or
• 9:22
  you know, sliding back into a dangerous crowd, he uses
• 9:26
  it as a massive wake up call.
• 9:27
  Speaker 1: He decides to completely rebuild his foundation. So in two
• 9:30
  thousand and six, he enlisted in the US Army and.
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: He doesn't take an easy dusk job either.
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: No, he serves as a mechanic and a combat soldier.
• 9:38
  He gets deployed to Afghanistan for a grueling fifteen month tour.
• 9:42
  Speaker 2: Fifteen months in an isolated combat outpost is a crucible.
• 9:46
  The level of discipline, the psychological endurance required to operate
• 9:50
  in that environment is immense.
• 9:52
  Speaker 1: Yeah, his commanding officer, Captain Benjamin L. Kilgore, wrote evaluations
• 9:57
  specifically highlighting Sam's unmatched to operate independently.
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: That doesn't just mean he was a good soldier, It
• 10:04
  means he was deeply reliable. He had developed a profound
• 10:07
  level of maturity that he simply didn't have at eighteen.
• 10:10
  Speaker 1: Exactly so, he earns his decorations, He finishes his tour,
• 10:14
  and in July two thousand and nine, he is honorably discharged.
• 10:17
  He comes back home to Coasta Mesa, California, and he's.
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: Got a plan, a very solid plan.
• 10:22
  Speaker 1: He uses the GI Bill to enroll at Orange Coast College.
• 10:26
  His ultimate goal is to get his degree so he
• 10:27
  can re enlist in the military as an officer.
• 10:30
  Speaker 2: That shows such dedication.
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: Right, He rents his own place at the Camden Martinique Complex.
• 10:34
  And here's the detail that basically seals his fate. During
• 10:37
  those fifteen months in Afghanistan, Sam saved his combat pay.
• 10:40
  He didn't blow it, No, he saved roughly sixty two
• 10:42
  thousand dollars.
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: Think about the blood, sweat and sheer survival that money represents.
• 10:47
  That sixty two thousand dollars was his foundation. It was
• 10:51
  the security he built to ensure he never went back
• 10:53
  to the vulnerability of his youth. But in the eyes
• 10:56
  of a predator, that money was simply an untapped res ah.
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: That's sick. Now. Let's look at Jery Kibuishi, known to
• 11:04
  everyone as Julie. She's born to Japanese immigrant parents, Masa
• 11:08
  and June, who built a life in the US over
• 11:11
  three decades.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: A very close knit, loving family as well.
• 11:14
  Speaker 1: Very much so. Julie is this absolute force of creativity
• 11:18
  and joy. She graduated from the Orange County School of
• 11:21
  the Arts, which is highly prestigious.
• 11:23
  Speaker 2: She's a dancer, a very talented one.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah. She studied under Cindy piccadolan, who described her as graceful, dynamic,
• 11:29
  and deeply emotional inner art and at the time of
• 11:31
  the murders. She's twenty three, studying anthropology and fashion at
• 11:35
  Orange Coast College.
• 11:36
  Speaker 2: Which is the same school as Sam. You know, the
• 11:38
  through line in all the interviews about Julie is her
• 11:41
  radical empathy. She wasn't just focused on her own ambitions.
• 11:44
  She was the person who would notice if a classmate
• 11:47
  was struggling, and that is precisely how she connected with Sam.
• 11:51
  They met in an anthropology class and Sam was having
• 11:53
  a hard time adjusting to the academic environment after being
• 11:56
  in a.
• 11:56
  Speaker 1: War zone, which is totally understandable.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: Right, Solie's stepped in and started tutoring him.
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: I want to be very clear about this because the
• 12:04
  staged crime scene tried to imply otherwise. Their relationship was
• 12:08
  completely platonic. Yes, the families were adamant about this. She
• 12:12
  treated him like a big brother, yeah, and he treated
• 12:15
  her like a kid's sister.
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: It's a beautiful dynamic. You have Sam with this hard
• 12:19
  won resilience, this gritty determination, and you have Julie with
• 12:23
  this pure nurturing artistry.
• 12:25
  Speaker 1: They supported each other, they really did, but.
• 12:27
  Speaker 2: Their friendship also reveals a devastating vulnerability. They were both
• 12:31
  fundamentally trusting people, which brings us.
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: Back to the question I asked earlier. How does someone
• 12:35
  look at a decorated veteran rebuilding his life and a
• 12:38
  kind hearted college student and see them only as stepping
• 12:41
  stones to pay off a wedding?
• 12:43
  Speaker 2: Right? How does someone get close enough to orchestrate a
• 12:46
  double homicide who has that kind of proximity.
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: It wasn't a stranger stalking them in an alley.
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: No, it was someone who had already bypassed their defenses.
• 12:54
  It was someone who lived in their immediate ecosystem.
• 12:57
  Speaker 1: There's a detail from the night of May twenty five
• 13:00
  first that is just I mean, it's heartbreaking. Julie is
• 13:04
  in Long Beach. She's ad a family dinner with her brother, right.
