Samuel Woodward’s Parents: Testimony, Autism, and Sentencing Letter

Samuel Woodward’s parents are Blake and Michele Woodward of Newport Beach, California — a commercial real estate executive and a licensed marriage and family therapist whose devout Catholic household became a central subject of their son’s 2024 murder trial. The defense argued that a “homophobic and repressive” home and the family’s reluctance to confront Samuel’s undiagnosed autism helped push him toward the neo-Nazi group whose ideology drove the January 2018 killing of Blaze Bernstein.¹

Who Blake and Michele Woodward Are

Blake Stuart Woodward is a first vice president at CBRE, the commercial real estate firm, based in the company’s Irvine office. He holds a California real estate salesperson’s license and has more than 30 years of experience in shopping center planning, development, leasing, and sales across Southern California. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from UCLA and has represented clients including The Irvine Company and Shea Properties.²

Michele Woodward is a licensed marriage and family therapist. She runs a sole proprietorship practice from the family’s home in the Port Streets neighborhood of Newport Beach, and her city business license has been active since October 2016.³

The couple are devout Catholics who attend Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church in Newport Beach. Michele attended Mass daily, and the family attended together on Sundays.⁴ They have two sons: Clayton, known as Clay, and Samuel, who is about two years younger.⁵

Inside the Household the Defense Described

Defense attorney Ken Morrison told jurors the Woodward family was “split into warring camps,” with Samuel and Michele on one side and Blake and Clay on the other. Morrison alleged that Blake and Clay frequently questioned Samuel’s masculinity and that Clay regularly used a homophobic slur against him. The defense argued the environment created “deep anxiety about his sexual orientation” and that Samuel joined the Atomwaffen Division seeking “an affirmation of his masculinity.” Prosecutors framed the same household differently, arguing that Samuel’s “reactionary parents fueled his hatred” of gay and Jewish people.¹

In a 2019 interview with defense investigators, Blake Woodward said he believed homosexuality was a sin. He also told investigators that Clay had bullied Samuel.⁵ On the stand, Blake said he could not recall Samuel making negative comments about Jewish or gay people, and described his son as prone to “angry outbursts or meltdowns” involving screaming and destruction of property.⁶

The trial also revealed that Blake had been molested at age 16. Michele cited that history as a source of her husband’s “misgivings” about Samuel’s potential sexual orientation, and the defense treated it as foundational to the homophobia Blake passed on to his sons.⁵⁷

Michele Woodward’s Testimony

Michele testified over four days, concluding on May 29, 2026. She described Samuel’s struggles from preschool onward: extreme sensitivity to textures and sounds, difficulty with social interaction, and early fixations on sharks, spiders, and eventually World War II and Nazism. She had kept meticulous records of her son’s life — report cards, medical files, journal entries, and handwritten correspondence — and turned hundreds of pages over to defense investigators after his arrest.⁵

On the stand, though, she was often evasive. She answered “I don’t recall” to many questions, sometimes when confronted with documents she had produced herself. She acknowledged that being “seen as normal” was important to her and remains so. Asked whether she had feared the stigma of an autism diagnosis for Samuel, she said she could not recall.⁵

Michele testified that she had told Samuel, “If you choose that lifestyle, it’ll be hard,” referring to homosexuality, and that the subject was more of an “issue” for Blake than for her. She admitted hearing Blake and Clay disparage gay people in front of Samuel but denied that Blake had beaten their son, describing physical altercations as “wrestling aggressively” when Samuel was angry. She called the allegation that Blake had used a homophobic slur against Samuel “absurd.”⁵

A six-page letter Michele had written to Samuel before he left for college became one of the trial’s most cited exhibits. In it, she described his “intense outpouring of yelling words and destroying property” and wrote: “For my own health, I can’t engage with you while you are raging… When you are raging I am going to leave the room. When I excuse myself, do not get physical with me.” She initially told the court the letter merely listed behaviors she wanted him to avoid, not events that had actually occurred. Under cross-examination by prosecutor Jennifer Walker, she acknowledged she would not have written it if the descriptions were untrue.⁵

By Samuel’s teenage years, Michele said, the home had grown volatile enough that she and Blake communicated with him primarily through written letters to avoid triggering what she described as “negative feedback.” She had also created a guide to help him navigate social situations in high school, and had banned the Harry Potter series from the home, saying she believed the franchise conveyed that “witchcraft and dark forces are fun.”⁵

