Clues with Morgan Absher and Kaelyn Moore - MURDERED: Blaze Bernstein

Episode Date: December 3, 2025

In 2018, 19 year-old Blaze Bernstein, an Ivy League student, gifted writer, and beloved son, vanished while home in California for winter break. Days later, his body was found in a shallow grave, and the truth that emerged stunned the nation. Morgan and Kaelyn trace the investigation that uncovered a hate-fueled murder, the years-long fight for justice, and the powerful movement his family built in his memory. Head over to our Clues YouTube channel to WATCH this episode: https://www.youtube.com/@CluesPod If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Clues to never miss a case! For Ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Clues is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.  🎧 Need More to Binge?  Listen to other Crime House Originals including Crime House Daily, Crimes Of…, Killer Minds, Murder True Crime Stories and more wherever you get your podcasts! Follow us on Social YouTube: @CluesPod | @crimehousestudios Instagram: @cluespodcast | @Crimehouse TikTok: @Crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia Clues is hosted by Morgan Absher & Kaelyn Moore  Instagram: @morgsyabsher | @itskaelynmoore TikTok: @twohottakes | @heartstartspounding Episode Sponsors:MasterClass always has great offers during the holidays, sometimes up to as much as 50% off. Head over to https://www.masterclass.com/CLUES for the current offer. Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/CLUES. Promo Code CLUESRight now, Merit Beauty is offering our listeners their Signature Makeup Bag with your first order at https://www.meritbeauty.com.Go to https://www.Cymbiotika.com/CLUES for 20% off plus free shipping. To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

I'm Dr. Hrini-Bot, host of Hidden History. Every Monday, I go where history gets uncomfortable. Vanished civilizations, doomsday prophecies, and events that science still can't fully explain. Listen to and follow Hidden History, available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is Crime House. Today, we're going to be covering the heartbreaking case of a 19-year-old chef writer and Ivy League pre-med student named Blaze Bernstein. Blaze was talented, passionate, and poised to achieve anything. he set his mind to. But in 2018, while on winter break with his family in California,

he vanished in the middle of the night and was never seen alive again. His death took investigators down a dark, disturbing rabbit hole that led to chilling revelations. Hi guys, welcome back to another episode of Clues, where we sneak past the crime scene tape to explore the key evidence behind some of the most gripping true crime cases. Also, are you subscribed? Be sure wherever you're listening, watching, hit the subscribe button. Morgan and I can see that 70% of you guys join us every week and don't hit the subscribe button. So hit it. Hit it, please.

I'm Kayla Moore. I'm going to be the one digging deeper into the timelines, the backstories, and the court files released on these cases. And I'm your internet sleuth, Morgan Abshur. And the one who's diving into the Reddit forums to talk about some of those lesser known details and pulling out threads that just don't add up. At crimehouse, we value your support. Follow clues and share your thoughts on social. For ad-free listening and early access, subscribe. to Crimehouse Plus on Apple Podcasts.

And if you don't get enough true crime, go search and follow Crimehouse Daily, Crime House's Twice a Day show that's bringing you breaking cases, updates, and unbelievable stories from the world of crime that's happening right now. Let's get into this case

and the clues that defined it. This episode is brought to you by Quince. So lately, I feel like I've wanted to be more intentional about the stuff that I've been wearing every day. I want to lean into pieces that feel effortless and comfortable but still look put together. That's the key. It just makes getting dressed simpler. And Quince is a go-to for all of those things. The fabrics feel elevated. The fits are very flattering and everything really works without having to overthink it. Yeah, these are pieces you're going to have in your closet for years to come. They stand the test of time. And I needed a closet refresh. So I've got my Quince bodysuit on some of the softest, most flattering body suits. I know. I was just rubbing your arm. And I felt how soft it was.

I also love my linen dress for summer. It's so lightweight, breathable, is cute with everything. I just put in a new order. I'm so excited. I'm getting the Bella Stretch Relaxed Straightleg jeans and also the 100% organic cotton boyfriend crew sweater, which looks so soft and like slouchy. Perfect for recording. Perfect for recording. Refresh your every day with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quince.com slash clues for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-C-E-com slash clues for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash clues. This is going to be a tough one today. This one's really dark and there's a big internet component to it and various rabbit holes.

We're going to get into all of that today. Very rabbit-holy. Reddit comes into play quite a bit. And it kind of hits close to home for us because this is right in our backyard. I mean, where this happened is like an hour and a half, hourish, depending on the traffic here in L.A. away from us. So this one hits close to home. Yeah, for anyone listening to, I feel like there's definitely parts of this story where I'm going to be asking the audience how they feel about things because there's just a lot of questions. I want to get your guys thoughts on some things. I don't know. Definitely this one, this one I feel like you're going to want to listen to with a fine tooth comb because we're.

going to be calling on you guys for comments and stuff for us to go through after. Absolutely. And just a quick reminder, if you're watching this on YouTube, you're going to see some photos, videos, maps that kind of help you visualize the case. And for anyone who's just listening to the audio, all of that's going to be over on our Instagram. That's at Clues Podcast. Along with our missing person of the week, we do highlight those on socials as well. We want you guys to share them, get the word out. So you'll see those over there too. And we do have a quick content warning, this episode contains graphic descriptions of a hate crime, as well as mentions of homophobic in anti-Semitic content and organized hate groups. So please listen with care.

And with that, let's kind of set the scene. So it's the night of Tuesday, January 2nd in 2018, in beautiful Lake Forest, California, which is down in Orange County. The Bernstein family is sitting down for a holiday dinner. Back in November, the family wasn't necessarily able to get together for Thanksgiving. I think that's something a lot of families deal with. And that's because the 19-year-old son of the family, Blaise Bernstein, who's the eldest of three siblings, couldn't take time away from his studies at the University of Pennsylvania. But Blaze is really known as the chef of the house. He's got a serious snack for cooking. He's very good at it. In fact, he was just promoted to managing editor for the university's food magazine called Penn Appetit,

which is very punny. So thanks to Blaze, the whole Bernstein family that night is enjoying a gourmet feast to celebrate the holidays and light Hanukkah candles. After the big meal, Blaze's parents, Jeannie and Gideon decide to go to bed early. Blaze, though, stays up. He's Snapchating. He's texting. He's using his phone. He's swiping through matches on dating apps. And that following morning, Blaz's parents wake up. Jeannie comes downstairs. She notices, though, on the way that Blaze's bedroom door is still closed. She figures that he's just sleeping in. She doesn't really bother to knock on the door.

