A Detroit judge in late January found that there was enough evidence to try the suspect accused of murdering Detroit synagogue president Samatha Woll in October, the Associated Press reported.
Detroit District Judge Kenneth King ruled on January 23 that the prosecution had sufficient evidence to bind 28-year-old Michael Jackson-Bolanos over to circuit court on charges of murder, home invasion, and lying to police. The judge also added a charge of first-degree premeditated murder.
Judge King described Woll as “the victim of a brutal attack,” noting that her home “was covered with blood.” The judge said that such a crime should not happen anywhere, “let alone in the city of Detroit.”
The hearing focused on video footage investigators collected from security cameras in the near-east side and downtown areas from both before and after Woll’s murder.
According to the prosecution, the cellphone belonging to Jackson-Bolanos was picked up near Woll’s home at the time of the murder. Additionally, blood was found on the jacket Jackson-Bolanos was wearing in the surveillance footage.
Jackson-Bolanos was arrested in mid-December for the October 21 fatal stabbing of Woll, who was the president of Detroit’s Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue.
Woll had attended a wedding the evening before and returned home around midnight. Her body was discovered the following morning outside of her home in LaFayette Park. Police said Woll, 40, had been stabbed inside her home and made her way outside to her front yard where she later died.
Because Woll was murdered so soon after the October 7 Hamas terrorist attacks in Israel, it was initially believed that her death was a hate crime.
However, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy insisted that not a “shred of evidence” had ever been found to indicate that Woll’s murder was motivated by antisemitism.
According to Worthy, Woll and Jackson-Bolanos were not connected in any way and did not know each other.