• 13:08
  He actually gives her a tiara as a gift that night,
• 13:11
  and she puts it on. She's wearing it at the table,
• 13:13
  just having a great time, and right in the middle
• 13:16
  of this happy family moment, her phone starts buzzing.
• 13:19
  Speaker 2: She's getting these urgent panic text messages from Sam's phone.
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: The message is say he's in trouble, he's having severe
• 13:26
  family issues and he needs her to come to his
• 13:28
  apartment immediately. If you are listening, put yourself in Julie's
• 13:32
  shoes for a second. You get a text from a
• 13:35
  combat veteran friend saying he isn't a crisis because she
• 13:38
  is deeply empathetic. She doesn't second.
• 13:41
  Speaker 2: Guess it right, she doesn't call him back to verify.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: No, she just acts on her compassion.
• 13:45
  Speaker 2: She literally leaves the family dinner early, still wearing the tiara,
• 13:49
  and drives straight to Sam's apartment to help him. But
• 13:52
  that text message wasn't from Sam. No, Sam was already dead.
• 13:56
  The message was sent by a neighbor who had spent
• 13:58
  months watching them, smiling at them in the courtyard, learning
• 14:02
  their habits.
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: This is where we pivot to the architect of this nightmare,
• 14:06
  and what's fascinating here is the psychology we are about
• 14:09
  to unpack, which is deeply, deeply unsettling.
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: Entered Daniel Patrick Wozniak, also known as Danny. He's twenty
• 14:15
  six years old. He grew up in Long Beach and
• 14:18
  in the Orange County community theater scene. He is a
• 14:21
  big deal.
• 14:21
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, he's the star.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: He's charismatic, he's loud, he's funny. He lands all the
• 14:26
  lead roles. He lives in the exact same apartment complex
• 14:29
  as Sam the Captain Martinique.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Right down the hall, essentially right. He lives there with
• 14:33
  his fiance, Rachel made Buffett, who is an aspiring actress
• 14:37
  and actually a former Disneyland princess.
• 14:39
  Speaker 2: To anyone looking from the outside, they are the golden
• 14:41
  couple of the complex. They are artistic, dramatic, and seemingly
• 14:45
  very happy.
• 14:46
  Speaker 1: But the facade was cracking under Immen's financial pressure. Wozniak
• 14:52
  didn't have a steady job. He was drowning in debt.
• 14:55
  In fact, he and Rachel were facing active eviction notices.
• 14:58
  Speaker 2: They were about to be thrown out of the street literally.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: Yet in the face of this absolute financial ruin, they
• 15:04
  were moving forward with plans for a massive, lavish wedding
• 15:08
  and an expensive exotic honeymoon. Right wait, hold on, if
• 15:11
  I'm facing Avich and I'm canceling the caterer, I'm going
• 15:14
  to the courthouse to get married.
• 15:15
  Speaker 2: I think so.
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: But Wasniak doesn't scale back. Instead, he goes to his computer,
• 15:20
  and this digital footprint is where the true crime media,
• 15:23
  the prosecutors, everyone just stops in their tracks.
• 15:25
  Speaker 2: He is unbelievable.
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: He is sitting at his PC and he's typing into Google.
• 15:29
  In one tab he is searching how do I accomplish
• 15:32
  this killing?
• 15:33
  Speaker 2: And quick ways to kill people, And in the very
• 15:36
  next tab, during the exact same browsing session, he is
• 15:40
  searching for bitch and honeymoon ideas and looking up tropical resorts.
• 15:44
  The psychological fracture required to do that is profound. We
• 15:48
  talk a lot about cognitive dissonance, but this goes beyond that.
• 15:52
  To research murder tactics and honeymoon luxury and the same
• 15:55
  breath requires a complete and total detachment from the moral
• 15:59
  reality of taking a human life.
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: I have to push back on this though. We hear
• 16:03
  people call him a mastermind because of how he staged
• 16:06
  the crime scene. But wait, he googled how to accomplish
• 16:09
  a killing on his own personal computer. Yeah, that doesn't
• 16:12
  sound like a mastermind to me. That sounds like an idiot.
• 16:15
  That's what you google when you want to fix a
• 16:16
  leaky faucet, not plan a murder. How does a mastermind
• 16:20
  leave a digital trail that loud?
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: That is a fantastic point, and it perfectly illustrates the
• 16:24
  paradox of psychopathy. Doctor Michelle Ward, a forensic psychologist who
• 16:28
  evaluated his actions, noted that Wosniak fundamentally lacks normal human
• 16:33
  emotions like guilt, remorse, or fear of consequence. You and
• 16:37
  I would be paralyzed by the fear of getting caught right,
• 16:40
  so we would hide our tracks meticulously if we were
• 16:42
  ever driven to something so dark. Absolutely, but wozniak psychopathy
• 16:46
  gave him a lethal combination of arrogance and entitlement. He
• 16:50
  didn't cover his digital tracks because he truly believed he
• 16:53
  was so much smarter and such a good actor that
• 16:56
  no one would ever suspect the charming guy from the
• 16:58
  theater Wow. To him, murder wasn't a profound moral transgression.