The Autism the Family Did Not Pursue

Defense psychological expert Martha Rogers diagnosed Samuel with autism spectrum disorder. She testified that when Samuel was 18, his parents had taken him to a clinic where he received a diagnosis of Asperger’s syndrome, and only after he had already been in therapy there for several months. Before that, there had been no formal evaluation, despite signs stretching back to early childhood, including auditory sensitivity so extreme it required a device to muffle the sound of urination, and the need to repeat kindergarten.⁸

Michele testified that she “didn’t think Sam was on the spectrum” and had not sought a diagnosis until his late adolescence. The family was described as reluctant to pursue a formal evaluation because of concerns about how it would affect their reputation.⁷ Rogers testified that Samuel’s autism led him to avoid anything that might put him in a “bad light” with people he cared about, particularly his parents, and that he carried a deep fear of abandonment.⁸

What They Knew About Samuel’s Radicalization

A friend identified as Patrick told investigators that Samuel “came out” to his parents as a Nazi in the spring of 2017. In messages to Patrick, Samuel expressed resentment toward his parents’ Catholic faith and particular frustration that his father referred to Jewish people as “God’s Chosen People.” He reportedly called his parents “cucks” but still loved his father and hoped he would eventually embrace white nationalism, believing Blake was “getting chipped away bit by bit.”⁹

By that point Samuel had already been active in Skype chats run by Vanguard America, another hate group, which he left because he considered it insufficiently radical.⁹ He had joined the Atomwaffen Division in early 2016, traveling to Texas for meetings and a three-day training camp.¹⁰ Reporter Louis Keene, who covered the trial closely, described Samuel’s path to violence as “colored by multi-generational trauma, concern regarding familial reputation, and loneliness,” and said the parents at trial appeared to walk a line between protecting the family’s reputation and preserving their son’s chance at freedom one day.⁷

Cooperation With the Defense and Public Silence

Between Samuel’s January 2018 arrest and the 2024 trial, Blake and Michele largely avoided the press. They did not respond to interview requests from ABC News.¹¹ Shortly after the arrest, Monsignor Wilbur Davis of Our Lady Queen of Angels spoke to reporters outside the Orange County courthouse, saying Samuel had been named after the biblical Samuel and had received communion two weeks earlier.¹²

Away from the cameras, both parents worked with the defense. Michele handed investigators hundreds of pages of family records and sat for hours of interviews. Blake gave the 2019 investigator interview in which he stated his view that homosexuality was a sin and acknowledged Clay’s bullying of Samuel.⁵

Their Letter at Sentencing

A jury convicted Samuel Woodward on July 3, 2024, of first-degree murder with a hate crime enhancement and the special allegation of personal use of a knife.¹³ On November 15, 2024, Judge Kimberly Menninger sentenced him to life in prison without the possibility of parole.¹⁴

Blake and Michele submitted a letter to the court for sentencing. They wrote: “In the past, you could look into Sam’s eyes and be surprised at the level of sensitivity and warmth — it’s one of his best traits. Now…, he’s too vulnerable to let you look him in the eyes…. He committed a crime, but he is not a person without value, unworthy of respect….”¹¹

Blaze Bernstein’s mother, Jeanne Pepper, addressed the same courtroom. She called Samuel a “sociopath,” expressed relief that he would never be free to kill again, and told the judge, “No mother should have to bury her child.”¹⁵

1
The Forward. Blaze Bernstein Trial Samuel Woodward Murder
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CBRE. Blake Woodward
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City of Newport Beach. Michele Woodward MA LMFT Business License
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Los Angeles Times. Woodward Update
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The Forward. Blaze Bernstein Trial Michele Woodward Testifies
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ABC7. Blaze Bernstein Murder Trial Defendant Samuel Woodward Takes Stand
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George Washington University Extremism. Firsthand Perspectives Sam Woodward Trial
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Patch. Psychiatric Expert Accused Hate Crime Killer’s Mindset Trial
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Mother Jones. How a Gay Teen, an Internet Nazi, and a Late-Night Rendezvous Turned to Tragedy
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ProPublica. California Murder Suspect Atomwaffen Division
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ABC News. Murdered Ivy League Student’s Family Reflects
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Getty Images. Msgr. Wilbur Davis of Our Lady Queen of Angels Catholic Church
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ABC7. Blaze Bernstein Murder Trial Jurors Reach Verdict
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CNN. Samuel Woodward Sentenced Blaze Bernstein Killing
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ABC7. Blaze Bernstein Murder Trial Samuel Woodward Sentenced