13. Attorneys Closing Arguments resume in Santa Ana Superior Court where Rachel Buffett's Accessory to Murder Trial continues.

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Please be advised this story contains adult content and graphic language.
But he walked right into that apartment with a dead
guy's computer, and he doesn't make any effort to hide
her from at all? How hard is he trying to
keep her in the dark. Welcome to Sleuth, I'm Linda Sawyer.

(00:33):
This week, we are back in a Santa Ana courtroom
for our front row trial coverage of Rachel Buffett's accessory
to murder trial. Matt Murphy has prosecuted his case for
nearly a week and is ready for his closing arguments.
David Medina, on the other hand, Rachel's defense counsel, feels
so confident he has presented plenty of reasonable doubt in
the trial that he doesn't put on a single witness

(00:56):
for the defense. Court spectators wonder whether Rachel herself would
take the stand in her defense. After all, not more
than a month before the trial, Rachel was presented an
offer that included pleading guilty to a misdemeanor with no
jail time. She turned it down and expressed wanting her
day in court. So why did she tell the judge

(01:18):
she didn't think it was necessary she take the stand.
Perhaps it'll all make sense. As we listen in to
both Matt Murphy and David Medina's closing arguments to jurors.
Our sleuth guest Daniel was next. Defense counsel Scott Sanders
returns to analyze the final slummations from both counsel. So

(01:38):
I want to welcome back Scott Sanders to Sleuth today.
Thanks for being here, Scott. We're gonna now go to
the final closing arguments of Mr Murphy speaking to the
jurors during the Rachel Buffett Accessory to murder trial, and
then we'll stop in a few places and and talk
about what we're listening to. I want to give you

(02:00):
kind of an overview. First thing, there are two ways
that I can sort of go about this. There's a
you heard this morning that I get two arguments. Some
of you have Satastoris before know that there's a tactic
known as sandbagging. Okay, you see it more in the
lower ranks when people first start, where a prosecutor has
the opportunity to not talk about certain pieces of evidence

(02:24):
and then they wait for the defense to get up,
and then they save little nuggets and they throw that
out there when the defense can't answer it. You can
kind of see that. It's called sandbagging. It's kind of cheap.
And so I'm going to be thorough as I go
through these facts. You've been thrown off a whole bunch
of information and a whole bunch of law even this
morning and those stipulations. That's probably two weeks of contested

(02:47):
evidence just from this morning. So very much out of
respect for the professionalism of just from Adina, and also
out of fairness to this buffet, I want to lay
out everything up front and give them an opportunity to
respond to whatever they feel they want to respond to,
or whatever they want to address. They don't have to.
So essentially, I'm going to talk about the law, and

(03:10):
I'm gonna not gonna go through every instruction again. But
there are certain basic concepts that are very important for
everybody to understand. We talked about this a little bit
during jury selection. But the law fundamentally is based on
common sense, all right, So each one of these things
should not only make sense to you. I believe when

(03:31):
you when you leave this experience and you go home
and you get to talk to people about it, husbands, wives, friends, whoever,
that you'll see that the law truly is it's fair.
It's based on fairness. And when we get a group
of people like we have here that agree to follow
the law, and you agree to put your lives on hold,
will you come in and discuss a matter like this.

(03:53):
When we do it right, the justice is going to
be done. You're going to do the right thing. So
we're going to talk about justice and in fact, the
justice that we are hoping we can always count on
in every courtroom. But indeed, I wanted you to tell

(04:15):
your listeners how you feel about Matt Murphy's form of justice. Well,
it's interesting to hear him talk about how it'll all
be laid out, how it'll all be there for you
when they're missing sort of the largest component, which is
from my perspective, what he argued in our case. So

(04:37):
this portrait of fairness, and even as I watch it,
not as Rachel Buffett's lawyer, he is a little difficult
to watch, and yet somehow he does manage to make
it work in his favor. That's because that jury is
limited to what they're hearing in this particular courtroom. So

(04:58):
it's not as if a ship in out of the
blue our trial. They're not going to hear any of it.
They're not going to have a sense of what's there,
so they're going to hear what he wants them to hear. Well,
you know the defense has a role in that too, Right,
they put on their case and the prosecution put on

(05:18):
their case, and he's going to effectively make his arguments.
I'm sure. Let's go back and listen to his argument. Continue. Now,
I'm going to go through after I get through the law,
I'm going to go through the objective evidence sort of
piece by piece in this and we can figure out
what somebody is thinking regardless of what they tell us. Okay,

(05:42):
we do it all the time. We do it every day,
and the law, as you just heard, empowers you to
make decisions like that. So as the guys trucking into
the movie theater parking lot and they say, hey, you
can't park your car there, and he goes, oh, I
was just here to get some mushrooms or comments or whatever.
What he says is one thing, But we figure out

(06:04):
what he's actually thinking based on a review of the
objective evidence. In that example, it's traitor Jone's closes at ten,
opening out of Star Wars Latest Jedi whatever. Okay, that's
how we do it. We look at things objectively and
we go through piece by piece. All right. I don't know.

(06:26):
I feel like when I listened to him at that moment,
I get a little concerned because I think what he's
suggesting is that just go with what I'm telling you,
like you're allowed to infer here, You're allowed to listen
to my narrative and make your assumptions based on that.

(06:47):
That seems so nebulous to me. I don't find that.
The troubling issue for me. It's that what he's saying
is if you look at the evidence, you and determine
someone's intent, and we do do that every day. He's
absolutely right about it. But let's watch the way he

(07:08):
argues why his interpretation of the evidence should be viewed
as he sees it here, and let's keep in mind
what he said in another case. So to me, it's
the issue that's I'm waiting for is to hear how
he's going to interpret the same pieces of evidence in
these two cases and then tell jurors in this courtroom

(07:29):
don't worry, it's an easy task. Just use your logic.
So you see, but based on what he's telling them,
will I'm based upon what he's arguing. It's not so
much the control of the evidence, because I said, both
sides have the right to put on the evidence and
that evidence is before them. But now the evidence when
I mean, is there a range of definition when you

(07:52):
talk about evidence when you're talking and closing arguments and
you really don't have to prove without any sense of
this specific evidence. Is why I'm telling you this. I mean,
it feels like in closing argument there's a lot of latitude.
Am I wrong? Well, it's the latitude to argue. I mean,
there is, there's wide latitude on both sides to argue

(08:14):
and inter and interpret evidence for that there is. It's
just what you want to do and what you know
and believe is the right interpretation. That's where it gets
very difficult. You're going to hear a lawyer in a
case in closing argument make the interpretation that they think
will help get them to the outcome they want. I mean,

(08:35):
that is part of being a lawyer. But that's what
you say, though, Why it's it's such a trust based system, right,
That's right? It is because and usually you don't have
to worry about these things as much because usually folks
are going about it in a way in which, of
course you're going to argue the same way in every case,
because that's what number one, what you're supposed to do

(08:56):
in number two. It just makes sense logically. It's hard
to even imagine the notion of going into different court
rooms and asking that evidence be interpreted differently. But usually
our cases are not on TV. Usually there's not recordings
where we can listen to it and watch it, and
so I think maybe I've assumed it's happened less than

(09:18):
it has. Let's go back to Matt Murphy. I'm going
to go through a little bit about what Daniel Wasnyac
had to be thinking, particularly in relationship to Rachel Buffett.
All Right, I'm gonna I'm gonna talk about that with you.
In other words, everybody knows he's a liar, everybody knows
he's a horrific murderer. We get that. The question is

(09:42):
how much really was she in the dark. Then I'm
gonna go through and I'm going to talk about again,
just piece by piece objective evidence was what did she
absolutely positively have to know at the time she sat
down with those police officers, then I'm gonna go through
the itimens to the police, and we're gonna we're gonna
put it all all together as we go along. Now,

(10:05):
the most important concept in any criminal case is the
idea of reasonable doubt. All right, So let me just
read this to you again briefly. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt.
It's proof that leaves you with an abiding conviction that
the charge is true. The evidence need not eliminate all
possible doubt, because everything in life is open to some
possible or imaginary doubt. Now, because this is common law,
because this is old and it goes back hundreds of

(10:27):
years in we would use this kind of language in
our day to day conversation. Abiding conviction. Now it's a
it's a little archaic, but it means the same thing.
The word abiding means something stays with you. Conviction regarding
a subject to our topic means that, based on your life,
your common sense, your experience, and carefully discussing with your

(10:51):
fellow jurors, you believe somebody did it, and you believe
it's strongly enough that it is abiding where it stays
with you. We hear this term reasonable doubt. Oftentimes people
confuse it with the term shadow of a doubt, you know,
where we have to prove something beyond a certainty. All
this means is that you believe she's good for it,

(11:12):
and you believe it's strongly enough so that in a week, month,
or year you can lick yourself in the mirror and say,
you know what, I still think she did it. I
still think she knew and acted with the requisent intent,
nothing more, nothing less. It's the highest standard of proof
in the law, but it has not proved to certainty.
This is based on our life experience, our common sense,

(11:34):
and ladies and gentlemen, you folks are experts when it
comes to human behavior. Five years of experience on the earth,
all right, you know how people are going to act.
You know what people are gonna say when they're innocent,
when they're guilty. You know what. You were the experts
on that. So why do you think Matt Murphy's talking

(11:57):
about abiding? Why why is he bringing up that concept?
He's laying out the standard for them. He wants to
get ahead of it. He wants to show, as you
can see from the beginning of this argument, he wants
to say up front that I'm a person who's going
to talk about all issues, good and bad, things that
are more challenging, less challenging. I'm not sandbagging, he's telling

(12:18):
the jurors. So he wants to get ahead of all
these issues. He's worried, as all prosecutors worry that jurors
will think the standards higher than they believe it is.
So he's telling them. Look, I'm being upfront with you.
This is the standard. It is long lasting, but it's
not beyond all possible doubt. Let's go back to court.
So witnesses, you already know this. You must judge the

(12:40):
credibility of witnesses. That's a to you who to believe
and not believe and deciding whether testimony is true and accurate.
Use your common sense and experience. And again you keep
seeing this phrase common sense over and over again throughout
the law, throughout the instructions. Do not automatically reject testimony
just because of the inconsis, inistencies, or conflicts. Consider whether

(13:02):
the differences are important or not. Sometimes people honestly forget
things or make mistakes about what they remember. Also, two
witnesses may two people may witness the same event yet
see it or hear it differently. Okay, again, that's very fundamental.
Now you heard an instruction this morning on aiding abetting.

(13:22):
This applies to the law of murder. There was some
conversation that you listened to in the interview with miss
Buffett with Sergeant Everett, and he was talking about if
you're actually helping somebody before the murder. That's the concept
of aiding and abetting. If somebody helps in the commission
of a crime, that means they're good for the crime. Again,

(13:43):
very fundamental. The law is that way. It's been that
way for hundreds of years, and it should be that way.
In other words, if you assist somebody in any way
in the commission of a crime, that means you're also
good for the crime. That is totally different. And accessory
after the fact, right, Just so everybody understands, accessory after
the fact is the same whether they help somebody steal

(14:05):
a really expensive bike get away with it, whether they
commit murder, everything in between. As long as it's a felony,
it's the crime of being an accessory. Why does this
matter in our analysis? It matters in our analysis if
she believes, If she believes that Daniel Wosniac helped Sam
killed Julie, or he's involved in any way before the

(14:29):
murder and aids in a bet in any way helps
him anyway. That satisfizes the element for knowledge for the
purposes of a murder to be an accessory after the fact.
All right, now, I'm gonna come back and talk about that.
That's where aiding and a a betting fits in. Just so
everybody understands, we're talking about Daniel Wisniac's involvement in the murder.
In other words, she can know every detail about what

(14:51):
he did, but the law says she doesn't have to.
All she has to know he said he's involved in
the murder of Julie before Julie is killed. So let's
discuss how Mr Murphy ultimately came up with Rachel's charges
In your estimation, Well, I think that he decided what

(15:12):
he thought he could prove, what he had his best
chances with proving, and he made a call, and his
call was he didn't feel confident that he would get
a murder conviction. Let's get back to his argument motive.
People are not required to prove that the defendant had
a motive to commit the crime charged. In reaching your verdict.

(15:32):
You may, however, consider whether the defensive had a motive.
Having a motive maybe a factor tending to show that
the defendant is guilty, Not having a motive, maybe a
factor tending to show the defendant is not guilty. I'm
going to talk about motive in just a minute. All
available evidence, this was something that we discussed during jury selection.
Neither side is required to call all witnesses who may
have information about the case, or to produce all physical

(15:55):
evidence that might be relevant. Perfectly appropriate from Mr Medina
not to call witnesses. Also, you heard a whole laundry
list of different people that we did not call to
the stand. Law says we don't have to do that.
So we're good as long as you consider the stipulations. Uh,
fairly for both sides. Accessory. So these are the elements.

(16:18):
Another person committed a felony. Everything from expensive bike theft,
drug dealing, robbery, burglary, name your felony, all the way
up to murder. It is a felony, right, and in
this particular case, we've got two burgal murders. So that's
that's what we've elected. The defendant knew that the perpetrator

(16:41):
had committed a felony, or that the perpetrator had been
charged with or convicted of a felony. After the felony
had been committed, the defendant either harvard, concealed or aided
the perpetrator. We've got some additional instructions on that. When
the defendant acted, she intended that the perpetrator avoid escape, arrest, trial, conviction,

(17:01):
or punishment. And they throw in sort of every descriptive term.
It's to help somebody avoid consequences for what they did. Now,
language here is also important. When the defendant acted. What's
a good example of that. We don't even have to
go outside of this case and not comparing there's no

(17:22):
comparative fault analysis here, but as an example of that,
there's no better way to understand that than to look
at Tim Wozniak. When he acted. He took possession of
that backpack and he threw it over the fence. He
obviously was racked with guilt. He's confused. He's thrown into

(17:45):
that situation by his little brother. Remember, he shows up
that apartment complex, he's in an argument with his girlfriend
and he needs to get gas, and next thing he knows,
he's driving off with a backpack filled with carnage, all right,
So he thinks about it, he talks it over with
his friend and they made the right decision. He decided

(18:05):
to do the right thing. But when he acted, he
had all the requisite intent. He knew it was involved
in a homicide, no clue how deep his brother was
into this thing. But he made that decision and it
got thrown over the fence. And even though he did
the right thing later, okay, he went through legal process

(18:29):
and that's another perfect example. He committed the crime of
PC thirty two. Yeah, well, I have a lot to
say about this because Tim was wasn't act the way
he just framed him almost as an innocent dupe and
a victim of his brother is just so far from

(18:51):
the reality of of what happened and Tim's role in
all this. And I'm going to get into great length
in a future episode about his role. But suffice to
say that Tim himself told me that that d A,
he's a great guy and he's taking good care of
him and he feels like he pretty much duped everybody

(19:14):
and came to your trial pretty drunk because he didn't
want to make sense. As he told me, he really
wanted to sort of be all over the place, and
he was quite frankly, and more importantly, based on all
of my interviews and my investigation about this, it appears
that there was some understanding between Matt Murphy and Tim

(19:41):
Wozniak's defense counsel. So I find it a bit startling
that that Matt really makes such an effort to explain
away Tim's role and too to suggest that he really
is not at all involved, And I just I don't,

(20:03):
I'm just I find it very disturbing for me. The
issue of whether there's an understanding, there's some type of
unspoken agreement, is supported by a few different things just
looking at the circumstantial of it. It's first, it's incredibly
unusual to hear of a lawyer putting their client on

(20:23):
the stand in a case as serious as this with
absolutely no understanding of what will happen. Um to think
that he would actually go up on the stand and
have um no sense whether he's doing a day, no
time or three years, eight months is inconsistent with my
experience the last twenty five years. If it happened, it
would be something historical for that to take place. The

(20:46):
second thing is just what Tim Wozniak said when he testified.
I asked him the question, do you believe you won't
do time and custody? His answer, yes, your belief, your
understanding as you're done with doing any more time. Yes.
Now he then tries to walk that back and say,
I don't know why I believe that, but I'm entitled

(21:07):
to believe what he said at that moment, not his
changes that take place afterwards. And of course that's actually
what happened. He did no additional time and custody, so
it all kind of fits together. Tim pled guilty to
the felony and didn't do any time. Right, So he's
on the stand saying I think I'm done. I'm doing
no more time. He gets no more time. My experience

(21:28):
as lawyers, don't put somebody up on the stand without
having some understanding in that kind of situation. That's your
job to protect your client, right. So it's very difficult
to believe that. But I have Tim Wasniak's own words.
So for someone to say, how could you say or
how could you suggest that there was a wink and
a that it's Tim Wasniak saying it. So to the
extent somebody has an issue with me reaching that conclusion,

(21:49):
blamed Tim Wasniak. He used those words. Then I've got
a deal afterwards that takes place. But and I have
an interview with Tim Wasniak after the trial exactly. So
you then share to me the fact that you have
an interview in which he said, specifically, I was led
to believe before I took the stand that I wasn't
doing any more time. So what else would a lawyer believe?
What else? What are their conclusion? If you were in

(22:11):
my seat, could you reach other than the one I have.
Let's go back to Matt Murphy. Let's go through the
letter of the law. Here. Certain laws or affirmative falsehoods
two authorities, when made with the rexit knowledge and intent,
may constitute the aid or concealment contemplated by thirty two.
Now in our case, we have both aid and concealment.

(22:31):
We've got both. However, the mere passive failure to reveal
a crime, and again this is this should be common sense.
You know, if you were to go and write this
law yourself, as a group, you would come up with
this something very similar to this. However, the mere passive
failure to reveal a crime. The refusal to give information

(22:52):
or the denial of knowledge motivated by self interest does
not constitute the crime of accessory. So there you go.
Isn't that what she's doing? Well, I think that her
interest is self interest and she's refusing to tell the truth.
She's refusing to cooperate for self interest. So he's saying

(23:16):
that's not accessory, right, because the accessory law requires that
you're helping someone else. You're helping someone else get away
with the crime. So that's why I keep asking, isn't
that what you were trying to tell me when you
have said to me in the past that in order

(23:37):
to prove accessory, he has to prove that she wanted
to help Dan when that was clearly not the case.
That's right, she clearly wanted to help herself. And here,
in order to fit it into the law of accessory,
he's saying, it has to be for protecting him. So

(24:00):
you have said to me before, Scott that you feel
that it would be tough for him to prove accessory,
because there's no question by the time those jailhouse calls
were happening, she already knew everything right, probably knew it
well before. But certainly by then she knew it, and

(24:22):
so anything that she was saying or doing was all
to preserve herself, was to protect herself. So accessory. He
just the way he just described it, the way I
just heard it was that if you are avoiding talking
to police, or you're not answering questions, or you choose
not to answer questions to protect yourself is not accessory. Right.

