He was visiting home for the winter holiday in Lake Forest, California, about fifty miles southeast of Los Angeles, when he went missing.
In concert with the Orange County authorities, his parents mounted a hunt that tragically culminated on January 10 when the young man’s body was found on the outskirts of a local park. He had been stabbed to death.
Bernstein was not only gay but Jewish, and Mr Woodward was a member of the Atomwaffen Division — Atomwaffen means “atomic weapons” in German — a neo-Nazi group connected to other murders in the area.
It was perhaps due to these revelations that the preliminary hearing to determine if there is enough evidence to proceed in the case against Mr Woodward was postponed on Tuesday. The defence claimed that they were “not ready.”
“We were told [by the District Attorney’s office] that the defence wasn’t ready to move forward with the pre-trial, so they postponed it,” Gideon Bernstein, Blaze’s father, told the Daily Pennsylvanian.
