Bail for Blaze suspect set at $5 million
A JUDGE has set bail for the suspected murderer of Jewish university student Blaze Bernstein at $5 million (£3.81 million).
Samuel Woodward, 21, will be formally charged with the killing at an arraignment hearing in California on November 9, before a full murder trial is held.
Prosecutors accuse Mr Woodward of stabbing Mr Bernstein 19 times in his neck in what they say illustrated his suspected homophobia and ties to the Atomwaffen Divison, an armed fascist group in California.
The two went to High School together in Orange County, California, before the 19-year-old Mr Bernstein began studying at the University of Pennsylvania.
The two men reportedly arranged a reunion on January 2 this year.
Blaze Bernstein’s body was found on the outskirts of a local park in Orange County on January 10, a week after he was reported missing.
Mr Woodward denies murder. Prosecutors said more than 100 “materials” had been found on Mr Woodward’s iPhone referencing the Atomwaffen Division, including a wallpaper and pictures referencing Nazism.
He reportedly told officers that he collected Mr Bernstein in his car at 11pm on January 2 this year and drove Blaze Bernstein
to a local park, where they spent time alone.
Officers searching Mr Woodward’s home found a knife in a bedroom drawer with blood on the tip of the blade and the handle, as well as blood stains at various locations including the visor of his car.
In June, Mr Bernstein’s mother Jeanne Pepper wrote for the JC about how she and her husband turned to tikun olam, “the practice of loving people and of repairing our world”, after their son’s death.
“To lose a child to violence and horror could certainly make us cynical people, looking at the world through the lens of bitterness and contempt,” she wrote.
“But I learned from this nightmare that how I react to what happened to our family and my son is my choice. I can choose life, or I can choose something much less.