Samuel Woodward was drawn by a desire for camaraderie to join a Neo-Nazi group months before he killed former classmate Blaze Bernstein, but quickly became disillusioned with the extremist organization, a psychiatric expert testified this week as testimony wound down in Woodward’s murder trial.
Martha Rogers, a psychological expert who interviewed Woodward shortly after his 2018 arrest and again in the months before his current trial, diagnosed Woodward as being on the autism spectrum. Her testimony late Wednesday in a Santa Ana courtroom directly followed Woodward’s time on the stand, when he acknowledged killing Bernstein — his former Orange County School of the Arts classmate — after Woodward claimed Bernstein touched his genitals and appeared to take an explicit photo that Woodward said he thought had been texted to other people.
Rogers echoed previous testimony describing Woodward as a social outcast who grew up in a conservative religious household and was unable to fit in at OCSA. In 2017 — months before he killed Bernstein — Woodward dropped out of college and moved to Texas at the invitation of members of Atomwaffen Division, a Neo-Nazi hate group.
Woodward had a tendency to admire “strong, leader-type men in history” who “went on” despite “not being well liked,” Rogers said. He felt Atomwaffen — which advocated the violent collapse of the current political structure — shared his beliefs, Rogers added.
After struggling to find and hold down a job in Texas and essentially finding himself homeless, Woodward decided he had been “duped,” Rogers testified, and he was forced to “tuck his tail between his legs and come home” to his parents’ house in Newport Beach.
“It was wearing thin and didn’t match up to the thoughts he had of what it would be, where he would have this great camaraderie and be uplifted as a man and become stronger and better,” Rogers said. “It somehow didn’t seem to match his expectations. He grew tired of it.”
Senior Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Walker — who alleges Woodward committed a hate crime by killing Bernstein because Bernstein was gay — sharply questioned whether Woodward actually moved away from Atomwaffen’s ideology even after he left Texas. Woodward had thousands of images tied to Atomwaffen on his phone at the time of his arrest for Woodward’s killing, and a search of his cell in 2020 turned up material that appeared to be tied to the extremist organization.
“After the crime, in jail, he had doodles about Atomwaffen in his cell,” the prosecutor noted.
A good portion of Rogers testimony focused on Woodward’s sexuality, which has emerged as a key question in the trial. Prosecutors say Woodward targeted Bernstein after allegedly “ghosting” or threatening other gay men he met online. The defense has countered by arguing that Woodward struggled with his own sexuality and was not driven to kill Bernstein by anti-gay or antisemitic beliefs.
Woodward himself testified that he was never drawn to men sexually. But two men testified that Woodward sent explicit nude photos of himself, including one who was a classmate of Woodward’s.
Rogers described Woodward as growing up in a “sexually repressive” environment and said he was “verbally abused and called a fag in the household.” Rogers said that led to “his many complexities about his identity and sexuality” and his denial of any homosexual tendencies.
“He really has a lot of trouble, still, saying anything he thinks would lead to his parents abandoning him,” Rogers said.
The prosecutor asked Rogers about previous violent incidents by Woodward, including a time when he returned to his parents’ home frustrated by work and stabbed a spare mattress with a knife.
“I think at that point he was pretty resentful of a lot of things that were happening,” Rogers said, citing pressure Woodward told her he was feeling at the time about whether to go to college and where.
Woodward, then 20, killed 19-year-old Bernstein while Bernstein — at the time a pre-med student at the University of Pennsylvania — was home visiting his parents’ home in Lake Forest for winter break in January 2018. Woodward admitted burying Bernstein in a makeshift grave he dug at the edge of Borrego Park, where Bernstein’s body was discovered after a headline-grabbing six day search.
On Thursday afternoon, the prosecution played for jurors video of investigators interviewing Woodward in the midst of the search for Bernstein.
Woodward, during that interview, said Bernstein tried to kiss him before walking off to meet an unknown friend, claims that he never mentioned during his actual trial testimony. Asked about apparent injuries on his hands, Woodward told the investigators an apparent made-up story about taking part in a “boxing ring” with people he met online.
