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Bernstein directed Woodward to the Lake Forest park the place he was killed, and shortly earlier than his demise despatched a textual content message that left one other good friend apprehensive about his security, Assistant Public Defender Ken Morrison advised an Orange County Superior Court jury late Wednesday throughout a second day of opening statements in Woodward’s homicide trial.
A day earlier, Woodward’s lawyer acknowledged to jurors that Woodward killed Bernstein, who was discovered buried on the fringe of Borrego Park within the Foothill Ranch space of Lake Forest.
Prosecutors allege that Woodward, now 27, killed Bernstein as a result of Bernstein was homosexual. Growing up in a conservative family, Woodward developed anti-gay and antisemitic beliefs that led him to hitch a neo-Nazi group and finally goal homosexual males — together with Bernstein — on-line, Senior Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Walker advised jurors Tuesday.
Woodward’s lawyer painted a extra nuanced portrait of Woodward, describing him as an outcast who’s on the autism spectrum and struggled to make mates and together with his personal sexuality.
The protection lawyer stopped in need of describing precisely what he believed occurred the evening of the killing, although he promised jurors that Woodward himself will testify in the course of the trial.
Instead, Morrison, as he wrapped up his opening statements in a Santa Ana courtroom on Wednesday, centered on a pair of conversations on the courting website Tinder that Woodward and Bernstein started six months earlier than Woodward’s demise and ended the evening of the slaying.
Both younger males had attended the Orange County School of the Arts, the place Woodward gained a repute for his conservative views. On June 15, 2017, Bernstein messaged different mates that he had noticed a Tinder profile belonging to Woodward that indicated he was open to being matched up with different males.
Woodward and Bernstein started exchanging messages on Tinder, with Bernstein telling Woodward that he was “actually the final individual I anticipated to see on right here.” Woodward initially denied that he was on the lookout for a sexual relationship with one other man, claiming that he was on the lookout for a searching accomplice.
The trade took a flirtatious flip, nevertheless, with Bernstein telling Woodward that he was “cute” and Woodward responding that “you aren’t too shabby your self, Blaze.” But after Bernstein stated they couldn’t meet up that evening, Woodward appeared to again off, claiming he had been mendacity and was simply curious since he “had by no means been hit on by a homosexual man earlier than.”
At a number of factors within the dialog, Bernstein promised Woodward that he wouldn’t inform anybody else. But Bernstein was mendacity, the protection lawyer stated, and was messaging different mates in regards to the Tinder dialog with Woodward even because it was happening.
Bernstein defined to at least one good friend that Woodward was “tremendous conservative,” based on messages the protection lawyer confirmed the jury, later including that “I must get (expletive) by Sam Woodward, it might be legendary.”
Six months later, in January 2018, Woodward apparently reached out to Bernstein on Tinder.
Bernstein — a pre-med scholar on the time on the University of Pennsylvania — was dwelling on winter break. Woodward already had dropped out of school as a way to quickly transfer to Texas to coach with Atomwaffen Division, an armed fascist group, after which returned to his mother or father’s dwelling in Newport Beach.
Woodward, within the second Tinder dialog, wrote to Bernstein “I believe I owe you a proof about why I unmasked with you” and including “I used to be going by means of a bizarre time in my life and I believe I figured issues out now.” Bernstein appeared initially unmoved, at one level saying “I actually don’t care.”
Bernstein famous within the dialog that Woodward “was straight,” at which level Woodward responded “I’d make an exception for you.” Bernstein didn’t seem satisfied, telling Woodward, “We have already executed this prank, bear in mind.”
However, Woodward requested for Bernstein’s Snapchat data, and through a dialog on that social media service Bernstein apparently despatched Woodward his tackle. A short while later, Woodward picked Bernstein up and the 2 drove to close by Borrego Park.
Shortly after 11:30 p.m., Bernstein despatched his final textual content message to a different good friend.
“I did one thing actually horrible for the story,” Bernstein wrote. “But nobody can ever know.”
“What story?” the good friend responded. “Hey, I’m actually apprehensive about you… please textual content me.”
The subsequent day, Bernstein’s mother and father realized he was lacking. A headline-grabbing six-day search ended with the invention of his physique, which had been stabbed greater than 20 occasions, primarily within the neck.
Investigators realized that Woodward was the final individual to see Bernstein alive. Woodward advised them that Bernstein had walked off into the park to satisfy one other individual, whose id Woodward didn’t know, and had by no means returned.
A wide range of forensic proof tied Woodward to the killing, together with a knife present in his room with blood on the tip and the deal with that was matched by means of DNA to Bernstein, and blood stains matching each males in Woodward’s car.
Investigators additionally discovered emails Woodward despatched to himself that the prosecutor described as a “hate diary” through which he appeared to specific an express hatred of homosexual and Jewish individuals and described assembly homosexual males on courting websites, gaining their belief after which “ghosting” or scaring them.
Morrison, Woodward’s lawyer, advised jurors that there was “one other clarification” for why Woodward wrote these messages, and denied it was a “hate diary,” however didn’t clarify additional throughout his opening statements.
Along with first-degree homicide, Woodward can be going through a hate crime enhancement. So if jurors are satisfied he killed Bernstein as a result of his sexuality, Woodward may face a harsher sentence of life with out the potential for parole.
