Murder of Blaze Bernstein


On January 10, 2018, 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania sophomore Blaze Bernstein was found dead in a park in Orange County, California, eight days after having been reported missing. He was visiting his family in Lake Forest, California, when he was killed. He had been stabbed twenty times. Two days later, Samuel Woodward, one of Bernstein's former high school classmates and a member of neo-Nazi terrorist group Atomwaffen Division, was arrested and charged with murdering Bernstein. As Bernstein was both openly gay and Jewish, authorities declared that Bernstein was a victim of a hate crime.

Blaze Bernstein

Bernstein was born on April 27, 1998, in South Orange County, California, to Gideon Bernstein, an equity partner at Leisure Capital Management, and Jeanne Pepper, a former lawyer who retired from law in 2000 to raise their three children. Before beginning classes at the University of Pennsylvania, Blaze graduated from Orange County School of the Arts.

Legal proceedings

On February 2, 2018, Woodward, a member of the Neo-Nazi group Atomwaffen Division, pleaded not guilty to murder charges in Bernstein's death.
In August 2018, Woodward was charged with committing a hate crime against Bernstein because of the latter's sexual orientation and religion. Woodward, who has been linked to the murder by DNA evidence, pled not guilty. A pretrial hearing was held in January 2019.