• 17:04
  It was just a logistical hurdle to get his honeymoon.
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: We hear about crimes of passion or survival, but this,
• 17:11
  this is slaughter for luxury. It's terrifying to think that
• 17:14
  a neighbor's life is worth less to someone than a
• 17:17
  catered reception.
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: It really is.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: And they socialized with Sam. Wozniak knew Sam had money
• 17:21
  because they chatted in the complex.
• 17:23
  Speaker 2: That is the socialization of a predator. Bosniak and Rachel
• 17:26
  Buffett weren't lurking in the bushes. They were borrowing sugar.
• 17:29
  They were chatting by the mailboxes. Yeah, Wosniak weaponized the
• 17:32
  social contract. We are biologically wired to trust the people
• 17:36
  in our tribe, the people we share a living space with,
• 17:39
  especially if they are friendly. Wosniak exploited Sam's basic human decency.
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to the day the curtain actually goes
• 17:46
  up on this horrific plan Friday, May twenty first, twenty ten.
• 17:51
  Let's walk through the logistics of this timeline, because this
• 17:53
  is where the theory becomes practice, and it is chilling.
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: The execution of this timeline requires an ability to compartmentalize
• 18:01
  that is almost robotic.
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: It starts in the afternoon. Wosniak needs to get Sam
• 18:05
  away from the apartment complex. He needs him somewhere isolated.
• 18:10
  So Wozniak tells Sam that he needs help moving some
• 18:12
  furniture or equipment at a theater located at the Joint
• 18:15
  Forces training base in Los Almidos.
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: Now, you might ask, how on earth does a civilian
• 18:19
  community theater actor get a combat veteran onto a military
• 18:23
  base into a dusty, isolated attic.
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, how does that work?
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: Again? He uses the camouflage of his identity. Wozniak was
• 18:29
  an actor. He had legitimate connections to theaters. Asking a
• 18:32
  strong military buddy to help move heavy theater equipment sounds
• 18:36
  completely plausible.
• 18:37
  Speaker 1: Sam has no reason to suspect a trap.
• 18:39
  Speaker 2: None at all. He wants to help his neighbor. He
• 18:43
  follows Wozniak onto the base and climbs up into this
• 18:45
  isolated attic space above the theater.
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: The symbolism is just grotesque, an attic theater. So they
• 18:51
  get up there, they are isolated, and Wozniak executes him.
• 18:56
  Speaker 2: Yea.
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: He pulls out a point three to eight caliber semi
• 18:58
  automatic pistol and shoots Sam twice in the head. He
• 19:02
  murders his neighbor in cold blood. And what does he
• 19:05
  do next? Does he panic? Does he run?
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: No?
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: He reaches into Sam's pockets and takes his cell phone,
• 19:11
  his wallet, and his ATM cards.
• 19:13
  Speaker 2: This is a critical pivot in his plan. The murder
• 19:15
  of Sam secures the physical assets the ATM cards. But
• 19:19
  Wazniak knows a missing veteran with Draine bank accounts looks
• 19:23
  highly suspicious.
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: Right. He needs the decoy.
• 19:25
  Speaker 2: Exactly, He needs the fugitive ghost. So literally, standing over
• 19:28
  the bleeding body of the man, he just killed. He
• 19:30
  opens Sam's phone and begins orchestrating the second murder.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: He starts texting Julie. He perfectly impersonates Sam's tone, creating
• 19:37
  that narrative of distress we talked about, and Julie, wearing
• 19:41
  her new tiara, leaves her family and walks right into
• 19:43
  the trap.
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: It's just devastating.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Wellsneyak drives back to the Camden Martinique complex. He lets
• 19:48
  himself into Sam's apartment and he waits in the dark.
• 19:52
  When Julie opens the door looking for her friend, Losniak
• 19:55
  executes her two shots to the head right there in Sam's.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: Bedroom, and then the staging begins. He pulls down her jeans,
• 20:01
  he cuts them with scissors. He writes the vulgar message.
• 20:04
  He is acting as a director, manipulating a human body
• 20:07
  to make sure every prop is in place for the
• 20:09
  police to find. He knows that by doing this he
• 20:13
  is permanently destroying Julie's dignity, and he is framing a
• 20:16
  man he already murdered, aulted by himself. A forty eight
• 20:19
  hour head start to hit the ATMs.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: But here is where my brain completely short circuits. After
• 20:25
  executing two people in separate locations. After physically manipulating a
• 20:29
  body to state his sexual assault, What does Danny Wozniak do?
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: It's hard to even comprehend.
