Samuel Woodward, who killed Blaze Bernstein, convicted of hate-crime in Lake Forest murder

Six and a half years after a weeklong community search ended with the discovery of Blaze Bernstein’s body in a makeshift grave at the edge of a Lake Forest park, the former classmate who admitted to carrying out the killing was convicted of murder.

Following a nearly three-month trial, an Orange County Superior Court jury on Wednesday found Samuel Woodward, 26, guilty of first-degree murder for the January 2018 slaying of 19-year-old Bernstein, his former Orange County School of the Arts classmate.