(24:50):
So is that? I mean, basically what he's just saying
right there is is that your is that your reason
why you had said to me you found you felt
that it is going to be tough for him to
prove accessory because she didn't really care about Dan at
that point. She wasn't protecting Dan. No, Okay, No, I

(25:12):
think that the way he's presenting this case, it is
an accessory case. But there's an undercurrent of that this
is really an accessory case. It's so difficult to believe
when you kind of pull this all back, that this
could possibly be about protecting Dan. But he has those charges,

(25:34):
so he's doing an argument here. It's a separate issue
from why he didn't prosecute her. He thought he didn't
believe the evidence was strong enough to assure that that
verdict would come. Let's go back to Matt Murphy. When
the police show up at our doors and they say
we would like you to cooperate in this, and you

(25:55):
say yes, and then you say, quote, I will be
completely honest, and you lie through your teeth. That's a
different story. That's where we cross the line, all right.
What is totality of the evidence meaning? It means that
as a jury, you consider every piece of evidence in

(26:15):
light of every other piece of evidence, almost like dots
in a painting. And this is from Paris Peeler's Day Off.
It's one of my favorites. Don't judge me, um. This
is the scene where they're at the Chicago Metropolitan Museum
and Cameron is looking at the painting and it it

(26:38):
starts out where he's looking at a single dot, and
then it backs up and the farther away we get,
the more the image that we can see. And I
am no scholar, especially not an art but it's a technique.
I looked it up. It's called pointali is um just
little points of color and when you look at the
whole thing together you see the picture very clearly. Re

(27:00):
trials are very similar to that. You take each piece
of evidence, you look at everything in light of everything else.
Your job is to mix it all together and look
at everything in light of everything else. You consider the
totality of the evidence. All right, So the charges here,
we just have two very simple charges. One is the

(27:22):
interview outside of Noah's apartment when that woman told Sergeant
Everett that she saw a third guy in her apartment.
And the second charge is the interview at the police department.
Now I count nineteen separate lives in that interview. I'm

(27:45):
asking you to convict on one of them. Judge is
going to give you what's called a unanimity instruction. I
think there's two real doozies, all right, and you can
choose between either one of them. Really, I mean you
can choose between any of them. You just have to
be unanimous as to which lie you've decided on. Okay,

(28:05):
And I'm going to go through those in detail. We
begin our objective analysis here by legal concept known as
companionship and relationship with principle. In other words, how does
she know the guy who committed the crime? Al Right?
See hitchhiking is a stranger, old college roommate or is

(28:27):
it something substantially closer than that. Let's go through what
we know about her relationship. They've known each other for
five years. They've lived together in three different places. They've
been dating, the way she put it is seeing each
other on a daily basis for over two years. They
lived together in a very small apartment. They drive together

(28:52):
everywhere they go because he doesn't have a car. The
socialized together. They have the same friends, they act together
in the same play. They sleep together on a small bed.
We know that she is dominant in the relationship, and
I also submit to you, ladies and gentlemen. She's a

(29:12):
lot smarter than he is too. They are engaged, and
not only are they engaged, they're getting married in one week.
So when we're talking about the cascade of possible human relationships,
these people are about as close as you can get.
They are inseparable. The motive here, again, it's not an element,

(29:37):
but when we really think about it, for all the
reasons that somebody could have to kill somebody, bad blood, revenge,
bar fight, whatever. If you watch those shows on TV,
the datelines, the forty hours, all that sort of thing,
there's a different different episode every week, and there's always
a the motives to commit murder are as married as

(30:01):
as human beings are. What's the motive in this particular case.
It was to pay their rent, It was to pay
their bills, it was to stop their eviction. It was
to pay off their overdrawn bank accounts and go on

(30:21):
their honeymoon. As far as benefits go, she stands to
benefit every single bit as much as Daniel Wasniak. So
we've got this. We start out with a very close
relationship where they're inseparable, and he is planning this diabolical,
horrific double murder right under her nose. She's been charged

(30:46):
with being an accessory after the fact. So at the
very outset, let's give her the benefit of the doubt
and say she has absolutely nothing to do with the
planning and the murder at all. Let's start there. That
means Daniel Wasniak is planning this whole thing by himself. Okay,
So the question is how hard is he really based

(31:07):
on the objective evidence? How hard is he really keeping
her in the dark? How hard is he really trying
to make sure she doesn't find anything out? So let's
go through what we know. Number one, she knows he's
a liar, she's known him for five years. She knows

(31:27):
she can't trust anything he says, so at the very
beginning she's unnotice and she admits it. We also know
that he is a terrible liar. You saw the clip.
Now every day that he's with her, it's not gonna
be He's not going to be ground down after a

(31:48):
two hour interview with really experienced, hard working police officers.
But you've got to actually see him lying to her
in action and what did you see looking at his feet?
And this is involved Sam, and he's mumbling, he's a
lousy liar. He's a bad actor, which is why he's
doing community theater instead of winning Oscars. And he is
a lousy liar and she knows it. Okay, so the

(32:15):
resputing of lies. He is not. So when he's going
through this whole thing step by step, okay, she's smarter.
She pays attention. Okay, So as we go through that,
ask yourself, how much is she really being fooled? So
he plans both murders right under her nose in an

(32:36):
apartment where she lives, on a computer that she uses. Okay,
her quote on that was I used both as computers
all the time. That's page fifty four for interview. So
we all know how Google works, right press do a
search for A, you press the letter A. The latest
searches on as pop up. Right, we got how to

(32:58):
hide a body? How loud is a gunshot? She's using
this computer, ladies and gentlemen, So there you go. It's
pretty stunny because what people can't see is how he's
the facial expressions as he's speaking, as he's talking about
the possibility that she would not know, and he's has

(33:18):
this smirking expression which is sort of like, come on, everybody,
we know the truth here, and the truth is she
knows throughout this whole thing. There's no way he's keeping
it from her, and he's now enumerating why they should
believe that on a logical level as well. But it's
very much a communication of we all know it's quite

(33:39):
obvious here, and that's that she knew from the beginning.
So to watch that is pretty incredible because this is
where it really departs from our case. We are really
in the heart of a very new and different version
about Rachel Buffett and what queue she was picking up on.
Now it's kind of like, come on, stupid and really

(34:00):
maps it out. He does. He does. We mapped out
the same thing. That's what's so fascinating. We are we
made the same arguments about why she would have known,
and he told our jury that those are the types
of things where you give the benefit of the doubt
to people like Rachel Buffett. Let's go back to the courtroom.

(34:23):
He targets two people that she knows. Alright, so again
this is the analysis, and how hard is he trying
to keep her in the dark? And we're gonna we're
gonna give her the stuff in our analysis, But what
else we know? He walks Sam right into their apartment
right before he murder him. He puts her in a

(34:44):
position that she's going to know. He's literally the last
person to see Sam her before he disappears. Why does
he do that? He's up in Sam's apartment, he's learning
Sam to the military base. If he's so worried about
her figuring this out, why does he go down to
the apartment Sam's driving, doesn't have a car. Right before

(35:09):
he commits murder. He walks the victim right in in
front of her face. Is he trying to keep her
in the dark? We know, ladies and gentlemen. He comes
back to that apartment with a variety of items, and
if he's trying to hide from her, just makes no
sense that they ever crossed the threshold of the camp

(35:32):
to Martinique apartment building. Right, he comes back to four
hundred bucks in cash. She sees that, she knows that.
In fact, she even knows that it winds up being
three eight. He's got Sam's car Okay park down the street.
Maybe she doesn't see that he's got Sam's wallet. We

(35:54):
know that because it's found in the backpack, and that's
something that he has to take from him at the theater.
He's got his wallet and his idea. But let's say
she doesn't see that he's got Sam's keys, And again
that's one of those things that ultimately we're gonna give
to her. Let's say she doesn't notice the keys. How

(36:16):
about Sam's computer and Sam's cell phone. They're broke, they're
getting married, They're beyond broke, they're in debt. She's on
the hook for that bail bondsman. Right, So it's a
subtle little comment, I'm on a payment plan to the

(36:37):
bail bondsman. They're about to get married, and he walks
in with a computer, that's Sam's computer, ladies and gentlemen,
and he puts it as he hid it in a drawer.
Do you put it down in Sam's car? Do you
find an alcove to put it in? Outside? He puts

(36:59):
it on a shelf where anybody in the living room
can see. And right next to it there's a bunch
of wires sticking up. How hard is he trying to
hide this from her? What woman who's about to get
married to a guy like this isn't asking that question?

(37:19):
Whose computer is that? I mean, that's a question that
would be asked, ladies and gentlemen, whether you're broke or not,
whether you're about to get married or not. Your husband
and wife walks in with a laptop, that's a totally
normal question. Look, I mean it's an apartment building. He
doesn't have to bring it inside at all. I think,
and I don't have to prove it. I think that

(37:40):
if he had the time, he's gonna start sending email
messages pretending to be Sam. I mean, that's why he
took it. I don't have to prove it, just a theory.
But he walked right into that apartment with a dead
guy's computer, and he doesn't make any effort to hide
her from her at all. How hard is he trying

(38:00):
to keep her in the dark. There's too much there
to Let's not talk about it right now, because that's
a law. I mean, this is incredible what he's doing,
how he's framing Rachel. Now is what you want to discuss. Well,
I can't believe what I'm watching. We've we've hit a
different spot now, you know, if you looked at me,
my mouth was open. I can't believe literally, what's what

(38:21):
he's doing right here? This is crazy. This is at
a different level to me to hear this argument at
this point and to say, basically, she had to know
from the beginning. There's eighteen factors. He's mocking any notion
that she could not have known at an early stage.
He's bringing the computer in front of everything he's listing.

(38:42):
You see a lawyer going to the jury. Are you
kidding me that the defense will ever possibly make an
argument other than Rachel Buffett knew from almost the beginning.
He's not hiding it. It's all out there. He brings
the person who's about to be killed. This isn't a
different level, right now to me, this is you know,
maybe I I'm forgetting the opening, but to hear this

(39:03):
in closing and you compare this to what we heard,
it's so vastly different in terms of what she had
to know. You know, we're going to get to it,
I'm assuming at some point. But what he says in
our case about what she may or may not have known,
it's hard to tell what she knew. What might she

(39:23):
have known being with a guy like him who knows
that's all speculative. And now he's turning to the jury
and saying, you are idiots if you don't realize the
obvious truth that's before you, which is that she knew
the whole time, or she was blinded by the light.
That's not what he's saying. I mean, realistically, he is

(39:45):
not saying that in any way. He's saying, this smart
person who would notice the computer that would notice all
these factors, not in a zillion years? Is she not
going to ask the question? And the fact that he's
not hiding anything says he's only not hiding it because
she knows exactly what he's doing. And so look at
one of the points he makes, see him disappears and

(40:07):
the last person that's with him is Dan Wozniak, and
Rachel Buffett is there when that's happening. So he said
that Sam was driving, so he had no reason to
bring Sam back down to the apartment. Right. This is
really incredible. I mean, this is really incredible. And for
people that are are listening, you're not sitting in the
jury proceedings in our case, so you can't see how

(40:30):
completely different this is to hear a lawyer say so compelling, Lee,
and he is compelling. That's one of the trouble spots.
He's really good here, he's really believable, and he's right,
by the way, this was all logical stuff. I mean,
it never made any sense that she didn't know it
didn't That never made any sense when you look at

(40:53):
all this these this constellation of factors. It never made
any sense. And you didn't need as many factors as
we have here. But what this is not the interpretation
he presented in our case, you usually are not going
to hear about it for a very very long period
of time. So I think you know, look, the nature
of the practice of law in a county as large

(41:14):
as Oranges, you're going to move to your next case.
You know all these lawyers, and that's not a fault
of them, that's all of us. You're going to move
to your next case. So you don't think that there's
any second thoughts or any kind of doubts with a
judge who has a ruling and then sort of looks
at and goes, Look, judges are just like anybody else,

(41:35):
and if they're interested in analyzing and reexamining their conduct,
then of course there's room for doubt in all sorts
of situations. I just don't know what Judge Connley's practices,
and he's not responsible for analyzing what takes place in
the following trial. He had before him what he had
before him in our case. But this is all new,

(41:56):
This isn't This is all new information that's coming out now,
and and it's pretty important information. And this is information
and evidence like closing and arguments and opening arguments are
considered evidence, right, So he didn't have the benefit of
this new evidence, right because he was just working off

(42:17):
of the preliminary and his trial. So they're not evidence
in the sense of there not evidence related to the crime,
but their evidence related to the issue of inconsistent arguments.
So it's it's new evidence that on the appellate level,
it's this argument that Mr Murphy's making is certainly going
to be presented in the Waznia case, and therefore the
judges Connolly's ruling in your case it really doesn't have

(42:40):
any impact, right, it doesn't have any impact because of
the fact that we have such new information since that
since your trial. Well, I don't know that it won't
have any impact because one of the things. We're getting
a little technical here, But because we raised it in
our case, it's something that can be brought up on

(43:02):
the direct appeal. There's a direct appeal, and there's a
there's habeas corpus appeal. And so because we raise it
in a new trial motion after the trial, the first
level of pell council can raise it. This new evidence,
which is the evidence of the closing arguments and things
that took place in the trial in Rachel's trial are

(43:24):
things that can be brought at that second level of
appeal and the habeas proceedings. So let's go back to
that trial. Now here's another thing. Let's think about it.
He's planning this murder, right, He's spent weeks putting this
plot together, right, He's gonna kill Julie as a decoy

(43:45):
to explain why nobody can find Sam, but he's still
taking money out. The tragedy of that is that it's
a stupid plan because he's got his cell phone. All
he needs to do is send some text messages on
his cell phone and the only people that are gonna
be looking for him are poor Stephen Roquell, her our

(44:06):
son was supposed to come as soon as the police
see those Afghan war Vett, who decides he's broken up
with his girlfriend and wants some time alone, is the
lowest end of the priority. He could have drained the
entire bank accounts by the time they figured that out.
Girl in apartment brutally murdered with potential dangerous, armed man

(44:30):
on the loose is going to get every cop in
California looking for him. So the tragedy is it's it's
a it's a horrific plan because Julie did not need
to die, but it was his plan. He's had time
to think about it. So all the places, and again,
if he's trying to keep Rachel in the dark, of

(44:51):
all the places that he could kill Julie next to
their own apartment. Sam HER's apartment is probably the second
worst place in the world. Right, He's got his keys,
he's got his cell phone, and he's got his car.
He can lure her anywhere anywhere he wants, right, think
about it. And she is a loyal, dedicated friend. And

(45:13):
you saw you see that. The glimpse of her personality
is look at those text messages. She was a She
was a beautiful young woman who was trying to help
a friend. And if he had said meet me in
the parking lot downstairs, He's got Sam's wallet, He's got
Sam's car. He can kill her in the parking lot

(45:34):
downstairs and frames Sam just as easily. If he's worried
about Rachel finding out. Instead, where does he lure her?
Learns her to Sam's apartment, which we know is directly
above their apartment. Okay, so the entire world that he
can choose to commit this murder, he picks pretty much
the worst place to do it. If he's trying to

(45:56):
keep Rachel in the dark, I mean he lives directly
above him. He's hustling Julie along to commit the murder
at a time that Daniel Wasniak knows having lived with
her for two and a half years. She's guaranteed to
be awake at midnight at eleven o eight. Where are

(46:17):
you just about back? And you come by? I don't
want to be up lade? Is he trying to keep
this from her? We know there's no efforts of silence
at firearm, Ladies and gentlemen, there's no pillow with a
hole in it, there's no feathers, and he's done research

(46:40):
on it. What do you know about three eighties? It's
a super charge thirty eight and without anything scientific and
spending a week on decibls and things like that. It's
really loud, and he shoots her twice in the head
at midnight, directly above their apartment. Ladies and gentlemen, How

(47:01):
worried is he about Rachel finding out about this? How
hard is he working to keep her in the dark again?
Injury selection, we talked about this. We gotta think, we
gotta put the pieces together, use our common sense, look
at the details in this case. You heard testimony yesterday

(47:28):
that during the barbecue on Thursday night, Sam leaned over
the balcony and said, hey, how can you guys even
invite me? If you can hear a guy say that,
I think you could hear two gunshots at midnight. We
were sorting a time when Rachel is gonna be awake
to a place that she's going to be able to

(47:49):
hear it, and he murders her. I don't know what
would that be forty ft away. And by the way,
it's May, it's not February when doors are going to
be open. He is making a compelling argument that anyone
who would view this other than Rachel knew all of it,

(48:10):
was in on knowledge of it. So let's just start
with that that she's fully knowledgeable about all of this.
The evidence, the quantity, the quality of it is so compelling. Jurors,
you absolutely must believe that she knew about it all.
He never hit it from her. She had all the
tools to find out. So again, compelling argument. Good job.