He's home for vacation, too, so she doesn't really want to bother him. It's one of their last few days together before he heads to school. She wants him to get rest. So she decides that she's going to leave the house and go to a yoga class, figuring that she'll see him later because they have dentist appointments at the same place at the same time. Except when Jeannie goes to this dentist appointment, Blaze is not there. And she waits a little while and he doesn't show up. And she kind of gets this aha moment of like,

something is wrong. This is an important dentist appointment. It's like long overdue for Blaze. You don't really get to go to the dentist a lot when you're in college. So for him to not show up to this is a little odd. And so she ends up calling the housekeeper back at the house. And she asks if the housekeeper saw Blaze while she was cleaning that morning. Now, the housekeeper doesn't answer the phone initially.

So Jeannie ends up leaving the appointment and that's when the housekeeper calls back and confirms that, no, I haven't seen Blaze this morning, actually. She ends up calling her husband Gideon. She relays this information to him, and they both start panicking. Jeannie runs home. Gideon leaves work, rushes home to meet her. It's really not like Blaze at all to not call his parents for this long of time, but also to just not show up to things. So together, the parents go into Blaze's bedroom. He's not there. And they start searching. And that's when they noticed something a little bit odd about Blaze's room. They discover that his wallet, his car keys, and his glasses are all stuff. there. However, they don't find his cell phone. So they figure that wherever Blaze is, his phone must be with him. But why would he have left the house without his wallet or his car keys or his glasses? It's just weird things to have left behind and to only have left with your phone. Yeah, I know his mom in an interview even mentions like his retainer is still there. So even that to them is like,

well, he probably didn't come home at all the night before. Yeah, like didn't put in his retainer. He would have grabbed his retainers likely for the appointment. So they note that just the smallest details. Like they knew their son really well. They knew what these items being there meant. And none of it was good. So I'm not sure exactly what time it was when the Bernstein's called the Orange County Sheriff's Department that day. But they do call to report plays missing.

They say that the circumstances are a little weird. He was there last night. He left with his phone, but nothing else. And the deputy that they get a hold of tells them that, quote, 100% of the time, teenagers that unexpectedly stay out overnight are out on a booty call or something similar. Completely brushes it off. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Even though he left with only his phone, this deputy seems to think he has it all figured out, says it's just a booty call. Quite the assumption to make.

And beyond that, Morgan, he discourages the family from filing an official missing person's report so soon. And we've talked about this on this show. It can make such a difference, the timing in which you file that report. Yeah. Jeannie and Gideon are, I mean, this only fuels their panic. They know their son. They know Blaze. They insist that he is not the type at all to disappear like this.

They know something is seriously wrong. I mean, say it was a hookup. He would have called. He would have let them know that he was out. Yeah. And unfortunately, they are right. They do have that parental intuition. But before we get exactly into what happened and more into this case, let's rewind just a little bit and talk about who Blaze was.

So born on April 27, 1998, he was named for the pioneering French philosopher, writer, mathematician, inventor, and physicist, Blaise Pascal. And much like this philosopher, Blaise's parents hoped that he would make great contributions to the world. His grandmother on his father's side, Leah Bernstein, survived the Holocaust as a child in Romania, and after, After the war, she made it to California and became a language teacher. She said she wanted to see future generations grow up in a world where they could take pride in who they were without facing hatred and violence. And Blaze definitely did not hide who he was from the world. Blaze, again, like his French namesake, had many talents. From 7th to 12th grade, he attended the prestigious Orange County School for the Arts,

a charter program that accepts only one in 10 students to become part of their program. And that's where Blaze discovered his love for creative writing. But he also had a passion for the sciences. He participated in the Science Olympiad and he won the statewide chemistry challenge. He just strikes me as someone that was good at everything. So smart. Like I took chemistry three times and I never made it past a withdrawal. Chemistry is the hardest of the subjects.

I will stand by that. Outside of class, Blaze made time to volunteer with younger kids at his synagogue and he loved traveling with his parents and his two younger siblings. And while Jeannie and Gideon gave the kids a lot of freedom, they also kept a close eye on how their children used their cell phones and the internet. They were very big on that. And that actually is how they found out that Blaze was gay. When he was 13 years old, his parents were checking text messages on his phone. I'm curious if any parents to, like now, I know we have parents in the audience, like if you're checking your kids' phones, because like the phone is so scary to me. But they were going through text messages

on his phone and they discovered private conversations that he was having. And in those messages, he had revealed that he was gay. But if he was worried about coming out to his parents, he didn't necessarily need to be. His family embraced him and accepted him right away. They were very supportive. They told him they were supportive in a lot of different aspects of his life. And that meant supporting whatever career path that he wanted to take as well. Blaze had begun to make a name for himself as a writer, even before he was an adult. In 2015, At the age of 17, he had a short story published in an online literary magazine. And between all of these creative gifts and academic achievements, Blaze was in really fantastic

shape for college applications. And soon he just started getting accepted to all these universities. And he chose to attend the University of Pennsylvania and Ivy League school with one of the country's top medical schools. And having that innate knack for science, he decided that he was going to enter Penn's pre-med program as the class of 2020. Even though he was going to go pre-med, he didn't want to give up on his creativity either. He soon came across an opportunity that really combined his love of writing with his passion for food and cooking. And that was through Penn Appetit, the university's student-run food magazine. Blaise absolutely threw himself into this publication. First, he was a copy editor, then he was a writer.

And at the end of 2017, Blaze was elected managing editor for the first Penn Appetit issue of 2018. All of this to say. I mean, the reason that I bring all of this up is he had so much to look forward to and he had this really, really beautiful life that he was cultivating for himself. And that just kind of begs a question even more. Why on the night of January 2nd did he vanish? Well, for as bizarre as Blaze's disappearance was, there were a few breadcrumbs that his family would be able to find that started painting a clearer picture of what happened that night. Hey, before we jump back into the show, let's take a quick break. But not just any break, this is a refreshing break with Snapple. We all know about Snapple's iconic, real facts, so let's take a minute

to go over some of my favorites. Snapple Real Fact, 964, it is illegal in the United Kingdom to handle salmon in suspicious circumstances. Snapple Real Fact 1013, it is illegal to sing off-key in North Carolina. Snapple Real Fact 2033, Americans consume 150 million hot dogs on July 4th. Snapple Real Fact 705. Every ton of recycled paper saves about 17 trees. So grab a Snapple, take a second, and enjoy the moment. Because let's be honest, this might be the most refreshing part of your day. Snapple. Make your break more interesting. All right, now let's get back to clues. One of this week's partners is Grooons. I'm using Spring as a reset button. I'm changing up my routines, getting back to

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about Grooons because their ingredients are backed by over 35,000 research publications. So if you're ready to try Grooons for yourself, save up to 52% off with code clues at Grooons. That's code clues at g-r-un-s.com. So back on Wednesday, January 3rd, 2018, police didn't really launch that large-scale investigation. They didn't feel like they had enough evidence of foul play. So they essentially encouraged Jeannie and Gideon to kind of keep looking on their own, which is exactly what they did. Blaze's family tried calling the friends whose names and numbers they need. knew, but nobody had any idea where Blaze was. And so on someone's suggestion, they actually decided to go and dig through his social media for any clues, which brings us to our first clue in this case,

Blaz's Snapchat activity. So Blaze's 14-year-old sister, Bowie, offered to help, you know, make sure the parents knew what they were doing on the apps, and Bowie was actually able to go into Blaze's iCloud and retrieve his Snapchat password and get into his account. Snapchat messages do disappear within seconds after being read typically unless you physically save them, but it does notify the other user if you save them. And so Bowie wasn't necessarily thinking that she'd find much. That's right. I honestly haven't used Snapchat since like 2016. I haven't used it in years. But it does also have a feature that if you take screenshots, it notifies the other person. Got it. That makes sense.

