As trial begins, O.C. prosecutors will try to prove Blaze Bernstein’s 2018 killing was a hate crime

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Suspicion soon fell on 20-year-old Samuel Woodward, Bernstein’s former schoolmate at the Orange County School of the Arts, who had admitted to being with him in the park the night he disappeared. Investigators said they found Bernstein’s blood on a visor in Woodward’s car, and on a knife discovered in a drawer at the Newport Beach home where Woodward lived with his parents.

Bernstein was Jewish and gay, while Woodward, according to one of his attorneys, was conflicted about his sexuality. When investigators managed to hack into Woodward’s iPhone, they unearthed a trove of anti-gay, anti-Jewish material linked to the Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist hate group.

The role that ideology may have played in Bernstein’s death will be sharply contested at his trial, with opening statements expected to begin Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court. Woodward is charged with murder, with enhancements for use of a deadly weapon and for hate crime, which could put him in prison for life without parole.

The exact defense strategy remains unclear, but one of Morrison’s aims will be to decouple his client’s alleged crimes from his client’s association with the Atomwaffen Division. The attorney has argued, with little success, to have references to Adolf Hitler and Nazis excluded from testimony on the basis that they are inflammatory.

[In a diary entry] from July 2017, [the defendant] wrote that he had downloaded the dating app Grindr and was amusing himself by threatening gay people.

“LMO,” he wrote, according to testimony. “They think they are going to get hate crimed and it scares the [poop] out of them ... Priceless.”

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[iluvatar5150]

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jeez

 

[AlexB23]

Suspicion soon fell on 20-year-old Samuel Woodward, Bernstein’s former schoolmate at the Orange County School of the Arts, who had admitted to being with him in the park the night he disappeared. Investigators said they found Bernstein’s blood on a visor in Woodward’s car, and on a knife discovered in a drawer at the Newport Beach home where Woodward lived with his parents.

Bernstein was Jewish and gay, while Woodward, according to one of his attorneys, was conflicted about his sexuality. When investigators managed to hack into Woodward’s iPhone, they unearthed a trove of anti-gay, anti-Jewish material linked to the Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist hate group.

The role that ideology may have played in Bernstein’s death will be sharply contested at his trial, with opening statements expected to begin Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court. Woodward is charged with murder, with enhancements for use of a deadly weapon and for hate crime, which could put him in prison for life without parole.

The exact defense strategy remains unclear, but one of Morrison’s aims will be to decouple his client’s alleged crimes from his client’s association with the Atomwaffen Division. The attorney has argued, with little success, to have references to Adolf Hitler and Nazis excluded from testimony on the basis that they are inflammatory.

[In a diary entry] from July 2017, [the defendant] wrote that he had downloaded the dating app Grindr and was amusing himself by threatening gay people.

“LMO,” he wrote, according to testimony. “They think they are going to get hate crimed and it scares the [poop] out of them ... Priceless.”

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Man, this article is so dark, that I do not feel like summarizing it, but I will, cos this is important stuff. Man, people are messed up. God told us to cherish life. It feels like the US is stuck in 1940s Germany. By the way, I ran the hate group's German name through a private, local AI* (Mistral Instruct 7B) on my computer, and the name atomwaffen translates to nuclear weapons. A direct translation from the artificial intelligence is below. Dang, that white supremacy group is named after evil, radioactive military tech. As a Christian guy who is bi (has attraction for both guys and gals, but will remain celibate unless with a woman), I am lucky to not have gone through this stuff.

Mistral Instruct 7B AI Translation from German: "Atomwaffen is a German term, which can be translated into English as 'Atomic Weapons.' It refers to the nuclear weapons that were developed during the Cold War and are capable of causing massive destruction through atomic explosions."

Here is the article's summary, for those who want killings to end:


The article by Christopher Goffard, published on April 9, 2024, details the upcoming trial of Samuel Woodward for the murder of Blaze Bernstein in January 2018. Bernstein, a 19-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania and former schoolmate of Woodward at the Orange County School of the Arts, went missing from Borrego Park in Lake Forest. His body was found a week later with 19 stab wounds to his neck.

Suspicion fell on Woodward, who had admitted to being with Bernstein in the park the night he disappeared. Investigators found Bernstein's blood on a visor in Woodward's car and on a knife discovered at his Newport Beach home. Additionally, they uncovered anti-gay and anti-Jewish material linked to the Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist hate group, on Woodward's iPhone.