(48:32):
It just should have been what you acknowledged in our litigation.
But if you're a juror in Rachel's trial, I would
be thinking to myself, he's proven to me that she's
a murderer. I think what yours do in this instance
as they go, We've got someone who may very well
be involved in a murder. We had ed Everett on

(48:52):
the stand when you were crossing him, and he said,
do you want me to tell you what I really
think of her? And he he he pointed his finger
at your client and said he she should be sitting
right next to him. And they believe that to this day.
And you know that, and I know that. Let's go
back to the courtroom again, still going with the idea

(49:17):
of how hard is Daniel was trying to hide this?
We know, based on the evidence of this case, ladies
and gentlemen, he murders two people, and he cut off
a human head, and he makes no effort to hide
his shoes. How hard is he trying to hide this

(49:38):
from her? And we're gonna give her the shoes when
we get to to what she has to know. But
how hard is he trying to hide this from her?
At what point did we get into the zone of
you gotta be kidding me? H. We also know he

(50:04):
drove over to Westley's house two times, not just once,
but according to her twice. Al Right, on the surface,
that doesn't really mean much until we sit back and
we think about this. His whole plan to get away
with this is he's going to have Wesley withdraw the money. Right,
If he's trying to keep Rachel in the dark, isn't

(50:26):
that like death to his plan? If Rachel Buffett meets
Wesley Frylick, what conversations can they have or wasiacts and
not gonna be found out? If he's trying to keep
her in the dark. Think about it. I'm so happy
to be working with your husband. When am I going
to get paid? Who's Sam her? What? What can he

(50:51):
say to her either at his house or at their wedding?
That isn't gonna blow it for Daniel wa Na. He's
trying to keep Rachel in the dark. But he drives
over there twice. And let's think about this, the stipulation.
What happened was we know he leaves, he gets money
on Friday, we know he goes back up, does the

(51:13):
grizzly task of dismembering Sam's body, and then he gets
money again on Saturday, and we know Rachel is not
what the money does that? Okay, Sunday, there's no money
taken out, so we only have three days left before
he's arrested. Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Okay, Daniel Wazniak goes to
Wesley's house three times, twice with her and once with

(51:35):
her brother. How hard is he trying to keep Wellsey
from her? When we think about this, Okay, remember totality
of the evidence. Here, is this a guy that is
keeping her in the dark? Wesley blows it for him.

(51:56):
If she has any contact and he's driving up twice
of her, once with her brother to drop off an
invitation to the wedding, Wesley equals ruined in his planning.
If he's trying to keep it from Rachel. We know
we borrowed the axe and the saw. Of all the

(52:19):
axes and saws in the world, he's trying to keep
this from her. At a time where he's supposed to
be teaching an insurance class, he goes over to the
house where her parents live with her brother, and he
takes an axe and a saw. An insurance class and
a lumberjack class are two totally different things, and he
leaves that house with them, trying to keep her in

(52:41):
the dark. If he does a batman and he manages
to crawl over the fence and nobody sees him, then
he returns them with blood on them. And look, her
family is innocent. They don't know anything about this? How

(53:03):
hard is he trying to keep Rachel from finding out
about this? Because this isn't the whole thing gonna fall apart.
If her mom calls and says, and she did call,
he said Dan was here, and she goes, oh, that
was weird. He's supposed to be teaching insurance class. If
she says Dan was here and he took a saw
and an axe, we call that a clue. How hard

(53:26):
is he trying to keep this from her? Uses her
brother to drive him back to Wesley's and collects more money,
And again, interesting little detail, we got the bachelor party
going on. Noah's driving separately, Daniel Waszia didn't have that
money on him when they arrested him. That money was
found in the car. So now he's left five hundred
bucks in cash in the brother's car. Is he worried

(53:47):
about her finding out that he's got some new source
of money? If he was worried about that, folks, that
money would have been in his sock or in his underwear.
I think Daniel wild Nick worried at all? Think is
Daniel Losnia worried at all? Pretty effective line that he

(54:09):
keeps repeating all of it's effective. It's really effective. It's
really good. In fact, he's going further in some respects.
I would say he did a better job than I
did in arguing about um, Yeah, why Rachel had to
know me. He's putting so many factors and he's adding
so much. He's looking at everything. I like to think

(54:31):
I did a good job, but he may be doing
a better job than I did here. He really might be.
He's putting it together in a really compelling fashion, and
maybe if with a lot of reason. I think his
reasoning for what he's saying is right on the money.
So you know, he says to the jurors at some point,
at some point, you have to say, you've got to

(54:52):
be kidding me to believe anything other than It's like
he saying, give me a break, Yeah, give me a break.
So why would he say is something different? In our case?
Would say, it's not fair to reach these inferences that
are the same ones he's asking of this jury because
he really wanted the death penalty in our case. When

(55:13):
when courts look at this on appeal, they look at
it from a harmless air standard, and there's um all
sorts of difficulties. It's really you want to do trials
right in the present time because look what we've been
talking about. This will not get likely fully handled for
um a couple of decades. And there's there's the appeal
won't happen for a couple of this part of the

(55:35):
appeal because this is all new evidence that fits into
this habeas corpus aspect of it. There's some legal changes
afoot that may mean that things go a little bit
more quickly than they did in the past, but it's
going to take a long time. And that's one of
the big problems here with this process is that you know,
on one end, victims families don't like the lack of

(55:57):
closure in the process because it takes a long time time.
But it works in both directions. So for a defendant
who had something go wrong like this, he doesn't get
that answered for a long time. Now, he's never getting out.
Let's be real clear about Daniel Wisnack. He never gets released,
but the death penalty is on the table until it

(56:17):
comes off of the table. Let's go back to court now,
I want to move into let's start analyzing. That's what
Wnia is thinking. Now, let's go through some of the
details of this case and talk about what Rachel Buffett
had to know. Again. She knows he's a liar. We

(56:38):
know he's a terrible liar. She knows they're beyond broke.
She knows that he has no job. She knows that
he hasn't that she has no job, Knows they're getting evicted,
knows she doesn't want to move back in with her brother. Right,
you saw one picture of that house or two, Alright,

(56:59):
she talks about that in the of you. She does
not want to move back to that house, and nobody
could blame her for that. She knows that a pending
bail payments d U I, his failure to appear, all
the rest of it. Knows they have a wedding in days,
knows he just borrowed two thousand dollars that he has

(57:19):
to pay back. And she knows, ladies and gentlemen, he
has mysteriously come into a recent source of cash Friday.
She knows he borrowed that money. Ladies and gentleman from
Chris Williams. Okay, and we had some some cross examination

(57:39):
this from Redina. Excellent cross examinations, every one of them.
But he braced Chris Williams a little bit on that
pressed him a little bit as totally appropriate for him
to do that. But Hey questions the effect of, well,
she didn't know the money came from Chris. You remember
what the answer was, He said, absolutely, she knew was
came from me. She was there when we first talked

(58:01):
about it. She knew why I went to the apartment.
We talked about it when I was there, and then
she watched him hand me the money. Okay, we know
she knows Chris Williams is there to collect the cash.
She sees Wosniac leave with Sam her. She sees Wosniac
come back without Sam, but with four hundred bucks in cash.

(58:26):
And this is kind of this is interesting, ladies and gentlemen.
And look, when this is all said and done and
everything's completed, your job is done. For any of you
who choose to stick around. I'll be curious in your
thoughts of this, for anybody who choose to share. While
he is gone. She logs onto his Facebook when he's
committing murder in a different city. Now it's it's mumbles, okay.

(58:53):
In his interview with her, as we see that, okay,
almost imperceptible. What is a part of his plan to
commit these murders. He's worked for Verizon. His scam, Remember
Detective moralsis brief testimony on what the fraud that he

(59:13):
claims he's engaged in with sam The scam is, you
get Wesley to withdraw money from an ATM in one location,
and then you make a phone call in another location.
You can prove to the bank that it wasn't you
that took out the money. So, in Wazniak's head, electronic
alibis are very very much part of his plan. She

(59:37):
logs onto his Facebook as if he's him within ten
fifteen minutes of the murder of Samuel. Her ponder that one.
Now in our analysis, I'm gonna again jump ahead here.
We're going to give her that We're gonna say that's
a coincidence, accident, or he put her up to it.
A lot to digest there. Let me just start with

(59:59):
that this is a technique he uses a lot. I'm
going to give her that he's really not. He's putting
it on the record. If you're giving her that, then
you wouldn't bring it up. What's the point that it's
not evidence that you want them to consider what he's saying,
is I've got so much. He's in an accessory for
murder case, so he's got to make it work for
the accessory for murder. But anybody listening to this would say,

(01:00:23):
this is incredibly compelling, circumstantial evidence of her involvement in
the murder. Let's go back to court. She sees him
come back, and the way Chris Williams described was next
demeanor was that is the most upset he's ever seen
another human being. And we know that's because he just

(01:00:43):
killed a guy. He's just engaged in his first rodeo
in the wonderful world of murder, and he's freaked out
about it. Chris Williams just wants to get out of there,
and she sees that so he leaves with Sam. He

(01:01:06):
comes back without Sam, but with all of a sudden
a bunch of money, and he is massively disturbingly upset. Okay,
it's like piece by piece totality of the evidence. She's
no dummy. And as we start putting this together, folks,

(01:01:26):
what does she have to know? At logs onto the
account again ten fifteen minutes within the time that that
murder is committed. Now we know exactly when he entered
the base. That was one thirteen. Okay, time to park
the car, Time to lure Sam upstairs, climb that ladder,

(01:01:49):
engage in whatever conversation they're having off close. We know
that the target changed from pet tra and we didn't
do a lot stipulation wise on that, but it changes
to Julie after he goes home, because the first text
between them is from Julie to Sam's phone saying, hey, buddy,

(01:02:10):
what's up? And Wosniac responds saying, helping Dan and going
to my folks for the weekend. But there's no attempt
to lure her yet. So he goes back to the
Camden Martinique compartments and he decides, and we're gonna say,
for the sake of argument and out of fairness, he
does it totally on his on his own. But in

(01:02:34):
that to create that electronic trail, right, he's creating electronic alibis.
So what does he want to do? He returns to
the base, and that first text message to Julie was
when he went back to the area of the base.
Daniel Wosniac knows that that phone is going to be
checked and it's gonna correspond with Sam's location and he

(01:02:56):
knows his body is eventually gonna be found because he
can't take that body back down that ladder, so he
sends the text to Julie when he's up at the
military base. That text was sent at four It's the
first one to lure her. In Ladies and Gentlemen at

(01:03:17):
four three, Rachel Buffett logs on a day and was
next Facebook account in the city of Coasta, Mesa. They
then drove to the play together. They acted in the
play together. She's very upset about something at the play.
They drive back together. They go to the apartment together ah,

(01:03:40):
and she sends a Facebook message to Julie. At eleven ten,
Wisniac sent a series of text messages back and forth
to Julie on a totally different looking phone with totally
different functions, with totally different sounds, and they go back
and worth. There are twelve messages that go back and

(01:04:02):
forth from the time they get back to the apartment
to the time he leaves the apartment to go murder Julie.
There are twelve text messages. And even though it wasn't
that long ago, it seems like a long time ago.
Daniel wasnis phone is an Android slider. It's a smartphone,
first generation smartphones. They don't look alike, they don't sound alike.

(01:04:26):
They operate completely differently. Sending text messages. Most of you
probably had one of these at some point. It's a
pain in the butt because you've gotta press to get
see you gotta press it three times. It's far more involved.
It's done. Phone four sounds and if you press it

(01:04:47):
on silent, it vibrates and lights up like a little
disco ball. There are twelve text messages between Daniel Wozniak
and Julie as Rachel Buffett is sitting next to him
in the apartment. According to Rachel Buffett, none of those

(01:05:08):
things makes sense. So, I mean the thing that makes sense,
as he's always talking about common sense, but the common
sense is is what he's saying here, which is that
she knew she was involved and maybe she's thinking. So.
One of the things he says in this excerptse he says,
we're going to, out of fairness say the texting to

(01:05:29):
Julie Koby Koby issue. We're going to say out of
In this excerpt where he's talking, he says, we're going
to say out of fairness that the texting to Julie
Kibuishi to lure her in, We're not going to use
that in terms of um, in terms of the accessory.
He's not doing that out of a sense of fairness.

(01:05:50):
It's really important to understand this. He's not doing that
out of a sense of fairness. The luring would be
evidence of a homicide of his, of her involved in
a homicide, and then she's not guilty of accessory, so
he's not actually giving a break. He knows one of
the elephants in the room that the defense is kind
of limited and arguing is that because of choice is

(01:06:14):
they don't want to argue she can't be guilty because
her involvement is in murder. Such a friendly message. It
was an incredible argument that he made. He put this
in a constellation of facts that said why she wouldn't
have been involved. He used the Facebook message at eleven
ten in our case to say why she should not

(01:06:34):
be viewed as being responsible. So here he is now
in Rachel Buffett's case, with this evidence, which he knows
is incredibly compelling. He can't even contain himself. But then
he says, jurors, I'm going to give that to her.
Why would you give that to her because that's evidence
of her involvement in the murder. That would mean that

(01:06:55):
this is evidence that she was doing this for herself,
not for Daniel Wosniac. She's protecting herself from her involvement
and her um complicity in the murder being found out.
The Facebook message obviously says she's in it or she's
incredibly close to it. It does not. You cannot reasonably

(01:07:15):
tell anybody with a brain that she was uninvolved because
of the Facebook message. He did that though, and I'm
going to take it one step further that I I
did have an interview with Daniel Hulkyard and he said
that Rachel did confess to him. It slipped. He said
it wasn't an intentional confession, but she said when she

(01:07:38):
sent that message to Julie, Dan was standing right over
her shoulder. I think that's pretty big too. I mean,
that's basically saying like they were in it together. It's
uh to see to see them both now, you know,
two years later, and to compare compare the two is
UH is an interesting journey. Let's go back to Matt Murphy. Okay,

(01:08:01):
leven a, wait he's trying to hustle Julie to the apartment. Rachel,
we know based on the Facebook activity, is sitting at
that computer because she's she sends Julie that message at
he's trying to hurry her up at eleven o eight.

(01:08:22):
Here's here's the scene. This is their living room, the
computers in the living room. Small apartment, one bedroom, one
living room, eleven twelve. Two minutes later, thanks, getting off
the freeway. Okay, And these are the these are the
text messages you're gonna have those was answer to Julie.
How long are you're thinking, Julie thirty minutes? Okay. And

(01:08:46):
there's this whole exchange back and forth. What's happening every
time she's texting Y or it's ringing or it's beeping whatever.
Rachel Buffett doesn't see that phone. Rachel Buffet doesn't hear
that on give me a break now we know if

(01:09:08):
we if we break it down, Hey buddy, where are you?
I'm freezing? That was that's Julie going to Sam's apartment
and knocking on the door, right and he doesn't answer
because he's been dead for twelve hours. Where's Daniel Waznac?
It's right downstairs in his apartment, according to rachel A. Right,

(01:09:31):
the text to Taca goes out at twelve oh four
oh Sam is crying. That's Daniel Wazney accent in that
text because Sam was dead. That's not Julie. So we
know Julie was murdered almost exactly at the stroke of midnight. Alright,
he gets that, He heads upstairs, lures her in, blows

(01:09:54):
her brains out, sends the text to Taca, and I submit.
He has to get out of that apartment because he
doesn't know if anybody heard the gunshots. Right, He's worried
about it. It's part of his planning. So he leaves.
All right, Now, what do we know about lividity. We
talked about that a little bit. To process the decomposition,

(01:10:16):
that's what blood settles and tissues. We know absolutely to
a scientific certainty, ladiest gentleman, those genes weren't cut off
for a minimum of two to four hours. So he
either stays there for a really long time, which doesn't
make any sense. When he goes back to his apartment,
they're a little love nest. And then he leaves, and
he goes up and he sets that whole crime scene.

(01:10:38):
He steals Sam's passport, which he's got to find. He
cuts those jeans off, he rips her shirt, he writes
the messages, He drops that invitation off, he writes does
that sketch? Now? It could be maybe he goes back
at eleven o'clock the next day, But that doesn't make
any sense either, because he knows there's a dead body
in there. He's got to get in and out when

(01:10:58):
nobody's gonna notice. So I have it on multiple sources
that indeed he did go back in the afternoon that Saturday.
He went and dismembered Sam, came back with Tim. I
have witnesses that saw them in the car together, and
Tim helped him clean up the scene and pose the scene.

(01:11:20):
As Mr Murphy suggests, how does she not notice that
he leaves the apartment? How does she get how does
she get around that? And more importantly, what does she
say when the police got from that question? Was Niac

(01:11:43):
leaves the apartment again? Two to four hours later? They
sleep on a twin bed. Now his his driver's licensees
to ten. He's six to alright, that's another forts on me,
from six to he's to thirty. If he's announced, but

(01:12:03):
it's give him to ten. That's a big guy in
a twin bed. I remember they were parting on Thursday.
We got that photo of her drinking wine and in
the cast party on Saturday? Did we hear any evidence
that they were drinking, using drugs or anything like that?
On Friday night, she's not passed out. She doesn't know that.

(01:12:28):
He leaves, not once, but twice. Do you think we're
not going to figure this out? Saturday, she knows that
he goes to her parents house when he's supposed to
be teaching the class. He we know he took a
wood wood acts uh wood saw. We know he used
it to chop up a human body. They call and

(01:12:48):
teller he was there, he dismembers a human being. He
comes back with in cash again. You know he's got
blood on his shoes. Saturday night we get the cast
party plan of state NOAs. Saturday night we get the
phone call from Jake. Woman's been killed in the apartment.
Nobody can find you in Petro Julie, she believes the

(01:13:09):
money from Chris involves loan sharks. And what are loan sharks?
Predatory people who use violence to enforce debts. Right, she
knows that Daniel was and cannot satisfy the bet. She
talks about that in the interview. She knows it's bucks
and she knows that he only paid Now she watched

(01:13:30):
him paint to Chris and lies about that. But she
knows that the debt has not been satisfied. Right. She
knows Sam is still missing, or she knows Sam is missing.
She sees w wasna conclude he was the last person
to see Sam. She is annoyed. So this is the
testimony from Violet concerning Saturday night. Now in the in

(01:13:53):
the world of what does she know? What does she
say at that? Oh my god, Sam? Or sorry, wasn'ta
is doing this whole act like, oh my god, was
I the last person to see him alive? He's doing
his little performance in front of the other people. And
she says, no, Dan, that's not what happened. Oh my god,
you're screwed up. Memories are messing up my story. Shut up, Dan, Okay,

(01:14:16):
interesting choice awards, but I'm not asking you to convict
on our language on that. Just interesting choice awards for
something that's completely in the dark, and calls it a story.
By Monday, she knows her friend Julie Kiebewish has murdered.
She knows Julia is a wonderful person. Knows her family
must be suffering horrific grief. Knows Sam's parents are desperately

(01:14:39):
trying to find him. Knows the police are trying to
find Sam. Knows Sam was kind to them, know Sam
is still missing, Knows Wozniak has to be connected by
this point, and she does nothing. What else do we
have to consider? Number One, She absolutely knows their financial circumstances.

