Confession Coverup

“Very few of us are what we seem,” Agatha Christie once said. This story seems like it was taken right out of the pages of the bestsellers novels, alas it is a true story of creed and an alleged modern-day Lady Macbeth. A story so convoluted that even Shonda Rhimes doesn’t want to adapt it. Here’s how a stage actor killed one person to steal money and then another to cover up the first and lead to his own downfall. Seriously.

Things were looking good for Daniel Wozniak. He was performing the musical Nine at a local community theatre in California. His fiancée, Rachel Buffet, was also his co-star in the production. Everything was great except for the fact that Wozniak didn’t have a full-time job, it got in the way of going to auditions! And he was broke.

Enter his friend Sam Herr, an army vet. The 26-year-old Herr had told Wozniak about some money he had saved from his combat pay. The amount was over $62,000 and would be enough for the loving couple to have a nice wedding and go away for a romantic honeymoon. The only issue, it wasn’t their money, and Herr had plans for that money. Plans that did not include sponsoring his friend’s dream lifestyle. So rude.

Wozniak decided that money should be his and determined the best way to get it was to get rid of Herr. One day, Wozniak asked the vet to help move some boxes. When Herr bent down to pick up a box, Wozniak shot him. As one does. Here is what the murderer said in his chilling confession; "I said, 'You need to bend down and help me lift this thing up.' And when he bent down, I grabbed the gun, and I shot him," Herr asked for help, so the reasonable thing to do was to shoot again. "[He said], 'I need help. Something hit me. It felt like an electric shock, I reloaded, and fired again." Bad right?

It gets worse. So much worse. Because shooting him twice and stealing his debit card wasn’t enough, Wozniak dismembered the body and scattered it along the El Dorado Park in Long Beach, California. You’d think that after a day of murder, stealing, and chopping up a body; one would be tired. That would be a bad assumption.

Wozniak decided that it would be too obvious what happened if he went and made withdrawals from the ATM with Herr’s card. Because this far he had apparently cared about discretion. So the killer decided to get a 16-year-old on the road to the crime. He enlisted Wesley Freilich to take money out of Herr’s account. During an interview with the police, he told them, “He asked if it was illegal. I said, ‘No, no, no, don’t worry,’ That was a lie." Did he need to say that he wasn’t being honest? He continued, introducing his cover up for the first murder by claiming that Herr had told him that he had killed their mutual friend, Julie Kibuishi. Because nothing says friendship like sharing that you killed another pal. “I'm like, 'Hey man, what's going on? Is everything good?' [Herr’s] like, 'Not good ... I did something bad,'" Wozniak said. "I'm like, 'What did you do?' He's like, 'There's a dead body in my apartment. I shot somebody. I was not happy about it. It was a fit of rage.'" Is it bro code to not call the police when someone confesses to murder? Or part of a dastardly cover-up?

The answer was a coverup. While the police thought that Herr was out of town, on the run, Wozniak's story began to unravel. Of course, lies often unravel when the actor forgets his lines. See Wozniak gave himself away, inadvertently. "I saw the goddamn body. Is that what you want to hear? ... I was right over the body; I didn't touch her. I didn't do anything ... I saw two gunshots in her head." This was after he had claimed that he didn't see the body. Police started to question Wozniak's role in Kibuishi's death since they hadn't mentioned to the person of interest that there were two bullet holes in the body. After the questioning, Wozniak was sent to a jail cell.

It was during this time that Wozniak really did himself in. He called his fiancee, the aforementioned Rachel Buffet. During this call, he begged her not to tell the police about the evidence or else he was "doomed." It was then that Buffet reminded him that all calls from the jail are recorded. With the jig up, Wozniak went back to talk to the detectives. "I'm crazy, and I did it, I killed Julie, and I killed Sam." With that, the case seemed to be wrapped up.

However, there's a new theory that has come to the surface in recent months. Linda Sawyer, a reporter, and host of the new Podcast Sleuth has suggested that Buffet may have been egging Wozniak on. A couple that kills together stays together. Allegedly one night, Buffet mistook her ex-boyfriend for Wozniak and said: “I told you to burn the body.” This has led to many people wondering why she wasn't charged with a crime, particularly accessory to murder. For her part, Buffet says that it's all nonsense and she had no part in her fiancee's murder spree. “I’m innocent and that’s what hurts me most in this whole situation is they’re trying to say I’m something I’m not,” because every criminal admits to their crime and never denies it?

Is Buffet's ex a jealous man, who wants to make her pay for dumping him and moving on? Or is he being honest about the run-in with her? Sawyer thinks it's the latter. “What is creepy about it [the ex-boyfriend’s claim about Buffett]—and rings so true—is the theater where the murder took place the building behind the theater was an old military hospital with a morgue and incinerator,” that certainly lends credence to his claims. The coverup led to a confession once, will it happen again?