So Bowie wasn't necessarily thinking that she'd find an exact conversation or anything like that, but maybe there were some clues to her brother's whereabouts on this app. And she also knew that this is how he communicated with a lot of his friends. Like, I feel like that's a younger generation thing. It is. Millennials, we text, Gen Z, Gen Alpha. They're on Snapchat. We're on Snapchat. And Bowie and her parents essentially kind of cracked this wide open when they found something they didn't expect. A bunch of unethical. unopened messages from someone her family had never heard Blaze mentioned before. Sam Woodward. Sam's Snapchat messages asked Blaze repeatedly, quote, Where did you go? There was also a sent message, a message from Blaze, that he had saved. And this message from Blaze, sent at 10.37 p.m. was his home address. Which brings us to clue number two, a call with Sam Woodward.

So Gideon messaged the seeming stranger asked us to be on the phone. And this stranger ends up actually calling Gideon. On the other line is 20-year-old Sam Woodward, and he is immediately admitting that, yeah, he was with Blaze the night before. At this same time, Bowie is recording this whole conversation from a separate phone. Side note, Bowie is a little FBI detective. She's so good in this whole case. Unreal.

getting into the iCloud? Are you kidding me? Yeah, she like knows exactly where to go and like what to do all the time. That's hard to do. Like Apple has like two-factor authentication on a lot of their stuff. So props to Bowie. And so Sam goes on to actually reveal to Gideon that he knew Blaze from high school. Sam attended the Orange County School for the arts for three years, but left school during his junior year for unknown reasons. We'll get into that later. And when Gideon questions Sam about Blaze's whereabouts. Sam just seemed super off. It's hard to tell if he's nervous, worried, he's definitely apologetic. And he kind of just stumbles over his words quite a bit. Gideon at this point kind of can tell he's uncomfortable and he doesn't want to lose this only, like, lead to where his son is. So he kind of just says like, hey, I know you're a good kid. I just want to find my son. And at this point, Sam says, Quote, I want to find Blaze as much as you do. And then he told a strange story.

Sam said that he picked Blaze up from his family's house and then drove him to a Hobby Lobby parking lot nearby to hang out and catch up. Sam claimed at that point, Blaze revealed he had invited another friend to join them. So Sam drove to Borago Park to meet up with this other friend whose name he didn't know. And now, Bregal Park is this well-groomed little neighborhood park in Lake Forest. It's got a playground, a soccer field, a short walking trail.

It also connects to Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, which is much bigger. It's a 2,500-acre nature preserve. And so Sam essentially says once they got there, Blaze just went off on his own, leaving Sam waiting by the bathroom. And he just never returned. So Sam gone his car and left. But when the Bernsteens are hearing this story, it is not computing for them. This behavior doesn't sound like Blaze. And again, Gideon kind of picks up on that same nervous energy you can hear when you listen to the call.

And so he kind of felt like maybe he was lying. Something was just off. And we're going to play a clip of this call. Let me know what you guys think in the comments. Like, am I reading into this? Is he calm and collected? What do you think the vibe is? We haven't heard from him all day.

He missed an appointment today, and then we started getting concerned, and I've been trying to figure things out. So you're the first real clue to the puzzle here. Yeah. I don't mean to put any pressure on you. I know you're a nice young man, but I'm asking you for help on this if you can,

if you've got the ability to do that. Absolutely. This is, you know, I want to find blood as much as you. So right after the call, Gideon takes the recording of it and the Snapchat messages and brings them to police. Now, hey, maybe they've got a little bit more to go off of. And they do agree with him, luckily. Something is weird here. And at the very least, Sam Woodward just admitted to being the last person to seeing Blaze alive.

So at least they have something to go off of now. Police are concerned enough that they actually deploy a team of officers. to follow Sam Woodward 24-7. And they're hoping that he might just lead them to Blaze. So over the next couple of days, the community really comes out in full force to help search for Blaze. Sam Woodward's story maybe seemed sketchy to everyone. But as of this point in the investigation,

that's the only lead that they have when it comes to Blaze's possible whereabouts. So the Bernstein's and everyone else they could get together were primarily searching around the park that Sam talked about. On January 6th, four days after Blaze disappeared, law enforcement searched the entire park multiple times. And Blaze's dad was with them while they were doing this. He said, quote, I walked every square meter of that park. I was all over that thing, yelling Blaze's name. Yeah. And when you guys see an image of this park, the park.

the park itself isn't very big. Right, right. It's not super expansive and it's, there's not a lot of like trees. It's like you can kind of see from end to end and then at the other end there's like trees and brush and stuff. But it's not super big. Yeah, I'm looking at it now on a map and it definitely is something that a group of volunteers could have searched. Yeah. And I mean, Blaise's synagogue, the rabbi there, really organized a vast search.

I mean, in the day or two after Blaze went missing, they had thousands of missing posters. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, this was a big turnout from the community as well. Right. And yeah, just looking at this park now, it's basically just a soccer field. Like, there's not really much that you can hide behind. No, a little playground for kids.