(01:14:59):
She absolutely knows that Chris Williams's owed money. She absolutely
sees Dan leave with Sam. She sees him come back
with money. She absolutely sees that flip phone. Ladies and gentlemen,
there's no way around that. And remember, interestingly, Chris Williams

(01:15:21):
remembers testimony Yesterroynd that he saw that flip phone. He
saw that flip phone, and he was with them. He
couldn't wait to get out of the apartment. Right If
he sees that flip phone, how does she not see
that flip phone? She sees him extremely upset. She knows

(01:15:44):
Sam has disappeared. She absolutely knows that he left at midnight.
She knows he left that apartment at midnight. She knows
that Julie was murdered, and she knows somewhere somehow, all
of a sudden, it's got money. Let's talk about Wednesday,
and let's get into the actual statements that Rachel Buffett makes.

(01:16:08):
They go to know us together. So this is now
where is Rachel Buffett mentally At this point, All these
people in the canidates that Jake Sweat, Dave Barneheart, all
the people you've heard about, they've all been trying to
figure out what happened to Julie, what happened with Sam?
It did Sam kill Julie? I mean, based on Violet's description,

(01:16:32):
these are two really nice, happy people who had this
relationship that they all saw. It was like a brother
and sister. Okay, so they're all talking about it. They're
all trying to figure that out, all right. So they
go and this is swirling around in her world. She's
listened to Dan Wazny. I could say, my God was

(01:16:54):
either last person to see him. So this is a
process of recollection as they're trying to figure this out.
So the police enter know us, and it's one of
those things. It's like it's in the real world, you
know on TV, I guess the police are always organized
and have it perfect. We've got two sergeants who are

(01:17:16):
checking out an address. They're not anticipating that they're going
to actually do interviews. Real world scenario things like that happen.
They walk in and they think it's a business, which
I think we can understand. And they've just walked into
a home and there's two people there, including the subject
of the investigation, and there there is Daniel Wosniac. What

(01:17:39):
happens right in front of her eyes? The police walk
in and Daniel wosnia says, how did you guys find
me here? And if that's not enough to tip her
off that he's involved, what does he say next? Can
I talk to you guys privately outside? What woman in

(01:18:04):
the history of engage women about to get married doesn't
follow that up immediately as soon as police leave with
what the hell do you mean? What can you what
do you have to say to them that you can't
say in front of me? Right? She hears him say that,
how much more information does she need at that point

(01:18:25):
to know that he's involved in this thing? Again giving
her full benefit of the doubt that she was not
involved in the planning or participation participated in these murders.
We're talking about knowledge. How can she not know? At
that point he leaves the apartment, She sees that cell phone,
she sees that money, she sees his emotional state. Right

(01:18:49):
when Sam disappears, she knows Julie has been murdered. She
said all that time to figure it out, all the
way to Wednesday, and he says, can I talk to
you guys privately outside? What more does it take in

(01:19:11):
the real world, with our life experience, why would he
need to talk to the police outside unless he has
information pertaining in their investigation. Again, we have to think
if they use our common sense, use our life experience,
there is no way at that moment that that woman

(01:19:34):
does not know and remember, legally, all she has to
know is that he's involved in the murder of Julie.
She can believe Sam did it and somehow Dan helped him,
and under the law, that means she knows he's involved
in the murder. She knows he is. He is a

(01:19:56):
principal to a homicide. She has enough to know the
legal defin Asian doesn't have to go to law school.
All she has to know is that he was involved
in that murder before or at the time that had happened.
And if she says anything at that point, any affirmative,
why to help him? We're done? So was was she

(01:20:22):
done at that point? Yes, she was done. She was
done long before that point. That's what he's been talking
about up to this point. This just happens to be
a marker because the police are there and there's about
to be some questioning. But he's saying, he's arguing up
to this point very powerfully, that this is just way

(01:20:43):
down the road. I mean, he's talked about all of
these things right now, the money, Chris Williams, the exchange
of communications, the cell phone, the tax all of it.
That's all coming before he gets to this moment. Oh,
yes she knew. But do you think that you and
he differ with regard to her intent with not telling

(01:21:08):
police the truth and lying to police. That she was
lying to police because she was protecting him or protecting herself,
Because the way he's charging her and what he's instructing
jurors two adhere to is that she she was Those
lies were committed to police based on the fact that

(01:21:28):
she was protecting her future husband. So the question of
what he believes is, you know, it is a difficult one,
especially when somebody is arguing two different ways in two
different courtrooms. But what he's laying out in terms of
details to support accessory after the fact are the same

(01:21:49):
bits of information that you would use circumstantially to prove murder.
He has counts that he's elected to proceed on, and
he's going to prove them. Okay, let's see how he
does that. Back to the courtroom. So at the point
that he walks out and he has that conversation with
the police, and what does she do in the middle

(01:22:10):
She walks out and says, is everything okay? And remember
what Sarge Nevertt said. They're just outside the door. She's
not listening to what they're talking about. And there's two
ways we can analyze it, ladies and gentlemen. She either
already knows what his cockamami story is concerning this third guy,

(01:22:34):
or she hears about it for the first time as
he's talking to them. Let's again, let's give her the
benefit of the doubt. She heard it for the first
time as Daniel O. Nanc is talking. She knows he's
involved and she hears him say something that she knows
is not true. She knows there's not third guy. She
knows that they bring her out and what happens she

(01:22:58):
tells an identical story. Sam gave us a hundred dollars
for our wedding early wedding present. They left Sam's gonna
help and run errands. There was a guy in the
apartment that I didn't know. Those friends with Sam and
then follows up with Sergeant Everett asked her had you
seen him before? He's they're just trying to put it together,

(01:23:21):
and she says, I've never seen him in the apartment
complex before. I didn't see that person before. Is a
personal statement of belief and observation. Now, when you when
you do this job long enough, pretty soon they asked
you to start training the new deputies on trial tactics

(01:23:43):
and stuff like that when you do enough trials. And
the cross examination that we heard of Detective Everett was
excellent by Mr Medina. Okay, I'll tell you why younger
defense lawyers might jump in and say you're lying, are lying,
you're lying, But he didn't. The cross examination basically was

(01:24:05):
you guys are super busy. You didn't write the report
for three days, Okay, So that I think that what's
coming and I certainly don't want to put words in
the mouth of an attorney as fine as Mr Medina,
but I think what's coming at you is it must
be a mistake. But you had an opportunity to assess
the testimony of Lieutenant Everett. So there we're talking about

(01:24:30):
the report, right, and there's it seems to be a
bit of a discrepancy because he's telling when when Lieutenant
Everett's on the stand, he's telling Jrors that he wrote
the report three days later. But there is a date
on there that's three and I do talk about that
in episode two of the podcast, and it seems that

(01:24:51):
that date could have been put on by a supervisor.
So in fact, maybe Lieutenant Evert did write the report
three days after the event that he's talking about. But
but there's that date that brought into question whether or
not the report was really done three days later or
a year later. So he's saying that David Medina did

(01:25:13):
mention that, but it doesn't really suggest that in the transcripts.
What's hard to know the date because the date the
only day you see at the bottom of the report
is the date in two thousand and eleven. So it's
just a question of whether you trust Everett on it.
And I guess what. That's why he's talking to jurors
right now and saying you have to trust Lieutenant Everett,

(01:25:35):
because if he wanted to lie, he could lie far worse.
He could say that she said things like I knew
about the murders or I was involved in the planning
of the murders or whatever. So he's basically instructing jurors
you have to trust Lieutenant Everett. So let's talk about
that for an instant as it relates to your trial.
Because of course there was that incredible moment when when

(01:26:00):
you were crossing him and he sort of broke out
of his box and and pointed his finger at Daniel
and said, do you want to know what I really
think about Rachel? I think she belongs sitting next to
Daniel Wozniak. But then that was like on a Thursday,
I think Thursday afternoon, and then come Monday he sort
of shifted what what he said about all that, So

(01:26:22):
do you want to talk about that? Right he and
he walked it back. You know, he had had this
powerful moment he turned to me and said, you really
want to know what I think in response to one
of my questions regarding Rachel Buffett, and he says she
should be sitting right there next to Daniel Wozniak. I
think we've talked about this a little bit before, but
you know, my perspective is an officer's experience is at

(01:26:43):
Everett doesn't say that in a courtroom unless he believes
there's evidence that supports it. The disappointing thing was that's
what he believes, and I believe that's what he believes
the evidence shows. But on Tuesday that was not going
to be presented the same way in the courtroom. Let's
go back to the court. So count one, ladies and gentlemen,

(01:27:05):
I'm gonna ask you believe Lieutenant Everett totally up to you.
You get to assess the credibility of witnesses. Lieutenant Everett.
You watched him testify and Mr Medine is not going
to argue this. But just in case, if the police

(01:27:27):
wanted to lie folks to get Rachel Buffett in an
unrecorded interview, they can just say, yeah, she said she
knew all about the murders before they happen. If they
want to screw over, right, they're gonna lie, have it
a really good lie? Or how about yeah, I knew
we killed him. Okay, I'm asking you to believe Lieutenant Ever.

(01:27:50):
It's interesting that Mr Murphy says to believe Detective Everett,
because Detective Everett, of course, in our case, took the
stand and said he believed that Rachel buff That should
be sitting right next to Daniel Wosnia. But another interesting
thing is what happens when we're making our closing argument.
And I say, while I'm closing in the Woznia case,

(01:28:13):
so when she I'm talking about Rachel Buffett talks to
Detective Everett, I do think we're all in agreement that
at this point she knows about the murder and she's
trying under their theory, hoping to help Daniel Wosnia get
away with it. We think the involvement is much greater.
Detective Moral seems to think the involvement is much greater.
So on this point, the entire prosecution team believes she

(01:28:36):
already knows about the murder. Mr Murphy objects, He lodges
an objection in my closing argument and says, your honor,
I'm going to object once again is completely misstating my argument.
And there's several objections during the closing argument, and they're
all on this point, which is that I keep saying,
everyone here has to be an agreement that Rachel Buffett
knows about the murder in Daniel Waznias involvement, and so

(01:29:00):
I sit here going she has to believe that in
order to be convicted of accessory after the fact. So
what were you possibly objecting about? And he was objecting
because in our case, her knowledge was not something that
he wanted to have clearly understood with our jury. Hell,

(01:29:25):
he was at that point trying to steer clear of
any remote sense of guilt on her part in the
role of these murders, right, And even more than that,
he's actually trying to give the impression to the jury
that we just don't know about her level of knowledge.
It's it's even further right, And this is what we've

(01:29:45):
been talking about throughout this podcast, the two different interpretations
of identical pieces of evidence throughout then the objection saying, look,
we're not we're not in agreement, and in essence that
objection is we're not in agreement. That she knew in
advance of the contact with detective Effort outside the apartment.
But you're saying your point is is just straight black

(01:30:07):
and white legal legally speaking. If he's charging her with
accessory after the fact, that means she had to have
knowledge of the murders and she is in fact an
accessory after the fact that she's now covering up the
murders to protect her fiance, right. I mean, that's the thing.
You can't have the conviction if that objection is really

(01:30:29):
what you want a jury, any jury to believe, because
the key element of the accessory after the fact is
that at each of these moments that support the two
different crimes, she knows that Daniel Wozniak has committed the murder.
It's the knowledge. It's the knowledge is the key. When
we make the argument in our case, the objection objects

(01:30:49):
and says that's not our position on the case. Do
you remember how the judge ruled on that objection. He
ruled against us. I mean, judge kindly ruled against us,
and I understand, and that in part because he didn't
have all of the information about what had gone on
at Rachel Buffet's preliminary hearing at that point, so it's
not I don't he didn't have access to that. Well,

(01:31:10):
he didn't have that at that moment of the objection,
so he's hearing something. And look, Mr Murphy's going, that's
not our position, and a judge might understandably say that
doesn't it's irrelevant, it doesn't matter, and there's no evidence
supporting that that's this position because I don't have that
in front of me at this moment. But you were
just looking for that acknowledgement. Well, that was an undebatable point.

(01:31:30):
That's the thing was so odd about our litigation. If
you're prosecuting her for accessory after the fact, she has
to have the knowledge. So there wasn't like I was
doing anything that was um improper or wrong in any way.
Everybody has to believe that Rachel Buffett, there was no
games you were playing here. It's just simple thing. Look,

(01:31:52):
I know you don't want to give in on her
involvement in the murder, and you can certainly take the
position that she wasn't involved in the murder. That's the
position you want to take, but you can't not take
the position in our case that she did not know
about his involvement in the murder at the time she
has contact with Detective Everett and at the same time
charge her with accessory after the fat's right, they don't work.

(01:32:13):
They don't work either, so there's nothing to object about.
And you know, so you've got that, you've got the
objections that are leveled. I think three times during my
closing when I say, look, we're in agreement about these points,
and he essentially says we're not in agreement. And in
Rachel's trial he showed that he was in fact in
agreement with your point in your closing argument. Well, his
whole closing argument is about how we're in agreement, right,

(01:32:35):
His whole closing argument is about the plethora of facts
that support her knowledge, which of course he needed to
do in order to get the conviction. And that's why
listeners have to realize the level of frustration you are
feeling when you listen to those opening arguments and closing arguments,
because in fact, pretty much throughout it, he is agreeing

(01:32:56):
with what you said in your closing arguments for your
client in the Asnia Capital case, well, he's absolutely in
complete agreement with us about her knowledge. He is he
can't move from that, he couldn't today say, for example,
I don't believe she had knowledge about um the crimes
and Mr wasni actual role before she spoke to Detective

(01:33:20):
Effort and before she had her interview, which Occounts wanted to.
He couldn't say that because he just got a conviction
for it, right, and he needed that to be the case,
and he made a tremendous argument in support of that.
But in our case he objected to me saying that
that's what the prosecution believes. Let's go back to Matt Murphy. Remember,

(01:33:40):
the elements of this crime are what does the person
know at the time they act? In other words, at
the time she's lying, not a week later, not two
days later, not a month later. It's at the time
she's telling these lives. What does she know? She knows
they're sitting in a police station and Daniel Wisnik has
been arrested. She's not under arrest, but she knows he's

(01:34:02):
been arrested, and we know on tape he tells her
he's involved in Julie's murder. He tells her he helps
Sam clean up. He admits he's engaged in felony conduct
at the before they even started interviewing her. We see

(01:34:23):
that on tape. So when we're talking about what her
intent is, any lie that she tells to benefit Daniel
Wasniac with knowledge that he's involved, that is the intent
that's required. He tells her he's involved, and the police
follow up almost immediately at the very beginning, they again suggest, look,

(01:34:48):
we suspect that he he's good for this as a
as a killer. As they're trying to untangle it. And
it's kind of interesting because the two interviews are going
on simultaneously. Sergeant Everett keeps leaving and coming back, and
he goes, and he comes back with additional information, and
you see actually his mind clearing up, and he becomes

(01:35:08):
more and more convinced as the interview goes on, okay,
and he keeps sharing that information with her, including at
one point he has information that only the killer would know.
So each one of these things adds on to everything
else the objective evidence than what we witness point after point.
At what point is it absolutely undeniable that she knows

(01:35:32):
that Daniel Waznac is involved in the murder? Right that recording,
which in our case was sort of a central point
for both sides. We talked about it quite a bait
for us. It was the key um to evaluating who
Rachel Buffett was, and you would think that it would
have made its way into this case. That the recording

(01:35:52):
them going back and forth Daniel Wisney act the three
separate jailhouse calls that that we have shared on this
podcast and that you're referring to. But there's one in particular, right,
it's the first call while Rachel Buffett's on the road
and Daniel Wai is going to say on tape for
the first time his involvement. That tape doesn't make it
into this case incredibly, neither side introduces it, but he

(01:36:16):
does reference it in his opening arguments. Mr Medina does.
He says things like she's the reason that they had
this treasure trove of evidence. She even got him to
confess he wants that, so he wants the treasure trove,
her responsibility for it. The difficulty and I'm you know,
I would understand why he made the decision he did.

(01:36:38):
The difficulty is explaining what on earth she's doing in
that recording as she's trying to figure out what to say.
And we've talked about it a little bit, and she's
trying to feel her way through that conversation, believing that
folks are recording, from my perspective, trying not to implicate herself.
Are you realize they're recording the song conversation anyways? You're

(01:37:05):
being an absolute ask to try and lie again, Yeah,
I am, because they're step in there. The simplemently means
something else with Sam, something bad. Um, you're talking about
the credit card scheme. They already know all about it. No, No,
it's more than that that. What I'm saying is, Um,

(01:37:32):
if they can't find up, they can't. I know. But well,
I don't know what that is. I thought it was
a murder weapon. I don't know what you're talking about
other evidence. I don't know what Tim has decided that then,
that he had a murder weapon. So that's exactly what
Tim told me. So I'm gonna go tell the detective now.

(01:37:54):
So okay, what do you want me to do? Um?
I don't want you to tell the detective any thing,
and I don't want them involved like that. I mean,
now I'm now I'm dead. Now I'm really dead. Maybe
are already dead. So if you're Matt Murphin, you play
the recording from the jail on the What are you
going to argue about it? Because of what's being charged her.

(01:38:17):
You have to argue that that call is a complete
fraud in terms of what Rachel Buffett's saying, right, because
she is saying things that would suggest she's learning about
the murders for the first time. She's also playing dumb
in that phone call, like she's hearing it right, She's
never what this is extraordinary? Right? Well, we think playing
dumb obviously, we think she's playing dumb, and he would

(01:38:40):
he being Mr Murphy has to argue that she's playing
dumb because he's filed a count based upon events the
day before, So that means the day before she knows
about the murders, right, and she knows of Daniel Wazniak's involvement.
Fast forward one day further, there's the call from the jail.
That call, her response has to be a complete fraud.

