Jurors deliberated about 8 hours before delivering their verdict
Six and a half years after a weeklong community search ended with the discovery of Blaze Bernstein’s body in a makeshift grave at the edge of a Lake Forest park, the former classmate who admitted to carrying out the killing was convicted of murder.
Following a nearly three-month trial, an Orange County Superior Court jury on Wednesday found Samuel Woodward, 26, guilty of first-degree murder for the January 2018 slaying of 19-year-old Bernstein, his former Orange County School of the Arts classmate.
Jurors, who deliberated for about eight hours before rendering their verdict, also determined that the killing was a hate crime, which makes Woodward eligible for life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Supporters of the Bernstein family, some of whom sat through large portions of the lengthy trial, burst into applause when the hate crime decision was announced, drawing a quick warning by the judge. After the verdict, Bernstein’s mother and father embraced the prosecutor, Senior Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Walker.
Bernstein’s mother, Jeanne Pepper, expressed her family’s “profound gratitude” to the jury in a statement following the verdict. Pepper said the family is “thrilled with the verdict,” believing it held Woodward accountable for the “brutal, painful murder” of Blaze, whom she described as “funny, articulate, kind, intelligent” and a “brilliant scientist, artist, writer, chef and son”
“Blaze’s death was a horrific tragedy for our family and friends,” the mother said. “This verdict brings a measure of closure… but it cannot erase the pain of losing our son and the agony of waiting all these years without resolution. Now, with this verdict in hand, we believe that justice has been served and that Blaze’s memory will be honored through this outcome.”
Woodward’s parents quickly left the courtroom after the verdict was read. His attorney, Assistant Public Defender Ken Morrison, in a brief statement following the verdict indicated that he plans to appeal, contending that some important evidence wasn’t allowed to be shown to jurors.
“The defense made an extensive record of very strong appellate issues, some of which involve denial of the jury’s ability to consider evidence critical to a determination of the whole truth and a fair trial,” Morrison said. “So while those issues are pending on appeal, I won’t have any further comment
That Woodward was responsible for Bernstein’s violent slaying wasn’t in doubt — his defense attorney acknowledged to jurors from the outset of the trial that Woodward stabbed Bernstein to death.
The question for jurors was whether the slaying was a murder driven by hate and the ideals of a Neo-Nazi group that Woodward had ties to, as alleged by prosecutors, or a deadly confrontation in the heat of passion and therefore voluntary manslaughter, as countered by the defense.
Woodward and Bernstein were acquaintances, but not friends, during their overlapping time at the School of the Arts. Bernstein, Jewish and gay, was quick-witted and intelligent, with a large group of friends. Woodward, on the Autism spectrum, struggled at the largely liberal campus, his conservative views and at-times homophobic statements making him an outcast.
Bernstein enrolled at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a pre-med student. Woodward dropped out after less than a year at Cal State Channel Islands, moved to Texas to meet up with members of Atomwaffen Division, the Neo-Nazi hate group, and then moved back in with his parents in Newport Beach.
The extent of Woodward’s allegiance to Atomwaffen and the exact nature of his sexuality were linchpins of his trial.
Morrison argued that Woodward became disillusioned with Atomwaffen in Texas, which ended with him essentially homeless and struggling for food.
Walker said Woodward continued to adhere to the extremist organization’s views, noting that thousands of images — many anti-Semitic and anti-gay — tied to Atomwaffen were found on his phone and drawings related to the group were discovered in his jail cell.
Jurors were shown emails Woodward wrote and emailed to himself. In explicit language riddled with slurs, Woodward wrote about matching up with “sodomites” online, getting them “hooked” and then ghosting them, pranking them or making them think they would be the target of a hate crime. Woodward enjoyed scaring gay men and eventually set his sights on his former classmate Bernstein, the prosecution argued, leading to the killing.
The defense argued that Woodward was conflicted about his sexuality, in large part due to a repressive home environment growing up in a conservative religious family. The emails, the defense argued, were meant to provide deniability if Atomwaffen members learned of Woodward’s online contacts with gay men.
In June 2017, Bernstein ran across a Tinder profile Woodward had created, according to online conversations shown during the trial, and was shocked to see that his conservative former classmate seemed to be searching for other men. Woodward, in messages to Bernstein, was at times defensive and at times seemingly flirtatious. But the conversation ended with Bernstein saying he couldn’t meet up, and Woodward responding by denying he was gay.
Woodward pleaded with Bernstein not to tell anyone about their online conversation, the defense noted, but Bernstein had already notified several friends about Woodward’s Tinder profile.
About six months later, in January 2018, Woodward reached out to both Bernstein and another former Orange County School of the Arts classmate who is gay. While Bernstein eventually responded, the other former classmate did not, a decision the prosecutor described as “the luckiest thing he has ever done.”
Woodward, during testimony, claimed he was looking for someone to hang out with. The prosecution argued that Woodward led Bernstein to believe they were going to “hook up.”
Late in the evening on Jan. 2, 2018, Woodward drove over to the Bernstein family home in Lake Forest, where Bernstein was staying during winter break. The two went to nearby Borrego Park.
In Woodward’s telling, the two sat on a park bench, chatted about their high school days and college challenges, and then Woodward took a couple of puffs of marijuana. Woodward said he was on the verge of nodding off when he opened his eyes to see Bernstein with one hand on Woodward’s genitals and the other holding a cellphone.
Woodward testified that he went into a “state of terror” and asked what he was doing. He said Bernstein responded by saying “calm down. … It’s not a big deal. … I got you, you (expletive) hypocrite,” and he may have used the word “outed.”
Woodward said he was worried that Bernstein was going to send an explicit photo of him to someone else. Woodward testified that he grabbed for Bernstein’s phone, and when he couldn’t reach it began to stab Bernstein over and over, filled with what he described as “anger like nothing I had ever felt in my whole life.”
Afterward, Woodward said he dug a grave in vegetation at the edge of the park.
“He didn’t hit him because he was gay, he didn’t hit him because he was Jewish, killing Blaze had nothing to do with his association with these characters in Atomwaffen,” Morrison told jurors during closing arguments.
Walker, the prosecutor, contended that forensic evidence didn’t match up to Woodward’s testimony.
She argued that Woodward persuaded Bernstein to go into the foliage area of the park under the belief that they were going to “hook up” there, and then brutally attacked and killed Bernstein.
“All of that anger, all of that hate, came out in all of those stab wounds,” Walker told jurors.
She noted that Woodward was stabbed nearly 30 times.
Woodward, by his own admission, made numerous attempts to hide the killing.
He sent messages to Woodward’s phone to make it look like Woodward had walked off into the park and never returned. He told a similar story to Bernstein’s parents, which immediately drew their suspicions. In an interview with investigators who were searching for Bernstein, Woodward claimed Bernstein had tried to kiss him and then had walked off after being rebuffed.
After a six-day, head-line-grabbing search, investigators discovered Bernstein’s body. Bernstein’s blood was on a knife found in Woodward’s room at his parent’s home, and on a skull mask that prosecutors tied to Atomwaffen that was discovered in Woodward’s rental car.
During Woodward’s more than six years in local lockup awaiting trial, his mental health deteriorated, his attorney told jurors.
In his testimony, Woodward used his long hair to cover his face. He spoke in a slow pace with lengthy pauses — up to 30 seconds at times — before answering questions.
It was a striking difference to video footage shown at the end of the trial of a relatively clean-cut Woodward talking to investigators in the midst of the search for Bernstein, when he quickly answered their questions with a normal speaking cadence.
Woodward is scheduled to return to court for sentencing on Oct. 25.
