The man accused of murdering a gay Jewish teenager in Southern California is being tried six years after the brutal stabbing murder.
Samuel Woodward, 26, has pleaded not guilty to the murder and hate crime charges stemming from the 2018 death of Blaze Bernstein, 19.
It took more than half a decade for the trial to begin, largely because of questions about Woodward’s mental fitness to stand trial.
Opening statements took place Tuesday in a Southern California courtroom, two years after Woodward was deemed competent to stand trial in 2022.
Bernstein, a 19-year-old sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania, was home visiting his family in Orange County in January 2018 when he made plans to meet Woodward.
Woodward, then 20 and originally from Newport Beach, was mentally unstable and conflicted about his sexuality, according to his defense team.
Samuel Woodward, originally from Newport Beach, has pleaded not guilty and his attorneys will argue that he is innocent of both the murder charge and the hate crime charge that was committed.
Blaze Bernstein, a 19-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania, was gay and Jewish. In January 2018, he was home in Orange County visiting his family when he was killed
The suspect was also affiliated with a white supremacist group – the Atomwaffen Division – and kept large amounts of anti-gay and anti-Semitic material on his cell phone, which investigators were able to hack.
In a diary entry of Woodward’s titled “diary of hate,” he described threats he claims he made against gays online, according to a letter from the prosecutor.
Leading up to the trial, Assistant District Attorney Ken Morrison told Judge Kimberly Menninger, “There is a narrative that has been put forward: the Nazi is killing gay Jews. From a defense perspective, that is inaccurate.”
The chief prosecutor said Tuesday that the state will argue that Woodward “killed Blaze Bernstein because he was gay,” and not because he was Jewish.
Bernstein went missing after a trip with Woodward to a park in Lake Forest. The pair had both attended Orange County School of the Arts and connected via Snapchat after matching on Tinder while Bernstein was home.
The teen’s parents later found his glasses, wallet and credit cards in his bedroom after he missed a dentist appointment on January 3 and did not respond to texts or calls.
Several days later, Bernstein’s body was discovered in a shallow grave in the park near his parents’ home.
Authorities say Woodward picked Bernstein up from his parents’ home and later stabbed him about 20 times in the face and neck.
DNA evidence linked Woodward to the stabbing murder, a theory supported by the wealth of anti-gay, anti-Jewish material found on his phone.
Woodward was arrested two days after a bloody knife was found in his room at his parents’ home in the upscale enclave of Newport Beach.
It took years for the case to go to trial because of questions about Woodward’s mental state and ability to stand trial. Several public defenders have quit working with Woodward, and the lead prosecutor in the case became a judge at one point.
Bernstein’s body was discovered in a shallow grave in the park near his parents’ home
Samuel Lincoln Woodward, 20, of Newport Beach, right, a suspect in the murder of 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein, consults with his attorney in January 2018
Bernstein went missing after a trip with Woodward to a park in Lake Forest. The pair had both attended Orange County School of the Arts and connected via Snapchat while Bernstein was home
Blaze Bernstein’s parents read a statement at a news conference for the Orange County Sheriff’s Department after their son’s body was found a week after he disappeared from their family home
He was deemed competent at the end of 2022. He has also consulted with a number of lawyers, one of whom claimed that Woodward has Asperger’s syndrome, which typically causes problems with social interactions.
In February, as the jury selection process began, an outburst in Woodward’s courtroom forced the trial to restart. The suspect allegedly threw a cup of water at Judge Menninger.
Before the trial, Morrison said: “For the past six years the public has read and heard a persecutory and bogus narrative about this case that is simply fundamentally wrong.”
“I caution everyone to respect our legal process and wait until a jury has the opportunity to see, hear and evaluate all the evidence,” he said.
The defense’s exact strategy remains murky, but Morrison has said one of his main goals will be to separate the crime his client is accused of from his ties to the Atomwaffen Division.
Morrison has previously sought to exclude references to Adolf Hitler and Nazis from trial testimony due to their inflammatory nature.
He has also said that despite media interest, having cameras in the courtroom during the trial could be “traumatizing” for some of the 56 witnesses who will testify.
“Is it simply because the news media loves the salacious narrative they have created?” the public defender asked.
However, Judge Menninger ruled that the trial concerns “major issues of public interest.” She will therefore allow limited cameras in the courtroom.
‘I have to make sure people trust us. “I want them to make sure we don’t hide the ball,” she said.
The process is expected to take two to three months, possibly until the end of June.
Woodward has visited a handful of lawyers in the six years since his arrest
During a preliminary hearing in 2018, the OC Sheriff’s Department worked hard to crack open the contents of Woodward’s iPhone.
Their successful efforts turned up a goldmine of suspicious material, including emails the young man had written and sent to himself under the heading “Sam’s Diary.”
‘I tell sodomites I’m bi-curious, which makes them want to ‘convert’ me… Get them hooked by being coy, maybe send them a few pictures, beat around the bush and pretend to tell them I like them and then kabam, i unfriend them or tell them they were fooled, ha ha,” he wrote in one such email from May 2017.
In another email sent from July 2017, Woodward wrote about downloading the gay dating app Grindr.
“LMAO. They think they’re going to have to deal with hate crimes, and that terrified them… Priceless.”
Investigators say Woodward admitted he was with Bernstein the night he disappeared, but said the victim walked through the park alone and left him waiting.
Woodward also said Bernstein made a pass at him, but the suspect thought homosexuality was “gross.”