True Crime Campfire - Episode 36: Stagecraft: A Wild Story of Double Murder, Part 2

Episode Date: February 7, 2020

In part 1 we began the disturbing story of the murder of Julie Kibuishi, who had been shot and left in a pool of blood in her good friend Sam Herr’s bed. Sam, a military vet who had been suffering from PTSD and confiding in Julie about his struggles, was now nowhere to be found, and his car and passport were missing. As police dug into Sam’s bank records to try to locate him, they traced his ATM card to a teenage kid named Wesley who told them a strange story. A family friend named Dan Wozniak had given him the card, he said. Wozniak had told him he was working for a bail bonds company and Sam Herr owed them a lot of money. Could Wesley do them a favor and withdraw the money with the fugitive’s bank card? When we left you, police had just discovered that Dan Wozniak and his fiancée Rachel were neighbors and friends of Sam Herr, and they suspected that Wozniak might have been helping Sam run. So they hauled Danny boy out of his own bachelor party to question him. Why did he have Sam Herr’s bank card? What, if anything, did he know about Julie’s murder? Who was this Dan Wozniak, anyway?Sources: CBS "48 Hours Mystery," episode "Killer Performance"NBC "Dateline," episode "Plot Twist"ABC "20/20," "The Final Act"https://abcnews.go.com/US/actress-convicted-lying-police-fiances-double-murder-pleads/story?id=63234575https://heavy.com/news/2019/05/sam-herr-death-murder-daniel-wozniak/Follow us, campers! Patreon (join to get all episodes a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfireFacebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://gramha.net/profile/truecrimecampfire/19093397079Twitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail] a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers. Grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. So, campers, in part one, we began the disturbing story of the murder of Julie Kibuishi, who had been shot and left in a pool of blood in her good friend Sam Hare's bed. Sam, a military vet who had been suffering from PTSD and confiding in Julie about his struggles, was now nowhere to be found, and his car and passport were missing. As police dug into Sam's bank records to try to locate him, they traced his ATM card to a teenage kid named Wesley, who told him a strange story. A family friend named Dan Wozniak had given him the card, he said.

Wozniak had told him he was working for a bail bonds company, and Sam Hare owed them a lot of money. Could Wesley do them a favor and withdraw the money with the fugitives' business? bank card? When we left you, police had just discovered that Dan Wozniak and his fiance Rachel were neighbors and friends of Sam Hare, and they suspected that Wozniak might have been helping Sam run. So they hauled Danny Boy out of his own bachelor party to question him. Why did he have Sam Hare's bank card? What, if anything, did he know about Julie's murder? Who was this Dan Wozniak anyway? So people in the theater scene described him as friendly, helpful, fun to be around, and charming.

Charming and charismatic came up again and again in interviews with his theater friends. He had a way of seeming like he was on stage even when he wasn't. Dan was magnetic. One of those people. and he and Rachel were just days away from their wedding and honeymoon. Aw. Well, that was going to have to wait until the detectives could figure out what the hell was going on. They called Dan and asked him if he'd come in for a chat and he said, not right now. I'm at my bachelor party.

Oh, man. Talk about timing, right? You can't just do that. Yeah, not really. Not when you have a fugitive situation. So the detectives were like, uh, no. And they went and hauled Dan out of his own bachelor party and brought him in for questioning. And he went willingly. He didn't ask for an attorney or anything, which is just a bad move all around.

And he said he wanted to cooperate as long as he didn't have to miss his wedding. In fact, he said, I'm sick of this. I'm sick of covering for Sam. I'll tell you. whatever you need to know, which sounds promising, right? Yeah, definitely. What followed was a long, dramatic interrogation. You can watch parts of it online, and you can see what a dramatic personality Daniel

Wozniak has. Sometimes he gets up and paces and runs his hands through his hair. Sometimes he yells. Who yells in an interrogate? Like, that floors me. And like several times, if you watch pieces of this interrogation, that are available to watch. Like, the detectives tell him to stop yelling.

Like he's a toddler. Inside voice, Danny. Inside voice. So just about everything he says comes out like a line in a movie. This is the kind of guy that seems to be on about 80% of the time. Okay. Daniel Day Lewis. It's real life.

