The author described it as his ‘Diary of Hate.’

And the vitriol spewing from the cell phone journal didn’t discriminate. Black people, Latinos, biracial couples, and other minorities were all targeted with disgusting slurs and venomous comments.

But Sam Woodward, a 20-year-old who had enjoyed a privileged upbringing in Newport Beach, harbored a particular disgust for two groups: Jews and gay people.

Among a trove of homophobic and antisemitic screeds and neo-Nazi material found on his phone, Woodward had detailed his MO for ‘pranking’ gay people on dating sites Grindr and Tinder before humiliating and threatening them - even sometimes sending them graphic photos of the bodies of gay murder victims.

‘They think they are going to get hate-crimed,’ he wrote to himself.

‘Take that f*gs,’ another entry read.

This hatred would reach a deadly conclusion one balmy California night in January 2018, when Woodward lured his former high school classmate Blaze Bernstein to a meetup.

Donning a skull mask as an homage to the neo-Nazi group he had proudly joined and trained with that summer, he then stabbed the 19-year-old gay, Jewish Ivy League student 28 times and buried his body in a shallow grave in a local park.

It was a murder that not only revealed how a privileged, middle-class white man had fully embraced radicalization, but also shone a spotlight on the violent bigotry and white supremacy that ran deep within the wealthy suburbs of Orange County.

This seeming dichotomy - and how Bernstein’s murder is symbolic of a broader uprising in neo-Nazism - is explored in the new book, American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate, from former New York Times and Washington Post journalist Eric Lichtblau.

As Lichtblau told the Daily Mail, perhaps surprisingly, Orange County is something of an epicenter for white supremacy.

‘It’s an emblematic place. Orange County has been through one tumult after another in terms of neo-Nazi uprisings. As a place, it is a microcosm, a petri dish of neo-Nazism,’ he said.

Known for its year-round near-perfect weather, Orange County is nestled along the southern California coastline - a calmer respite to Los Angeles in the north.

Swaying palm trees line the streets of multi-million-dollar mansions, home to wealthy tech and finance execs. Idyllic beaches welcome locals and visitors to bask on the sun-kissed sands and surf in the rolling waves.

Nearby, tourists flock to the ‘Happiest Place on Earth’ where ‘dreams come true’ inside the Disneyland Resort in Anaheim.

But beneath its beauty lurks a dark underbelly.

Historically, Orange County has been a right-wing political oasis - a place dubbed the ‘Orange Curtain’ where white conservatism long held steadfast within California’s overwhelming liberalism, Lichtblau explained.

In recent years, it has diversified rapidly, with a growing minority population and a rise in Democrats taking office.

This growing diversity, Lichtblau said, has in turn fueled a doubling down from white supremacists.

‘It was a changing of the tide once unthinkable, and the resistance from the old-guard white supremacists in Orange County, fighting for their very identity, has been fierce and violent. Hate crimes soaring. "White power" music thriving. The KKK and other resurgent white supremacist groups rallying publicly in the shadow of Disneyland,’ he writes in his book.

And so it was within this petri dish that Woodward’s hatred for minorities was fostered.

Woodward and Bernstein had both attended the same art school in Orange County. But they were never friends.

While Bernstein was studious and artsy, Woodward was a loner best known among fellow students for his racial slurs, drawings of swastikas, and love of the Confederate flag.

In the school corridors and classrooms, he publicly voiced his disgust of the ‘mixing of races’ and his admiration for Nazis.

After leaving school, Woodward and Bernstein’s lives grew even further apart.

Bernstein went to UPenn and had dreams of going to medical school.

Woodward was a college drop-out who wound up living back with his parents in Newport Beach, where he turned to social media to air his mounting hatred for minorities.

In one chilling photo posted online, Woodward posed in his bedroom with a knife and Confederate flag, writing: ‘If you’re a race mixer comment your address so I can kill you.’

After what Lichtblau describes as ‘speed dating’ with various neo-Nazi groups, Woodward found his ‘niche’ in the Atomwaffen Division, joining what it called ‘The Movement.’

The group, founded by Brandon Russell in Florida, counted Charles Manson - who wanted to start a race war - among its heroes. 

It hit headlines in 2017 when a member killed two other members in an apartment in Tampa, with police arriving on the scene to find a sobbing Russell, along with a stash of explosives and neo-Nazi paraphernalia. 