Like, not anything super big. Yeah. Well, they basically say that too. They say if Blaze was there, they were positive they would find. him. But the big fear was that he might have made his way into the much larger neighboring area of Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park, where mountainous terrain would really, really hamper a search. I mean, I guess at this point they're really thinking, like, maybe what Sam said was right. Like, maybe he did go and meet a friend. And they walked off together into the wilderness

park. Like, there's so many possibilities of what could have occurred. Yeah. And they just have really nothing but Sam's story to go off of. So these volunteer drone pilots show up. to help search the nature preserve from the air. And while they're doing that, ATVs are following Whiting Ranch Wilderness Park's many hiking trails. Cadaver dogs are now involved and police helicopters join the aerial search too. They all find nothing. As the week went on, the Bernstein's also start appearing on any television news broadcasts that would have them, basically. They leveraged Gideon's career as a wealth manager to reach celebrities willing to help spread the word.

and that really works for them at the beginning. As the first week of the search drew to a close, they get Kobe Bryant to say something. Charlie Puth says something. They're sharing information on the search for Blaze with their social media followers. People are really starting to hear about what happened. But ever since that weird phone call with Sam,

the Bernstein's had this like sinking suspicion that Sam was somehow involved. Like maybe, even if not directly, maybe he knows something that he's not telling them. Like, maybe he does have a key to this. They really start thinking that he knows more than he's letting on. Yeah, which brings us to our third clue, Sam Woodward's strange behavior. So we're going to go back in time a little bit to January 4th, which is two days after Blaze vanished. This is when police asked Sam Woodward to come in for voluntary questioning.

And during this, Sam, Sam, You know, he continued to express sympathy for Blaze's family, calling his parents really nice people. And during that interview, Sam still was sticking to that original story. Blaze had just wandered off in the park and never came back. But he also added some new details. He now says that after he left the park, he drove to his girlfriend's house nearby. It was about 20 minutes away in Tustin. And when investigators asked about speaking with her, Sam claimed that he couldn't remember his girlfriend's last name or where she lived.

Red flag, that's huge. Yeah. I mean, you'd seemingly want to connect investigators to your alibi. Or you would remember your girlfriend's last name. I mean, if you had a girlfriend. Exactly. And during this interview, investigators also noticed that Sam, like, he was not touching any door handles at the headquarters with his. bare hands. Instead, he would, like, use his sleeve. And they kind of speculated maybe he's

trying to avoid leaving fingerprints behind. Yeah, that's what I would think. And something else, strange, happened that afternoon. Now, sources do kind of conflict on whether the following event happened before or after he went into the station for an interview. But I'm maybe thinking it was before, and you guys tell me what you think. But here's why. That same day, Sam actually went to Bregal Park. He ran into an investigator there named Sergeant Dylan Jansen, and I'm not sure if Sam was there, also claiming to want to help find Blaze or if he had another agenda. But Sergeant Jansen recognized Sam as a person of interest in this case,

and he also noticed that his hair was different from just a few days earlier. He'd now cut it and dyed it. He also appeared to be hiding his hands in his pockets a lot. And when Sergeant Jansen spoke with Sam, he did eventually get him to show him his hands. And when he saw them, he was very surprised. They were covered in bloody band-aids and his fingernails were, quote, completely caked with dirt. And so when Jansen presses Sam on how he injured his hands, he says that he was in a fight club with friends and had fallen in a quote dirt puddle while sparring.

Yeah, you've got a face over there. I just don't think fight clubs are real. I mean, maybe I'm... You don't talk about fight club. Maybe I'm wrong, but just the idea that, oh yeah, me and my friends just go to the park and we fight each other. I don't know. Like alarm bells would immediately be going off in my head, but maybe I just don't know

20-year-old boys. I don't know. You're not the only one who finds it suspicious. Officer Jansen does as well. And again, this day just keeps getting weirder because Sam let the officers at the park actually look inside his car, a Nissan rogue. They saw hiking and camping equipment, plus a plastic bin and a black belt, but they didn't spot anything that seemed like obvious evidence. What did raise their suspicions was what Sam did when he got home later. Because again, he's being followed.

Still unaware that he's under round-the-clock surveillance, Sam cleaned his car thoroughly with a spray bottle and rig, paying special attention to the doors and rear bumper. At this point, everyone's on the same page. They're all agreeing that Sam is acting pretty odd, but they're not ready to arrest him just yet. There's still a chance that he must. might reveal more evidence that could actually lead to Blaze.

Right, because they still don't know where Blaze is. So at this point, they need to get more information out of him. Yeah, they need him to hopefully lead them in the right direction. And as they're waiting for this to happen, investigators get their fourth clue. Blaz's cell phone location data. As we know, Blaze's phone wasn't in his room. So authorities assumed it must have been taken with him wherever he went. but by the time his parents noticed that he was gone,

his location services were turned off. So Blaze's iPhone wasn't showing up on that Find My app, which they would have easily seen because they were in the iCloud. Yeah, right. And so it actually takes a few days for police to subpoena those records from the provider, but now they had confirmation that Blaze's last known location was a specific spot towards the rear of Barreys. Rago Park. And get this. When they run it next to Sam's cell phone data, it showed that the two of them had

gone to that specific spot together, meaning Sam's story about staying by the bathrooms and Blaze ditching him was looking like a lie. It was at that location that Blaze's signal abruptly disappeared while Sam's continued on and eventually moved away. Investigators discovered all of this on Tuesday, January 9th, exactly one week after Blaze disappeared. So they are moving extremely quick on this one. And so on that day, the weather takes a turn. It's a cold winter day. Rain is soaking Barago Park. And so investigators head back to the park and start looking one more time. And now they are armed with Blaze's exact last known location. One of this week's partners is Peloton. There's a specific kind of joy and freedom that comes from a truly great workout,

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Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates, Price and Coverage Match Limited by Seward. state law. Captain Jack Akerman was among the officers searching Borago Park and the pouring rain on January 9th. And as he walked along this steep, muddy embankment at the edge of the park, he noticed that there was an area that they all had missed before where the ground looked like it was a little bit raised. It was almost like the rain had maybe piled up dirt around an object. Like maybe that's the reason they missed it was because the rain was able to reveal something in the dirt. There was a fallen tree branch that was resting on the raised spot. Captain Ackerman approached the area. He moves the branch to the side. And that is when he sees that there is a human

leg lying in the soil beneath it. It was the body of Blaze Bernstein, buried in a shallow makeshift grave that had been exposed by the rain. His cell phone was buried in the same spot that he was underneath his body, and after that, officers were dispatched to notify Blaze's family. And the sheriff's department officially changed the case from a missing person's investigation to a suspected homicide, which they were probably thinking at that point anyways with just how weird everything was going. But that meant that the search was officially over, but now the investigation was just getting started. And that brings us to our next clue. Clue number five, Blaze's autopsy. Blaise's cause of death was multiple sharp force injuries.

He was stabbed 28 times. There were 14 stab wounds in the right side of his neck and five on the left side of his neck. He also had injuries to his face and a stab wound in his left knee. Defensive wounds were found on his right palm and fingers, showing that Blaze had really done his best to try to fight back against his attacker. Based on the autopsy results, Sergeant Jansen believed the murder was motivated by quote, hate and rage. Mainly because multiple stab wounds

tend to be associated with an existing relationship between the killer and victim. These attacks are a lot more personal. And so after Blaze's autopsy, police felt certain that he was killed in a very targeted way. And now they needed to look for more evidence to prove it.