You're not going for a damn golden globe. You're talking to the cops. Dial it back. Several clicks. Several. Early on, he admitted conning Wesley until withdrawing money from Sam's account. He said on the night Julie was killed, he was performing in that musical with Rachel at the community theater. They'd finish the performance, gone home and had sex, and gone to bed.

Ugh. Jesus Christ, Dan, T.M.I. Right. I do not need to know about you and Rachel making boom boom before bed, for God's sakes. Thank you. Apparently he felt he needed to be thorough, which I'm sure the detectives so appreciated. This dude is a freaking weirdo. Like, why did you need to tell him about the sex you had?

Just a flex, you know, like weird flex, man. Have you seen my fiance? Yeah. She is irritatingly pretty. I'll give her that. So he said that the next morning Sam had shown up at his door looking all disheveled and freaked out. Sam had said, I've done something really bad. there's the dead body in my apartment. I shot somebody. It was a fit of rage. And to be

honest, she had it coming. Jesus. Wow. Yikes. She had it coming. Right. Dang. Dan said his response was basically, look, man, don't drag me into this. And Sam's response to that? Well, I know where you live. And if you wrap me out, I'm going to kill you. And better yet. I'm going to start with your wife, which, all right, well, Rachel was his fiance at that point, but I'm not going to nitpick. So this was story numero uno. He knew Sam had killed someone and he'd helped Sam escape, but had nothing to do with the murder. He hadn't seen the body, blah, blah, blah. The detectives kept pressing and Dan kept getting more agitated. Once they asked him for a DNA sample, and he gave it up, Dan made sure to let them know he'd been at Sam's apartment recently.

At this, the detective smelled a rat. They kept pressing. And soon, story numero dose emerged. Dan said, okay, I saw the fucking body. Is that what you want to hear? Oh, my God. Real nice jackass, referring to Julia as the fucking body, Danny. Yikes.

That is so great. Gross. But the only thing that's interesting, though, how often people just can't seem to help but give themselves away. Like, you see this all the time in murder cases. Like, a suspect is in interrogation. Let's say his wife has just been murdered. And at first, he does a, you know, fair job of mustering up some fake grief, maybe even a few fake tears. But then he just cannot resist bad mouth in her. Like, he'll talk about how she wasn't always the most attentive mom or it had been months since they had sex or how she spent too much money or whatever. Like, it happens all the time. I could probably name you like 10 cases without even trying where I've seen that happen. Right.

Just dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb, dumb. But the thing is, there's this thing called leakage, and I apologize for using that gross word. But that is what psychologists call it when you sort of accidentally tell the truth. Right. It's like in Legally Blonde at the end of that movie. I love that movie. I'm going to spoil it because it's been 20 years, campers. But at the end, where the murderer is on the stand and she accidentally gives up her.

her motive. And that shit happens all the time. I used to think it, I used to think it was like a dramatic like Sherlock Holmesian literary device where somebody would be like, I did it. I do it again, too. Because they've had it. Right. And there's this, there's this thing called trickle-truthing. Yeah. And I learned it. You guys are going to know how much a freak I am on the Reddit sub, the Reddit board called surviving infidelity. And there people... That sounds like good reading right there. It is.

And I'm sorry. It is really good reading. I despise drama in my own life, but I cannot get enough of other people's drama. It's a big part of why I'm interested in true crime and why, like, spouse murders tend to fascinate me because there is inevitably a mountain of, like, dirt in those cases where you get to hear all kinds of interesting details about people's intimate lives.

It just fascinates me. I guess I'm voyeuristic and creepy, but whatever. Like, I'm interested in psychology. What can I tell you? No one gets hurt. And here's the thing is on the subreddit, people post the stories of their spouses cheating. And over and over and over again, their spouses, they call them their wayward spouses, call it, do this thing called trickle-truthing, which they'll say, yeah, okay, I, you know, I kissed her, but that was it. We didn't do anything else. Yeah. And then slowly starts to come out, right?

