The holidays are over and I’m back to work on my upcoming book on Daniel Wozniak and the murders of Sam Herr and Julie Kibuishi. I don’t release blog posts often these days, but when something particularly interesting happens in Daniel’s life, I feel the need to post.
Something Particularly Interesting Happened
I talk to Daniel on the telephone at least four or five times a week. I haven’t been able to see him since the pandemic caused San Quentin to cancel all in-person visits. However, the prison recently started video visits with the inmates. I was scheduled twice, but there were technical issues both times.
While I had Daniel on the phone one day in December, I decided to check my email and see if there was any information about scheduling.
Instead, I noticed a Google Alert letting me know Daniel Wozniak’s name had popped up online again.
During Daniel’s trial, his name appeared regularly, but since then, I’ve learned he isn’t the only person on the internet with the name Daniel Wozniak.
This time, though, when I clicked on the email, there was another name alongside Daniel’s that caught my attention. Google had found the name Daniel Wozniak in the lyrics of a new song from rapper Eminem!
I clicked on the link and skimmed through the lyrics while Daniel was talking about having a good supply of peanut butter.
“Oh my!” I must have sounded like I’d just heard some pretty startling news.
He tentatively asked, “What’s up?”
“I just checked my email, and you know how I get those Google alerts for your name on the net?”
“Yup. Oh, goody. What’s being said about me now?”
“Eminem just released a new album.”
Daniel is used to me jumping from topic to topic during our conversations.
“OK. Is it good? My buddy Rajah is a big fan…”
“It’s called Music to be Murdered By, Side B,” I interrupted, “And there is this song on it called ‘Killer,’ and your name is in that song.”
“Sorry, what? That’s a joke?”
“Nope. I’m pretty damn sure Eminem is talking about you.” I started reading to him.
But for all you know I probably act like I’m Daniel Wozniak
I’m a psycho-chopathic killer
“It sure sounds like he’s referring to you, the Daniel Wozniak who’s a former community theatre actor and on death row for double murder.”
(pause)
“Are you positive?”
I continued reading the lyrics to him, and eventually he accepted this reality.
I pointed out that his name is used in a really entertaining rhyme sequence:
You almost had a heart attack when you met Cardiac
You ran inside, told your boyfriend like, “I’ll be back”
But for all you know I probably act like I’m Daniel Wozniak
“Do you think Eminem found your name by searching for killers whose names rhyme with cardiac and heart attack?”
“No idea.”
“I guess he could be a Dateline fan. I’m trying to picture Eminem watching the ID network. Maybe he scanned the names of all the death row inmates around the country and there you were. Rhyming gold.”
Then Daniel mumbled, “I always wanted a theme song when I was a kid, bud-ump-bump.”
When I asked him if this was something he’d “brag about on the yard,” he said he wouldn’t. He’d tell Rajah, but other than that, he felt no need to draw attention to himself with the rest of the row. He went back to talking about peanut butter.
I told a number of my friends and family members about the Eminem song, and each person asked me if Daniel liked this extra bout with notoriety. I said he seemed rather indifferent about it. It’s another bizarre twist in the never boring life of Daniel Wozniak.
I won’t deny I found the entire situation oddly amusing. I’m writing a book about my friend and his name just showed up in an Eminem song!
Fifteenth of a Second of Fame
Then, as always happens, I’m hit with thoughts of Sam Herr’s and Julie Kibuishi’s loved ones. If they don’t already have their own Google alerts about Daniel, they might be learning about this song through my blog. I can at least say this is not a song about Daniel Wozniak. It’s definitely not his theme song. He’s a throw-away mention. At most.
Hello to New Readers!
If you’re new to my blog, hello! After you finish with this post, please go to the beginning so you can understand how I ended up writing about Daniel in the first place.
More importantly, you can learn about Sam Herr and Julie Kibuishi and how Daniel Wozniak is responsible for the tragic murders of these two innocent college students.
New readers often come up with some really useful comments and questions that I plan to answer in the book I’m writing about Daniel as well.
My blog readers are smart, and I do appreciate your “armchair quarterbacking” blog comments. You guys ask the exact same questions I have.
Admittedly, even though my book partially tells Daniel’s version of what “really happened” when Sam and Julie were killed, there are parts of his story that really don’t make a lot of sense to me. There are claims he’s made that have been disputed by trustworthy sources, but when the book is finally finished, you can all decide for yourselves how a middle-class kid from Long Beach can end up a murderer whose name is in an Eminem song.