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

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Christopher Goffard April 9, 2024

Blaze Bernstein had been missing a week when investigators found his body buried under a thin layer of mud at Borrego Park in Lake Forest in Jan

uary.

2018, with 19 stab wounds to his neck.

A 19-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the managing editor of Penn Appetit, a student-run food magazine, he had come home to spend the holidays with his family in Orange County.

Suspicion soon fell on 20-year-old Samuel Woodward, Bernsteins 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 Bernsteins blood on a visor in Woodwards car, and on a knife discovered in a drawer at the Newport Beach home where Woodward lived with his parents.

Orange County man denies hate crime in slaying of gay ex-classmate

Bernstein was Jewish and gay, while Woodward, according to one of his attorneys, was conflicted about his sexuality. When investigators managed to hack into Woodwards 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 Bernsteins 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.

There is this narrative thats been pushed: Nazi kills gay Jew. From the defense perspective, thats inaccurate,

Asst. Assistant

Public Defender Kenneth Morrison told Judge Kimberly Menninger during one of many hearings leading up to the trial.

The exact defense strategy remains unclear, but one of Morrisons aims will be to decouple his clients alleged crimes from his clients 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.

LGBTQ college student is stabbed 20 times, but was it a hate crime?

The case has drawn widespread media interest, and Morrison objected to the possibility of video cameras in the courtroom, which really could be traumatizing to some of the 56 people on his witness list, some of whom are reluctant to testify.

Is it simply because the news media loves the salacious narrative that they created? Morrison said, adding that in a

fraught political climate, publicity poses a greater risk of prejudice for Mr. Woodward.

Judge

Menninger

, the judge,

said the trial involves great issues of public interest, including murder, sexual orientation, gender and religion. She said she would allow cameras on a limited basis, in part because transparency would serve the safety of the courthouse.

“I need to be sure people trust us, Menninger said. I need them to see that we are not hiding the ball.

According to testimony at a preliminary hearing in Sept

ember .

2018, the Orange County Sheriffs Department worked diligently to crack open the contents of Woodwards iPhone. An investigator carried the phone by hand to New Jersey, where a telecommunications company called Cellebrite Inc. worked for 10 weeks to find the PIN code, bypassing the auto-shutdown function.

On Woodwards phone, investigators found an abundance of Atomwaffen-related material, including a photo of Woodward with James Mason, the author of Siege, which a prosecutor described as the Bible of the hate group.

According to Sheriffs Department testimony, the phone also contained emails Woodward wrote and sent to himself under the heading Sams Diary. One email from May 2017 said:

I tell sodomites that Im bi-curious, which makes them want to convert me Get them hooked by acting coy, maybe send them a pic or two, beat around the bush and pretend to tell them that I like them and then kabam, I either un-friend them or tell them they have been pranked, ha ha.

In another, from July 2017, he wrote that he had downloaded the dating app Grindr and was amusing himself by threatening gay people.

LMAO, he wrote, according to testimony. They think they are going to get hate crimed and it scares the

shit s

out of them … Priceless.

According to investigators, Woodward acknowledged meeting Bernstein on the night he vanished but

assertedclaimed

that Bernstein walked alone into the park and left him waiting, unsure if Blaze was pranking him.

Woodward also said that Bernstein had made a pass at him, an investigator testified, but Woodward found homosexuality gross. Asked about numerous cuts and scrapes on his hands, Woodward

saidclaimed

he got them in a fight club, according to testimony in the preliminary hearing.

Six years after the killing, jury selection began in late February. A courtroom outburst by Woodward forced the process to start over. Woodwards prior attorney said his client had Aspergers syndrome and was torn about his sexuality. The trial is expected to last through the end of June.