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: He goes to work, He drives to the theater, He
• 20:36
  puts on his costume, he does his vocal warm ups,
• 20:39
  and he performs in the musical nine as the lead.
• 20:42
  He plays the lead role Guido, the charming singing ladies man.
• 20:45
  And he doesn't just do it once. He performs twice
• 20:48
  that weekend.
• 20:49
  Speaker 2: I often explain compartmentalization like computer ram. When you are
• 20:54
  doing a complex task, your brain uses processing power. For
• 20:58
  a normal person committee a murder would consume one hundred
• 21:01
  percent of the system's ramp.
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: Oh totally, you would crash. You'd be shaking, vomiting, unable
• 21:06
  to speak exactly.
• 21:07
  Speaker 2: But Wozniak was able to partition the murders into a
• 21:10
  background drive. He walled off the emotional and physiological reality
• 21:15
  of what he just did, leaving his main processing power
• 21:18
  completely free to step onto a stage, hit his mark,
• 21:21
  sing on key, and absorb the applause of an audience.
• 21:24
  Speaker 1: Here's where it gets really interesting, or rather really disturbing.
• 21:28
  It's the ultimate method acting gone wrong. He is playing
• 21:31
  a charming ladies man on stage while literally covered in
• 21:34
  the metaphorical and perhaps literal blood of his friends off stage.
• 21:38
  Speaker 2: The mask is fused to his face, and it.
• 21:39
  Speaker 1: Gets so much worse because after the play, after he
• 21:42
  takes his bes and the theater empties out, Wozniak drives
• 21:45
  back to the military base, back to the attic. He
• 21:48
  goes back up into the attic where Sam's body is
• 21:50
  lying in the heat, and he brings a saw and
• 21:52
  an axe.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: The psychological shift required here is jarring. He goes from
• 21:56
  performative art to the absolute most visceral, gruesome, mechanical labor.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: He systematically dismembers Sam's body. He removes Sam's head, his
• 22:07
  hands in his arms. He leaves the torso in the
• 22:09
  attic temporarily, but he packs the head and hands into
• 22:12
  bags and drives to the Long Beach.
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: Wetlands, specifically the El Dorado Nature Center right.
• 22:18
  Speaker 1: He scatters the body parts in the brush. Then he
• 22:20
  goes to his parents' house and hides a backpack with
• 22:23
  bloody clothing and Sam's wallet.
• 22:25
  Speaker 2: Dismemberment is not just physically exhausting, it is the ultimate
• 22:28
  act of dehumanization. Yeah, he is reducing a decorated war veteran,
• 22:32
  a man who survived a combat zone into pieces of
• 22:36
  evidence to be discarded in a swamp, specifically to prevent
• 22:39
  dental or fingerprint identification. It is a level of coldness
• 22:43
  that is hard to articulate.
• 22:44
  Speaker 1: But a stage performance relies on an audience willing to
• 22:47
  suspend disbelief. Exactly when Wazniak staged that apartment, he thought
• 22:51
  the police would be his audience. But police detectives, however,
• 22:54
  deal in hard facts and was in the act script
• 22:57
  was about to fall apart.
• 22:58
  Speaker 2: Arrogance is always the down fall. He believed he controlled
• 23:01
  all the variables. But the modern world is a surveillance state.
• 23:06
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the unraffling. Because while the police are
• 23:09
  publicly hunting for Sam her, behind the scenes they are
• 23:13
  following the money.
• 23:14
  Speaker 2: They always follow the money.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: They see that Sam's bank accounts are being drained ATM
• 23:18
  withdrawals are popping up all over Long Beach. So the
• 23:21
  detective pulled the surveillance footage from the ATM cameras. They
• 23:24
  press play, expecting to see a fleeing combat veteran.
• 23:28
  Speaker 2: And instead they see a scrowny teenager.
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: Right the physical profile absolutely does not match sam Her.
• 23:33
  Speaker 2: Wozniak knew his own face would be recognizable, so he
• 23:37
  outsourced the risk. He found a seventeen year old acquaintance
• 23:40
  named Wesley Frelich.
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: A seventeen year old kid.
• 23:43
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Wasiak spun some lie to this kid, essentially saying, Hey,
• 23:46
  I need you to make some withdrawals for me. I'll
• 23:48
  give you a cut of the cast.
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable.
• 23:49
  Speaker 2: The teenager, likely naive and trusting the older, cool actor guy, agrees,
• 23:55
  but in doing so, Wisniak created a tangible, undeniable link
• 23:59
  back to the.
• 24:00
  Speaker 1: Police identify the teenager quickly, They bring him in and
• 24:03
  the kid immediately points the finger. He says, Danny Wisniak
• 24:07
  gave me the cards.
• 24:08
  Speaker 2: The narrative of the volatile veteran instantly evaporates.
• 24:12
  Speaker 1: The spotlight swings violently away from sam Her and directly
• 24:16
  onto the community theater.
