The heartbroken mother of a University of Pennsylvania student allegedly murdered by a neo-Nazi fled a courtroom this week as the suspect detailed the horrific crime.
Blaze Bernstein, 19, was reported missing on January 2, 2018 while on winter break in California.
His body was found eight days later in Borrego Park, Orange County.
Appearing in Orange County Superior Court on Thursday, Bernstein’s former high school classmate, Samuel Woodward, 26, recounted how the two reunited on Tinder and met up at a park on the evening of Jan. 2. The Forward reported.
According to the outlet, Woodward testified this week that he stabbed Bernstein more than 20 times because he feared he had taken photos of his genitals while he was unconscious from marijuana.
The victim’s mother, Jean Pepper, left the room in tears as Woodward described his efforts to bury Bernstein’s body by hand.
“I was scared to death,” Woodward said of waking up to find Bernstein holding a cell phone in one hand and Woodward’s penis in the other.
Woodward claimed he killed his former classmate because he feared his family, particularly his father, would expose him as gay.
“People like him, people in our community, people in our neighborhood, I can’t imagine the look on his face if he heard something like that, or if it got out somehow,” Woodward said. “I just couldn’t imagine anything like that happening.”
“At that point, the phone wasn’t even in the way anymore. There was nothing in the way. I just kept driving, kept driving, kept sticking the knife in,” he added.
Prosecutors allege Bernstein’s murder was a premeditated anti-gay hate crime, the Forward reported.
During opening statements in April, Woodward’s lawyers acknowledged that their client had ties to the neo-Nazi group American Vanguard.
Investigators say Woodward eventually moved on to a more violent offshoot, the Atomwaffen Division.
But in his testimony, Woodward maintained he barely remembered the group and was never an official member.
He acknowledged reading excerpts from “Siege,” a far-right pamphlet promoted by Atomwaffen.
When asked by his public defender whether he tried to kill Bernstein because he was gay or because he was Jewish, Woodward replied, “No, not at all.”
Woodward was arrested on January 12, 2018, and charged with first-degree murder.
He also faces hate crime charges.
If convicted, he faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.
