Sam Woodward, former member of Atomwaffen Division, was arrested in 2018 for murder of gay, Jewish pre-med student

Sam Woodward, former member of Atomwaffen Division, was arrested in 2018 for murder of gay, Jewish pre-med student

Six years after his arrest, a former member of the Atomwaffen Division will face trial in a southern California courtroom over the killing of his former high school classmate – a murder that rocketed the neo-Nazi group to international notoriety and highlighted the wave of violence by far-right American extremists during the presidency of Donald Trump.

Sam Woodward was arrested on 15 January 2018 and charged with the murder of Blaze Bernstein, a former fellow student at the Orange County School of the Arts. Bernstein, a gay and Jewish pre-med student, had been missing for a week before his body was discovered in a shallow grave.

On the night of 10 January 2018, the two men met at Borrego Park in the Orange county city of Lake Forest, according to Orange county sheriff’s reports. Bernstein was home from the University of Pennsylvania on winter break, and re-established contact with his former high school classmate through Tinder, where the two had previously connected.

Bernstein did not hide his identity as a gay man. Although Woodward was not open about his, while in high school he made passes at more than one of his male classmates, according to reporting in Mother Jones.

Bernstein’s body was found with 19 stab wounds. Investigators’ attention quickly turned to Woodward, the well-off son of an observant, conservative Catholic family from Newport Beach.

    • girlfreddy@lemmy.ca
      19·
      7 months ago

      Woodward’s trial has faced similar lengthy delays. Woodward has switched defense attorneys several times since 2018, and his defense team has repeatedly highlighted his Asperger’s diagnosis as justification for why he should be declared unfit for trial.

      In 2021, the then newly elected Orange county district attorney, Todd Spitzer, called the then three year delay (partially due to the Covid-19 pandemic) in Woodward’s case “unreasonable”, but was unable to advance the case until last summer. Jury selection was started and swiftly abandoned in early March after Woodward threw a cup of water at the judge.