“It was the beginning of hell,” the father of Blaze Bernstein recalled during testimony Thursday about learning in January 2018 that his son was missing, leading to a massive search that ended nearly a week later with the discovery of the young man’s body in a makeshift grave at the edge of a Lake Forest park.
Bernstein’s mother and father took the stand Thursday in a Santa Ana courtroom in the midst of the Orange County Superior Court trial of Sam Woodward, a former Orange County School of the Arts classmate accused of stabbing Bernstein to death because Bernstein was gay.
Woodward’s attorney acknowledged earlier this week at the outset of the trial that Woodward killed Bernstein, but denied it was a hate crime. Such a jury determination would result in a longer prison sentence.
Bernstein was a 19-year-old pre-med University of Pennsylvania student who at the time of his death was staying at his family’s Lake Forest home while on winter break. Woodward had dropped out of college and spent time in Texas with a neo-Nazi group before returning to live at his family’s Newport Beach home.
On Jan. 3, 2018, the Bernstein family gathered for a belated “Thanksgiving” meal to make up for the holiday gathering their son had missed while he was off at college. Blaze himself served as the chef, his mother, Jeanne Pepper, testified.
“He cooked an amazing dinner for the family, like a feast,” the mother said. “I was really blown away.”
Bernstein was still awake when his parents went to sleep. Unbeknownst to his mother and father, Bernstein later that night met up with Woodward, who apparently killed Bernstein at nearby Borrego Park.
“He normally would tell us if he was going out,” Pepper testified, “But he didn’t have to tell us. He was over 18. It was a courtesy.”
“We didn’t have any rules about that, unfortunately,” the mother added.
Bernstein’s parents didn’t think anything about not seeing him the following morning,…
Read the full article here