On the same day that Blaze's body was found, January 9th, prosecutors served a search warrant on the Woodward family's home in Newport Beach where Sam was still living. At this point, they, I mean, felt pretty confident that Sam Woodward was the killer and also that he had acted alone.

I mean, they have so much evidence besides, I guess, any real physical evidence, but there's so much circumstantial evidence leading to Sam. Yeah. And because they don't have this physical evidence, they feel like they need a little bit more proof before they can actually make an arrest.

Like, one of the things that they feel like they need is a motive. If they can nail that down, they can prove definitively that it was Sam. And also, when you have a motive, you can dramatically affect the sentencing of a case. We found a little bit of context on this, specifically in California, how it works. To convict a person of first-degree murder in California, the government has to prove that they acted with something called malice aforethought. Basically what that means is the person either intended to kill the victim or they had a plan that they knew might lead to the death of a victim. And so one common defense strategy that gets used is to claim that the killing happened in the heat of the moment or the heat of passion,

meaning that the killer flew into an uncontrollable rage under circumstances that would cause someone to lose self-control. And that's a very different type of crime. If the defense is successful in that argument, the charge would then get dropped to voluntary manslaughter instead of murder and the maximum sentence for voluntary manslaughter in California is 11 years and the maximum sentence for murder is life. That is all to say exactly why Blaze was killed. The circumstances surrounding it leading up to it could make a huge difference between his killer being freed within like 11 years or staying behind bars forever. And that means that the police needed to search the Woodward home for both evidence of guilt and also evidence of motive.

Well, they got one of those almost immediately, which brings us to our six clues, plural. When an investigator opened a drawer in Sam's bedroom, they noticed a folding knife with stains that appeared to be blood. They also found blood stains on a sleeping bag, found outside of Sam's bedroom window, and they found blood on the driver's side visor of his Nissan, the car he did admit to picking Blaze up in. There was also this skull mask in the car, which appeared to have blood on it too. These items were immediately collected and sent off for DNA testing. Now, upon further investigation, detectives spotted their first hint into a potential motive. They spotted a swastika on Woodward's notebook. And when they moved on to his cell phone, it really started to confirm their suspicions.

without even unlocking the phone, they could see that Sam's wallpaper was an image referencing a violent extremist neo-Nazi hate group called Adam Woffin. This group goes back to 2015. They're really trying to achieve this purity through racial, religious, and ideological homogeneity, and they do this through violent conflict. They kind of have this leaderless social resistance, which basically means that each member acts as independent agents and they're encouraged to carry out acts of extremist violence on their own without any instructions or approval. They did, however, follow a handbook. Their handbook calls for

white men to commit acts of terrorism in order to bring about a race war. So if the rest of the phone's contents revealed that Sam had been influenced by this group whose members promised to, quote, do away with homosexuality for good, it would certainly reveal the motive police were looking for, but a lock screen image alone wasn't enough to prove anything. And they needed full access to all of Sam's devices. And while they were working on getting that, the results came back for the blood-stained items that were found in Sam's home and in his vehicle. And they tested positive for Blaze's blood on the knife and a combination of Blaze and Sam's blood in Sam's car. So obviously after that comes back, the investigators can move incredibly quickly. They get a warrant. They don't even

wait for Sam to come home that day. Police ended up intercepting his mom's car and pulled her over, and Sam was inside of the vehicle with her. At around 1.15 p.m. on Friday, January 12th, 2018, that's 10 days after Blaze disappeared. Sam Woodward was arrested for the murder of Blaze Bernstein. We talked a little bit about the stuff that was found, at least initially on Sam's phone, but maybe it's worth going a little bit more into Sam's background, maybe what led the 20-year-old to commit something like this. So Sam grew up in Newport Beach, California. It's a wealthy coastal suburb of Orange County. His parents, a commercial real estate vice president and therapist, raised their family as Catholic. They attended Mass almost daily. Now, according to his mother, Michelle, Sam had some

difficulties as a child, including sensory sensitivities. He showed signs of emotional disregulation. He had a lot of trouble picking up on social cues amongst peers. And also he had interests that very quickly devolved into something very dark. So initially, he was very interested in things like spiders and airplanes. And that kind of turned into a love of global history eventually. But by fifth grade, this global history fascination he had gave way to a fascination with specifically Nazis and Nazi era Germany. This did not make him popular pretty much wherever he went. Sam hadn't made even one friend by the end of elementary school, so his parents hoped that by starting the seventh grade at the Orange County School for the Arts, he could get a fresh start. Despite

some of his social difficulties, Sam had enough talent to get into the prestigious school. That's where he met Blaze. but Sam didn't fit in at this school either. In fact, from things we read about Sam, it seemed like he was actively trying to not fit in with anyone. He had like an art project where they had to like just draw something innocent and he chose to draw a Confederate flag. He also would scribble racial slurs all over copies of books that he got from the school. One of the books was Raisin in the Sun, which is a seminal African-American play.

He would doodle guns and his notebooks. His classmates started to get worried that he was potentially a future school shooter. I mean, he was a very, very dark and disturbed guy. The one time he seemed actually engaged in his schoolwork was, at least according to some of his classmates, in this one acting class, he was assigned to perform a monologue from Quentin Tarantino's World War II movie in Glorious Bastards. I'm sure many listeners have seen that movie. We can all imagine a, uh, what monologue he was maybe reading, and it was probably not the actual, like, bastards that he was reading. There were also several of Sam's classmates that talked to reporters and confirmed that he did express openly, very openly, extremely homophobic views during high school alongside other bigoted ideas. I mean, according to one classmate, he had a reputation of being racist, homophobic, sexist. There's even a source. I saw that his father pulled him. him out during his junior year at Orange County School for Arts because of multiple reports of Sam being homophobic towards gay students. And so Woodward actually finished his junior and

senior years at Corona Del Mar High School. There's also this creepy Reddit theory about Sam creating a fake Facebook account using the name Harold Gershner. Allegedly, this Harold Gershner user was going to groups Blaze's family had started. to help find him and was taunting Blaze's mom there. Many think it's Sam because this Herald seemed to know things that nobody else could know about the murder. But again, this is kind of all speculative and has not been proven. Well, it seems like a lot of people were creeped out by Sam and they considered him potentially capable of murder even long before Blaze was killed. Even Sam's mother, Michelle, said that she mostly communicated with Sam.

through letters because of his frequent episodes of rage. Though things seemed to be a little bit better lately since Sam was living back at home and he would go places with his mom. But I guess in the past, these episodes of rage included physical violence towards his family and destruction of property, although Michelle took some of that back when she was questioned about it later, all to say that Sam's history did not do him any favors in this investigation. Between the bloody knife and the dresser, the blood in his car, and the blood in his car, and

the long history of troubling behavior, the defense was going to have a really hard time putting a case together for him. And with the story now making national headlines, prosecutors were motivated to push hard for a guilty verdict in a maximum sentence. The best possible case scenario for Sam was to convince the jury that this was voluntary manslaughter, which we talked about earlier, the difference in California, and not first-degree murder. So on February 2, 2018, exactly a month after Blaze disappeared, Sam Woodward pleaded not guilty on charges of murder. The judge set bail initially at $5 million. Sam did not post this, but eventually his bail was just fully revoked.

