| Murder of Blaze Bernstein | |
|---|---|
 Blaze Bernstein | |
 Interactive map of Murder of Blaze Bernstein | |
| Location | Lake Forest, California, U.S. |
| Date | January 2, 2018; 7 years ago (2018-01-02) PST (UTC-08:00) |
Attack type | Murder bystabbing,hate crime,violence against LGBT people |
| Weapon | Knife |
| Victim | Blaze Bernstein |
| Perpetrator | Samuel Woodward |
| Motive | Neo-Nazism,Anti-LGBT extremism,Antisemitism |
| Convictions | First-degree murder |
On January 2, 2018, 19-year-oldUniversity of Pennsylvania sophomoreBlaze Bernstein was killed after leaving home to meet an acquaintance at a park inCalifornia. Authorities later charged his former high school classmate Samuel Woodward with the murder, declaring that the incident was ahate crime.Woodward was sentenced tolife in prison without the possibility ofparole.
Bernstein was born on April 27, 1998, inSouth Orange County, California, to Gideon Bernstein, anequity partner at Leisure Capital Management,[1] and Jeanne Pepper, a former lawyer who retired from law in 2000 to raise their three children. After completing high school atOrange County School of the Arts, Blaze attended theUniversity of Pennsylvania.[2]
The 20-year-old perpetrator, Samuel Lincoln Woodward, was born inNewport Beach, California and grew up in a household alongside his older brother.[3] Woodward officially became a student at the Orange County School of the Arts, but his father pulled him out during his junior year due to multiple reports of Woodward beinghomophobic towards gay men. Woodward finished his junior and senior years atCorona Del Mar High School before briefly attending theCalifornia State University Channel Islands for his first two semesters. Dormmates at Channel Islands told theOrange County Register that Woodward was not sociable with them.[4]
On January 10, 2018, 19-year-oldUniversity of Pennsylvania sophomore Blaze Bernstein was found dead in a park inOrange County, California, eight days after having been reported missing. He was visiting his family inLake Forest, California, when he was killed.[5][6] He had been stabbed 28 times.[7] Two days later, Samuel Woodward, one of Bernstein's former high school classmates and a member ofneo-Nazi terrorist groupAtomwaffen Division, was arrested and charged with murdering Bernstein.[8] As Bernstein was both openlygay andJewish, authorities declared that Bernstein was a victim of ahate crime.[9] Five deaths had links to the Atomwaffen Division over eight months from 2017 to early 2018.[10]
The presiding prosecutor initially charged Woodward with murder and personal use of a deadly weapon.[10] In August 2018, two charges of committing ahate crime were added because of Bernstein'ssexual orientation.[10][11] Woodward, who has been linked to the murder scene by DNA evidence, pleaded not guilty.[12][13] Apretrial hearing was held in January 2019.[14]
Woodward's attorney stated that Woodward hasAsperger syndrome which likely contributed to his social issues. He also said that Woodward was confused regarding his own sexual identity.[15]
Woodward, who was 20 at the time of the crime, faced a sentence of life without parole if found guilty.[10] He had initially faced a maximum sentence of 26 years in prison for the murder and weapons charges, prior to the addition of the hate crime enhancements. Woodward's bail was initially set at $5 million, but at a hearing in November 2018, the judge decided to deny Woodward bail altogether, remanding him to custody pending trial.[16]
Due to theCOVID-19 pandemic, Woodward remained in confinement since his last court appearance in 2018. His trial was tentatively scheduled for the summer of 2021,[17] though a series of postponements pushed it back until July 15, 2022.[18][19]
On July 15, 2022, an Orange County judge temporarily suspended criminal proceedings after Woodward's defense attorney said she had concerns about his competence to stand trial.[20] In late October 2022, mental health experts deemed Woodward competent, and a pre-trial hearing was scheduled for January 2023.[21] In a subsequent court hearing on February 20, 2024, jury selection for the trial commenced.[22] The trial began in April.[23]
In the opening statement for the defense, Woodward's attorney admitted to his client's guilt, but argued that the murder was neither premeditated nor motivated by homophobia orantisemitism.[24] Instead, the defense argued, Bernstein shared flirtatious messages between himself and Woodward on Tinder with other friends. Woodward, the defense claimed, wanted their relationship and any mention of his sexuality to remain between the two of them, as his father is homophobic, and known to call gay men "sodomites", among other terms.[25][26]
The police went through Woodward's chat history and discovered messages from Woodward to his neo-Nazi friends where he wrote that he was baiting gay men and discussed a previous victim he had attacked. In addition to this he posted a picture of a knife with the text "Texting is boring, but murder isn't".[27]
The prosecution argued in their opening statements that online radicalization encouraged Woodward's already-conservative upbringing into extremism, and that the murder of Blaze Bernstein was an anti-gay and anti-Jewish hate crime, mentioning several emails allegedly sent by Woodward, photographs of Woodward with known extremists, and Woodward's dropping out of Channel Islands to train with the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division in Texas.[28]
In the opening days of the trial, Bernstein's mother, Jeanne Pepper, took to the stand, establishing that her family were practicing Jews, laying the framework for the prosecution's case. The defense focused on the text message exchanges between Bernstein and Woodward.[26] On July 3, 2024, six and a half years after the murder, Woodward was found guilty of murdering Bernstein.[29] Woodward was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on November 15, 2024.[30] Woodward was imprisoned in theWasco State Prison but was later transferred to theCalifornia Medical Facility, where he is imprisoned as of 2025.[31]