Victim’s mom flees courtroom as neo-Nazi killer details grisly 2018 murder after Tinder date
The heartbroken mother of a University of Pennsylvania student who was allegedly murdered by a Neo-Nazi fled the courtroom this week as the alleged killer detailed the grisly crime.
Blaze Bernstein, 19, was reported missing while home on winter break in California on Jan. 2, 2018.
His body was found eight days later in Borrego Park in Orange County.
Appearing in Orange County Superior Court on Thursday, Bernstein’s former high school classmate, Samuel Woodward, 26, detailed how the pair reconnected on Tinder and met up at the park on the night of Jan. 2, the Forward reported.
When he took the stand this week, Woodward claimed he stabbed Bernstein more than 20 times because he was afraid Bernstein had taken a picture of his genitals while he was passed out from marijuana, the outlet said.
As Woodward described his efforts to bury Bernstein’s body by hand, the victim’s mother, Jeanne Pepper, left in tears.
“I was just in mortal terror,” Woodward said of when he supposedly woke up to find Bernstein with his cell phone in one hand and Woodward’s penis in the other.
Woodward claimed he killed his former classmate because he was afraid of being outed as gay to his family, particularly his father.
“There is no way people like him, people in our community, people in our neighborhood — just the look on his face if he heard about something like that, if it got out somehow,” Woodward said. “I couldn’t fathom something like that.”
“At that point I just — the phone wasn’t even in the way anymore. Nothing was in the way anymore. It just kept — I just kept driving and driving and driving the knife down,” he added.
Prosecutors have argued Bernstein’s killing was a pre-meditated anti-gay hate crime, the Forward noted.
During opening statements in April, Woodward’s attorney admitted his client had been linked to American Vanguard, a neo-Nazi group.
According to investigators, Woodward eventually moved on to Atomwaffen Division, a more violent offshoot.
During his testimony, however, Woodward said he barely remembered the group and claimed he was never a full-fledged member.
He admitted to having read parts of “Siege,” a far-right tract promoted by Atomwaffen.
When asked by his public defender if he planned to kill Bernstein because he was gay or because he was Jewish, Woodward replied “no, not at all.”
Woodward was arrested and charged with first-degree murder on Jan. 12, 2018.
He is also facing hate crime charges.
If convicted, he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