Now with Sam behind bars, investigators had some time to really build their case for the longest sentence possible. Which brings us to our seventh clue, Sam's online hate activity. When investigators finally gained access to Sam's cell phone, they found even more horrifying evidence. Now, Sam didn't just follow this neo-Nazi group online. He was actively a part of it. We don't know when he originally started communicating with this group, but we do know that he first read the handbook in April of 2017. He did so at the urging of an online friend that he met through Skype chat. for a different white supremacist group. And shortly thereafter, Sam and this online friend both abandoned this initial white supremacist group and joined this neo-Nazi group.

So at the age of 19, Sam had already been a part of at least two neo-Nazi hate groups. But this commitment to Adam Woffin was on a different level because as the police soon learned, Sam had extensive contact with this group in the real world, too. In fact, several months before Blaz's murder, investigators discovered that Sam had actually moved to Texas to live in motels and shelters for a summer in order to attend this group's training camp. It's their version of a corporate retreat,

but it also has the name Hate Camp. So it tells you exactly what it is. Sam also traveled to Colorado together to meet the founder of this group. I mean, like, heavily, heavily involved in this group. And while Sam did eventually move back in with his parents, him and this friend actually worked together to run a Southern California branch of Adam Woffon. Some of these local chapters also would host their own hate camps, like the one Sam attended in Texas. There, during these Cape camps, they trained members for their desired race war. A new ethno state with no LGBT Kruplus, no black people, and certainly no Jewish people. So Sam got pretty deep into the

neo-Nazi world in a relatively short amount of time. But as police were digging through his phone and his email accounts, investigators learned that this white supremacist persona had been developing for years before he even joined a group. And so he had a lot of activity on this Russian-owned meme site. And I didn't really know a lot about this site before we started doing the research on this, but apparently organized neo-Nazi groups are using meme sites like this to recruit young boys and men into hate movements. And that's according to the counter-extremism project. But he was making a lot of really weird posts on this Russian meme site. And one of the posts that he made was actually about his attraction to his English teacher, and it was kind of surprising when police found this

because she was Middle Eastern. Sam used, I mean, incredibly offensive language, to say that he would like to have children with this teacher, despite his beliefs that interracial procreation was wrong. And later when he would go on to join more neo-Nazi group chats, he would often make similar, but far more extreme posts about sexually assaulting women of color to forcibly impregnobes. them. A lot of these sites have been taken down. I mean, I'll give a little bit of credit where credits do. Like a lot of these sites have been taken down and the posts have been cleaned. But some of these sites are still around, including the meme site that he was on. You can still go on it and look at stuff and it's all horrible. But not all of this stuff has been taken down off the

internet. And it's still this place where young men can be recruited into these hate groups. So it's just, it's just like really shocking to see. Yeah. And while investigators did gather a lot of kind of info on Sam and maybe potential motive through these memes and hate forums. There was another clue that really gave detectives the most insight into Sam and his motive, which is clue number eight, a diary. Sam had actually been sending emails to himself. I'm not sure how far back the email's date, but one email included this statement, quote, the Jew will always destroy the society in which he resides, end quote. A bigger theme in the diary was Sam's interest in toying with gay or bisexual men,

who he called, quote, sodomites. He described connecting with other men, flirting for a while, potentially sending pictures of himself, and then either unfriending them abruptly or announcing that they had been pranked. This pattern of flirting and then withdrawing started years before Sam joined any dating apps. at least if his high school classmates are to be believed. There was an interesting post on Reddit that I was able to partially get back through the Wayback machine. Someone claiming to be a former classmate of Sam's at OCSA writes, quote, while at OCSA,

which has a large liberal slash left population, Sam would preach his conservative and homophobic views and unwise move. Now we all remember it. On top of this, his social skills were off, although not totally inept. I know any form of empathy never truly clicked with him. However, after leaving OCSA, he contacted a well-known homosexual classmate in hopes of finding answers on how to deal with all caps, his own homosexuality.

What started as a crutch for support grew into a passionate fling going so far as to send his own dickpicks. I don't recall the outcome to a T, but I do know it ended without backlash. Obviously, Sam didn't know this person had shown fellow classmates the DMs, or I'm sure there would have been. Sam could easily have transferred his self-prejudice to blaze and killed a part of himself he was ashamed of.

Now, this post was anonymous, as all of Reddit is, basically, but later reporting did confirm most of it, including the part about Sam having a flirtation with an openly gay student at OCSA, that did include sending explicit pictures of himself. From this interaction, it really did seem that Sam's behavior just escalated over time. He eventually downloaded Grindr, a hookup app primarily used by gay men, and started threatening his grinder matches in addition to his Tinder matches. One of his diary emails read, quote, LMAO.

They think they are going to get hate-crimed, and it scares the bleep out of them. priceless, end quote. It seems this strange hobby of his could have been what led Sam to reconnect with Blaze years after losing touch, which brings us to clue number nine, some Tinder messages and some final texts. So you see,

detectives actually are able to learn from both Sam and Blaze's cell phone activity that the two of them had matched on Tinder, not once, but twice. The first time, was in June 2017 when Blaze sent a super like to Sam and messaged him, quote, wait, Sam Woodward, is that you? After they matched.

Sam made an excuse for why his Tinder profile was open to male matches. He told Blaze he was mostly using the app to have sex with women, but that he was also hoping to meet a man willing to be his spotter on deer hunting trips. That's odd. Yeah, this is also Southern California. There's not many deer hunting places nearby. And now some speculate that Blaze was kind of blown away to find this homophobic former classmate on Tinder looking for men.

And so he supposedly sent screenshots to multiple friends who also remembered Sam from high school. And they were equally as stunned by this reveal. Yeah, this would be like a shocking arc for the students that he went to high school with. Yeah. And so Blaze ended up kind of keeping these friends of his updated on progress with Sam. He would text them about coaxing his former classmate with compliments to see if he would reveal that he was looking for more than a hunting buddy. Eventually, it did work. And Sam complimented Blaze on his looks.

