# Murder of Blaze Bernstein

On January 2, 2018, 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania student Blaze Nathan Bernstein was stabbed to death in Lake Forest, California in part due to their homosexuality. Bernstein was discovered missing by his parents the following day and was reported missing. After 6 days of searching authorities found Bernstein's remains in a shallow grave near the edge of Borrego Park in Lake Forest.
The perpetrator was Samuel Lincoln Woodward (then age 20). He was convicted of first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement for part of their motive being Bernstein's sexuality. During the course of the criminal investigation, while state prosecutors did not pursue additional enhancements on this basis, it was revealed that Woodward had ties to the Atomwaffen Division. This caused the case to gain national media attention as Bernstein was Jewish.
Woodward was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

## Background
### Blaze Bernstein

Bernstein was born on April 27, 1998, in South Orange County, California, to Gideon Bernstein, an equity partner at Leisure Capital Management, and Jeanne Pepper, a former lawyer who retired from law in 2000 to raise their 3 children. After completing high school at Orange County School of the Arts, Blaze attended the University of Pennsylvania.

### Samuel Lincoln Woodward

The 20-year-old perpetrator, Samuel Lincoln Woodward, was born in Newport Beach, California and grew up in a household alongside his older brother. 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 being homophobic towards gay men. Woodward finished his junior and senior years at Corona Del Mar High School before briefly attending the California State University Channel Islands for his first two semesters. Dormmates at Channel Islands told the Orange County Register that Woodward was not sociable with them.

## Disappearance and investigation

On January 10, 2018, 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania sophomore Blaze Bernstein was found dead in a park in Orange County, California, eight days after having been reported missing. He was visiting his family in Lake Forest, California, when he was killed. He had been stabbed 28 times. Two days later, Samuel Woodward, one of Bernstein's former high school classmates and a member of neo-Nazi terrorist group Atomwaffen Division, was arrested and charged with murdering Bernstein. As Bernstein was both openly gay and Jewish, authorities declared that Bernstein was a victim of a hate crime. Five deaths had links to the Atomwaffen Division over eight months from 2017 to early 2018.

## Legal case

The presiding judge initially charged Woodward with murder and personal use of a deadly weapon. In August 2018, two charges of committing a hate crime were added because of Bernstein's sexual orientation. Woodward, who has been linked to the murder scene by DNA evidence, pleaded not guilty. A pretrial hearing was held in January 2019.
Woodward's attorney stated that Woodward has Asperger syndrome which likely contributed to his social issues. He also said that Woodward was confused regarding his own sexual identity.
Woodward, who was 20 at the time of the crime, faced a sentence of life without parole if found guilty. 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.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Woodward has remained in confinement since his last court appearance in 2018. His trial was tentatively scheduled to begin sometime in 2021, though a series of postponements pushed it back until July 15, 2022.
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. In late October 2022, mental health experts deemed Woodward competent, and a pre-trial hearing was scheduled for January 2023. In a subsequent court hearing on February 20, 2024, jury selection for the trial commenced. The trial began in April.
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 or antisemitism. 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.
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.
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. On July 3, 2024, six and a half years after the murder, Woodward was found guilty of murdering Bernstein. Woodward was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on November 15, 2024. Woodward was imprisoned in the Wasco State Prison but was later transferred to the California Medical Facility, where he is currently imprisoned on 2025.