• 24:17
  Speaker 2: Star, and the timing of the arrest is almost cinematic
• 24:21
  in its irony.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: Picture this you are days away from a wedding funded
• 24:26
  by blood money. It is May twenty six, twenty ten,
• 24:30
  just five days after the murders. Wosniak is at a
• 24:33
  restaurant in Huntington Beach.
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: It is his bachelor party.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: He is surrounded by his groomsmen having drinks, celebrating his
• 24:40
  impending wedding to Rachel. They are laughing, having a great time,
• 24:44
  and suddenly the doors open and US Marshals swarm the room.
• 24:47
  Speaker 2: They arrest him in front of everyone. The curtain falls
• 24:50
  right then and there, But even in handcuffs, the actor
• 24:52
  doesn't break character. When they get him into the interrogation room,
• 24:56
  the psychological chess match begins.
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: I've read the transcripts of this interior and it is wild.
• 25:01
  Wozniak starts by playing completely dumb. What Sam's missing? Oh
• 25:06
  my god, that's terrible.
• 25:07
  Speaker 2: He's playing the concerned friend.
• 25:09
  Speaker 1: When that doesn't work, he tries a new script. He
• 25:11
  pivots and says, okay, look, Sam came to me. Sam
• 25:15
  said he did a bad thing and killed Julie, and
• 25:17
  he begged me to help him escape. I just helped
• 25:19
  him get away.
• 25:20
  Speaker 2: He's still desperately trying to force the police to believe
• 25:23
  the original staging.
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: Testing different narratives to see which one the audience the
• 25:27
  detectives will buy.
• 25:28
  Speaker 2: If we connect this to the bigger picture, it shows
• 25:30
  the pure hubris of the criminal mind. Wosnik believed he
• 25:34
  could out act the interrogators. But the detectives in this
• 25:37
  case were brilliant, right. They recognized they were dealing with
• 25:40
  a narcissist who thought he was the smartest guy in
• 25:42
  the room. So they deploy a classic, highly effective investigative technique,
• 25:48
  the false evidence ruse.
• 25:50
  Speaker 1: This is fascinating break down how this ruse works because
• 25:53
  they essentially bluff him. Right.
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: Yes, in the United States, police are legally allowed to
• 25:58
  lie to a suspect about the evidence they possess. It's controversial,
• 26:02
  but it's a standard practice. Okay, The detectives look Wosniak
• 26:06
  dead in the eye and tell him, Danny, we have
• 26:08
  your DNA at the crime scene in Sam's apartment.
• 26:11
  Speaker 1: But they didn't, right, Yeah.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: No, they didn't have DNA results back yet. It was
• 26:15
  a complete bluff. But Wozniak didn't know that.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: So why does that specific lie break him?
• 26:20
  Speaker 2: Think back to the computer ram analogy. When you are
• 26:23
  lying in an interrogation, your cognitive load is maxed out.
• 26:27
  You have to remember the truth, remember the lie you
• 26:29
  just told, anticipate the next question, and monitor your own
• 26:33
  body language.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: That's a lot to juggle.
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: Exactly when the detectives introduce an incontrovertible scientific fact like DNA,
• 26:42
  it crashes the suspect's mental operating system. Oh wow, Wosniak panics.
• 26:47
  His arrogance tells him he has to explain away the
• 26:49
  DNA without admitting to the murder. He tries to adjust
• 26:52
  his script on the fly, And when you adjust a
• 26:54
  complex lie on the fly under pressure, you make fatal errors.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: And his error is monumental. In his gramble to explain
• 27:01
  why he might have been in the apartment, he slips
• 27:03
  up and mentions the exact number of gunshot wounds to Julie's.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: Head, a massive mistake.
• 27:08
  Speaker 1: Our sources point out that Julie's hair and a staging
• 27:11
  made it impossible to know how many times she was
• 27:14
  shot just by peeking into the room. The only person
• 27:17
  who would know exactly how many bullets entered her head
• 27:20
  was the person who pulled the trigger.
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: It is the verbal equivalent of the police finding the
• 27:25
  murder weapon in his pocket. The detectives instantly caught it.
• 27:29
  They didn't let it slide. They confronted him with his
• 27:31
  own slip up.
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: And in that moment, the psychological fortress collapsed.
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: He realized he had been outplayed.
• 27:37
  Speaker 1: He drops the act. He breaks down and gives a
• 27:39
  full taped confession, and the words he uses are chilling.
• 27:44
  He says, I'm crazy and I did it. I killed
• 27:46
  Julie and I killed Sam. Sam came first.
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: And when they ask him why, he doesn't offer some grand,
• 27:51
  tragic theatrical motive.
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: No, he just says it was all just about the money,
• 27:56
  just the money.
• 27:57
  Speaker 2: That confession strips away any remaining illusion of complexity. It
• 28:01
  was pure, unadulterated banality of evil breed.
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: Following the confession, he physically leads the police to the
• 28:08
  Eldorado Nature Center right.
