Trial begins in 2010 killings of O.C. Army veteran and his female friend

In May 2010, Steve Herr walked into his son’s Costa Mesa apartment and found a woman’s body.

Juri “Julie” Kibuishi, 23, was bent over a bed. Her pants were ripped and around her ankles. An expletive was written on her back.

She still wore a tiara her brother had given her that night.

Herr’s son, Sam, a 26-year-old Army veteran who was a friend of Kibuishi, was nowhere to be found. Police began searching for Sam Herr as a suspect, but his father refused to believe he could be a killer.

“Immediately I said, ‘Sam would never do this,’” Steve Herr said.

Authorities now think Steve Herr was right. Within a week, Sam Herr’s severed head was found dumped in bushes at the El Dorado Nature Center in Long Beach.

More than five years later, Steve Herr took the stand Wednesday in Orange County Superior Court to describe how he discovered the gruesome apartment scene. He was the first witness in the trial of the man authorities say killed Sam Herr, then killed Kibuishi in an attempt to cover his tracks.

Prosecutor Matt Murphy told jurors during his opening statement that Daniel Patrick Wozniak, 31, Sam Herr’s neighbor, killed him for money.

Desperate for cash to refill an empty bank account, cover his rent and fund his upcoming wedding, Wozniak hatched a plan to steal thousands of dollars that Herr had saved from his service in Afghanistan, Murphy said.

According to Murphy, Wozniak shot Herr twice in the head while they moved furniture in the attic of a theater in Los Alamitos where Wozniak acted in community productions. Then, Murphy said, Wozniak dismembered Herr’s body with a hatchet to hide it more easily.

To complete his scheme, Murphy said, Wozniak tried to make it look like Herr was on the run.

Prosecutors believe Wozniak used Herr’s phone to lure Kibuishi to Herr’s apartment, where Wozniak shot her and staged the body to appear as though she had been sexually assaulted.

But withdrawals from Herr’s bank account led detectives to Wozniak, who authorities believe stole Herr’s ATM card, Murphy said.

Within days of the killings, police arrested Wozniak at his bachelor party in Huntington Beach.

Murphy said authorities originally suspected Herr was a fugitive and that Wozniak was funneling money to him. But according to grand jury transcripts, Wozniak admitted to both killings after being questioned by detectives, and he directed them to Herr’s remains.

Wozniak, who has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder, could face the death penalty if convicted.

“I have no forgiveness in my heart,” Sam Herr’s aunt, Miriam Nortman, said outside the courtroom when reporters asked her about Wozniak.

Defense attorneys declined to make an opening statement Wednesday and had few questions for most prosecution witnesses under cross-examination.

But they have fiercely fought Wozniak’s eligibility for the death penalty to the point that the trial was repeatedly delayed while they crafted voluminous motions alleging decades of misconduct by the Orange County district attorney’s office.

In October, Judge John Conley ruled the death penalty could stay on the table, writing that the defense’s allegations of misuse of jailhouse informants — whether true or not — had no bearing on Wozniak’s case.

“I’m feeling relieved that we finally got started,” Steve Herr said Wednesday. He and his wife have attended more than 100 court dates in anticipation of the trial, where they hope to hear exactly what happened to their son.

He and his wife, Raquel, sat in the front row Wednesday wearing hearing-assistance headphones that amplified the voices of lawyers and witnesses.

As a crime scene technician vividly described how Sam Herr’s limbs and head were hacked off, Raquel Herr looked at the floor. She removed the headphones and placed her fingers in her ears.

“It was hard to see Julie’s body on the bed,” she said earlier. “I’m not going to look when they talk about Sammy.”

Steve Herr held her hand but kept his headphones in place, listening.

“I’ve been waiting too long to hear everything,” he said.

jeremiah.dobruck@latimes.com

Twitter: @jeremiahdobruck

Dobruck writes for Times Community News.