The killing of Blaze Bernstein by former classmate Samuel Woodward was not driven by hate, a defense attorney suggested Wednesday as he detailed for jurors the complex interactions between the two young men on a dating app leading up to Bernstein’s violent slaying in January 2018.
Bernstein directed Woodward to the Lake Forest park where he was killed, and shortly before his death sent a text message that left another friend worried about his safety, Assistant Public Defender Ken Morrison told an Orange County Superior Court jury late Wednesday during a second day of opening statements in Woodward’s murder trial.
A day earlier, Woodward’s attorney acknowledged to jurors that Woodward killed Bernstein, who was found buried at the edge of Borrego Park in the Foothill Ranch area of Lake Forest.
Prosecutors allege that Woodward, now 27, killed Bernstein because Bernstein was gay. Growing up in a conservative household, Woodward developed anti-gay and antisemitic beliefs that led him to join a neo-Nazi group and eventually target gay men — including Bernstein — online, Senior Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Walker told jurors Tuesday.
Woodward’s attorney painted a more nuanced portrait of Woodward, describing him as an outcast who is on the autism spectrum and struggled to make friends and with his own sexuality.
The defense attorney stopped short of describing exactly what he believed happened the night of the killing, though he promised jurors that Woodward himself will testify during the trial.
Instead, Morrison, as he wrapped up his opening statements in a Santa Ana courtroom on Wednesday, focused on a pair of conversations on the dating site Tinder that Woodward and Bernstein began six months before Woodward’s death and ended the night of the slaying.
Both young men had attended the Orange County School of the Arts, where Woodward gained a reputation for his conservative views. On June 15, 2017, Bernstein messaged other friends that he had…
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