In 2025, Russell would be sentenced to 20 years in prison over a subsequent plot to attack the power grid in the predominantly Black city of Baltimore, Maryland.

In the summer of 2017, the group’s recent recruit Woodward attended a ‘hate camp’ in Texas with his fellow members. Dressed in military gear and skull masks, the group camped out in the remote countryside, practiced combat, shooting and survivalism, drank and posed for propaganda photos making the Heil Hitler salute.

But most of all, they railed against the people they classed as ‘sub-human.’

After the ‘hate camp,’ Woodward continued his training in white supremacy with a pilgrimage to Denver to meet James Mason, an infamous neo-Nazi who had recently gained a new following among younger white supremacists.

It was also around this time that Woodward reached out to Bernstein for the first time on Tinder, sending him flirty messages.

For months, Woodward then fell quiet - until Bernstein returned to his parents’ home for his sophomore winter break.

It was January 2, 2018, when a message suddenly popped up from Woodward: ‘Well there’s a face I haven’t seen in a while.’

He sent the same message to another gay man from school.

That man didn’t respond. Bernstein did.

The 19-year-old seemed to believe his classmate might have changed his ways since their school days, and agreed to catch up with him that night.

Just before 11pm, Bernstein slipped out of his home and got into Woodward’s car without his parents noticing.

The next day, he was reported missing.

His social media accounts offered a clue: his conversations with Woodward and their plan to meet.

Following six grueling days - in which celebrities including Kobe Bryant and Real Housewives stars tweeted about the case - Bernstein’s body was discovered in a shallow grave in nearby Borrego Park. He had been stabbed 28 times in the face and neck.

Inside Woodward’s home and car, investigators found the killer’s skull mask and a folding knife with his dad’s name carved into it. Both contained Bernstein’s blood, with police believing Woodward wore the mask during the murder in homage to Atomwaffen’s cause.

Atomwaffen members, meanwhile, celebrated the murder on Discord.

The mask’s meaning was uncovered when investigators accessed Woodward’s phone, finding his Diary of Hate, photos of Mason, Manson and neo-Nazi imagery, and his history of hateful writings.

A napkin with a scribble of a bloody dagger, skull and eyes and the writing: ‘Text is boring, but murder isn’t’ was also found.

Woodward was charged with first-degree murder with an enhancement for a hate crime for killing Bernstein because he was gay.

At his 2024 trial, Woodward testified over five days.

But it was his ‘Diary of Hate’ that became ‘the most damning evidence’ at the trial, Lichtblau believes. ‘The diary was powerful because it was really predictive of the ultimate murder,’ he said.

It also became clear that, if it hadn’t been Bernstein, Woodward likely would have targeted someone else.

Another former classmate, Gabe Garcia Combs Morris, testified that Woodward had reached out to him at school, claiming to be gay before catfishing him.

‘Gabe said to me, "Oh my God, that could have been me. I think about that every day,"' Lichtblau said.

‘It certainly seems plausible that if it wasn't Blaze that night, it certainly could have been someone else.’

Woodward was convicted of all charges and sentenced to life without parole, in a case that shone a light on the surge in white supremacy.

While to some it might come as a surprise that Woodward was someone who ‘had it all,’ and came from the privilege and luxury of Newport Beach, Lichtblau said it shows that people ‘from all walks of life’ and all sorts of occupations join neo-Nazi groups.

His research also found that places undergoing most change in terms of political climate and diversity tend to become hotbeds for far-right extremism.

‘It’s not so much white strongholds like the Deep South. It's places that are changing, so people feel threatened and see it as a battle for identity.’

In Woodward’s case, Lichtblau believes a big part of his descent into white supremacy was his desire to become part of something.

‘A lot of white supremacist groups actively recruit kids who they see as alienated and disaffected and lure them in with the chance to be part of something bigger and to belong to a cause,’ Lichtblau said.

‘In his diary - as well as a hatred for minorities - Woodward wrote about gaining an identity with Atomwaffen and, as perverse as it was, feeling for the first time that he had found a cause he belonged to.’

To Lichtblau, Bernstein’s murder serves as a bigger warning about the prevalence and rise in extremism.

‘This is a tragic case where the victim knew his killer, they grew up together in school, and the killer became radicalized right under everyone's noses.’

American Reich: A Murder in Orange County, Neo-Nazis, and a New Age of Hate by Eric Lichtblau is published by Little, Brown and Company