(01:39:03):
Do you remember what Mr Murphy said in our case
and our closing argument. I think it was closing regarding
that call. He says, look, these guys are pretty good actors,
but our officers don't think this is acting taking place
right here, because he one of the counts is in
front of Noah's apartment. That happened that Wednesday afternoon and

(01:39:24):
then Thursday, here's the recorded jail house phone call. She
has to have knowledge at that point, so that has
to be he has to argue here that this is
a fraud. But in our case he's arguing, no, this
is sincere and if she was involved, it would be
too risky to have this type of conversation. Well, that
doesn't make sense. These two don't work together. If what

(01:39:46):
she's doing on that recording is real and authentic, she's
really sincerely surprised. She's not guilty here, There's no way
around it. If that is is, if that is a
person learning about the murders and Daniel Wazniak's involvement for
the first time, then she's not guilty. Absolutely has to
be not guilty of accessory after the fact. So why
don't they play it in the Rachel Buffet case? Why

(01:40:09):
doesn't he want to say this, Hey, look at her acting.
Look what an incredible actor she is. That's the one
kind of because do you think that that would be
the point where he would be reversed on the capital case.
It would be very very difficult to get up in
Rachel Buffett's case and say, in fact, she's acting when
you compare it to what he said in our case.
On the other hand, why don't you want to separate

(01:40:31):
our our case for a moment. You can't. He was
the prosecutor there too, right, you can't but separate of
you know those reasons. Just if we were to sit
here for a moment and go why would the prosecutor
not want to play the recording of all the defendant
you're prosecuting one day after you have this incident outside

(01:40:55):
of nose apartment? Why would you not play it? Why
you have her talking, you have acting. It's great. Evidence
of acting doesn't make sense unless there's another reason for
not playing it. And I think we know what the
reason is. It was going to put him in an
enormously difficult position in terms of what he did in
our case. Let's go back to court. So what's the

(01:41:20):
key if she's innocent, the key to finding the killers
and she gets to accomplish all this. She gets to
make sure she is safe, She gets to make sure
that Wasnak is safe. She gets to make sure that
her friend Julie's murder gets solved. She gets to make
sure that the killers are brought to justice. Right. What's

(01:41:42):
the key to that? If she's innocent, who's the person
who knows who the loan sharks are. Who's the key
to the loan sharks? Who did the police need to
talk to? What's the real reason she doesn't want the
police know about Chris Williams, or I should say reason
she knows Chris Williams is central to this whole thing.

(01:42:06):
She knows Chris Williams loans and that money. She knows
Chris Williams is there that day. She knows exactly how
much Chris Williams gets paid back. But she also knows
Chris Williams is immediately gonna say what third guy? She's

(01:42:30):
told the police there was a third guy, and if
they find out about Chris Williams, that lies blinding out
of the water. I think what else she knows? Chris
Williams saw Waznak leave with sam and Chris Williams is
in fact the last human being to see Samuel her alive.

(01:42:53):
He sees Daniel returned with cash, knows Chris Williams saw
how upset he was, knows Chris Williams will say interestingly
that she was the one on Wosniak's phone. Why is
she picking up his phone? Chris Williams knows that when
his phone is on, it's her on the phone. One

(01:43:14):
of the murders has happened at that point. Now, as
Chris Williams saw how upset she was at the play, folks,
she doesn't want the police to know anything about that stuff. Okay,
when we're talking about intent and telling lies, Okay, when
we're saying she's not involved in the murder, you don't
get that. Then say, I'm lying for myself to protect myself.

(01:43:36):
I'm not involved in the murder, but I'm lying about
non crimes to protect myself. That doesn't make any sense.
The only reason she has to tell these lives is
because she's backing up Daniel Wosniak. So it's interesting that
Matt Murphy says that Rachel Buffett doesn't get it both ways.
She can't say she's not involved in the murder, and
then also asked that, um, she's doing these things for

(01:43:59):
somebody other than day Ner Waznia. But that's the sort
of the choice the prosecution makes, right, it's not her
that's making that choice. Is the prosecution that's arguing she's
not involved with the murder in this case because they
want her for the accessory after the fact, So right,
Rachel Buffett doesn't get to do that. But the prosecution
could have charged her with murder and then she would

(01:44:20):
have to apparently argue it some other way. Why do
you think the prosecution didn't charge her with murder? Look
that it's really hard to get into the prosecutor's head completely.
He might have just looked upon it as not a
sufficiently strong case with the evidence he had. I know,
you've accumulated more evidence. He may have felt that he

(01:44:40):
didn't have the evidence he needed. The presentation he makes
in this case includes a lot of good evidence. That
is I've talked about could easily support a murder charge
as much as it supports an accessory after the fact.
And you know, we've talked a little bit about that
accessory after the fact charge. I know you want to
talk about it a bit. And it's that is she
of when she's making the statements, when Rachel is making

(01:45:03):
the statements that she makes. Can she making those statements
to assist herself and still be convicted of the accessory
after the murder. I think she can, I think legally
to the extent she's trying to keep Daniel Wisnia being
from being arrested or prosecuted because it does ultimately help her,
right because if he's arrested and she is involved in

(01:45:25):
the murder, or she's been involved in covering up the murder,
she obviously would be concerned about it working back to
her better for her that Daniel wasna can not get arrested.
Of course, from our perspective, there's plenty of evidence to
support her involvement in the murder, but even her involvement
in covering it up, she would have ample reason to
be concerned. So I think that can support the accessory
after the fact. You've also asked, you know, could you

(01:45:46):
have the accessory after the fact and the murder charge
for the same person, And there's sort of a split
of authority in California, But there are cases out there
that suggest if you have facts that support the accessory.
So for example, here the line to Detective Everett, you
could argue that that supports the accessory after the fact,
and then separate facts that support the involvement in the

(01:46:08):
murder you could have both, for example, the Facebook messaging,
the timing extraordinary timing, and the Facebook messaging by um
Rachel back to Julie, because Julie had Facebook messaged her
earlier in that day, the day of the murders, and
then later that night she had messaged Julie back, right,

(01:46:30):
So you could use pieces of evidence like that, argue
their circumstantial effect and use that to support a murder
conviction and also argue for the accessory after the fact.
And we have, just for the benefit of my listeners,
we have discussed that Facebook message at length, and it
was a very friendly, warm message that Rachel sent to Julie.

(01:46:52):
And so Mr Murphy said in the capital case for
Daniel Wisniak that that couldn't have been an alibi message,
that that seemed genuine. It seemed like she they were friends,
so she couldn't have been involved in the murder of Julie.
That's how he framed it there. And now he's saying
the coincidence and in her trial, in Rachel's trial, Mr

(01:47:13):
Murphy saying it's just overwhelming of a coincidence that she
sent that message forty five minutes before Julie's murdered and
kind of around the same time, right that Also, Dan
was luring Julie as Sam on Sam's phone to Sam's apartments.
So the timing of both, as well as Rachel admitting

(01:47:36):
that Dan was standing right behind her when she sent
that Facebook message to Julie just seems very different than
how it was originally framed in your trial. And I
think that she sent that as an alibi message to
cover herself. There's really no other logical conclusion, because the
other logical conclusion that he would ask the jury to

(01:47:58):
believe is she's not involved the murder. This is just
pure knowledge. As if she's sitting there, she knows the
murder is taking place, and she's doing what what would
she be doing. She's then waiting for him to come back,
and it's still pure knowledge. There's no aiding in a
betting when what she's doing is creating an alibi and
and she being Rachel just and when Rachel creates an

(01:48:20):
alibi with Daniel Wazniak present, she's doing it for both
of them, right, It's not reasonable to believe what she's
doing as they're sitting this close together, is doing it
just for herself and That's exactly Daniel hulk Yard's point
when he was telling me this, sharing it with me exactly.
It's it's an alibi for both of them. Matt Murphy

(01:48:42):
didn't argue this point, and I understand why because it's
really way too close to the murder, and he's still,
for lots of reasons, does not want to say Rachel
Buffett is involved in the murder, right because now you're
kind of getting a lot closer to what we've been
arguing and what we argued in our case. So he
stays away from it. But really, what would it be

(01:49:03):
other than aiding and abetting the murder. It just doesn't
make any sense. I mean, I would love to hear
him argue at some point as to why it doesn't
support her role in the murder, all of the other
evidence that's there, all of the incredibly compelling arguments he's
made about her knowledge. Then at that moment when the
murder is about to happen, she does a fake message.

(01:49:25):
And it is a fake message, right, I mean, it's
a real message, is just full of fake sentiments. And
he's clearly saying that, I mean, clearly Mr Murphy is
insinuating that of course, again in our case, he says
that Facebook message friendly well, and it's part of the
evidence that says she doesn't have involvement. He actually is

(01:49:45):
saying that he goes through all of the pieces of
evidence that speak to why Rachel Buffett wouldn't be involved
in the murder, and he includes in that the Facebook
message that doesn't make any sense. And now we actually
again have a wit is Daniel Hulkyard where she, in
her own words, told him point blank, Daniel was standing

(01:50:06):
behind me when I sent that Facebook message. I think
that's all we need to know. At this point. Will
Matt Murphy's argument seems to be he doesn't even need
that because really what he's saying is, obviously they're right
next to each other. He's not saying that he's short
of a witness on this point. He's saying, come on,
let's look at all the evidence. Of course, there's there
side by side when this happens. Let's go back to

(01:50:27):
court who needed their money their money back, and you
listen to the police as they go back over and over,
they understand that that is potentially a critical witness of
this thing. And we know objectively they were absolutely right
because Wazniak's diabolical plan on the computer and all that stuff.

(01:50:50):
The catalyst of this whole thing was Chris Williams. The
need to pay Chris Williams back is what put this
from horrible plan into actual action. Were too awesome. People
got murdered in their twenties, So they're trying to get

(01:51:14):
the information about where they where did the money come from.
They know Wasnaxt involved. They every sense they have, and
you see it. They know he did this. He either
helped Sam or he did it on his own. And
he keep telling her that, and what's her answer, Um,
I don't know dance thing. He said. He borrowed money

(01:51:35):
for somebody. He borrowed money from somebody to pay the
round on Tuesday. I think it was going to keep
us in the apartment, so we needed to give the
money back on Friday. Okay, it's not like I'm asking
about a year ago. And this is Detective Morales as
you're saying, were you ever up in the apartment? I
don't really remember. And finally he calls her out on it,

(01:51:57):
and remember their position on this. She's not in hot seat,
She's sitting in one of the detective seats. They're being
nice to her, they're giving her life advice. They're treating
her like she's nothing but a witness and a victim
of Daniel Wozniak. They are giving her the benefit of
the doubt. And he said, it's not like I'm asking

(01:52:19):
about a year ago or even a month ago. I'm
asking about last week, and not only he's asking about
four days before. And we know the evidence is everybody
in that apartment complex is thinking about that Friday, and
that's Saturday, and Sam and Julie and she's there for that.
I've had a lot of stress in my life. The
last three weeks have been unbelievable. Question what's that stress from? Answer? Money.

(01:52:45):
Dan admitted he lied to me at some point earlier
in the week about something. Okay, and the next, of course,
logical question for a police officer, He said, Um, he
said he borrowed money from someone else that I knew
that I was comfortable with him borrowing money from. Then
he said, he brought money from somebody that I didn't know.
That we're bad people, Okay, we know exactly who that

(01:53:05):
person is. That's Chris Williams, right, And of course he's
comfortable borrowing money from Chris Williams. You met him. He's
a really nice guy. Not greater the leg breaker, Okay,
Sergeant Evitt in particular, and this is I mean, they
keep going back to it. She knows the police want

(01:53:27):
to know who that is. She knows Chris Williams is
a central witness to this. And he says, in particular,
who are the people he brought money from, the person
that he said he borrowed that. You know who was
that person? What's her answer? The embellished made up people,
Jim and Mark. That is an affirmative falsehood. They specifically

(01:53:53):
narrow it down to Chris Williams. They asked her the question,
and she tells a lie. She doesn't say, I don't
want to talk about it. She doesn't say I don't
want to I don't want to hurt my my neighbor,
I don't want to hurt my fiance. She tells them
a lie, and she throws throws these two names out
there again. That is accessory after the fact, Ladies and gentlemen,

(01:54:18):
she knows about a murder. She's sitting through things. She's
sitting through texting, she's looking at phone calls, she's hearing
the sound of gunshots above. She sees Dan come back
to the bed. Dan she admits to Dan hell Care
that when he came back, she saw blood on his
shirt when they went in a shower together, right And
Dave barne Hard said to me that she later after,

(01:54:42):
you know, after the way, after the murders and once
Dan was arrested, that she actually did see Dan when
Dan came back he had blood on his shirt right
before they went into shower together. I think that's pretty unbelievable.
I know it's not evidence in this trial, but it
certainly took me for a loop when I heard it.

(01:55:02):
Matt Murphy and our case goes through these pieces of evidence,
he says, Um, you know, look at the conversation with
Chris Williams in which she says, I'm upset about something else.
Murphy says, you know, is that because she's in a
murderer or is that because Daniel Wozniak drove up to
the base and left her with Chris Williams just so
he left her with Chris Williams there for like three hours.

(01:55:25):
That gleer she gives him as he walks in the
door that Chris william describes who knows what that is.
Can we take that improve means she's involved with them?
I mean, I don't think so. He did not want
the jurors to hear that Rachel had a significant role
in the planning and execution of these murders. He went

(01:55:46):
further than that. In our case. He wasn't just saying
no role in terms of the murders. That we don't
even know what she knows. And that's what he's doing
here in terms of what I'm talking about in the
Wazna case, who knows what's in her head. So I
had shared an elevator after the penalty vere it came
in and we were all leaving the courthouse and the

(01:56:07):
four woman was in the elevator, as was Matt Murphy,
and she said, so what about Rachel Buffett? What's going
to go on with Rachel Buffett? And his response was,
I don't know. We'll have to We'll have to see,
you'll have to see. Sometimes it's just collateral damage. I'll
never forget that. Well. I don't think he ever wanted

(01:56:31):
to prosecute her. I mean, I know that he went
quite a long time telling families that I'm offering deals,
but she's not taking them, only to find out that
Rachel Buffett walked up to Steve Hare and one of
those pre trial hearings and said, mister Hare, I want
you to know I haven't been offered anything. And at
that point there was this sort of big explosion outside

(01:56:54):
the courtroom because Steve Hare felt violated. He felt like
I've been listening to for month after month telling me
that you presented an offer and she wasn't accepting, and
but she ultimately got it. She ultimately got a hum
dagger of a of an offer, right. I mean she
was offered a misdemeanor with no jail time and the

(01:57:17):
vocations it dismissed in a year. So it's an extraordinary
offer to make to a person who is involved on
some level in covering up two murders if you accept
just that level of responsibility. So one of the questions
is why why would you make an offer that's that
phenomenal and reasonably? Again, the offer is accepting a misdemeanor,

(01:57:38):
no jail time and expunged after a year. Look, this
is what I've heard, this is what you've heard. I
can't say, and I don't see the firm agreement before me.
But if that's true, if that's accurate, and we have
some reason to believe that it is, that's that's an
incredible offer, um in a case of this consequence and
people being killed in the way they were killed. So
that's it's an incredible offering. It's reasonable ask the question

(01:58:01):
why would you make that offer just weeks before the
trial was supposed to take place, particularly when you hear
these arguments, because the arguments are so compelling for her knowledge, right,
they're just so compelling. I mean, I listened to him
and he's incredibly convincing, and he's not convincing. He's very good. Yeah,
but it's not just because he's good. He's got the
facts exactly. He owns the facts in this case. The

(01:58:24):
reason he's gonna win is both because he has the
facts and because he's a very good uh courtroom presenter.
There's no question about it. But you have to ask yourself,
why did he want the case to settle? That's the
question of the hour of the day of the year.
Let's go back to the courtroom. And this is an

(01:58:46):
ironic day to be making an argument like this as
Americans again, today is an anniversary. Is something really bad right,
every single one of you remembers where you were when
these hors came down. What day could be worse for
Rachel Buffett than that Friday Personal nine elevens. This is

(01:59:09):
the day that Daniel way It comes back more upset
than Chris Williams has ever seen another human being. She
doesn't remember that day. This is the day that her
friend gets murdered. How many people does she know they
get murdered? She doesn't remember every detail of that day,
giving her the benefit of the doubt that she's walking
into that she had nothing to do with the murder.

(01:59:31):
She doesn't remember that day. That's the day that her plans,
her life gets completely turned upside down. She says, she
can't remember. This is four nights before when everybody in
her world is trying to remember that day. Right, ladies
and gentlemen, I submit to you, that is absolutely nonsense.

(01:59:57):
Everybody in that a problem with complex is talking about
what happened on that right, That, ladies and gentlemen, is
an affirmative falsehood. Okay, Wesley, and he'd been telling me, Um,
He'd been telling me at least a few days in advance,
that he had a class on Saturday, Um, and I
know I now know that he was planning on Wesley

(02:00:18):
to do the A T M thing. Okay, so number
one Sergeant Everett at the time. Sergeant Everett's reaction to
that was pretty immediate, and he said, wait a second.
If he's telling you a lie before Julie got murdered,
that's really strong indication that he was involved in this
murder before they happened. He's sharing that information with her,

(02:00:40):
and she is unnoticed at that point. He didn't teach
an insurance class. If he's telling lies before the murder
related to the murder, who is not going to figure
that one out? Okay? And his next question, Okay, so
you knew Wesley, Um, I'd seen pictures of him. I'd

(02:01:01):
been to his house once twice when he wasn't home.
We went to drop off a wedding invitation to his house.
So she's seen photos, she's been to his house twice,
and he's coming to their wedding. So what happened to
Who's Wesley? She knows exactly who Wesley is. Exactly who
Wesley is. Is that little performance that the two of

(02:01:23):
them put on at the you know who's Wesley? Why
did you lie to me about Jim and Mark. That
Ladies and Gentlemen is exactly that. It's a performance by
two actors. Who's Wesley. But he didn't tell you about
any of this. To scam and get money, he told

(02:01:46):
me Friday he brought money from loan sharks. That's all
I need. Again, that's completely not true, Sergeant Everett. Is
there a way that we're gonna find that you're connected
to this? I know Sam, I know Julie. I live
in an apartment where evidence is apparently, well, that's an
interest a little singer. She doesn't see any of this stuff.
Why does she think they're gonna find evidence in the apartment?