Right. And a week later, they'll say, okay, well, we had sex one time. Right. But that was it, I swear. And then it's almost like every time a new thing gets revealed, the wound keeps getting torn open. And a lot of... Why would you do it that way? It's awful. Because that's just worse, right? Like, it's just like when you're jumping into a cold pool. It's, you know, we always, and I'm one of these people and I never learned. So I shouldn't even be saying, I'm a total hypocrite even saying this. Because I'll just. put a toe in and then a foot in and then a calf in and just slowly ease into that freezing cold water and like an hour later I'm like oh it feels fine instead of just cannonballing in like you should you get over it in like two seconds right and and that's what a lot of people like anecdotally say this was the thing that ruined my marriage not the initial infidelity it was the constant lying and constant hurting me yeah I would say that's a pretty good analogy

actually. And I love that term trickle-truthing. You do see suspects doing this all the time. And Wozniak was doing that hardcore. Well, and I think what happens is the suspect is like, okay, I got to give them something. So they tell them what the detect, they think the detectives want to hear and think they'll, oh, they'll back off and say, okay, okay, I saw the body. But then they, this has happened so much because the suspect always thinks they're smarter than the detectives. Yeah. But then when he says, oh, I saw the body.

body, the detectives are like, oh, you did? Let's talk about that. Oh, we'll go home then. That's fine. Thanks for telling us. Can we drive you home? What do they think is going to happen? But I think you nailed it there that there's a certain narcissism about a person who chooses

to commit a murder or commit a big crime that I'm the smartest person in the room. They'll never catch me. So anyway, so he said he was standing right over the body. So they might find his DNA on Julie's body. And one of the detectives said, I love this. Well, DNA doesn't just fall. off. And as Dan got more and more agitated, he did what so many boneheaded dipsets before him have done. And he made what I like to call a little whoopsy. When one of the detectives asked him,

what did you see? Dan said, I saw two gunshots in her. So record scratch moment. Excuse me? Two? You saw two gunshots in her. Okay. Well, here's the thing, bud. You couldn't see two gunshot wounds the way her body was lying. seen, you could only see one. So the only way that Dan could know that Julie was shot twice was if he was there when it happened. So what did we say? Whoopsie doodle.

Whoopsie doodle, Dan. Whoopsie doodle dandy. Add that, Camper, is to the boneheaded moves killers make bingo card. Letting it slip that you have knowledge that only the killer could have. Bad fucking move. That's not smart. So obviously they confronted him on this. And he tried to play it off like they'd misunderstood what he said, which is hilarious because Dan, buddy, you're being recorded.

You absolute show. That's what that camera up in the corner of the room is. Remember when they told you everything in this room is being recorded? So you cannot pretend that you did not say a thing that you just said, you moron. This shit baffles me more than anything else because of all the horrible, horrible things that you could do. an interrogation room is gaslighting the detectives. That has to be in the top ten. I am floored by this.

That is gaslighting. I didn't say that. Well, okay, let's rewind the tape. We win. So they sent him back to his cell to kind of, you know, marinate in his own gooberiness for a while. And after a bit, he asked if he could call his fiancé. And they said, sure.

And I'm sure they saw this as yet another opportunity to let this potato hang himself with his own rope. and they were not disappointed. So fiancé Rachel, who we haven't talked about much yet, she seemed, I would describe it as very annoyed that this murdered woman was interfering with her wedding plans. Just irritated. A woman is dead, Rachel.

Yep. And will never be seen by her family again. Yeah, she was just irritated. And she's on Dr. Phil, by the way, talking about this case. I don't know if any of you've seen her on Dr. Phil, but that seems to be the vibe that I got from her there too. She's just annoyed by how this whole thing is just derailed her plans. So anyway, Rachel had just talked to Dan's brother Tim, who apparently had a bag full of evidence, including the murder

weapon. And Tim had told Rachel, shit, I'd probably better get rid of this, huh? So obviously these guys are neck and neck in the old intelligence race, right? It's cut from the same cloth, bless their hearts. Why do you people hold on to evidence? It's astonishing. It makes no fucking sense. It's bizarre. I don't get it either. And people seem to do it all the time. It's like, what, you don't have rivers where you people live? Is it that you don't want to just eat the cost of the gun? Like, you're going to be out a whole lot more money for a defense attorney. I promise you that. Like, you feel like you're going to have an urgent need for a pair of bloody latex gloves at some point in the future. Like, you can buy more gloves. They have them at

Walgreens. What are you doing? Why would you give your brother? Why would you involve someone else? And hand somebody a bag of stuff that could bury you. It's just, I can't. I can't with these people anymore. I'm done.

We're stopping right now. I'm done. I can't with these people. And now, on the phone, Rachel told Dan, I need to make a phone call to the detective now before they catch me on this recording device because it looks like I'm trying to tell them right away. And Dan didn't like this. He said, well, then I'm doomed. Oh, for fuck sake.

