Struggling actor sentenced to death over California double-murder

Community theatre performer Daniel Wozniak killed two friends in a plot to fund his wedding and expensive honeymoon

Wozniak, 32, was arrested during his own stag party at a sushi restaurant in Huntington Beach, California ((AP))

A broke California actor who killed two friends as part of a scheme to steal cash to fund his wedding and costly honeymoon has been sentenced to death. Daniel Wozniak, 32, was convicted last year of the grisly murders of Afghanistan war veteran Samuel Herr and his friend Juri Kibiushi. He now faces a long wait for the death penalty.

In May 2010, Wozniak was living in Costa Mesa, where he planned to marry Rachel Buffett, his co-star in a local community theatre production of the musical Nine. When he realised he could not afford the wedding and honeymoon he had envisaged, he plotted to killed his neighbour, Herr and steal $62,000 that the 26-year-old had saved from his military service.

Wozniak met Herr in the attic of a theatre after asking him to help move furniture. He shot Herr, dismembered his body and dumped the parts in a nearby park. He then used Herr’s phone to lure Kibiushi, 23, to Herr’s home, where he also shot her, arranging the scene to look as if Herr had sexually assaulted her, killed her and fled.

The plot quickly unravelled after a teenager was caught making ATM withdrawals from Herr’s bank account and told detectives Wozniak had put him up to it. Wozniak was arrested at his own stag party on 26 May, 2010, two days before he was due to be married. Buffett, his former fiancée, was later charged as an accessory after the fact.

Jurors deliberated for just one hour and 14 minutes before recommending the death penalty, according to the Orange County Register. Orange County Superior Court Judge John Conley said last week that Wozniak “chose not to get married inexpensively or to defer his honeymoon… He wanted to do it in style, and he was willing to kill two people he knew to accomplish this.”

At the sentencing hearing, Herr’s father called Wozniak “a coward and a poster boy for the need for an effective death penalty in California.”

On Friday, Wozniak was sent to California’s death row at San Quentin prison near San Francisco, though the state has not executed anyone since 2006 due to legal challenges over the state’s death penalty. He joins almost 750 other California inmates awaiting execution.