Suspect in Samantha Woll murder trial found not guilty of first-degree murder

The agonizing month-long trial for the man charged with murdering Detroit synagogue leader Samantha Woll has ended with a partial verdict on Thursday, after jurors failed to reach a consensus in two of the four charges against the defendant.

Michael Jackson-Bolanos, 29, of Detroit, is accused of fatally stabbing Woll inside her Lafayette Park townhouse this past October.

After five days of deliberations, the jury found Jackson-Bolanos not guilty of first-degree murder and guilty of lying to police, but could not come to a unanimous decision over the felony murder and home invasion charges.

The jury remained deadlocked Tuesday, with one juror swapped out due to a pre-scheduled vacation. Wayne County Circuit Judge Margaret Van Houten allowed the jury to take the day off on Wednesday due to another juror’s child care conflict. However, the shakeup was not significant enough to reach a unanimous verdict on all counts.

Woll, 40, served as the president of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue at the time of her death and was a board member of the Jewish Community Relations Council and the American Jewish Committee in Detroit. Her murder gained national attention largely due to its close proximity to the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel over concerns it could have been an act of antisemitism. However, Detroit police were quick to dispel fear of the killing being a hate crime.

But with no eye witnesses or evidence directly tying Jackson-Bolanos to the inside of Woll’s apartment, some doubt remained about his possible motive for committing such a brutal murder when he has no criminal history of assault or violent crime.

For many, those doubts grew considerably as more details about the case emerged throughout trial — including a recanted confession to the murder by Woll’s ex boyfriend, Jeffrey Herbstman, who was the first suspect arrested in the case before being released and ruled out by investigators three days later.

Read more: Testimony in Samantha Woll murder trial reveals ex-boyfriend’s retracted confession

Herbstman testified during trial as a prosecution witness, claiming his manic confession was “the product of an adverse reaction to a medication that causes delusions.”

Though police say Herbstman’s cell phone data placed him in his apartment on the night of Woll’s murder, defense attorney Brian Brown argued he could have left his phone at home, adding that detectives’ failure to fully investigate Herbstman left significant potential for reasonable doubt in the case.

During his closing arguments last week, Assistant Prosecutor Ryan Elsey dismissed Brown’s claims, stating: “There are simply too many coincidences, too many coincidences to suggest that anyone other than the defendant killed her.”

Read more: Prosecutors introduce blood, surveillance evidence in Samantha Woll murder trial

Those coincidences include surveillance video and cell tower data that place Jackson-Bolanos near Woll’s apartment on the night of her murder at 4:20 a.m. — the exact time her ADT security sensor was triggered for the last time. Additionally, the jacket and backpack Jackson-Bolanos was seen wearing on surveillance video that night both tested positive for Woll’s blood, according to police, though the stains were so small they were not visible to the naked eye.

Brown alleges that his client could not have entered Woll’s apartment at 4:20 a.m., stabbed her eight times and got into a struggle throughout her home, and be a quarter mile away by 4:24 a.m. — when he was captured on surveillance video crossing the Monroe Street bridge over Interstate 375.

Michigan State Police Detective Sgt. Chadwick Bloom testified to conducting three field tests to see how long it would take to traverse the distance between the two points — ranging from 3 minutes and 33 seconds at a brisk walk to 1 minute 10 seconds in a full sprint.

During his testimony in his own defense, Jackson-Bolanos admitted to discovering Woll’s body on the street while he was in the area checking for unlocked vehicles, and suggested the blood found on his sleeve and backpack was a result of him touching her neck to check for a pulse.

Read more: Defendant testifies in Samantha Woll murder trial

However, his testimony contradicted statements he made during his interrogations by police, during which he denied several times checking cars for valuables or encountering Woll’s body.

Woll, who led the Downtown Synagogue since 2022, was a beloved political activist whose loss has been felt well beyond metro Detroit’s Jewish community. Described by long-time friends as “eternally optimistic,” and extremely “vibrant” and “passionate,” she gained a reputation as a community bridge builder between the Jewish and Arab American community in Detroit.

“Sam had an amazing willingness to listen carefully to each and every person with whom she spoke,” Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue Rabbi Ariana Silverman stated at Woll’s funeral. “She certainly had her own convictions, but she would really listen to different ideas and had the remarkable ability to say ‘let me think about it and I will get back to you.’”

The partial verdict could result in an attempt by prosecutors to re-try the case for the deadlocked felony murder and home invasion charges. The lying to police officers conviction is punishable by up to two years in prison.