Trauma queen. Jeez. And she said, well, did you know that Tim had some evidence? And he said, yeah. So Rachel said, well, this is ridiculous. And I have to go tell the detective the truth. And at this, Dan freaked. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Um, babe, don't, don't, don't, don't, please, that can't be found. Please, just trust me, like, freaking out. And Rachel was just stone-cold. old man. She was like, nope, babe, I'm going to do it. Okay. So these guys are totally that couple that always says babe.

Babe. Like, babe. Please don't turn evidence of murder over to the police, babe. I don't want to go to jail, babe. I'm going to go to jail, babe. Please, babe. Please don't send me to prison, babe. So Dan wanted to know if his brother Tim had told the detectives anything. And Rachel said she didn't think so. He just told her so far. And she was going to tell the detectives. And Rachel said, you know this conversation is being recorded anyways, don't you? You're being an absolute ass trying to lie again, which fair point, Rachel, points to Rachel. But this is interesting to me, because you might argue that this conversation exonerates Rachel from knowing anything about the murder either before or after the fact, because this is one of the big questions in this

case, whether Rachel knew anything, how much Rachel knew, when she knew what, et cetera. And I mentioned that episode of Dr. Phil that she was on. And if you asked me, she didn't do herself any favors. But the fact that she's aware that they're being recorded and reminding him of that fact and casting herself in an innocent light at the same time means that I would argue we have no way of being sure about whether this conversation actually points to her innocence. Like, she might just be smarter than he is and trying to save her own ass. I mean, yeah, she's at the very least smarter than Dan, which probably puts her in the lukewarm range at minimum. Right. So, after this phone call, Dan, unsurprisingly, sent word to the detectives that he was ready to talk.

I guess he realized at this point the jig was up, and once they had him back in the interrogation room, they said, okay, Dan, what is it you want to tell us? And Dan Wozniak said that I'm completely insane, and I did it. And it was what exactly? I killed Julie and I killed Sam. So remember that first text Julie got from Sam the night she was murdered? Helping Dan then off to the folks for the weekend. Dan had, in fact, asked Sam for help that night, moving some stuff around at the local theater. Sam was the kind of guy who would lend a hand to anybody that needed it. So he said, sure.

Dan drove him there, told them they needed to go up to the attic to get the stuff. And once they were up there, Dan shot Sam hair in the back of the head. God. Now, it didn't kill him. Sam had fallen to his knees, turned around and said to his friend, I need help. I just felt something hit me. It felt like an electric shock. Oh, my God. Which, God, bless his heart. He didn't know his friend had shot him. The innocence of that moment breaks my heart. That his reaction was, help me, friend, you know, and I just can't even stand. It's horrible. No, and this is actually really common where shooting victims don't realize they've been shot. Yeah, I've heard that. I feel like something just hit me or they just,

it just doesn't occur because the force of it doesn't feel like, I guess. Like it takes a while for it to like really start hurting sometimes, I think. And also you've got adrenaline going and everything. Yeah. Yeah. So what did Dan do in response to his friend asking for help? Well, told the detectives, I reloaded and shot him again. I hate this guy. You see, Dan had been lying to Rachel. She thought he had a good full-time job. She thought he was making good money. She thought they were going on a luxury honeymoon, a luxury cruise, in fact. But in reality, Dan was taking whatever little part-time gigs he could find, and he was broke as hell and about to be evicted. Friends of his say he

always broke, always moving from job to job. He had no way of paying for that nice honeymoon cruise he'd promised her. He had no way to pay for anything. He needed that $62,000 he knew Sam Hare had at his bank account. Sam's combat pay from Afghanistan. For a while, anyway, that money would solve everything for Dan. It would keep him from being found out as a loser. Rachel wasn't the kind of woman who would be willing to marry a loser. I can believe that from the interviews I've seen with her. I could be wrong. I could be completely wronging this woman, but she just kind of makes my skin crawl.

I'm not exactly even sure if I can articulate why, but you'll have to watch her on Dr. Phil and tell me what you think. And on 48 hours as well, there's just something kind of flat about her. And on Dr. Phil in particular, like Sam's dad was there. and she just kept going back to how this had kind of ruined her life and inconvenienced her and set her plans back. It's like, you know, somebody's dead, right? Like, two people are never going home to their families and she just didn't.

