Suspect charged with murder, home invasion in slaying of Detroit synagogue leader
Prosecutor says no ‘shred of evidence’ Samantha Woll was killed in antisemitic hate crime, attacker murdered victim after breaking into her home
DETROIT — Authorities filed a murder charge Wednesday in the October 21 slaying of Detroit synagogue leader Samantha Woll, alleging that she was killed by a stranger who broke into her home.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kim L. Worthy identified the suspect as Michael Jackson-Bolanos, 28, who was taken into custody on Sunday, according to NBC News. Worthy said there are “no facts to suggest” that the suspect knew Woll personally.
Worthy also said that there was not a “shred of evidence” that Woll was killed as a result of antisemitism or any hate crime.
Speculation had swirled in the hours and days after Woll’s killing that it was an antisemitic act connected to the Israel-Hamas war, which has been accompanied by a sharp rise in antisemitism in the United States. But police have said since the early stages of the investigation that the murder did not appear to be a hate crime.
Woll, 40, was found stabbed to death outside her home, east of downtown Detroit, on October 21, hours after returning from a wedding. Investigators believe she was attacked inside the residence.
Police said a person of interest was in custody over the weekend. A different person who was in custody was released in November.
“This was an extraordinarily sad and tragic case,” Worthy said. She added, “This takes time. We never want to rush to judgment.”
Police Chief James White said the suspect “came on our radar a few weeks ago” when investigators were trying to solve larcenies in the area. “This is not a case you can solve like on television,” White said. “Hours and hours of evidence, hours and hours of video, of phone work, seven days a week.”
Woll was president of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue. Besides her work for the synagogue, Woll had worked for Democratic US Rep. Elissa Slotkin and on the political campaign of state Attorney General Dana Nessel.
Rabbi Asher Lopatin, the executive director of Detroit’s Jewish Community Relations Council/AJC, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the arrest is a “great relief.”
“The entire Detroit community, and frankly the entire world that came to love and respect the incredible person that Sam Woll was, felt that justice must come to the person who would perpetuate such a horrible crime and take away such a precious life,” Lopatin said. “In our terrible sadness Jewish community is grateful for the work of the police, and we are grateful that the police found absolutely no evidence that this was a hate crime directed towards any community.”
The fatal stabbing of Woll came just two weeks after the October 7 shock attack by Hamas on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, and amid an immediate rise in antisemitic incidents in the US, setting an unprecedented record in the past two months.
The Anti-Defamation League said last week that it had recorded 2,031 incidents between October 7 and December 7, the highest ever two-month number since the ADL began tracking antisemitism in the country in 1979. It also represented a 337-percent increase from the same period in 2022.
The cases in question included 40 incidents of physical violence, 749 of verbal attacks, 337 cases of vandalism and 905 rallies that featured antisemitic speech, support for terrorism or anti-Zionism, the latter being defined by the ADL as an expression of antisemitism for denying the Jewish right to self-determination.
Times of Israel staff contributed to this report.
