A University of Pennsylvania sophomore who was found dead last week in a Southern California park had been stabbed at least 20 times in a crime authorities are investigating as an act of rage, according to published reports.
On Monday, the same day Blaze Bernstein’s family held a memorial service for him, a search warrant affidavit acquired by the Orange County Register detailed the gruesome condition of Bernstein’s body and described strange behavior by suspect Samuel L. Woodward, 19, who was taken into custody three days earlier after DNA evidence linked blood found on his sleeping bag to Bernstein.
Before his arrest, Woodward, 19, had told investigators that he had dropped off Bernstein at Borrego Park in Lake Forest, Calif., on Jan. 2, only to leave after an hour to visit a girlfriend when Bernstein did not reappear. When questioned by Orange County authorities, Woodward could not remember the girlfriend’s last name or where she lived, according to the Register, but said he returned to search for Bernstein later that night.
Investigators uncovered text messages Woodward sent to two female friends in June that implied he had previously rejected a romantic advance from Bernstein. “He made me promise not to tell anyone … but I have texted every one, uh oh,” Woodward wrote in one message cited in the affidavit. He later told authorities that Bernstein had tried to kiss him on the lips just hours before the Penn student’s disappearance.
According to the affidavit, Woodward “clenched his jaw and fists” while describing the interaction, noting that “he wanted to tell Blaze to get off of him.”
In a statement to the Los Angeles Times, Bernstein’s parents described the circumstances of their son’s death as a possible hate crime.
“If it is determined that this was a hate crime, we will cry not only for our son, but for LGBTQ people everywhere that live in fear or who have been victims of [a] hate crime,” the family’s statement said.
The Orange County Jail lists Woodward’s occupation as “nerf games.” He will be arraigned Wednesday, a Sheriff’s Department spokeswoman told the Inquirer and Daily News.
During his interview at the Sheriff’s Department, Woodward “avoided touching doors with his hands,” according to court filings reviewed by the Associated Press. He also drew investigators’ suspicion by attributing dirt found under his fingernails to “falling into a mud puddle and participating in what he termed a “fight club,’” the Register reported.
Woodward displayed an affinity for guns and right-wing politics, unnerving some of his classmates at the Orange County School of the Arts, in Santa Ana.
Michael Joseph Wells, who attended that school with both Bernstein and Woodward, said in a Facebook post that Woodward was “aggressive and made scary remarks to people.”
Bernstein was remembered by friends and his academic adviser at Penn as a skillful creative writer with omnivorous interests in science, psychology, and food writing.
Wells said Bernstein was “playful and kind hearted” while Woodward always “was drawing guns when prompted to draw our favorite things.”
Woodward defended the Confederate flag in an online post as a symbol of “Southern pride, not hate,” according to the CBS Los Angeles affiliate. In a thread on ask.fm, a site that invites anonymous commenters to post questions to a specific person, he said atheists will go to hell, and railed against President Barack Obama, calling him a “spineless coward” and an “arrogant, hypocritical, spineless socialist.”
Screenshot // Ask.fm
In one post, a commenter told Woodward, “You are violent. And it scares me.” He replied, “Haha what?? Me? I wouldn’t fight anybody unless they attacked me. I don’t know why you think that way about me.”