And, like, Dr. Phil was trying to continually, like, remind her of that. And then she would pay lip service to getting it, but she clearly kind of didn't get it. Anyway. She seems very constructed. I can kind of get what Whitney's going. Yeah, going at where I don't know if maybe her lawyers had said, these are the things you're going to say. These are your talking points, Rachel. Right.

Yeah, very possibly, which is a attorney's job, but. Right. But just don't make television appearances, perhaps. Yeah, that would probably be a good idea to avoid that. This is interesting, too, and I'm busting in on you here because I didn't put this in the notes. But another thing I find interesting about this, we talk about patterns and recurring themes in the cases that we explore in true crime. One of the themes that I've noticed again and again and again is this lying about not only money, but your level of success. Right. And your level of achievement.

I mean, it just comes up so much. And it often comes up in family annihilator cases in particular where you're committing a murder to save face. Right? It's interesting. I mean, talk more about that in a minute. I don't want to interrupt the story, but yeah. Okay, yeah. We'll get to that because I have some thoughts. But, okay, Dan, you murdered a man for $62,000. You took somebody away from their family, to somebody's away from their families, for money that Sam Hare got for putting themselves through hell. That makes you a pretty big loser anyway, my dude. I can't fucking stand to you. Dan told the detectives, this was really just all about the money.

He told them he was a, according to him, a pathological liar. But why the hell had he killed Julie? What did she have to do with it? Dan dropped his head and said, just to cover up Sam. Oh, God. Yeah, so he could frame his first victim for her murder, make it look like he'd sexually assaulted and killed Julie and then gone on the run. And really, Sam was the perfect choice. for a plan like this, with his PTSD and his background of having once gone on trial for murder,

acquittal or no, that would make the police think exactly what they did think at first. Sam must be the killer. That was the only smart part of the plan, as awful as it was. Like, his victim that he chose was actually a fairly solid choice, as awful as it sounds to say that. The rest of it, he was a dipshit. He's a dipshit for doing it in the first place, obviously, and an evil dipshit at that. He'd left Sam's body in the attic at the theater and gone home to text Julie from Sam's phone. When she arrived, he'd met her in front of Sam's apartment door.

He said he'd gotten in text to and he was worried about Sam. I have a key, he said. I'll let you in and we can both check on him. Julie knew Dan. She had no reason not to trust him. So she followed him in. Oh, my God, I've got goosebumps. This is so creepy.

And once they were inside, Dan said, Hey, did you see this thing on Sam's bed? Julie said, no. And Dan said, go look. It's right there on his bed. He told her to lean in closer to look, and Julie did. And Dan shot her in the back of the head. And then shot her again.

And then he wrote them. message on her sweater, fuck you all yours, and cut her pants to make it look like she'd been sexually assaulted. Which again, stupid. They can check for that. Dipshit. Ugh, I hate this guy. And it got worse. Dan told the detectives they'd find some of Sam's body in the attic at the theater. But, he said, be aware that the head and hands have been decapitated. All right. English major time. First of all, Dan. Decapitated means that the head was cut off, you fucking loser. Yeah.

The word you're looking for was dismembered. Yeah, he can't even say it right. He's the worst. Anyway, he had cut off Sam's head and hands at the theater and scattered the remains around the El Dorado Nature Center. Oh, my God. Presumably, this was about making Sam harder to identify, which is just absurd given that Sam was tattooed at the yin-yang. I guess that didn't occur to him. Whatever. This man is a doofus beyond my ability to express it. He thought he was the godfather, but he was really just Mr. Bean.

Yeah. And this is the most banana pants part. When the detectives asked Dan how he was feeling when he was doing all of this, he said, and I shit you not, I was actually smiling and laughing as I did it. I just couldn't believe I was actually doing this, which just holy crap on a cracker. And I don't know what to make of that Whether his laughter was joyful laughter Like I'm really enjoying myself Or just hysterical laughter As in like he said I can't believe I'm doing this

That is just creepier than hell on Halloween at midnight And I can't with it It's just yeah And after he disposed of Sam's head and hands At the Nature Preserve He went and acted In the closing night performance Of the musical he was in

People said his performance was especially dynamic that night. It's best yet, in fact. Which just... So, can we just talk about that for a second that he gave the performance of his life after murdering two people? Oh, my God.