(02:02:11):
That's kind of a clue. I mean, they say they're
looking for a gun at one point, there's a comment
that Wozniak he used gloves to help clean it up.
Nobody ever tells her there's evidence in the apartment. Oops,

(02:02:32):
how dumb does she think you are? Not? Mr? Medina,
Miss Buffett? Was he did he tell you that he
paid this money to these people on Friday? Look at
this um He said it was taken care of. He
got an extension of Monday or something like that, or
he he paid some of it. He said, yeah, he paid.

(02:02:55):
I actually saw him with that much money. He would
um and here we go. He had four dollars somehow
on Friday he got a hold of four hundred dollars
and he dropped a twenty as as we was going,
so it would have been three a d I'm sorry
that should say he as he was going, so it
would have been three eighty. And then he said he
extended somehow till Monday for the rest. And then Monday

(02:03:19):
came and went, and I was out doing my own thing, running,
running all day, and he said he took care of
all of it. Okay, what did Chris Williams tell us
about that? He hands some four hundred bucks, He sees
how stressed Wozniak is, and he says, dude, is this
all the money you have? Here's a twenty dollar bill
and Rachel is standing right there. That is an absolute lie.

(02:03:42):
That is a lie. Question. But he told us he
gave Okay, they're referring to Wasnias interview here, Detective Everett.
But he told us he gave the four dollars to
Sam so Sam could have money. That's what he told us.
But you're telling us he had four hundred, and look
at the wish she answers this one. Um, he told

(02:04:04):
me he gave it to the bad people he owes
money to, as like um par partial payments so they
could hold off until Monday. Not only was it not
four hundred, it was three eight unless he unless he
dashed over when he said he had to go meet
his parents to grab the money and give it to
Sam and then come back, that's possible. He could have

(02:04:26):
given Sam the three eight. Then he told me he
gave it to the other people he owed it to.
She watched him hand that money to Chris Williams, and
then they talked on the phone and they have a
conversation about it. Another absolute bald face in your face
life regarding Noah. They're talking about when Noah got arrested

(02:04:51):
here and pick up that money. And not only that,
when questioned by detectives, he forgot to tell us where
he'd been when we saw him drive and meet with
Wesley because he was driving. He was driving the smart car.
Wozniak was in the pastor seat right then. Ultimately, the
money's found in your brother's car, Buffett, and this shows
us where her mentality is but so he didn't like
out and outlie. He neglected to tell you something, Sergeant Evertt,

(02:05:16):
the same thing, Julie. What he's saying. He's saying that
he witnessed particular things on the body that only the
killer would know. So Buffett, and this is was she
merely shot in the head or was she also raped?
So I'd like to make clear all of the quotes
we just heard him say with regard to Wesley and

(02:05:40):
about the money and who did Dan give the money to?
And then of course Julie the last comment we heard,
which was she was asking police, was Julie just killed
or raped? As well? All of those comments that he's making,
those quotes are coming from transcriptions of her first initial

(02:06:01):
interview with police that Thursday morning, and so he also
refers to the first time she saw Dan after he
was arrested. They brought her in and they had an
exchange back and a fourth briefly, and so some of
those comments that he just made also came from that
earlier before her first interview, when she was solo with police.

(02:06:21):
So I thought it's important to make that clear, and
I want to talk about it because there's quite a
few things in there that he's obviously still mapping out
her guilt, her knowledge, and for me, one of the
biggest things. I've said this before in the podcast, I'll
say it again when people ask me, what do you
think is the smoking gun that proves that she was

(02:06:42):
involved with the murders. I've always brought it back to
this when she says when she's asked by police, who
did Dan give the money to? And she says, well,
it could have been the bad guys or the loan Sharks,
or it could have been Sam. I'm condensing it, but
that's in essence what she says, and to me, when

(02:07:03):
we all know she was there in the apartment with
Chris when Dan handed Chris that money, says to me,
she knows Sam's dead. She does know that Sam's dead there.
Matt Murphy agrees that she knows Sam's dead there. The
interest a question of how that evidence is used. Is
that evidence support accessory after the fact as its support

(02:07:26):
accessory to murder. I would say it supports both. So
Mr Murphy is about to take us back to that
Thursday morning made It's after Dan's initial arrest from the
night before, when he was charged with accessory after the fact,
since police believe that Dan was still helping Sam on

(02:07:48):
the run. So that Thursday morning, Rachel and Violet go
to the Waznak parents house to tell them the news
about Dan. Let's go back to court. They go along
reach and what happen they talked to was acts Dad.
They have this conversation, they leave, they run into Tim

(02:08:10):
and Violet being a human, here's Tim's got information, right?
So what does she say? Violet says, we need to
call the police immediately, and Rachel's reaction is, no, I

(02:08:30):
need to call him first regarding intent? Is that informative
for us? After the police have literally implored her on
behalf of the Kibowi she's in the hers about the
need for information. Her first reaction there is she with them.
First reaction when you're considering intent is I gotta warrant him.

(02:09:00):
She's not lying to help Daniel, wasnack, I need to
call him first. And then the way the way it
pans out, Violet is like, oh yeah, what's her what's response?
Do you want it to disappear because that's what's going
to happen, which, of course, at that time it would

(02:09:22):
have been fine with Rachel Buffett, why else called Tim?
So she's got Violet sitting next to her. And that's
another thing. I didn't want to stipulate to her folks
for variet of reasons, but I wanted you to see her, right,
so you can assess Rachel knows or their friends they

(02:09:44):
actually lived together after the murders. Violet is a force
of nature, and Violet is calling the cops no matter what.
And she knew that. So they drive off in that
car they get the information. Ten minutes go by before
they get to that gas station, and Violet is already
on the phone with her mom trying to get the
number to the police department. And Rachel Buffett knows that

(02:10:09):
Violet is a force of nature. I don't recall him
ever even mentioning Violet in your trial. I don't think
I ever even heard the name Violet in the Dan
Wasniac trial. Because in the Dan Wasniac trial, Rachel was
the one that provided the cornucopia of evidence and he

(02:10:30):
wanted a metal pinned on her. I mean, if you
were to listen to the argument encountering me in my
penalty face closing argument, he said, look, she's responsible, and
she he wasn't just saying she's responsible because she handed
it over. He was saying that she's responsible in a
good way, saying something good about her. No sense whatsoever

(02:10:51):
in our case that it was motivated by Violet. It
was motivated by a desire to do what was right here.
So when we go back now to Mr Murphy's closing argument,
he is discussing all the lies that he could tell
during her first interview with police that morning that Thursday morning,
from three in the morning till six am. And he says,

(02:11:13):
there's so many, just pick one. So let's go back
and and here is the finish of his argument. So
of the nineteen different lives that I counted, I'm asking
you to convict her on one and again you can,
you can pick the fake alibi. But I submit to
you the statement when they go back over and over

(02:11:35):
again about who Dan borrow the money from, those are
firmative false fools, ladies and gentlemen. And it's not right.
It is not right. That violates California law. And the evidence,
when we put the pieces together and spend the time
on this is overwhelming. So hiding physical evidence like Tim did,

(02:12:05):
or hiding the existence of a witness under California law
are exactly the same thing. So Count one is the
interview at Noah's. She absolutely knew he was involved in
a felony. She knew, she knew that there was a murder,
and she knew Wasna comes up to his eyeballs in it.

(02:12:27):
She lied Sergeant Everett and Sergeant Davis. The lie was
an affirmative falsehood about a non existent person which happened
to match Wasniaks lie, which was a calculated part of
his plan to get away with murder. Count two, with
undeniable knowledge of bosniaks involvement in her murder, especially after
he tells her he's involved in the murder, she led

(02:12:49):
nineteen times. She provided a false alibi. She hid the
existence of a critical witness. Police did not learn of
Chris Williams until ten days after the murders and five
days after the interview of Daniel Waznia. And I submit
to you, ladies and gentlemen, those families how to write
for the police to have that information. They did, all

(02:13:11):
right now, I really appreciate your patience, ladies and gentlemen.
I know this is this is a lot of information, Okay.
I think the law is simple enough. All right, you've
been you've been patient with me. Everybody's been paying attention.
Les listen very carefully to everything that Mr Medina says. Okay,
but when he's done, I'm going to rebut every single

(02:13:31):
thing that he says. Thank you. So that's the conclusion
of Matt Murphy's first round inclosing arguments in Rachel's successory
to murder trial. What do you think He's absolutely right,
there's overwhelming evidence of her knowledge. Um. I think quite

(02:13:52):
a bit more. He's hinting that at that again throughout
the closing argument. So he's absolutely right. It's just completely
from what he argued in our case. But that's a
problem because if he delivered the closing argument that he
did in the Washniak case, if those jurors heard the
Washniak closing our argument and not having heard David Medina,

(02:14:14):
they acquit her of both of these charges, they'd have
to essentially go against the prosecutor. If you heard what's
in our case put it before that same jury, I
don't know how they could convict. So what you're saying is,
if David Medina played the closing argument in the penalty
phase of your trial. He could have won this case

(02:14:34):
if the law allowed him to do that. To put
that before the jury, I don't see how he loses.
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z O l A Zola dot com backslash sleuth s
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e U t H. Thank you. In order for you

(02:16:51):
to believe the government's theory in this case, there are
some things that you have to believe yourn a reason
wall doubt. The first thing is you have to believe
that Rachel knew that Dan butchered two of her friends.
You have to believe that Rachel was okay with that.
You have to believe that Rachel then lied to the

(02:17:13):
police in order to help Dan beat the rap for
butchering her two friends. And you have to believe that
Rachel did all this in order to have a great honeymoon.
I want to go through the evidence with you to
explain how there's no way in the world that theory
is supported by the evidence in this case. First look

(02:17:34):
at the relationship between Dan and Rachel. It's based completely
on lies. Dan's lies. Every aspect of their relationship is
based on lies. It's not like a normal loving relationship
where there's trust, where there's loyalty. Dan has lied to

(02:17:56):
Rachel about everything. He's lied about his childhood, he's lied
about his past relationships. He's lied about his employment, he's
lied about his parents. He's lied about where he goes
when he leaves the house, he lies about who he's
on the phone with. Everything he does with respect to

(02:18:18):
his relationship with Rachel is fake. And the reason he
does that, and we know the reason he does that
is because he doesn't feel he's worthy of being with Rachel.
He confesses that tour Uh when he makes his full
confession to her while he's at Costa Masa p D.
He says, I did this because I couldn't be the

(02:18:40):
man you wanted me to be. I wasn't worthy. Now,
if Dan is willing to lie to Rachel about even
the smallest things, like who he's on the phone with,
who he is going to work with, who he's in
a car with, why in the world would he tell
her or allow her to know that he's killed two

(02:19:02):
of their friends. Why would he ever want her to
have any suspicion that he did that because he thinks
that that would keep her, that would ensure that the
marriage is going to happen in a couple of days.
If if he lets her know, hey, by the way,
I killed two of our friends so we could have

(02:19:23):
money for our honeymoon. Be okay with that? Of course
not if he's gonna lie about the smallest things, if
he's gonna lie about his wedding ring, why in the
world would he tell her that he murdered two people
to keep her. He wouldn't, of course he wouldn't. Now,

(02:19:49):
the key issue in this case is what knowledge did
Rachel have about these murders and when did she have
that knowledge. I submit to you she did not know
about Dan's involvement in these murders. She didn't believe about
his murdering of these two people until he confessed to
her on the phone after her interview with Costa Maza

(02:20:12):
p D. When he had this explosion of truth to
her and he went step by step with her over
the phone how he killed those two people. That's when
she knew exactly what he had done. And we know
that because we see how she acted prior to that
phone call. We heard there that he cited those jailhouse calls.

(02:20:37):
He he spoke about those jailhouse calls as if that
was the key evidence that proved that she had no
knowledge of the murders before that time, and that she
was learning about the murders from Dan at that moment. Fascinating,
that piece of evidence doesn't come in though in many respects,

(02:20:59):
she would think, Okay, that would be the piece of
evidence you would point to, But neither counsel wants that
piece of evidence before the jury. Could the attorneys have
introduced at least the transcriptions of the calls or that
wouldn't have helped either. Well, you have to introduce the recording.
So you've got to live with that recording. The evidence
is the recording, the transcriptions there to assist the jurors

(02:21:21):
in studying it. But they've made a decision, both of them,
I'm sure has given a lot of thought to that.
But it is the elephant in the room. Why in
the world is that recording not before them if it's
so compelling to either side. I do think it's compelling
for Matt Murphy. I think he just doesn't want to
touch it because of our case. Well, let's see what
more we can learn. Let's go back to Mr Medina's

(02:21:42):
closing argument. Count one is the conversation that she has
with Everett and Davis at her brother's house. The people's
theory is at that point she knows that Dan had
butchered her two friends. She knows at that point Dan knows,

(02:22:05):
because the theory has to be that he told her
or he left so much evidence around that she must
have known that he butchered these people. So how did
those two people act when they come into contact with
the police. They act pretty differently, don't they. The person
that actually has knowledge of the murders, what does he do?

(02:22:29):
How did you find me? Here, he says. He doesn't say,
how did you find us here? And then he immediately says,
I want to talk away from Rachel outside. And what
is he doing while he's talking to Everett? He's shaped
visibly shaking. He seems nervous, he seems evasive, consistent with

(02:22:53):
knowledge of the horrible crimes he's committed, consistent. How does
Rachel act the exact opposite? She acts in a manner
that someone would act when they don't have any knowledge
of this horrific crime that's just happened. She's not shaking,

(02:23:14):
she's not nervous. Everett even told us that she was
more accommodating than Dan. Two distinct reactions, circumstantial evidence of knowledge.
He's acting like he has knowledge of these horrific events,
she's not. Now what does she say to Everett? She

(02:23:41):
says what Dan says to Everett? And you've got to
ask yourself, well, why did she say that? Why did
she give the same story about this this third person? Well,
a couple of different reasons, A couple of possible reasons.
Number one, she's at the door listening, she doesn't know
what's going on, and she parents, what what Dan says?

(02:24:03):
That doesn't mean she knows about these crimes. That doesn't
mean she has the intent that Dan get away with
a double murder. Maybe the third person she's talking about
is Chris Williams, who was there. There was a third person,
it was Chris Williams. Maybe that's who she's talking about.
But to make the leap from that statement to her

(02:24:26):
knowledge of this horrific crime and her intent to have
Dan beat the rap on those two it doesn't make sense.
So it seems like Mr Medina is suggesting there she
is just not good for accessory, right, That's what he's suggesting.
That's of course, that's what he's going to argue, and

(02:24:49):
and he may believe that, and I'm assuming he does
believe and that's what he's supposed to do, and he's
making a very articulate argument about it. Um it's a
hard argument, obviously, even though it's the same r document
that Matt Murphy made in our case. I mean, he
also says that how could she be covering for Dan
when she spoke to the police saying, you know that

(02:25:10):
he's a liar, And she said quite a few things
in that interview with police that Thursday morning that weren't
terribly supportive, right. So Mr Medina's point is, if she
were looking to cover for him or protect him in
any way, why would she frame him that way. That's

(02:25:33):
that's his argument, and it's interesting. One of his points
is that, look how cool she is. And I don't
want to keep coming back to the same point, but
if you're Matt Murphy, what a great piece of evidence
you would have had in your back pocket on that,
because she's never more cool in terms of communications with
Dan Waznac than on and she is as cool as

(02:25:55):
can be. I mean some some listeners have referred to
her a morseless Well, she doesn't. You don't get from
her even a sense that she cares about the victims there.
You certainly don't get a sense that she's surprised about
his involvement in two murders. And so if you're Matt Murphy,
you would think, but he hasn't introduced it, ind evidence

(02:26:17):
for his own reasons. You'd want to go You want
to see how someone who's involved can look and sound
take a look at this tape, but it's not there.
Let's go back to court. Now. The second count is
the interview. This this taped interview. Again, the people's theory

(02:26:38):
is during the interview, and actually it's two. It's when
she first learns of the arrest for accessory and they
bring her into the interview room with Dan, and then
subsequent to that she's interviewed by herself. The people's theory
is for both of those interviews, she has knowledge that
Dan committed these horrific crimes. She is to intend to

(02:27:00):
lie to them so that he can beat the rap
and they can live a beautiful, happy life together. Now,
let's have your future groom be arrested at his bachelor
party the day before the wedding. Now we're gonna take
all of that stress and all of that context, and

(02:27:24):
we're gonna call you into Coasta Masa p D at
three in the morning and we're going to interview you.
We're gonna ask you very specific questions about specific times, dates,
and instances. Is that an ideal interview situation? And I'm

(02:27:44):
not saying Coasta Masa p D did anything wrong by
bringing her in, but I'm asking you to look at
it in the context of how it took place. Now,
she does talk about Chris Williams in that interview. She
doesn't mention him by name, but she does mention Dan
getting money from bad people. The bad the bad people

(02:28:09):
that she's talking about. That's Chris Williams, and he's a
very important witness because he provides the explanation for why
she doesn't want to talk about him. Again, we're dealing
with a young twenty year old. Okay, he says he's
in the mafia. He's lent money to your crazy, stressed

(02:28:31):
out fiancee who's freaking out, who has a deadline to
pay the money. He maintains the mafia life throughout the
entire day. He's sitting there in your apartment with you,
and he's not going to leave until he gets the money. Now,
we saw him testify. He seems like a really nice guy,
really nice. But why in the world would he lie

(02:28:57):
about being in the mafia. What affect did that have
on Rachel? What affect did that have on her ability
to tell the tell the police. Yeah, this mafia guy
was there. She's not going to say that. She's hesitant.
It's not because because she wants to provide an alibi
for Dan. She's scared, she's concerned. She doesn't know this guy.

