A southern California jury has convicted Samuel Woodward of the 2018 murder of former high school classmate Blaze Bernstein, following a three month-long trial that re-excavated a brutal killing that made international headlines for the perpetrator’s membership in the neo-Nazi Atomwaffen Division organization.
Bernstein, a 19-year-old pre-med student at the University of Pennsylvania, disappeared on 2 January 2018 after meeting up with Woodward, then 20, that evening. The pair, who had attended the Orange County High School for the Arts together, had reconnected over the dating app Tinder. Bernstein’s body was found six days later, buried in a park in Orange county. Woodward was the last person Bernstein was in contact with, and immediately fell under suspicion.
Woodward was arrested on 12 January and charged with Bernstein’s murder. A few weeks later, ProPublica revealed Woodward was a member of the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi guerrilla organization implicated in four other murders, multiple bomb plots and other crimes.
Woodward faced first-degree murder charges with a hate crime enhancement – prosecutors had argued Bernstein’s killing was motivated by hatred for LGBTQ+ people.
A jury on Wednesday found Woodward guilty of first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement, the top charge brought against the Newport Beach native. Woodward faces a prison sentence of life without parole. Deliberations lasted less than two days. Woodward is set to be sentenced on 25 October.
The marathon trial centered around the motive for the murder: public defender Ken Morrison had admitted his client’s culpability in the murder during opening statements in early April.
Over three days of closing arguments, Orange county deputy district attorney Jennifer Walker characterized Bernstein’s murder as a “ceremonial killing” intended to get Woodward “prestige and recognition” within the Atomwaffen Division. She cited a skull mask recovered from Woodward’s rental car covered in Bernstein’s blood.
Among the evidence presented to document Woodward’s extremist leanings and hatred of gay people were thousands of neo-Nazi images and documents, including Atomwaffen Division propaganda, and what Walker labeled a “hate diary” from Woodward’s phone that outlined his attempts to “catfish” gay men online. “I tell sodomites I’m bi-curious, which makes them want to convert me,” Woodward wrote on 14 May 2017. Another entry from June 29 2017 read: “All you fags and fakers are going to pay for it, get ready to die.”
Walker said: “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. It’s only by the grace of God that rain happened and they found his body.”
Woodward’s attorney claimed the motive was not a premeditated killing for the benefit of an extremist group, but a violent outburst from a young man with untreated autism, a confused sexual identity, and the baggage of growing up in a staunchly conservative, occasionally violent home where he was bullied and sometimes beaten by his father and brother.
Both Woodward’s parents testified, recounting their child’s struggle with social isolation, mental illness and his sexuality, which Morrison claimed made the young man more susceptible to recruitment by the right wing extremists Woodward found in obscure corners of the internet, such as the messaging apps Kik and iFunny.
In June, Woodward testified for five days in a halting, occasionally incoherent manner, often pausing for a minute before answering questions from his attorney and the prosecutor. On his fourth day on the stand, Woodward spoke of the circumstances that led to the murder, recalling how he had picked Bernstein up after texting via Snapchat and driven together to Borrego Park in Foothill Ranch. He and Bernstein sat on a bench reminiscing about their time in high school, and then smoked a joint of strong marijuana together.
“I had been looking for people for a long time to spend time with or talk to,” Woodward testified, adding that he had struggled to build relationships with other people his age and only had a social life online.
Woodward claimed the marijuana made him sleepy and disoriented. He closed his eyes, only to feel Bernstein’s hands “right on my crotch with my pants unbuttoned, and he had me in his hand”, he said. In his other hand, Woodward claimed, Bernstein held his cellphone and appeared to take an explicit photo of his genitals.
In prior testimony, Woodward and Bernstein’s former high school classmates recounted Woodward’s sexual interest in at least one other classmate, and Bernstein’s own intent to hook up with Woodward after the latter reached out to him
Judge Menninger refused to let Morrison introduce the content of the final messages sent by Bernstein on that evening, a move Woodward’s attorney strongly protested against.
Woodward said he flew into a rage, screaming at Bernstein and struggling to grab the cellphone. He grabbed one of the knives he had used to open a metal container of marijuana, he said, and “at that point the phone wasn’t in the way anymore, nothing was in the way any more”. Forensic evidence and law enforcement testimony at trial showed Woodward stabbed Bernstein nearly 30 times.
Two former members of the Atomwaffen Division testified at trial: Tyler Wiesing, who headed the group’s New Jersey cell, and “Brian Murphy”, a former member sworn in under an alias who had met with Woodward for firearms training while he was living in Texas during the summer of 2018. Wiesing and Murphy spoke about the organization’s structure, its belief system and the group’s promotion of violence to bring down established society and create a white supremacist-dominated order.
A third AWD member listed as a witness, Tristan Evans, did not testify: Evans is an active member of The Base, another neo-Nazi militant group, and recruited Woodward into the Atomwaffen Division, convinced him to move to Texas in the summer of 2018, and accompanied him to visit AWD’s ideological lodestar James Mason in Denver that summer. In fall 2018, Woodward and Evans moved back to California to find construction work and start AWD’s California cell.
In the six and a half years since the murder, the Bernstein family has relentlessly pressed for Woodward to be held to account.
Woodward, now 26, was assaulted by other inmates multiple times during his incarceration at the Orange county central jail, and suffered a severe mental breakdown in custody. During the trial, Woodward appeared with a full beard and long, matted hair, often staring unmovingly in the distance for days at a time during testimony.
After Woodward threw a cup of water at Judge Menninger during jury selection earlier this year, the judge dismissed the entire jury pool and restarted the selection process, delaying the trial even further. Issues with Woodward’s competency to stand trial, the Covid pandemic and the defendant cycling through three legal teams contributed to delaying his trial for more than half a decade.