Blaze texted one of his friends a one-word update, quote, acquired. But Sam unmatched with Blaze basically right after this interaction, kind of ghosting him. as he described, these interactions that he would pull on people in his diary. Then came January 2nd, 2018, eight months after they last had spoken on Tinder. And that's when Blaze was home for winter break and the two young men matched again. Sam apologized for their previous encounter and said that he was straight, but, quote, might make an exception for Blaze. Blaze was skeptical this time messaging, quote, we've already done this prank Sam,

but Sam talked to Blaze into moving their conversation to Snapchat where messages, as we know, disappear. Whatever Sam said, he must have seemingly convinced Blaze that he was serious about being interested in him because, you know, as we know at 1037 p.m., Blaze sent Sam his address. And then at 1136 p.m., Blaze sent his best friend Lily the final text of his life.

He said, quote, I did something really horrible for the story, but also no one can ever know, end quote. Lily responded, obviously, like, concerned about Blaze. Like, wait, what? Yeah, what could that mean? What could that mean? But by the time his phone lit up with her response, Blaze was unable to respond. After learning about everything that was found on Sam's cell phone, prosecutors filed a hate crime enhancement to the murder charge.

They argued that Sam intentionally lured Blaze to the park that night to kill him simply for being gay and Jewish, two marginalized identities that are protected under California's hate crimes law. Also, two minority groups that this neo-Nazi group that Sam was a part of were known. to target. However, prosecutors chose to focus on Blaz's sexuality for the purpose of the court case because there was ultimately more evidence pointing to a homophobic motive than an anti-Semitic one, though they did believe it was both. If proven in court, that hate crime enhancement would call for an increased sentence that would be life in prison but without the possibility of parole, rather than having a chance at parole after just 15 years. Which is crucial. crazy. 15 years. Yeah. It's like nothing. That was shocking to me. For a crime so egregious.

28. And I hate that runs so deep in you that like you would just go on to commit another crime afterwards. That doesn't get stamped out after 15 years in prison. Such a threat to the community. That just gross. Horrible. Prosecutors definitely wanted to go for this more severe punishment because of the extreme brutality of this crime. And it seemed like both sides were basically prepared to. go to trial, but then there was this series of unexpected delays that hit the case. First, Sam's public defender removed himself with the judge's permission. We're not entirely sure why this happened. But this meant that a new public defender would need some time to get up to speed on the entire case.

And by the time the case went back on track, I mean, COVID hit. It slowed the whole court system to a crawl. It ended up pausing this trial for years before the, the jury selection even started. And this is so strange, we don't have a lot of information on this, but we know that half of the jurors were seated on the trial and Sam had some sort of outburst in court. There's not a transcript of what he said, but the thing he said caused the entire jury process to start over, the selection of the jurors to start over. That also raised some questions about Sam's mental capacity, like maybe his ability to stand trial.

That was ultimately raised by his lawyer around mid-July 2022. And so a judge ordered two experts to evaluate. And while he met with one, he refused to meet with the other. And so that also delayed any like follow-up until October 2020. However, in late 2022, they do decide that Sam is competent to stand trial. Blaze's family at this point had been stuck in limbo for six years. His mother, Jeannie even put off having cancer surgery because she was scared that she would be unavailable if the trial suddenly began. Finally, then, on April 9, 2024, the trial began.

And since his arrest, Sam Woodward's appearance had changed pretty drastically. Have you seen the photos? Drastically is an understatement. Yeah. He basically walked into the courtroom looking like Charles Manson. His hair was all grown. His beard was scraggly. He looks so scary.

Has anyone seen the movie The Ring, the little girl with the hair just covering her face? Samara. That was him. Yeah. The thing is it does seem like Sam was trying to actually look like Charles Manson because I was reading about how a lot of Charles Manson's writings are kind of like required reading for the neo-Nazi group he was a part of. So he wanted to basically look like their hero and show up in court and I don't know how. of a picture taken so it could be sent to all of his neo-Nazi friends and they would be really proud of him. Yeah, and I will say something extremely sad about this case that his parents

touch on quite a bit in their interviews is the fact that after Blaise's murder was linked to this hate group, they were celebrating in online forums. Yeah, absolutely. They still celebrate to this day. And so just like, you hear that from his mom. It's just like... This is a huge win for them, unfortunately. It's just tragic. Yeah, it's ridiculous. The prosecution's case leaned very heavily on Sam's history of participating in all of these different hate groups. There was a testimony from a sheriff's forensic examiner about the, quote, thousands of homophobic and anti-Semitic images that Sam had on his phone and his computer. The hate diary that you were talking about earlier and its claims of baiting gay men were also featured prominently in the prosecution's case. I mean, that basically was a playbook for the way he was going to.

commit this crime. Yeah. And Sam's most homophobic and violent entries were actually read, and I'm glad they did this too, but they were read word for word for the jury to hear because they needed to hear like the severity of the hate that this guy harbored for other people. There was also another disturbing revelation that came from Sam's phone. And that was a text that he sent at 238 a.m. So we know that it happened after the murder had taken place that night. And it read, quote, man, life is good. End quote. The defense told a different story and in an unusual move, I actually put Sam on the stand to testify to this story.

I hate that I have to be the one to read this part because it just really pisses me off. Yeah. But Sam takes the stand, tells his side of the story, and Sam goes on to say that he used cannabis while he and Blaze were sitting in his car at Barago Park. that caused him to drift off into a light sleep. And then Sam said he woke up to see Blaze unbuttoning his pants while holding a camera phone. Sam told the jury that he was a closeted gay man and terrified of being outed. He flew into a rage and stabbed Blaze repeatedly with a folding knife that he always carried. The defense also leaned heavily on a potential autism diagnosis.

This part always gets me. I hate this part so much of this. It's coming from his mom. It's purely as far as we know and what was presented, speculative. Yeah. And to me, like. I mean, they're grasping at straws so hard in everything they try to say to defend this guy. And so they just throw it.

