CA Nazi Gets Life In Hate Crime Murder Of Gay Man

November 17, 2024 Extremists, Nazis

The New York Times reports:

A California man who expressed allegiance to a neo-Nazi group and espoused anti-gay rhetoric was sentenced to life in prison on Friday after a jury found him guilty of brutally killing a former high school classmate who was gay in a hate-motivated murder, the Orange County District Attorney’s office said.

The man, Samuel Lincoln Woodward, 26, of Newport Beach, Calif., had reconnected with his former classmate, Blaze Bernstein, then a 19-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania, on a dating app for men seeking men, the authorities said.

On the evening of Jan. 2, 2018, Mr. Woodward drove Mr. Bernstein, who believed they were going on a romantic encounter, to a park in Lake Forest, Calif., where Mr. Woodward brutally stabbed Mr. Bernstein 28 times and buried his body in a shallow grave in the park, the district attorney’s office said.

NBC News reported earlier this year:

During closing arguments, prosecutor Jennifer Walker emphasized Woodward’s affiliation with a violent, anti-gay, antisemitic group known as Atomwaffen Division. “This is a person focused on hate,” Walker said. “Not following, not being led by, influenced by, victimized by Atomwaffen — seeking it out.”

Prosecutors said Woodward joined Atomwaffen Division and repeatedly targeted gay men online by reaching out to them and then abruptly breaking off contact while keeping a hateful, profanity-laced journal of his actions

Authorities said they searched Woodward’s family home in Newport Beach and found a folding knife with a bloodied blade in his room. They also found a black Atomwaffen mask with traces of blood and a host of anti-gay, antisemitic and hate group materials, prosecutors said.

My first 2018 post on the murder is here.



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