The role of ideology in Bernstein's death will be contested at the trial, with Woodward's defense team aiming to decouple his alleged crimes from his association with the Atomwaffen Division. The defense has argued for excluding references to Adolf Hitler and Nazis from testimony, but this request has been met with little success.

The case has drawn widespread media attention, and the defense objected to the possibility of video cameras in the courtroom due to potential trauma for witnesses. The trial, which involves issues of public interest including murder, sexual orientation, and religion, is expected to begin with opening statements on March 13 in Orange County Superior Court. Woodward is charged with murder, with enhancements for use of a deadly weapon and for a hate crime, which could result in life imprisonment without parole.

Testimony from the preliminary hearing in September 2018 revealed that investigators worked diligently to access Woodward's iPhone, which contained a significant amount of Atomwaffen-related material. One email from May 2017 showed that Woodward pretended to be bi-curious to lure gay men, only to unfriend or prank them. In another email from July 2017, he threatened gay people on the Grindr dating app for amusement.

Woodward claimed that Bernstein made a pass at him but found homosexuality gross, and he attributed cuts and scrapes on his hands to a fight club. Jury selection began in late February 2024 but was disrupted by an outburst from Woodward, who had previously been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome and reportedly struggled with his sexuality. The trial is expected to last through the end of June 2024.

 

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O.C. jurors consider fate of Samuel Woodward, who fatally stabbed a gay man in alleged hate crime​

When Samuel Woodward decided to kill a gay high school classmate in January 2018, according to a prosecutor, he chose a weapon with symbolic significance: a knife with his father’s name etched on it.

During his murder trial in Orange County Superior Court, both sides portrayed the 26-year-old Woodward as a young man who struggled with his sexuality growing up in a conservative Newport Beach family, with a particularly disapproving father.

“Who better to prove to that you’re not gay than this homophobic father?” Deputy Dist. Atty. Jennifer Walker told jurors. “‘I’m not gay, look what I just did.’”

Woodward, who kept a “hate diary” in which he bragged of pranking and frightening gay men, had dropped out of college and was living with his parents.

Deriding the notion that Woodward flew into a rage for fear of being outed, [the prosecutor] said he had posted his own photo on a Tinder profile saying he was seeking other men and had sent out photos of his penis more than once.

The prosecutor said that by killing Bernstein, Woodward was hoping to raise his profile with the Atomwaffen Division.

[Although the hate crime enhancement is about Bernstein being gay, he was also Jewish.]

“It will prove to Atomwaffen he’s not gay,” Walker said. “It will prove to his dad he’s not gay. It will prove to himself he’s not gay.”

[The defense] attributed his client’s attachment to the Atomwaffen Division to “his lifelong struggle to fit in, to make and maintain meaningful friendships,” which left him vulnerable to a group that offered fellowship and preyed on people like him.

[While it's true white supremacists are good at recruiting losers, that's no excuse for murder.]

 

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Former classmate found guilty in murder of gay teen Blaze Bernstein​

Bernstein, 19, was stabbed to death in a park in 2018.

Woodward, now 26, was charged with first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement. Prosecutors had alleged that Woodward murdered his high school classmate because Bernstein was gay.

Sentencing has been scheduled for Oct. 25. He faces life without the possibility of parole.

[The prosecutor] told jurors during closing arguments that Woodward's hatred of gay people and his affiliation with Atomwaffen Division -- a far-right, neo-Nazi group -- led him to plan the murder.

"He already had his bags, he was already talking to Atomwaffen people about going somewhere else, and he thought he was going to get away with it," she said. "It's only by the grace of God that rain happened, and they found his body."

 

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Former classmate sentenced to life without parole in murder of gay teen Blaze Bernstein​

In issuing the sentence during a lengthy hearing on Friday, Judge Kimberly Menninger said there was evidence that the defendant planned the murder, and that the jury found it true that the crime was committed because of Bernstein's sexual orientation.

On whether the defendant is remorseful, Menninger said, "Unfortunately for the court and for the defendant, I've never seen any evidence of this up to this point in time."

 

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An all-new "20/20" episode, "The Last Text," which airs Friday, Jan. 3, at 9 p.m. on ABC and streams the next day on Hulu, features exclusive interviews with the Bernstein family and detectives involved in the case.