(02:29:18):
Maybe she wants to to not have this guy be
a part of this. He's having an affair with her friend,
who knows the reason, But she does discuss the money
and where it came from. It came from bad people,
bad sources, and that's what Chris Williams said. He said,
I can get the money from unreputable people. I think

(02:29:38):
this is a good moment to discuss the fact that
Mr Murphy dropped count three. I have sources in the
d AS office who told me that he dropped count
three because count three revolved around an interview that she
that Rachel Buffett had with police on nine. And in

(02:30:02):
that interview, she said that she does admit that it
was Chris Williams. She does tell police that it was
Chris Williams that was in the apartment that day, and
she said the reason was is because she she was
told that he was in the mafia and his family
was in the mafia, and she was very concerned, very fearful.

(02:30:25):
She didn't know him that well and all she knew
was that he said that he got the money from
loan sharks, and she was scared, and so she just
didn't want to bring him into this and that was
something that Mr Murphy allegedly was concerned about because that's
reasonable to a lot of people, right, So he just

(02:30:45):
wanted nothing to do with count three for that reason,
because it was centered around that subsequent interview she had
in June nine. I sure would like to know your
opinion about why you think he dropped that third count.
I think certainly possible if you have that information, that
may be possible part of the calculation. I think the
bigger part, the one that makes more senses. He's had

(02:31:08):
the case at that point that he dismissed it for
six years, longer than the Wozniak case when it goes
to trial. He's thought out the case, he understands the facts,
he understands his arguments. Nothing's changed. But I do think
what he rethought was, why would she still be telling
lies on this late date, well after Daniel Wozniak has

(02:31:30):
admitted his involvement to her to the police. He's definitely
going to be prosecuted and has admitted to his involvement
in the murders. How possibly could statements that are deceptive
on this late date, before the purpose of getting Daniel
Wozniak out of harm's way, though, they have to be
forgetting her out of harm's way. So the reality is

(02:31:53):
that count was going to be very confusing to jerors
because because it was going to be very hard to
argue when that interview takes place, that third interview, she's
thinking about anybody but herself. And I don't think he
wanted that contradiction before the jurors because it's a slippery
slope because you can work backwards and go, well, if
this was about her, why would we not think the

(02:32:13):
earlier counts were about her? I see that's a valid point,
and potentially the reason as well. I mean, maybe there
were two reasons. Let's go back to court now. The
other thing, uh, that Rachel did that, especially with respect
to her interview, is she provided some pretty devastating facts

(02:32:38):
about Dan. If she really intended to protect Dan and
make sure that he would beat this this murder case
that she knows about, or this murder that he may
have committed, um, would she have disparaged him? Would she
have um explained that he's a liar? Would she have

(02:32:59):
said that to them? Of course not. If there's this
grand scheme. The two of them have gotten together and
they've talked about how they're going to beat this case
so they could live happily ever after. Wouldn't there have
been some discussion about, hey, don't let them know that
I was stressed out and about to have a heart
attack right after I came home from killing Sam. Don't

(02:33:20):
you think there would have been some discussion. I mean,
that's the people's cases, that there's this this plot, this
diabolical plot between these two people to get away with
his crime. She acted exactly like anyone would act under
those circumstances when she was interviewed. Chris Williams also said

(02:33:41):
some things about Rachel that Mr Murphy argued. One of
the things was for crying during the play. I don't
know if you remember that. Um, he indicated, Yeah, she
was crying when I went to see the play, and
she explained to him listening, I was emotional because of
what was going on that day. And the prosecutor talked
a little bit about Rachel and emotions, how she's an actress. Now,

(02:34:04):
Violet is this whole case. She really is. She's the
whole case because she provides the instance where we know
exactly what Rachel knew and what Rachel's intent was. Rachel
leaves Costa Masa p d after finding out her fiance

(02:34:25):
has been arrested for accessory to murder. Police are telling
her that he may be involved in more than that.
She's freaking out. She's getting married, well, was supposed to
get married the next day. So violets her friend. She's
banging on the door. She collapses to the ground. We
never heard Violet say she was totally faking it. I

(02:34:45):
didn't believe she was emotional. We heard Violet say that
Rachel was shaking, she was losing it. Is this how
someone would act if they had prior knowledge of a crime,
or is this how someone would act if they just
found out for the first time that their fiance may
have been involved in something horrific? So Violet takes her

(02:35:11):
and they proceed to do what anyone would do. Let's
notify our parents. Rachel goes to her parents place in
Long Beach, breaks the news. We have to start canceling
wedding stuff. Is that weird? Of course not. But here's
where the case blows open, and here's where the prosecution

(02:35:33):
case falls apart. So when Tim pulls up in his
vehicle and Rachel goes out to talk to Tim. Now
in this instance, we get an idea of what Rachel's
intent was and what her knowledge was. Tim says, Dan

(02:35:53):
gave me the murder weapon, the murder weapon. I have
the murder weapon. And the reason we know what Rachel's
intent was is because if there was a prior agreement
between Dan and Rachel that they were gonna hide what
Dan had done. If Rachel had known what Dan had
done and didn't want to tell anyone, didn't want him

(02:36:15):
to get arrested, get convicted, she wanted to protect Dan.
Why in the world would she tell Violet what Tim
just told her. Remember, Violet couldn't hear what Tim said.
Rachel easily could have come back to Violet and said, oh,
Tim's high out of his mind, he's acting crazy. She

(02:36:37):
could have made up a million other lies. But what
does she do? She tells Violet Tim has the murder weapon.
Dan gave it to him. Is this what someone would
do if they want to protect Dan, if they don't
want anyone to find out that Dan's involved in this
horrific crime, Why in the world would you tell anyone

(02:37:00):
that now the prosecution wants to spend it that she
did not. And when I say she I mean Rachel
did not want to contact the authorities without information. There's
actually absolutely no evidence at all that Rachel tried to
dissuade Violet from calling Costa Masa p D. We can

(02:37:21):
infer that violets on the phone trying to get the information.
Rachel's driving the car, and it is Rachel who contacts
Costa Masa p D and she gives the information to
the lead investigator. He did not have that information prior
to Rachel's call. We hear that the gun information was

(02:37:44):
uh communicated to Long Beach p D, but Long Beach
PD had not yet communicated that with Coasta Masa. Rachel
had no idea or would not have any idea that
any communication between Long Beach p D and the gun
had happened. She's the main reason Costa Masa p D
had the information on the murder weapon information on the
backpack a treasure trove of damaging, devastating evidence against Dan.

(02:38:12):
What do you think of Mr Medina's argument There both
sounds a lot like I hate to keep going back
to this. It sounds a lot like Matt Murphy's argument
in our case. I mean he uses the word treasure
trove attributing that to an active um good faith by
Rachel actually an act of almost heroism. Matt Murphy called
it delivering a cornucopia of evidence. There's they're they're from

(02:38:34):
the same page in different cases. So he's making the
arguments he's and they must have sounded very similar to
the ear of Matt Murphy because they were his. In
our case, I don't have a great feeling for Rachel Buffett.
I think she should be held responsible or should have
been held responsible like Daniel Wazniak was. He's doing his job.

(02:38:55):
He's making the argument that's there for him if it
was fair, and it's hard even if you represent Daniel
Wasnac not to be bothered by the unfairness of this process.
That what he's arguing is what Matt Murphy argued. He's
coming again and again with why should you believe that
she wasn't misled by Daniel Wozniak And what did Matt

(02:39:16):
Murphy say in our closing argument on a common sense level,
what's really the evidence that she knew she has Daniel
Wazniac in her life. That's what Matt Murphy says in
our case, and he's a pathological liar who knows what
Daniel Wazniak was telling that woman. That's what Matt Murphy
said in our case. So it's eerie to hear David

(02:39:38):
Medina make the same argument that Matt Murphy made. I
don't think in the end the truth is that I'm
not saying he's doing anything other than argument. That wasn't
that statement that you read wasn't from David Medina's opening argument.
That's from Matt Murphy's That's that's from Matt Murphy's um
closing argument. In the penalty phase. Let's go back to

(02:40:00):
court now, the prosecution gave you a lot of what
I would call circumstantial evidence that they argued two attempt
to convince you that Rachel should have had knowledge that
these crimes took place. She should have known that Dan

(02:40:20):
was the one who committed these crimes. Some of that
circumstantial evidence would have been the laptop, the keys, the
flip phone. What evidence did you did you hear that
would convince you that Rachel would sit idly by while

(02:40:43):
Dan goes upstairs and shoots Julie twice in the head
and would be okay with that? Is that logical? What
evidence did you hear that Rachel would hang out at
her house with Chris Williams knowing that Dan was gonna

(02:41:06):
go kill Sam and she was gonna be okay with that.
None you didn't hear any of that. Now, if the
motive is money because they need money. If she knew
that Dan was going to kill Sam that day and
drain his bank account of sixty dollars, why is she

(02:41:28):
on the phone while Chris Williams is there or on
the computer on Craigslist looking for a job. Why is
she racking her brain trying to figure out how to
get money If she knows she's going to come into
this huge windfall of sixty dollars. She doesn't because she
doesn't know what Dan's doing. She has no idea if

(02:41:51):
she did. Why in the world would she tell costamsa
p D that he was at the location where Sam
was murdered. Was Sam him on that day and he
was freaking out about to have a heart attack after
he got home, he wouldn't. She wouldn't. Now. In Tim's case,

(02:42:13):
we heard that Tim had knowledge that the property he
was taking was used in a crime. Dan told him
to get rid of that property, and Tim did that.
With the intent to help Dan guilty in that case.

(02:42:33):
For Noah, Rachel's brother, different situation. We heard he was
still arrested, but this was his factual situation. He didn't
tell Costa Masa p d that they had made a
stop to Wesley's while he was with Dan. He left
out some very important information. But he was later released

(02:42:57):
and you heard he was never convict it or charge.
And the difference between the two is that Noah did
not have the intent to protect Dan, nor did he
have the knowledge that he was assisting Dan and committing
a crime. And that's really the analysis for Rachel. Did

(02:43:19):
she have the knowledge of these two murders? Did she
intend to lie or omit information? And then did she
do that to help Dan beat the rat? Did she? Yes, well,

(02:43:40):
she did that and much more. She didn't want him
to be arrested. She didn't want him to be charged.
She knew it was going to lead back to her.
He's the one who was most likely to speak. She
is very good. She's you know, much more skilled at
kind of holding her water. He knows how to navigate

(02:44:01):
through these things much better. And she's shown that. I mean,
you just look at it from beginning to end. She's
quicker on her feet, she's smarter arguably, So, yeah, she
did things to protect Ann Wozniak, to protect herself. Do
you think that she figured at some point he's going
down and I've got to do everything i can to

(02:44:21):
save myself. Absolutely, and you can see that. You can
see that at key moments, including in that call, right,
she knows the calls recorded, and she's analyzing it at
a rate that's much quicker than he does. She knows
he's going down. She says he's going down. He doesn't
even care that it's recorded anymore. You can tell there's

(02:44:43):
a desperation, right. And one of the things that's interesting
that Dave Medina said is that she never tried to
stop him from confessing. Well, again, I don't think the
recordings before them, there's been no reference of the details
and it hasn't been played apparently, But in that recording,
in actuality, she goes back to him at the end

(02:45:05):
and says, don't take the blame for something you didn't do,
because clearly he is taking the blame. He's not moving
from it. He's in essence, adamant during that conversation that
it's up, it's done, and she tries to save him
from himself and to save herself from what he's doing,
because she knows very well that the riskiest person in

(02:45:28):
that conversation is not her, it's him. I know that
you're going to think this is a far out, wacky,
crazy theory on my part, But have you ever thought
for a moment that she set him up from the beginning.
She did find the sex tape. He did tell her.
He said that the sex tape was an intentional filming

(02:45:52):
of this affair he had with a former girlfriend because
he wanted to extort money from their family, even though
this family that I know well said he never ever
came to us for money or ask for money. So
I'm just wondering, is it a possibility to me? It's
not the most reasonable of possibilities. I just don't think so.

(02:46:12):
I think, you know, because in that Fernando Perez letter,
that informant letter that was not really introduced right in court,
but there was this letter where allegedly Dan Wozniak said
to Fernando that Rachel was aware of the plan to

(02:46:33):
kill Sam, and she allegedly said, do whatever you have
to do to make us happy. Well, but that's a
different thing to me. To me that she's all in
on the plan, she's all in on it could be
all in on a setup too. To me, that's not
what that that says when I and I want to
make it clear, I think that she's prepared to let

(02:46:53):
him go down. It's not that, but the notion that
they're going to do the crime from the beginning. First
of all, I think the crime changes. I think she
has a role in that second crime that's far bigger
than is talked about in this case. If you look
at the timing of all sorts of things, including those
text messages, and how they change once they're back together.
I think, and I argued, that she had the primary

(02:47:16):
role in that second murder. So I just don't know
that that. I think I have enough evidence to say
she somehow thought this was all going to happen and
she would be left with all this money and he'd
go to prison. That's a that's a risky thing for
anyone to think that you're going to get through all
of it. I think she thinks sir going to get
the money, and but it wouldn't be the first time

(02:47:38):
a theory like that was reality. Let's go back to
Mr Medina's final arguments. I'm gonna ask you to deliberate
look at everything. I'm convinced that when you do, you'll
see that Rachel did not have the intent to protect
this monster. She would not have been okay with what

(02:48:00):
he did and protecting him and then getting married and
going on a honeymoon. Do you think this case is
the poster case for a reasonable doubt? No, it's not
a to me. It's it's proven beyond a reasonable doubt.

(02:48:21):
But she shouldn't be convicted. There are two different things.
I think there's an ample evidence that she was participating
in the murder. I believe there's apple evidence that she
was attempting to help um Dan in terms of avoiding
culpability and avoiding really avoiding more questioning that could lead

(02:48:42):
back to her. I mean, I think that's what her worry.
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With that said, we now have an opportunity or Mr

(02:51:16):
Murphy has an opportunity to rebut everything that the jury
just heard from Mr Medina. So let's go back to
Matt Murphy where he is in the process of talking
about the difference between circumstantial evidence and direct evidence. Circumstantial
evidence has afforded the same exact weight as direct evidence,

(02:51:38):
and oftentimes circumstantial evidence doesn't forget, does not bias. Oftentimes
it's some of the best evidence that we have, and
when we're talking about assessing what somebody was thinking, it's
always circumstantial evidence. You know. The Coast to Massa police

(02:51:58):
have often said to me that they from the beginning
thought Rachel Buffett was involved in these murders and that
should have been charged for murder. But they told me
that Mr. Murphy's answer was always it's circumstantial. It's circumstantial.
Yet here he seems to really make a point of
saying that circumstantial and direct are evaluated equally in a

(02:52:22):
court of law. Cases are built on circumstantial evidence. Every day,
he's building this case on circumstantial evidence. So, you know,
one of the things that came out after the trial,
part of the informant related litigation, was we learned that
Detective Morales had written a letter to the Sheriff's department
to let them know they wanted a mail cover. That

(02:52:44):
means they wanted to watch the mail that was going
to be sent out of the jail on someone they
were about to arrest. And we didn't know this during
the trial, but later we would get this letter from
Detective Moralse and you got a letter from detective moralist
just received the letter that was from detective Morales to
the informant. Whoever the informant was, Okay, there's a letter

(02:53:08):
we learned about which is from detective Morales to a
deputy in the jail. They want to watch the mail
that's about to go out for an inmate they're about
to arrest. The inmate isn't named in the letter, but
it's clearly Rachel Buffett, and the letters says we're about
to charge a co conspirator in the Daniel Wozniak case.

(02:53:33):
Was it dated, Yes, it's dated in two thousand and twelve,
and it pre dates her charge and her arrest, and
her charge and arrest, and very clearly, from my perspective,
they were going to arrest her as a co conspirator,
which is for murder. And there was some dialogue that
took place. They told me point blank that Mr Murphy

(02:53:55):
makes the decision. He makes the call. He's their prosecutor.
And he said it's not enough, it's not enough, it's circumstantial. Well,
it's right that he makes the call, and it's right
to reject cases. I mean, I believe in that fundamentally.
I don't want just police officers making calls. I think
the lawyers should make the call. You know, there's just
so much that's happened here. It's very hard to evaluate

(02:54:18):
the reasons, the legitimate reasons for those types of decisions.
From my perspective, I just don't I can't follow anything
here anymore. And that people can argue so differently about
evidence that when I'm now supposed to rely upon good
faith decision making on those calls, it just is not
something I can accept. I just found when not listening
to him defend circumstantial and sometimes that's the best evidence

(02:54:41):
we have, and so forth. It just struck me as
odd when when he used that same reason to tell
the Coast of Massa police that he would not charge
Rachel with murder. Let's go back to Mr Murphy's rebuttal.
The first Mr Data started by saying, in order to
convict the government has to prove that she knew Dan
Butcher two people, you have to believe she was okay

(02:55:04):
with that. That's not actually correct. All she has to
know is that he's involved in a mur doesn't have
to know the details, doesn't have to know that he
planned it. All she has to know is that somebody's dead.
Daniel w wasna helped in some way. That's it. It's
like Tim. Tim has no idea, there has no idea

(02:55:27):
what his brother got into. He just knows he's involved.
It's a homicide, and he's got the murder weapon. It's
all Tim now in a way. You know, you could
argue Tim is even he's a victim of his brother stuff,
but he's still guilty of that PC thirty two. She

(02:55:48):
is up to her eyeballs in Daniel Watsney Next Life.
Everything that Mr Medina just said about Daniel Wadni is accurate.
I can stand up here for another forty five minutes
and throw in descriptive terms for what DANIELA. Nacis. He
is a pathological liar. He is a monster, but he's
her little monster. She knows him, not a stranger, she

(02:56:14):
knows him. All of the stuff goes on right under
her nose. So she doesn't have to know that butcher
two people and be okay with it. She just has
to know he's involved and tell police things that are
not true in an attempt to help them. You listen
to her lie. She lied about him, lieving the apartment,

(02:56:35):
She lied about Chris Williams repeatedly. That's those aren't mistakes,
should we yes? I mean, look again and again, We're
an agreement in this case, we're an agreement. It's just
I'm hearing a completely different human being. I think they're
occupying the same suit or a similar one. But it's

(02:56:57):
it's just a completely different argument from what we heard
in our case. It's what we would have argued. You know,
obviously there's different pieces of evidence in two different cases,
but it's what we were arguing in essence throughout. It's
not credible that she's doing anything other than covering up
that she's trying to protect herself and him because she's
afraid of what he could do in terms of revealing

(02:57:19):
her culpability. So I mean, I'm in agreement with Matt Murphy.
That's that's the unusual thing here. I just wish he
would have said this in our case. Legally, did Mr
Medina have the ability to introduce the interview that took
place between Rachel Buffett and Costa Masa police on June nine,
which would be considered if you went with their numerical

(02:57:43):
chronological order, that would be the third interview, Well, the
prosecution would have had an argument that no, he was
not able to introduce that without calling her as a
witness because it's hearsay at that point. So you know,
if there's an interview and the prosecution introduces or the
defense introduces one portion of that same interview. By law,
you can introduce the rest of it, but once you

(02:58:04):
start stretching into other interviews. No, he's not legally entitled.
Is that because Mr Murphy dropped the third count so
he stayed away from that interview. No, it's not because
of that. It's because legally it's hearsay and you have
your defendant available if you want to call the person
to testify. But it's an out of court statement by her.
So so why could why is the second interview introduced them?

