Leonard Lopate at Large: Johnathan Krohn

Today on Leonard Lopate at Large, Johnathan Krohn discusses the events recounted in his article “How a Gay Teen, an Internet Nazi, and a Late-Night Rendezvous Turned to Tragedy”

Friends remember Blaze (left to right: in first grade, at his 19th birthday dinner, and on vacation in 2017) as smart and generous, with a biting sense of humor.

On January 12, 2018, Sam Woodward was arrested and charged with the murder of a former classmate, 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein.

Police had found a knife stained with Blaze’s blood in Sam’s room, along with blood inside Sam’s car. Sam told police he had hung out with Blaze the night he disappeared.

The story behind Blaze’s tragic death, as reported by Jonathan Krohn in his feature article for Mother Jones magazine “How a Gay Teen, an Internet Nazi, and a Late-Night Rendezvous Turned to Tragedy” (titled “Boy Meets Hate” in the print edition), is that of a boy driven by his white supremacist views and self-hatred over his own sexuality to take Blaze’s life.