• 28:10
  Speaker 2: Yeah, walking them right through the brush to show them
• 28:12
  where he discarded Sam's head and hands.
• 28:15
  Speaker 1: But even after confessing, the manipulation doesn't totally stop. There
• 28:19
  is this audio recording of a phone call he makes
• 28:21
  from the jail. He calls his fiancee, Rachel Buffett.
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: And he is frantically begging her not to talk to
• 28:27
  the police.
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: Explicitly telling her not to reveal where he hid certain evidence.
• 28:32
  He is so frantic that Rachel actually has to interrupt
• 28:35
  him and say, Danny, this call is being recorded.
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: It perfectly encapsulates his profound narcissism. Even sitting in a
• 28:42
  jail cell, having just confessed to dismembering a veteran, his
• 28:46
  only instinct is self preservation. He is still trying to
• 28:50
  direct the play from behind bars.
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: The prosecutor in this case, Matt Murphy, summarized it beautifully
• 28:55
  during the trial. He said that because of Wasniak's digital trail,
• 28:59
  his Google search, which is the ATM footage, and these
• 29:02
  recorded calls, investigators could literally read his mind.
• 29:05
  Speaker 2: Technology and his own staggering Hubris systematically dismantled a plot
• 29:09
  he thought was foolproof.
• 29:11
  Speaker 1: Wosnia's confession closed the man hunt, but for the families
• 29:14
  of Sam and Julie, the agonizing journey through the justice
• 29:17
  system was just beginning.
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: This is a crucial point that true crime narratives often skip.
• 29:22
  The arrest is viewed as the climax, but for the
• 29:24
  victims' families, the legal marathon is often a secondary trauma
• 29:28
  that lasts for years.
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: Let's look at the timeline. The murders happened in May
• 29:33
  twenty ten, Wosniak's trial does not begin until late twenty fifteen.
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: That is more than five years of waiting.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: Five years of waking up every day knowing the man
• 29:42
  who slaughtered your child is sitting in a cell filing motions,
• 29:46
  delaying the inevitable. And a massive reason for this delay
• 29:50
  was a systemic legal earthquake known as the Orange County
• 29:54
  jail informant scandal.
• 29:55
  Speaker 2: We need to explain this clearly because it is complex
• 29:58
  but vital to understand and why the family suffered so long.
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: Yeah, break that down for me. What exactly was this scandal?
• 30:05
  Speaker 2: The scandal was brought to light by Wozniak's defense attorney,
• 30:07
  Scott Sanders. Sanders discovered that the Orange County Sheriff's Department
• 30:11
  was running a covert, unconstitutional operation inside the jails.
• 30:15
  Speaker 1: Okay, what were they doing?
• 30:16
  Speaker 2: Wow? The sixth Amendment guarantees your right to an attorney.
• 30:19
  Once you are represented by counsel, the police cannot interrogate
• 30:23
  you without your lawyer present. To get around this, deputies
• 30:26
  in Orange County were taking seasoned jailhouse informant snitches basically
• 30:31
  and strategically placing them in cells next to high profile
• 30:35
  defendants who already had lawyers.
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: Oh wow.
• 30:37
  Speaker 2: The informants would cozy up to the defendants, get them
• 30:39
  to brag. About their crimes and then report back to
• 30:41
  the deputies in exchange for lighter sentences or commissary perks.
• 30:45
  It was essentially law enforcement conducting illegal interrogations by proxy.
• 30:50
  Speaker 1: Okay, I understand why that is a massive civil rights
• 30:54
  violation for the county, But why did it delay Wozniak's trial.
• 30:58
  Wozniak confessed on paid to the detectives before he even
• 31:01
  got a lawyer. He didn't need a jailhouse snitch to
• 31:04
  bring him down.
• 31:05
  Speaker 2: You're right, Wozniak's initial confession was legally sound, but the
• 31:09
  legal doctrine of fruit of the poisonous tree comes into play.
• 31:12
  How So, Sanders argued that the entire district Attorney's office
• 31:16
  and sheriff's department were so fundamentally corrupted by this secret
• 31:19
  informat program that they could not be trusted to prosecute
• 31:22
  a death penalty case fairly. He demanded massive amounts of discovery,
• 31:27
  thousands of pages of internal sheriff's logs trying to prove
• 31:30
  that the state had violated Wozniak's rights while he was
• 31:33
  in custody awaiting trial, and that takes time, exactly. It
• 31:37
  paralyzed the court system. The judge had to pause Wosniak's
• 31:40
  trial to essentially put the entire county justice system on trial.
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: So Steve and Riquel Harrier and Massa and Junkibuci are
• 31:48
  sitting in a courtroom for years watching lawyers argue about
• 31:52
  systemic jail corruption that doesn't even directly change the fact
• 31:55
  that Wozniak confess to killing their kids. It's maddening.
