The mother of a 19-year-old man fatally stabbed to death six years ago in Foothill Ranch testified Thursday how she grew suspicious of her son’s accused killer when she and her husband reached out to him for help finding the victim.
Jeanne Pepper, the first witness in the trial of 26-year-old Samuel Lincoln Woodward of Newport Beach, who is charged with the Jan. 3, 2018, killing of Pepper’s son, 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein. She said she did not know Woodward previously, nor that he was a former classmate of her son.
Woodward is charged with murder with sentencing enhancements for a hate crime and the personal use of a deadly weapon. He faces up to life in prison without parole if convicted.
Pepper said she and her husband saw that her nearsighted son, Blaze, had left behind his glasses, wallet and other items. They started rummaging through his electronic devices for clues and found that his Apple laptop was synced with his iPhone. They called the authorities. An Orange County sheriff’s deputy came to her home, but she didn’t think they were taking it very seriously. So, she and her husband returned to their son’s devices for leads.
A man who lived about a mile away and had been in touch recently with their son said he was in Florida, Pepper said. Under cross-examination by Woodward’s defense attorney, she was surprised to hear the lawyer suggest the man was lying.
They learned Bernstein had been in touch with Woodward. A lawyer friend of the family meanwhile insisted they file a missing person’s report with deputies. Her children helped coach the parents on reading Snapchat messages without triggering a deletion.
One of the messages that got deleted “sounded like they were planning to meet up or met up with some communication about, `Where did you go? I waited for you,’ ” Pepper testified.
“We decided we were going to try and get in contact with him,” so they messaged Woodward, who responded.
Pepper had her then-14-year-old daughter videotape them as they talked with Woodward on speakerphone, but Pepper said she felt fairly certain he was lying.
According to the account, Woodward and Bernstein had gone to Borrego Park near their home in Foothill Ranch, where the victim’s body was later found in a shallow grave on Jan. 9, 2018, about a week after he was killed. Blaze Bernstein played soccer at the park growing up, among other activities, so Pepper was familiar with the territory and grew skeptical of Woodward’s claim that her son had walked into the woods to get another former classmate of theirs as a surprise, but never returned.
“He said Blaze walked off into the darkness,” Pepper said. “Was there a trail you saw? He said, `yeah,’ and that’s not possible.” There are two parks in the area and, “Both of these parks were a big part of our lives.”
“I was concerned because he sounded like he was lying and very anxious and nervous on the phone,” Pepper said.
She said that at the time, her son’s life was “amazing,” and he was buying “all kinds of cool things” for a new apartment he would live in when he returned to school, she said.
Pepper also spoke about the halting, intermittent conversations the parents had with their son about his sexual orientation. For instance, when he checked off a LGBQT club as an interest in his college application, they asked him if he was sure he didn’t do that by mistake because Pepper was concerned it might hurt his chances of acceptance. Her son said he wasn’t ready to discuss the subject then but he later came out.
The victim’s father testified about the family’s last meal together. It was a “belated Thanksgiving” that Blaze Bernstein prepared because he stayed in Philadelphia for the holiday. “The last thing I remember with him was going up to my bedroom” after dinner, Gideon Bernstein said. He choked up as he described his son’s room when he got home to help his wife sort out what was going on.
Woodward’s attorney, Ken Morrison of the Orange County Public Defender’s Office, finished his opening statement Wednesday after a morning of behind-closed-doors legal skirmishing, and fleshed out more details of an online exchange Woodward and Bernstein had in June 2017 and again in the day leading up to the killing. The two encountered each other on the Tinder dating app as Bernstein “liked” Woodward.
The two had attended the Orange County School of the Arts together for a time. When they reconnected that January, Woodward said he was straight but “would make an exception for you,” and soon after, the two began talking on Snapchat, Morrison said.
Before Bernstein was killed, he sent “two quick text messages to his best friend,” Morrison said. The message was, “I did something really horrible for the story, but, also, no one can ever know.”
Woodward is expected to testify that Bernstein directed him to drive to Borrego Park, where the victim was found in a shallow grave on Jan. 9, 2018, following a massive search for Bernstein, Morrison said.
Morrison also said there will be evidence in the trial that will shed more light on a so-called “hate diary” Woodward kept about what Senior Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Walker said involved Woodward’s reveling in “catfishing” gay men and then threatening or ghosting them later online.
“I anticipate … you’re going to hear another explanation of why Sam did that,” Morrison said. “Very different from what the prosecution suggested it meant.”
Walker told jurors on Tuesday that Woodward dropped out of Cal State Channel Islands to go to Texas to get involved with a neo-Nazi group. Prosecutors are alleging Woodward killed Bernstein because he was gay, not because of his religion, but they are using the defendant’s neo-Nazi activities as part of the evidence on the trial.