A member of a neo-Nazi group whose computer was filled with anti-gay and anti-Jewish propaganda was sentenced to life in prison Friday for the brutal stabbing death of a gay and Jewish former high school classmate.
A California judge sentenced Samuel Lincoln Woodward, 26, of Newport Beach to life in prison without the possibility of parole after a jury in July found him guilty of first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement in the death of Blaze Bernstein, who was 19 at the time of his death and home from college on winter break in 2018.
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Judge Kimberly Menninger said Woodward, then 21, was driven by “pure hate and rage” due to the victim’s “sexual orientation and religious beliefs.” She characterized the two former schoolmates as on “opposite ends of a culture war.”
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Woodward reconnected with Bernstein on a gay dating app and arranged to meet while he was in town during the holiday break in January. The University of Pennsylvania student met up with Woodward in a public park, where prosecutors say Woodward stabbed the young man 28 times and buried him in a shallow grave.
Bernstein’s parents reported him missing the next day and went through his online activity in search of clues. They discovered he’d been in touch with Woodward, a former classmate at Orange County School of the Arts, a middle school and high school in Santa Ana.
“Woodward told the Bernsteins that he had met up with their son but that he had walked off into the park with an unknown person and he never saw” him again, the district attorney’s office said.
Bernstein’s mutilated body was found in the park a week later after it was exposed during heavy rains.
The student’s blood was discovered on a skull mask in Woodward’s possession linked to the neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen, whom Woodward had pledged allegiance to. The nihilist group’s stated aim is to use violence to bring about the collapse of society and government.
In the three-week trial in July, Woodward’s attorney argued the killing was a spontaneous, irrational act, and Woodward testified feeling “anger like nothing I had ever felt in my whole life,” leading him to just keep “driving and driving and driving the knife down.” Asked if he remembered how many times he stabbed Bernstein, Woodward responded, “No.”
Woodward claimed in the same testimony that he had been provoked to stab Bernstein when he allegedly took a photo of Woodward’s genitals. Woodward also claimed that he had smoked cannabis at the park and was in a haze when his discovered Bernstein was touching him.
At the sentencing, prosecutors reminded the judge that Woodward was a former Eagle Scout hoping to impress Atomwaffen with the murder and prove he wasn’t gay.
Bernstein’s mother said at the sentencing she was haunted by the thought that her son was made “to die looking at an Atomwaffen mask.”
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