That is off the chain. I wonder there's something to be said about his mask never being more securely in place after pretending to be these people's friend. Yeah. It was obviously firmly in place when he talked to Julie that night because she didn't seem to have gotten a bad feeling. She just followed him right in.

And he said, go look at this thing and bend over, look closer. And she did it, you know, so she must not have felt that anything was off. He's an actor through and through, isn't he? I think he has to be, like, somebody who can do this has got to lack empathy. Got to be. So it's that classic model of the psychopath with the charming mask, isn't it? And after the performance, the cast and crew threw a big rap party, and there's video from this party, and Dan's in it, and he's just smiling and laughing and playing around on his phone, and you would never guess what he had just done to look at it. It's just unbelievable.

And it was Sam Hare's 27th birthday on the day they searched the Nature Center. And his dad has said that when the detectives told him that his son had been murdered, he said, for some reason, well, at least he wasn't decapitated. It's so weird that he even thought to say that Because the detectives had to tell him he was Which I can't even imagine And he said that he woke up the morning of the search On what should have been a day of celebration The son's birthday

Just hoping and praying that they would find his son's head Which I literally Cannot even fathom How you would survive such a thing And they found Sam's dismembered body in several shallow holes scattered around the park discarded in charmingly white trash bags and the remains were in bad shape

they had to identify him through his mom and dad tattoo on his torso which is heartbreaking they also found a bag containing Sam's wallet passport bloody clothing and the gun that killed both Sam and Julie so despite his detailed confession and the mountain of evidence against him Dan Wozniak pled not guilty at trial But the defense seemed to be focused not on proving his innocence. I mean, they had his videotaped interrogations to contend with, but saving him from the death penalty.

At trial, they didn't even give an opening statement, and they didn't call a single witness, which I think right there tells you they knew perfectly well that this guy was boned like he was going down. And unsurprisingly, the jury found Daniel Wozniak guilty of the murders of Sam Hare and Julie Kibuishi. The defense argued that he should be spared the death penalty because he was mentoring of him. other inmates at the prison and could still do some good if allowed to live. The jury thought about the testimony of Julie and Sam's parents, and they voted to sentence him to death. Julie's mom said after the sentencing that Julie's murder has made her question her parenting. She'd always taught her kids to be kind and helpful, but in her words, that got my daughter

killed. She'd gone to help a friend in need, and she'd ended up murdered. And that is heartbreaking to me. When I heard her say that, I just wanted to reach through the screen and hug her and tell her that teaching her daughter kindness is not what got her killed. It was the opposite of that that got her killed. The opposite of kindness. The opposite of empathy, the complete lack of humanity in this man is what got her killed. So I hate that she's questioning herself.

It's just so sad. Like you're never wrong to teach your kid's kindness, you know? No. But it does make me remember how, you know, you. She told, I think it was 48 hours, that she used to worry sometimes about Julie because she was so nice that she would sometimes sacrifice her own well-being for others. And I'm sure that that's torturing her mom. And it's just, I mean, you can really feel the family's grief in the shows about this. And it's just awful.

These people so did not have to die. And a little postscript to the story is that Daniel Wozniak's brother Tim and his fiancé Rachel Buffett were charged and convicted in 20. of accessory after the fact. Now, I just told you a minute ago that they found that bag of the murder weapon and the passport and everything that I suspect, at least, it wasn't entirely clear in the shows that I watched in the articles, but it seems to me that that was the bag that Rachel was telling him about on the phone, like Tim's got this bag of evidence. So clearly, what it looks like to me is that Tim went out and buried this thing and knew

where to bury it, you know, after the fact. So they got charged and convicted of that. Rachel was sentenced to 32 months in prison, but got some time shaved off for time served since she'd been sitting in jail waiting for trial. She's expected to serve like a year or two. She might be out already for all I know. And she claims she's completely innocent of all of it, but I think you've probably already noticed have some doubts. She just gives me the Wiggins. And just like I said, in interviews, she just seems blasé about the fact that her fiancé killed, you know, two completely innocent people to give her a nice honeymoon, which I realize it's not her fault that, you know, like I'm not.

