Actor Murdered Neighbors to Pay for Honeymoon

Daniel Wozniak sentenced to die for grisly killings
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 26, 2016 3:28 AM CDT
Actor Sentenced to Death for Grisly Calif. Murders
Daniel Wozniak sits before being sentenced in Superior Court, Friday, Sept. 23, 2016 in Santa Ana, Calif.   (Mark Rightmire/The Orange County Register via AP)

When struggling actor Daniel Wozniak couldn't afford the fancy wedding and honeymoon he wanted, he decided to murder his friends and neighbors instead of going for a cheaper option. The 32-year-old former resident of Costa Mesa, Calif., was sentenced to death Friday for the 2010 killings of Samuel Herr, 26, and Juri "Julie" Kibuishi, Herr's 23-year-old girlfriend, the Los Angeles Times reports. Prosecutors say Wozniak, who wanted to steal the $62,000 Herr had saved from his military service in Afghanistan, shot the man to death in an empty theater on a military base before dismembering him and dumping his body parts in a Long Beach park, People reports.

Wozniak then used Herr's phone to lure Kibiushi to Herr's apartment, where he shot her to death and tried to make it appear that Herr had sexually assaulted her and fled. Days later, Wozniak was arrested at his bachelor party after detectives tracked him through suspicious ATM withdrawals, the Orange County Register reports. "You, Dan, are a coward and a poster boy for the need for an effective death penalty in California," Herr's father said at the sentencing hearing. Wozniak's former fiancee, Rachel Buffett, has been charged as an accessory after the fact. Buffett and Wozniak were cast members in a community theater production of the musical Nine at the time of the murders. (More California stories.)

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