News
Orange County prosecutors working to establish Blaze Bernstein murder as a hate crime
Blaze Bernstein had been missing a week when investigators found his body buried under a thin layer of mud at Borrego Park in Lake Forest in January 2018, with 19 stab wounds to his neck.
A 19-year-old student at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was the managing editor of Penn Appetit, a student-run food magazine, he had come home to spend the holidays with his family in Orange County.
Suspicion soon fell on 20-year-old Samuel Woodward, Bernstein’s former schoolmate at the Orange County School of the Arts, who had admitted to being with him in the park the night he disappeared. Investigators said they found Bernstein’s blood on a visor in Woodward’s car, and on a knife discovered in a drawer at the Newport Beach home where Woodward lived with his parents.
Bernstein was Jewish and gay, while Woodward, according to one of his attorneys, was conflicted about his sexuality. When investigators managed to hack into Woodward’s iPhone, they unearthed a trove of anti-gay, anti-Jewish material linked to the Atomwaffen Division, a white supremacist hate group.
The role that ideology may have played in Bernstein’s death will be sharply contested at his trial, with opening statements expected to begin Tuesday in Orange County Superior Court. Woodward is charged with murder, with enhancements for use of a deadly weapon and for hate crime, which could put him in prison for life without parole.
“There is this narrative that’s been pushed: Nazi kills gay Jew. From the defense perspective, that’s inaccurate,” Assistant Public Defender Kenneth Morrison told Judge Kimberly Menninger during one of many hearings leading up to the trial.
The exact defense strategy remains unclear, but one of Morrison’s aims will be to decouple his client’s alleged crimes from his client’s association with the Atomwaffen Division. The attorney has argued, with little success, to have references to Adolf Hitler and Nazis excluded from testimony on the basis that they are inflammatory.
The case has drawn widespread media interest, and Morrison objected to the possibility of video cameras in the courtroom, which “really could be traumatizing” to some of the 56 people on his witness list, some of whom are reluctant to testify.
“Is it simply because the news media loves the salacious narrative that they created?” Morrison said, adding that in a fraught political climate, publicity poses a “greater risk of prejudice for Mr. Woodward.”
Menninger, the judge, said the trial involves “great issues of public interest,” including “murder, sexual orientation, gender and religion.” She said she would allow cameras on a limited basis, in part because transparency would serve the safety of the courthouse.
According to testimony at a preliminary hearing in September 2018, the Orange County Sheriff’s Department worked diligently to crack open the contents of Woodward’s iPhone. An investigator carried the phone by hand to New Jersey, where a telecommunications company called Cellebrite Inc. worked for 10 weeks to find the PIN code, bypassing the auto-shutdown function.
On Woodward’s phone, investigators found an abundance of Atomwaffen-related material, including a photo of Woodward with James Mason, the author of “Siege,” which a prosecutor described as “the Bible” of the hate group.
According to Sheriff’s Department testimony, the phone also contained emails Woodward wrote and sent to himself under the heading “Sam’s Diary.” One email from May 2017 said:
“I tell sodomites that I’m bi-curious, which makes them want to ‘convert’ me … Get them hooked by acting coy, maybe send them a pic or two, beat around the bush and pretend to tell them that I like them and then kabam, I either un-friend them or tell them they have been pranked, ha ha.”
In another, from July 2017, he wrote that he had downloaded the dating app Grindr and was amusing himself by threatening gay people.
“LMAO,” he wrote, according to testimony. “They think they are going to get hate crimed and it scares the s— out of them … Priceless.”
According to investigators, Woodward acknowledged meeting Bernstein on the night he vanished but asserted that Bernstein walked alone into the park and left him waiting, unsure “if Blaze was pranking him.”
Woodward also said that Bernstein had made a pass at him, an investigator testified, but Woodward found homosexuality “gross.” Asked about “numerous cuts and scrapes” on his hands, Woodward said he got them in a fight club, according to testimony in the preliminary hearing.
Six years after the killing, jury selection began in late February. A courtroom outburst by Woodward forced the process to start over. Woodward’s prior attorney said his client had Asperger’s syndrome and was torn about his sexuality. The trial is expected to last through the end of June.
News
Is now the right time to invest in gold as prices have cooled?
The price of gold has climbed to record highs recently and has remained strong through much of April. And, that growth continued until the precious metal traded at around $2,390 per ounce on April 19, 2024. But since, growth in the price of the precious metal has cooled, with gold’s price now hovering around $2,300 per ounce.
This lull in gold’s price may represent an investment opportunity.
In general, investing is centered around buying assets when prices are low and selling them when prices are high – generating a profit on the difference between the two. So, considering the declines in gold’s price over the past few days, now may be the time to make your investment. But is buying gold during this lull in prices really a good idea?
Compare your gold investment options among leading brokers now.
Gold prices have cooled. Should you buy in now?
With gold’s price down from recent highs, you may be wondering if now is the right time to buy in. There are several reasons the dip in gold’s price may represent an opportunity to buy. Here are some of the biggest:
Prices may rise again
If looking at a gold price chart shows anything for certain, it shows that changes in the overall growth of the medal come in fits and spurts. Periods of price growth are typically followed by periods of declines and vice versa.
But with inflation rising in recent months – and with gold’s reputation as a safe-haven asset that can hedge against inflation – it only makes sense that the price of the precious metal will eventually start to head up again in the future. While attempting to time that directional change may be tricky, buying the precious metal while the price is down gives you the opportunity to take advantage of any upward movement that may be ahead.
Add gold to your portfolio now before prices have a chance to rise.
You may be able to make a quick profit
Gold isn’t known as an asset in which you can earn a quick return, but in today’s market, that may be the case. Don’t forget that in January, gold was trading at just $2,000 per ounce. And, by mid-April, the commodity’s price had climbed to around $2,400 per ounce. That’s about 20% growth in a matter of months, much of which happened since March 1 – an impressive climb for any investment asset.
Perhaps more importantly, gold’s price growth through the beginning of 2024 shows that the commodity doesn’t have to be a buy and hold style investment that you keep in a safety deposit box or precious metal depository for years to come. There’s also the possibility that the commodity’s price could climb further ahead, making it a compelling way to potentially generate a quick profit.
There are other benefits of investing in gold
There are other benefits of investing in gold that have little to do with the price growth seen thus far in 2024 – or the lull in prices seen over the past couple of days. Those benefits include:
- Inflation protection: Gold has long been considered an inflation hedge, and for good reason. When inflation drives the prices of consumer goods and services up – and the value of the dollar down – gold’s price tends to rise. So, it could be used to maintain the value of your portfolio during inflationary economic conditions. That’s important in today’s economic environment as stubborn inflation continues to weigh on the value of the dollar.
- Portfolio diversification: Gold’s price doesn’t always move in the same pattern that bonds or stocks do. So, mixing a reasonable amount of gold into your portfolio (up to 10% of your portfolio assets) as a diversifier could protect you from losses should one or more of your traditional portfolio assets fall in value. “If you have less than 5% – 10% of your net worth in commodities & FX (forex), you should absolutely consider adding exposure to gold and other precious metals,” says Vijay Marolia, money manager and managing partner at the wealth management firm, Regal Point Capital.
The bottom line
Gold’s price has fallen from recent highs – which may represent an opportunity to tap into growth ahead. However, gold isn’t simply a “buy while it’s low and sell while it’s a high” kind of investment opportunity. The commodity can also protect your portfolio from the stubborn inflation we’ve seen thus far in 2024 while acting as a diversification tool that could increase your risk-adjusted portfolio returns. So, consider adding gold to your portfolio today while it has the potential to grow in value.
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