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: It is the ultimate lateral damage. The failures of the
• 32:01
  justice system, even those unrelated to the specific facts of
• 32:04
  the crime, continually traumatized victim's families who are simply desperate
• 32:08
  for a resolution.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: Eventually, the legal maneuvering runs its course. The guilt phase
• 32:13
  of the trial finally begins in December twenty fifteen, and
• 32:16
  despite the five year delay, the evidence is an avalanche.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: The Google searches, the ATM footage with the teenager, the
• 32:23
  tape recorded confession, the forensic details.
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: The jury doesn't buy the defense's attempts to mitigate his culpability.
• 32:30
  They deliberate swiftly and convict Daniel Wozniak on two counts
• 32:33
  of first degree murder. But the true emotional weight, the
• 32:37
  rawest part of this entire saga happens a month later,
• 32:41
  in January twenty sixteen, during the penalty phase.
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: The penalty phase is where the sterile legal environment of
• 32:47
  a courtroom gives way to the visceral reality of human loss.
• 32:51
  It is the moment the families finally get to speak
• 32:54
  directly to the court through victim impact statements.
• 32:57
  Speaker 1: The transcripts of these statements are incredibly tough to read.
• 33:00
  Steve hur Sam's father, stands up. He looks directly at
• 33:03
  the man who dismembered his son. He calls Wozniak a
• 33:07
  coward and a monster. Powerful words He reads aloud the
• 33:10
  glowing evaluations from Sam's army captain, reinforcing the honor and
• 33:14
  dignity of a life that was stolen. And then June
• 33:17
  Cabouh she takes the stand.
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: She is holding a photograph of Julie. Yeah.
• 33:20
  Speaker 1: She looks at Wosniak through her tears, and she asked
• 33:23
  the question that haunts this entire case. You took her
• 33:26
  precious life. Why what did she do to you?
• 33:28
  Speaker 2: It is a question that expects a human answer, but
• 33:31
  Wozniak is incapable of giving one. Observers in the courtroom
• 33:35
  noted that throughout these agonizing tear filled statements. Wozniak sat
• 33:40
  completely emotionless.
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: He didn't look down in shame, he didn't cry, He.
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: Just stared blankly. It was the final public confirmation of
• 33:47
  doctor Ward's psychopathy diagnosis. He simply could not internalize the
• 33:52
  devastation he caused.
• 33:53
  Speaker 1: The jury saw that coldness. They recommended the death penalty
• 33:57
  after just over an hour of deliberation, and on September two,
• 34:00
  twenty three, twenty sixteen, Judge John D. Conley officially sentenced
• 34:04
  wasni acted death.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: But the story doesn't completely end with Danny. There is
• 34:08
  a massive unresolved thread regarding his fiancee, Rachel Buffett Oh.
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: Yes. Her role is arguably the most fiercely debated aspect
• 34:15
  of this entire tragedy, heavily scrutinized by true crime documentaries
• 34:19
  and the public.
• 34:20
  Speaker 2: Rachel maintained from day one that she had zero knowledge
• 34:23
  of the murders until after the US Marshals crashed the
• 34:25
  bachelor party.
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: She claims she was just a naive girl manipulated by
• 34:29
  a master.
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: Liar, but the prosecutors did not buy the innocent princess routine.
• 34:34
  They alleged that she lied repeatedly to investigators in the
• 34:37
  days following the murders to protect Danny right.
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: They said she lied about his whereabouts, lied about evidence,
• 34:44
  and actively tried to obstruct the investigation.
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: The debate centers on willful blindness versus active participation. Was
• 34:51
  she so deep in the theatrical illusion of their relationship
• 34:54
  that she ignored the glaring red.
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: Flags, the sudden influx of cash, his bizarre behavior, or
• 35:00
  did she.
• 35:01
  Speaker 2: Suspect the unthinkable and actively choose to cover for the
• 35:04
  man she loved well.
• 35:06
  Speaker 1: The justice system eventually made its ruling in twenty twelve.
• 35:09
  She was arrested, and in September twenty eighteen she went
• 35:13
  to trial and was convicted on two counts of being
• 35:16
  an accessory. After the fact, she.
• 35:17
  Speaker 2: Was sentenced to thirty two months in jail.
• 35:19
  Speaker 1: The court determined she definitively crossed the line into criminal obstruction.
• 35:23
  Speaker 2: But if you read the forums in the public commentary,
• 35:26
  people are still fiercely divided on how much she actually
• 35:29
  knew beforehand.
• 35:30
  Speaker 1: It speaks to our fascination with proximity to evil. We
• 35:33
  want to believe that if we were living with a murderer,
• 35:36
  we would know. We want to believe we would see
• 35:38
  the monster right.
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: Rachel Buffett's conviction terrifies people because it implies that either
• 35:42
  the monster can hide perfectly or that normal people can
• 35:46
  easily convince themselves to ignore the monster in their own bed.