(02:58:28):
It's considered what's called an admission, So anytime a defendant
makes a statement about the facts of the case, the
admission comes in. But so, even though Matt Murphy is
telling Jerrs she never revealed Chris Williams in that time,
but she did reveal it in the June ninth interview,
there's no way Mr Medina could tell yours that that's right,

(02:58:48):
not unless Mr Murphy was in agreement with doing that.
And I don't know whether he would have been an
agreement or not. Let's go back now and listen to
Mr Murphy's rebuttal closing argument. Okay, Violet is going to
the cops and Rachel Buffett knows it. She's got to know.
There's a hard working police and they've got it just

(02:59:09):
about completely figured out, and Daniel Wisney has going down.
Does that mean that she has to be involved in
the planning or the execution, Absolutely not. She just has
to have knowledge, not a diabolical plot between the two
of them. Let's give her the benefit of the doubt.
To say Wasnac trying to keep her in the dark

(02:59:30):
is kind of absurd. And there was a roll of eyes, right,
it is important to see what he's doing at that moment.
Kind of absurd roll of eyes. Mr Murphy says, the
notion that Daniel Wisnya kept her in the dark is absurd.
This is what he told our jury in a death

(02:59:53):
penalty case with a person potentially down the road being
executed by lethal injection, looking at whether she has knowledge.
When you're talking about that guy, a pathological liar that
he is, who knows what Daniel Wisnik was telling that woman,
So he told our jury that he would keep her

(03:00:14):
in the dark. He tells this jury mockingly, almost how
absurd for any of you to believe that? And this
is consistent with his arguments and his presentation in the
opening and the closing. Throughout, Folks, it would be absurd
to believe he's not telling her every day about what's
going on and talking to her. So to do this

(03:00:37):
is really terrible. It's really terrible because you don't have
two different analyzes. He does not have them. He has
one analysis, and it's this one. Because this is the
only one that makes sense. Why did he tell our
jury that? So let's finish listening to Mr Murphy's rebuttal,
where he's focusing in on some of the things Mr

(03:01:00):
Medina said in his closing argument. If you can draw
two or more reasonable conclusions from the circumstantial evidence, and
one of those reasonable conclusions points to innocence and the
other to guilt, you must accept the one that points
to innocence. That's what Mr Medina just went through. You
went through it with you. He's exactly right. But the
second part of this is equally important. Okay. The second

(03:01:25):
part is, however, when considering circumstantial evidence, you must accept
only reasonable conclusions and reject any that are unreasonable. Your
duty bound as jurors. If you hear stuff that's not
reasonable folks. You must reject them, whether I present it
or whether the defense presents it. Number One, they're broke,

(03:01:47):
so Wozniak catches a plan to solve their many money problems.
So far, so good. He does this all by himself. Again,
so far so good. He plans murders on a computer
she uses all the time, and she never does a
Google search for anything beginning with the letter H. And

(03:02:07):
he is worried about her finding out they're planning a wedding.
He's planning a honeymoon, but he never mentions the honeymoon
that he's planning to her. He really wants to keep
her in the dark about the murders, so he walks
the first victim down to their apartment so she can
see that he's the last person with Sam before he disappears.

(03:02:28):
He returns flustered, sweaty, stressed out mess, but it never
occurs to her that his demeanor may be related to
Sam's disappearance. Mm hmm. She sees her unemployed, broke fiance
suddenly has a bunch of money by pure coincidence, at

(03:02:51):
the exact same time he's committing this murder in another city.
She logs onto his Facebook account, making it appear like
dan is in Costa Mesa. I as to make that argument.
I want to emphasize I'm not arguing that that shows
that she is a part of the murder. What I'm
arguing is he has made her a part of his
subjective plan. He has involved her in that, and she's

(03:03:14):
on notice that she's doing that. What does that mean
she's on notice? It means nothing. It means he got
caught a mistake here, kind of a big one. Right.
You cannot reasonably argue that that was dan Wozniak unwittingly
pulling her into it. His point was he puts dan

(03:03:37):
Wosniak in cost to Mace at the time of the murder,
which means he's she's The point is that she puts
dan Wassniak in custom at the time of the She
puts dan Wosniac in cost Maze at the time of
the murder. You don't put someone in a place at
the time of the murder. I mean what he's suggesting there,
he immediately jumped on himself, right, I mean he that

(03:03:58):
makes that makes no sense exactly. You can't subjectively put
somebody into the murder. You either put them into the
murder plan or not. And the plan would be Rachel
go on the Facebook while I'm committing the murderer, and
there's no way around that. And I think he knew
he messed that up and he wanted to walk himself out,

(03:04:20):
so he got out of there quickly, but not quickly enough.
He believes, I'm going to take him at his word,
not how he tried to undo it. He believes that
Rachel Buffett went on that page to help him get
away with murder and to help her get away with murder.
Aished right there on a plan together. In that rebuttal,

(03:04:40):
you can see right in the rebuttal that we just heard,
you can see you can see Matt Murphy make this air.
It's not an air. It's the truth that's the problem.
And you know when he misspoke, but he misspoke in
speaking the truth. Yes, I mean he noticed and believes
that she accessed his face book so that she could

(03:05:01):
create an alibi for both of them. That's what he believes.
Let's be real. So he has another piece of evidence
that I've been waiting for throughout closing argument and rebuttal,
which he makes a large point of in the opening statement,
which is the Facebook messages the evening of Julie kibuis
She's death. Right, there's the Facebook message that Rachel sends

(03:05:23):
out two minutes after, there's a luring message from Daniel Wozniak.
He talked about it in his opening statement, and he
talked aexts from Sam's phone to Julie when Dan is
pretending to be Sam luring her to Sam's apartment. Right,
So he talks about it, and he talks about it
pretty compelling. I think he thought, um. I think he

(03:05:43):
thought over the next few days about how close he
was getting, or what he believed was being approaching compelling
evidence of inconsistency and evidence of her involvement in the murder.
I think most importantly, he started to think about, this
is really going to make it look like she's participating
in the murder. Because of the circumstantial evidence that he presents,

(03:06:05):
that Facebook message is perhaps the most compelling. Mr Murphy's
arguing that the text message luring Julie takes place at
a time when Rachel is sitting next to him. That's
one of his points. The first luring message to Julie
happens after he's left Rachel in Campden, Martinique, and he
goes back to Liberty because he wanted to check and

(03:06:28):
see if there was any buzz. He knew that he
left Sam's body in the attic and he wanted to
see if there was any commotion or anything. But at
that point is when he then sends his first quote
unquote luring message. Up till then, all of his messages
to Julie were pretty innocuous, pretty tame, and there was
no luring. But after he went back to Camden to

(03:06:50):
give Chris the first installment of money and sat a
little with Rachel Costa Mesa police, they believed that she
looked at his text messages all that he put himself
as the last person with Sam, and one of those
text messages to Julie, and then Julie became the decoy,
if you will. She was going to be the second
one that they had to take care of. Right, So

(03:07:13):
that he goes back to Liberty Theater check see what's
going on, and that's when he sends the first loring
message because Sam's body is there, so again it's that
electronic alibi, so it must be Sam sending the message.
And we presented right, and we presented at the trial
argument that if you look reasonably and everything we know
about Rachel, that the timing was such that it would

(03:07:36):
make sense that the sharper of the two saw those
text messages and put a plan into action. And then
you come back later in the evening at a time
where Matt Murphy says they're absolutely together, that being Daniel
and Rachel. They're in the apartment and Daniel, under that theory,

(03:07:57):
sends a message to Julie Kibawishi at the eleven or
eight hour eleven ten, Rachel sends the message to Julie
on on the Facebook on the Facebook page. So what
an incredible coincidence, right, that has to be a one
in a million of all the times to think, you
know what, I'd like to send a responsive message back

(03:08:18):
to Julie. It's the time two minutes after a message
was sent that you know, and Julie had originally sent
the first Facebook message to Rachel earlier that day. And
like you said at eleven ten, I think I'm gonna
send Julie becca response now, and within forty minutes she's
going to be murdered. Well, and Matt Murphy's arguing that

(03:08:41):
they have to be sitting together. Remember, his point is,
I'm not giving up the phone. She's there, But they were.
I mean, I told you about my interview with Daniel Hulkyard.
He said that Rachel Buffett said Daniel was standing right
behind her when she sent that Facebook message to Julie.
So they were within each other's space. And even if
you didn't have that piece of evidence with you, Mr

(03:09:01):
Murphy's right, of course, what's what's the chances that they're
not together at that moment. But if they're at that
moment together, the chance that that Facebook message is unassociated
with a plan to alibi herself at the very least
alibi herself, right, she's and it's not it maybe alibi
is the wrong word what she's trying to set up. Well,

(03:09:25):
it's it's two things. It's an alibi and it's and
it undermines the possibility that she would hurt this person, right,
because because I'm just going to hang out with you
the pool and catch some sunshine. And it was this
really friendly, warm message that said, can't wait to see
you after the wedding. We'll get together this summer and

(03:09:47):
hang out by the pool. Right, So it's a message
of we're friends, don't ever think that I would do
something too. And isn't that what Mr Murphy said in
his closing argument at the penalty phase. That's right. He
argued that one of the reasons why we were wrong
was that there was this text message which was very

(03:10:09):
friendly and how his face right. What Mr Murphy argues
is the fact that they have that Facebook message is
actually evidence of why she wouldn't be involved. That's absurd
when you just heard the closing argument. That is a
compelling piece of evidence of her involvement in the murder.
But I don't think he was concerned about that fact

(03:10:30):
in anything he said in this trial. Again, I feel
like in this trial he mapped out a story, if
you will, based on circumstantial evidence that revealed her role
in the murders. It did, but it's just what's in
his head. He's laid out ample evidence about her involvement

(03:10:51):
in the murders, but in his mind, he's got other
things that he's looking at. He's It's not the way
justice is supposed to be. So you're not supposed to
be thinking about, hey, what are my arguments In the
other case, they should just naturally be consistent. You should
be going back to your transcripts to figure it out.
You've already analyzed it. Let's go back to court. Dan
really wants to keep her in the dark still, so

(03:11:13):
he returns with Sam's keys, Sam's car, Sam's wallet, and
Sam's cell phone. All right, he puts Sam's computer on
a shelf in plain view in a common area, but
Rachel Buffett doesn't notice. In a reasonable versus unreasonable analysis,
we're starting to have some problems. Although Woznak exchanges multiple

(03:11:35):
text messages with Julie Kiebowishi on a phone that looks, operates,
and sounds completely different than his phone, Rachel Buffett never
notices that either she watches is Chris Williams hands Wozniak
a twenty dollar bill, but totally forgets and thinks Dan
dropped the twenty dollar bill instead. Wosnia wants to create

(03:11:55):
a false pattern of evidence and returns to the area
of Sam's murder. He sends the first text message to
Julie from the base coincidentally without any prompting from Wozniak.
Exactly one minute later, Rachel Buffett again logs onto wasnaxt
Facebook page. She has no clue he's up to something,

(03:12:17):
completely ignorant of what's going on. Rachel Buffett is extremely
upset about something totally unrelated and cries throughout the entire play. Okay,
they returned to the Camden apartments. Wosnac really wants to
make sure she knows nothing, so he decides to hurry
Julie along so she arrives at a time when he
absolutely knows Rachel is going to be awake. He decides

(03:12:39):
to murder her in Sam's apartment instead of Sam's car
or somewhere else. While they're in the apartment together, Waznac
exchanges twelve additional text messages with Julie and Rachel again
does not see or hear anything reasonable versus unreasonable. How's
this sounding so far? He sneaks out of the apartment

(03:13:03):
like a ninja. She doesn't notice a thing shoots Julie
in the head with an unsuppressed semi automatic handgun roughly
forty ft away from her ear drums. She doesn't hear
the thing or she thinks it's hammering, and doesn't figure

(03:13:28):
out later that that was actually Julie being murdered. At
the time that Dan Wosnak is out of their apartment
reasonable versus unreasonable. He's concerned about how a lout of
gunshot is. He knows Rachel is awake, but again no

(03:13:50):
efforts to suppress them at all. There's a special vortex
at the Camden departments where you can hear barbecue going
on to floor below, but not gunshots. Super agitated after
one murder, the most upset Chris Williams has ever seen
another human being. He comes back to his bride to
be and is totally normal, and again she notices nothing

(03:14:11):
about his demeanor despite sleeping on a twin mattress. Wisnia.
Then sneaks out again two to four hours later, stages
the crime scene, and Rachel Buffett doesn't notice him leaving
or being gone on that bed. That guy on that bed,
no alcohol, no drugs. She doesn't notice Dan cuts off

(03:14:39):
a human head. He's super worried about Rachel finding out,
comes back with bloody shoes and takes them off in
plain sight, and she doesn't notice a thing reasonable versus unreasonable.
Just like the computer keys, cell phone, she doesn't notice
the shoes. Okay, Everyone in the camp to Martinique Compartments

(03:15:02):
is trying to figure out what happened on Friday and Saturday,
but those days are not remarkable at all for Rachel Buffett.
Totally ignorant, She sees police walk into her brother's apartment.
She here's Daniel was next, say how did you guys
find me here? But doesn't think that's a little bit
of Here's Daniel was next say can I speak to

(03:15:24):
you guys privately outside, but doesn't occur to her that
he may be involved. She says nothing about the third guy,
but Sergeant Everett makes a big mistake, and actually that's
not even the argument for the defense. She thinks the
third guy is Chris Williams. She thinks the third guy
is Chris Williams, and she tells police he left with

(03:15:44):
Sam and Dan. It doesn't even make sense. She lies
maybe two dozen when he had him all up. Okay,
I'm asking you to convict on two just two, the

(03:16:04):
third guy, okay, and hiding the existence of Chris Williams.
And if you feel more comfortable, you can do her
for the You can convict her of the false alibi
thing she violated the law, hold her accountable for it,
and then trust the judge to do the right thing.
And sensing it matters and your your time as valuable

(03:16:27):
as it is. Thank you, Thank you for coming in
and doing us. I know it's complicated, the facts are confusing.
You've got a whole lot of information, and as you
deliberate folks, take your time, take your time, talk about
her all the time you need, but take care of business.

(03:16:49):
Hold her accountable for what she did. Thank you very much.
If I'm sitting in that jury box and I just
listened to a prosecutor who mapped out a litany of
circumstantial evidence that supports Rachel Buffett had knowledge of the
murders and participated as an accomplice to the murders, I

(03:17:13):
think that that prosecutor is trying to tell me that
she could have been tried for murder because he said
to all of this before. Dan could have misled her.
He's capable of making her believe things that are other
than the truth. And here he says, there's no way
that could happen. The evidence is so overwhelming no matter

(03:17:35):
what he would do. But that why didn't he just
say that in our case? Why didn't you just say
these things in our case? And I think I know
the answer, and people should know the answer. What's the answer.
Winning winning the death penalty was not as clear a
path if this was presented in our case. Now you

(03:17:58):
have somebody who's doing the text messaging, who's accessing the
computer searches. He said, in our case that it's not
Rachel's computer. She didn't do the searches. Now, he says,
but come on, she certainly read the searches. She knew
about it. So all these things they have slightly different takes,
sometimes dramatic. So for example, the crying in our case,

(03:18:21):
the crime case, he said, the crying meaning the crying
during the nine performance that Friday night between Sam and
Julie's murders. Right, he said, Look, Mr Sanders wants there
to be an inference drawn about her knowledge of the murders.
He says, that's not fair. That's not fair to do that,
to ask that inference to be made. She's a twenty
three year old getting married to Daniel wasnia. She could

(03:18:41):
be crying about a lot of things. Here. He puts
it on the list of powerful evidence, so you know,
and he even says that the what was it, the
electronic alibi trail? I think he called it when Dan
was murdering Sam in the attic of the Liberty Theater.
She's existing his Facebook page as Dan and it just

(03:19:04):
seems like there's a coordination there. There's that's an interesting moment,
that part of it, and looking in and then he said,
I'm not saying she's part of the that she's a
partner in the murders subjective. But now that's a problem
one And as I heard that today, it probably struck
me for the first time most powerfully. He tries to

(03:19:25):
come back from that very quickly because one of the
problems with that piece of evidence. Again, he's he's got
our case in mind too, as he's doing all of this.
But right there at that moment, that's not accessory after
the fact, that is, you are participating in the murders.
But it's up to the jurors to decide. And I

(03:19:45):
really want to thank you once again for your time here.
And now we wait and see what the verdict comes
out to be. Thanks for being here, Thanks for having me. Yeah.

(03:20:08):
Next week on Sleuth, we will learn the verdict. As
Rachel Buffett's trial comes to a close, both prosecutor Matt
Murphy and defense counsel David Medina delivered powerful arguments to
the jury of twelve. Both attorneys are hoping to sway
the members one way or the other for a verdict.
Each lawyer hopes lands in their favor. How do you

(03:20:31):
think the jury will decide what do you feel the
verdict will be. Stay tuned so you don't miss a
minute of our exclusive trout coverage heard only here on Sleuth.
Sleuth would like to thank our new sponsors, Zola Wedding
Registry and Care of Vitamin's subscription service. We appreciate your support.

(03:20:53):
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