California Community Theater Actor Stands Trial for Allegedly Killing Two People
— -- A community theater actor in California is facing the death penalty after he allegedly killed his neighbor before and another woman after he performed at a community play.
Prosecutors allege that 31-year-old Daniel Wozniak brutally killed his neighbor, Samuel Herr, a 26-year-old military veteran, and 23-year-old Julie Kibuishi in 2010 and then staged the murder scene to make it appear Herr was the killer.
The motive for Wozniak, who was just days away from getting married, was money, according to prosecutors. Investigators say that Herr had recently returned from Afghanistan and had over $60,000 in a savings account.
“He needs money for overdrawn bank accounts and, kind of a kicker, he's getting married in a week-and-a-half,” prosecutor Matt Murphy said in his opening statements Wednesday in a Santa Ana, California, courtroom.
Authorities claim that Wozniak lured Herr into a theater attic at the Los Alamitos Joint Forces base in May 2010 and shot him. He stands accused of then inviting Kibuishi to Herr’s apartment and killing her too.
Wozniak was starring in the play “Nine” at the time of the murders, and prosecutors allege he went on with the show before and after the killings.
Wozniak’s then-fiancé, 25-year-old Rachel Buffett, starred in “Nine” alongside Wozniak and was arrested as an accessory to murder. She was released on bail and is now awaiting her own trial.
Buffett told ABC News in 2012 she was innocent and that, when it came to Wozniak, “It was like the person I loved never really existed.”
Police zeroed in on Wozniak at his bachelor party when cash missing from Herr’s bank account was traced back to Wozniak, whom prosecutors say confessed to the two killings.
Wozniak has pleaded not guilty. He told MSNBC in a 2011 jailhouse interview that Herr and Kibuishi were “two of my close friends.”
Outside the courtroom, Herr’s father spoke of missing his only son.
“We loved him with all our hearts, Herr’s father said. “He was our only child.”
Wozniak’s defense team chose to waive its opening statements and declined to comment to ABC News.
If convicted of murder, Wozniak will face another trial to determine whether he receives the death penalty or life in prison without the possibility of parole.