What if it was his autism? They're throwing mud on the wall. Like, they're just like trying to just poke doubt, reasonable doubt, you know, as the defense is supposed to do. But to just drag Blaze. through the mud like this in the process is horrible, horrible. And Blaze's parents are sitting in this courtroom. They're furious. His mom had to actually get up and excuse herself out of the room at one point because

she's a grieving parent who's waited six years for justice. And I can't believe she sat in there at all. That's so heartbreaking to have to go through all of this. It's just, it's horrible. And to hear all of the, yeah, all of Sam's excuses for why he did this. And there's no evidence at all that Blaze had done. anything, but the defense still tried to drag him even further, bringing up his mental health history, past breakups, just anything to try to attack his character. And, you know, they were

able to retrieve the phone. Like, to me, this is maybe my hot take of the day. Like, if Blaze would have done this story, wouldn't there have been evidence on the phone? Like, yeah, come on. Just It's a bit... It's a little bullshit for me. And the judge did eventually rule that most of this evidence had to be excluded. So Sam's own testimony, the testimony of his mother, Michelle, kind of became the centerpieces of the defense's case. Except that didn't go exactly as planned. The defense tried to get Michelle to say that her son experienced homophobic abuse as a child,

specifically from his authoritarian father and his bullying brother. But Michelle kind of expressed a different point of view. According to her, her family wasn't homophobic. They were just worried about Sam having a more difficult time in life if he turned out to be gay. And this really didn't play into the defense's strategy. Like, again, they're trying to portray Sam as this closeted gay man terrified of what would happen if his family found out. And having called Michelle, and Michelle was kind of going against this. Yeah, it's very conflicting. Very different. Like, a lot of people on Reddit kind of are like,

she was really trying to protect the overall family, like protect the family in their image. It seems like she's doing a lot of like image recon throughout the whole thing. Yeah. And because the defense had called her to the stand, as a witness, it also meant the prosecution could cross-examine her on all of these statements. Prosecution used this opportunity to get Michelle to talk about Sam's anger problems as he was growing up. And so the trial ended on kind of a down note

for the defense. Not much had really gone their way. And their only hope for a lighter sentence was if the jury believed Sam had testified truthfully about killing Blaze in a sudden, unplanned fit of rage. Which again would give him,

what did we say, 11 years? I mean, it could go to manslaughter. It could go to like second degree murder, which is again, parole after 15. Like, it just really changes the game compared to life without the possibility of parole. Yes. But overall, the question at this point for everyone is had the prosecution done enough to prove for the jury that this was indeed a murder motivated by a hate crime? Well, on July 3rd, 2024, the jury found. the then 26-year-old Sam Woodward guilty of first-degree murder with the hate crime enhancement.

Yeah, so the sentencing hearing came on November 15, 24, just a bit over a year ago. There, Jeannie made an impact statement on behalf of the Bernstein family. She began by expressing her anger at Sam Woodward and his defense team, mainly for accusing Blaze without evidence of sexual misconduct and forcing the family to sit through a horrible six-year wait. Jeannie closed her statement by speaking directly to Blaze saying, quote, Blaze, we did the best we could for you. We figured out who did this. We brought him to justice. We saw justice carried out. We kept this world safer. We also continued to make this world a better place in your honor. And for that, we are grateful. We love you, our sweet boy, and we will miss you

always. After that, Sam was sentenced to life without parole. And Jeannie did keep her promise by making the world a little bit safer. In the wake of his sentencing, Orange County District Attorney Todd Spitzer issued a powerful statement. He said, quote, to hate someone simply for who they are is a hate like no other. It targets our identity and our self-worth in an attempt to render us worthless, but every one of us has worth and meaning, and every one of us brings value to our collective table of who we all are and who we want to be as a community. The acceptance of hate by one of us is a condemnation of all of us, because silence is what allows hate to flourish. In the wake of Blaze's murder, his parents have changed the Help Us Find Blaze Bernstein group on Facebook into a group that's meant to honor Blaze's life called Blaze It Forward.

They ask everyone who comes across the group to honor Blaze every January 17th by doing a random act of kindness in his name. Some have included paying for a stranger's groceries, things like buying gloves and socks for young unhoused men, and beautifying Berego Park where Blaze ultimately died. At least one member was so inspired by the Blaze at Forward movement that he got a tattoo honoring the group. And the Bernstein's also created two funds. There's the Blaze Bernstein Memorial Fund and a scholarship fund that accept donations in Blaze's honor. The Memorial Fund supports charities that Blaze cared about, while the scholarship helps Orange Orange County students who embody Blaze's values pay for college. Today, people who visit Barago Park bring hand-painted stones honoring him and they add them all to a memorial display at the

base of a tree across from where his body was found. It serves as a reminder that love always outshines hate. And on that note, we move on to our missing person of the week. This week we are highlighting the case of James Yablonski. James was 13 at the time of his disappearance. He disappeared from Reidsburg, Wisconsin. The description we have is 5-11, 120 pounds, a half-inch scar on the back of his neck. He was last seen June 12, 23, at about 10.30 p.m. when he was wearing red shoes, blue jeans, an unknown shirt, and an unknown baseball cap. Video captured James leaving his home early in the morning of June 12, 2023, and then driving off in his father's van. The van was eventually seen parked along Highway 12 and Baraboo.

And about 100 yards into the forest next to the highway investigators did find a campsite that had closed toiletries and James's father's phone that James had on him, but James was nowhere to be found. James's father, Bill, has done everything he can to keep getting the word out there.

And he urges people to even reach out to him via email if you know anything. His email is William Yablonski at yahoo.com, anyone with information is asked to contact the Sock County Sheriff's Office at 608-355-4-495, or the Sock County Crime Stoppers, at 1-888-Tip-S-A-U-K, otherwise known as 1-888-8-488-4-7-2-8-5. And with that, I think that's all we have for this episode of Clues. Yes.

We hope that you will remember Blaze the way that his family asked everyone to remember him by doing random acts of kindness and his memory. And if you've participated in the blaze it forward movement or something like it, you can let us know on social media. We're always reading through the comments. We want to hear from you. Now, your thoughts, your theories, feedback, all of that is what makes this community so special.

At Crimehouse, we value your support. So please, again, share your thoughts on social media. And remember to rate, review, and follow clues, and subscribe. Subscribe. Subscribe. To help others discover the show. that's it until next time guys thanks guys bye

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in store or online at Pandora and let your summer unfold. When someone goes missing, the headlines focus on what happened, but the truth often lives in the smallest details. I'm Sarah Turney. After my sister disappeared, I learned how those final hours, the last conversations, the last decisions can haunt families forever. And I'm Courtney Nicole.

After seeing crime impact my own family, I've learned how overlooked moments, missed red flags, and unanswered questions can change everything. Together, we're bringing those lived experiences into the work. This is the final hours, a crimehouse original powered by Pave Studios, a podcast that puts the moments before a disappearance under a microscope. Listen to and follow the final hours wherever you get your podcasts, new episodes every Monday. I knew about investing, but I really didn't know how to go about it.

Meet Corey, a Walthfront client. With Walthfront, I could put money in. in and it would automatically distribute it into a diversified portfolio. Then it starts to compound. The compounding compounds on the compounding. Just let it wrong, and it's great. Over 1 million clients trust Wealthfront. Get started at Wealthfront.com.

Client was paid $1,000 for their testimonial, creating a conflict of interest. Outcomes vary. Investment management and advisory services provided by Wealthfront Advisors LLC and SEC registered investment advisor. Investing involves risk to principle regardless of the strategy used. Task performance does not guarantee future results.