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: Which brings us to where we are today. May sixteenth,
• 35:53
  twenty twenty six, Daniel Wosniak was sentenced to death nearly
• 35:57
  a decade ago. He was sent to California's infamous death
• 36:00
  row at San.
• 36:01
  Speaker 2: Quentin, but he hasn't been executed.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: No. In twenty nineteen, California instituted a moratorium on the
• 36:07
  death penalty, halting all executions.
• 36:09
  Speaker 2: And that moratorium fundamentally alters the concept of justice for
• 36:13
  the families.
• 36:14
  Speaker 1: So what does this all mean When the justice system
• 36:16
  finally works but the perpetrator simply sits in a different
• 36:19
  prison due to political moratoriums, How do families like the
• 36:22
  Hairs and Kibushis ever find actual closure?
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: It gets even more complicated. In twenty twenty one, Osniak
• 36:29
  was actually transferred out of San Quentin to Salinas Valley
• 36:31
  State Prison. The state initiated a condemned inmate pilot program. Basically,
• 36:36
  they started moving death row inmates into the general maximum
• 36:39
  security population. At other prisons, integrating them into rehabilitation and
• 36:44
  work programs to pay restitution to victims.
• 36:47
  Speaker 1: This program generated intense pushback from victim's families, including the Hairs.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: I can entirely understand why Steve Hurr fought for years
• 36:55
  through trial delays to get a death sentence for the
• 36:57
  man who dismembered his son.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: And now, by per demoucratic mandate, that man has moved
• 37:02
  out of death row and into a general population setting.
• 37:05
  Speaker 2: The harsh reality we have to acknowledge is that closure
• 37:07
  is often a myth manufactured by the media. A verdict
• 37:11
  is not a magic spell that cures grief.
• 37:13
  Speaker 1: No, it's not.
• 37:14
  Speaker 2: Steve Hurr has become a fierce, relentless advocate for victim's rights.
• 37:18
  He has navigated trial delays, informant scandals, and prison transfer
• 37:22
  programs for families like the Hairs and the Kibushis. The
• 37:25
  justice system provides a legal finality, but the battle to
• 37:28
  honor their children and ensure the perpetrator faces consequences is
• 37:31
  an exhausting, lifelong burden.
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: The contrast in legacies is profound. Our sources note that
• 37:38
  Sam Hurr arrests at the Riverside National cemetery. His gravestone
• 37:42
  proudly honors his service as a soldier in Afghanistan is
• 37:46
  a place of deep, solemn respect.
• 37:49
  Speaker 2: And Julie Kabushi's memory thrives through her family's tireless advocacy
• 37:53
  and the vibrant Orange County arts community she loves so much.
• 37:56
  Speaker 1: They are beautiful testaments to who they were, but they're
• 37:59
  also agonizing reminders of the beautiful lives extinguished by greed.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: It is a tragedy defined by intersections. You have a
• 38:06
  combat veteran successfully rebuilding his life, a kind hearted artist
• 38:10
  offering her friendship, and a struggling psychopathic actor desperate to
• 38:14
  maintain an illusion of wealth.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: They were brought together by the simple geogracy of an apartment.
• 38:18
  Speaker 2: Complex, and they were destroyed by one man's absolute entitlement.
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: As we wrap up this deep dive, I want you
• 38:23
  to trace this bizarre and tragic trajectory one last time
• 38:27
  in your mind. It starts in a quiet, sunny coast
• 38:30
  mesa apartment complex.
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: It moves to a dusty, isolated attic theater on a
• 38:34
  military base.
• 38:35
  Speaker 1: It shifts to the bright lights of a community stage,
• 38:38
  and it finally sits in a death row Cell.
• 38:40
  Speaker 2: On one side, you have Sam and Julie, lives defined
• 38:43
  by service, joy, resilience, and radical empathy.
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: On the other side, Daniel Wozniak a life built entirely
• 38:50
  on a flimsy facade, crippling narcissism and unimaginable cruelty.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: This reason is an important question. The physical crime is solved,
• 38:59
  the perpetrator is low away, but the psychological horror of
• 39:02
  a neighbor wearing a mask of friendship remains a chilling reality.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: The killer wasn't a stranger hiding in an alley. He
• 39:10
  was the guy next door. He was someone who smiled,
• 39:13
  who offered to help, who wore a flawless masks.
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: One of us to confront our vulnerabilities in the spaces
• 39:22
  where we assume we are safest.
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: I want to leave you with a final lingering thought
• 39:27
  to mull Over. Today, we've talked extensively about acting, about compartmentalization,
• 39:31
  and about the masks people wear. If an actor can
• 39:33
  so seamlessly blend a charming public persona with private atrocities,
• 39:38
  performing on stage while his victims lie hidden.
• 39:40
  Speaker 2: How deeply can we ever really know the people we
• 39:43
  share our everyday space.
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: Is with When the curtain drops on our daily interactions.
• 39:47
  What is the true face of the person living right
• 39:49
  next door