Murder of Blaze Bernstein: what Wikipedia removed
Blaze Bernstein was a University of Pennsylvania student murdered in 2018 by a former high school classmate, Samuel Woodward. By 2020 the opening said Woodward was “a member of neo-Nazi terrorist group Atomwaffen Division” when he was arrested and charged with the murder. Today the word does not appear in the opening, surviving twice in the body, and the opening identifies the case only as an “Antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ hate crime” without naming Atomwaffen Division. A reader of the opening today does not learn that Woodward was tied to a group Wikipedia once called a neo-Nazi terrorist organization.
The word “terror” appeared 1 times in this article’s opening at its peak, in 2020. Today the opening carries none; the body carries 2. Checked against the full current article on 2026-08-01.
The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot
Section titled “The tracked words, snapshot by snapshot”| word | 2020 | 6 October 2023 | 2025 |
|---|---|---|---|
| terror | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| antisemitism | 1 | 1 | 1 |
Counts are of the opening paragraph only, the part most readers, search engines and AI training sets ever quote.
What was taken out
Section titled “What was taken out”- This exact phrasing, dated January 10, is gone; the current opening restates the classification as January 2 with ‘anti-LGBTQ’ in place of ‘anti-LGBT.‘
How it opened then, and now
Section titled “How it opened then, and now”2020 (revision 963643726):
Antisemitic and anti-LGBT hate crime On January 10, 2018, 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania sophomore Blaze Bernstein was found dead in a park in Orange County , California , eight days after having been reported missing. He was visiting his family in Lake Forest, California , when he was killed. He had been stabbed twenty times. Two days later, Samuel Woodward, one of Bernstein’s former high school classmates and a member of neo-Nazi terrorist group Atomwaffen Division , was arrested and charged with murdering Bernstein. As Bernstein was both openly gay and Jewish , authorities declared that Bernstein was a victim of a hate crime . ^ Cite error: The named reference nbc was invoked but …
2025 (revision 1287791973):
Antisemitic and anti-LGBTQ hate crime On January 2, 2018, 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania sophomore Blaze Bernstein was killed after leaving home to meet an acquaintance at a park in California . Authorities later charged his former high school classmate Samuel Woodward with the murder, declaring that the incident was a hate crime . Woodward was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole .
Related
Section titled “Related”- The drift report: what changed across all 61,944 watched articles
- The case file for this article, with every snapshot and every marked removal
- Who made the cuts: removals grouped by the account that made them
- The live article on Wikipedia
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