saying she said kill these people. I don't think that she was involved before the fact, but I'm not entirely sure I'm convinced she wasn't involved after the fact. And at the very least, she seems like I said, very blasé about the whole thing. And to really just want to talk about how she's been terribly inconvenienced by the whole thing. And it's just ruined my life. It's like, okay, Sam and Julie are dead. You're still alive and young and pretty and like getting your 15 minutes of fame out of it. So can we not? Maybe. So, it's one of the wilder stories I've heard in recent years and I you know we've disclaimer we can't diagnose anybody we're not saying we can but Dan Wozniak seems like a

classic psychopath to me what do you make of this guy I mean he killed these two people just completely out of nowhere because he wanted money for a nice honeymoon do you just spring fully formed into that at his age like do you think he'd had fantasies about killing people that's what I want to know I just it seems like it ought to to left field to me to do this just for money. I don't know that he had fantasized about

killing people, but I definitely think he doesn't view people as humans. Yeah. Well, people, like people don't matter to him. They're just, like we said in the intro that when you do genuinely

have that mindset that all the world's a stage, well, then in your mind, probably what you mean is I'm the only one that's real. I'm the only one that matters and everybody else is expendable. Right. And I'm curious about whether he thought he'd have more time before the bodies were discovered. Oh, 100%. I think that's why he killed Julie. Because I think he figured that Sam would seem to be on the run. I guess he might not have thought that he'd have more time before Julie's body was discovered. But Sam, I think he was sending the police on a wild goose chase after this alleged military veteran dangerous killer.

The only reason I say that, though, is because he only got $1,600. Yeah. And I think he probably, he didn't bank on Sam's dad being so proactive and just showing up at his kids' apartment. Right. Yep. That's very possible. And I think Dan Wozniak just, I don't know how he found out about how much money his friend had. Don't tell anyone how much money you have.

That's a very good piece of advice. Most definitely. If you don't know somebody very well, don't be confessing that you've got a big bunch of money. Well, and I actually saw some comment on one video I watched about this where somebody was like, I was active duty military. I was deployed to Afghanistan for X months. And I got out with $100 to my name. I have a buddy that saved every single dime.

He did not eat fast food. He did not buy anything. And he got out with $20,000. So the fact that this guy was able to scrimp and save and basically set himself up to be pretty comfortable. Yeah. Is just so impressive. Absolutely. And I don't know.

The thing that that blows my mind about Dan is that he broke so fast. Oh, totally. I mean, like day one they hauled him in. And it was one interrogation that got him almost all the way there. And then it was that phone call with Rachel where he realized how boned he was. And then it was just like, I did it. Well, he involved so many people. Again, why in God's name?

Don't, please don't murder anybody. Just don't. But if you're going to, you can't tell anybody ever. That's what always gets people caught. Any homicide detective will tell you that the vast majority of the time, what gets people caught is they tell somebody. They run their mouth about it. don't do that that's really stupid or better yet do so you'll get caught right away yeah please tell

everyone you've ever met posted on facebook because with with dan wosniak i have no doubt that he thought he was just the smartest most handsome brilliant person and he thought he could get away with it and i mean if this were a movie or you know an episode of of law and order or something it would seem at first glance like a decent plan. Yeah, he, you know what he should have done? He should have written an episode of NCIS Yeah, made money to

instead of murdering two innocent people. And also try being honest with the people in your life. Right. Instead of lying to your girlfriend and making her think you're someone, you're not, and then you've painted yourself in a corner where now you either come up with a luxury honeymoon or she's going to be

mad and dump you, which she might not have in the first place. She might have been perfectly fine with a small wedding and a, you know, honeymoon at the motel six for all we know. Right. So be honest, for love of God, that's such a trope and true crime is these guys like bigging themselves up and then ending up killing the people that they're supposed to love because they can't bear to lose that golden boy reputation. It's really stupid.

And Dan is appealing his death sentence, but I very much doubt he'll ever see daylight again. And personally, I'd be happy to see him rot in prison for the rest of his life and have a long, healthy, miserable life in a stinky little jail cell. So that's what we wish for you, Danny Boy. Bet you wish you were smarter. Anyway, so campers, you know we'll have another one for you next week. Another stranger than fiction story.

But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe. Until we get together again around the true crime campfire. And we want to send a shout out to our newest patron, Florentia. I hope I said your name right. Thank you so much. We appreciate you to the moon and back. And if you haven't become a patron yet, missing out. Patrons get every episode a day early, an extra episode every month, and a free

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