Judge says jury deadlocked in Samantha Woll murder trial

The jury tasked with deciding the fate of the man accused of killing Detroit synagogue leader Samantha Woll will resume their deliberations on Monday after failing to reach a consensus by the end of the day on Friday.

Jurors disclosed to the judge they were in a deadlock, which prompted Judge Margaret Van Houten to offer hung jury instructions.

Deliberations in the case began on Tuesday, following lengthy closing arguments from both the defense and prosecuting attorneys and nearly a month of testimony from over 50 witnesses.

Described by Assistant Prosecutor Ryan Elsey as a “common sense case” and an “absolute triumph of an investigation,” the charges against 29-year-old Michael Jackson-Bolanos hinge on surveillance video and cell tower data that place him near Woll’s Lafayette Park apartment on the night of her murder; as well as blood droplets police say were a match for Woll that were found on a jacket and backpack he had been wearing that night.

Woll, 40, was stabbed eight times inside her apartment in the early morning hours after she had returned home from a friend’s wedding in Sterling Heights. 

During his closing arguments on Tuesday, defense attorney Brian Brown insisted to the jury that his client was the “wrong person in the wrong place at the wrong time,” and said the blood can be explained by Jackson-Bolanos touching Woll’s neck to check for a pulse when he allegedly found her dead on the sidewalk.

Prosecutor points out defendant’s lies

Surveillance video obtained by police from the night of Woll’s murder show Jackson-Bolanos walking around the downtown area from 12:40 a.m. and 5 a.m., checking car doors and casing vehicles.

Police believe Woll was killed at 4:20 a.m. — the last time her ADT motion sensor was triggered and around the time surveillance video and  Jackson-Bolanos’ cell phone data place him in the area.

While testifying in his own defense, Jackson-Bolanos said he stumbled upon Woll’s body on the sidewalk while he was in the adjacent parking lot checking for unlocked vehicles, and after determining she was dead, did not call 911 out of fear of being implicated in her murder.

During Elsey’s closing arguments, he reviewed several clips of Jackson-Bolanos being  interrogated by police, during which prosecutors say he lied more than 40 times about breaking into cars and later about encountering Woll’s body.

“He lies, he gets confronted with evidence, and then he often lies again; changes his story, gives you more lies,” Elsey told the jury. “It’s the trend that you’ve seen on full display throughout these interrogations and during his testimony at trial.”

Jackson-Bolanos admitted on the stand to lying to police officers out of fear of becoming a habitual offender due to past felonies he received for car-related larcenies. He also expressed fear about telling investigators he saw Woll’s body after one of the detectives lied about having evidence of him entering her apartment.

“There are simply too many coincidences, too many coincidences to suggest that anyone other than the defendant killed her.”

— Assistant Prosecutor Ryan Elsey

‘Too many coincidences’

Although there were no witnesses to Woll’s murder, Elsey described the circumstantial evidence mounted against Jackson-Bolanos as “powerful,” adding that there are “too many coincidences to suggest that anyone other than the defendant killed her.”

He said Jackson-Bolanos spent the night committing “crimes of opportunity,” before being “presented with an opportunity in the form of an open door at Samantha Woll’s home.”

He also attempted to disprove the defense’s theory that the murder may have occurred around 1:20 a.m. — just before Woll’s ADT security sensor went idle — reminding the jury that Woll’s phone was in “continuous use” up until 1:35 a.m. when her phone was last locked.

Defense suggests pattern of incompetence

Brown argued that there is a clear pattern of a lack of thoroughness in the investigations into other possible persons of interest in the case — including Jeffrey Herbstman, a recent ex-boyfriend of Woll’s who told police he thought he may have killed her during a psychotic break and couldn’t remember doing it.

Although Herbstman was the first suspect arrested by Detroit police as a person of interest in the case, detectives later ruled him out based on cell phone data that placed him inside his apartment at the time of Woll’s murder.

Brown says investigators did not do their due diligence when investigating Herbstman, accusing them of handling him with “kid gloves” during his police interrogation compared to the treatment of his client.

Brown also pointed out their failure to test a Buck knife for possible hair and fibers that was found in Herbstman’s car the day he was arrested, as well as their apparent inability to obtain additional surveillance footage of an unknown individual caught briefly on video who appeared to be running from the direction of Woll’s apartment at 1:24 a.m.

“Stones were left unturned,” Brown told the jury. “[The prosecutor] put on his defense hat and he went to work to try to convince us that Jeff Herbstman could not have done it, simply because his phone wasn’t there? Is that it? Because your phone is not there?”

Brown also noted that Michigan State Police Det. Trooper Alex Martinez, the interim officer in charge of the case, testified to suspects sometimes leaving their phones at home before committing a crime.

Woll served as the president of the Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue since 2022 and was a beloved activist and member of metro Detroit’s Jewish community. Brown suggested that Detroit police were under significant pressure to charge a suspect with Woll’s murder due to national attention gained over concerns that her death was related to the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel just a few weeks earlier. Detroit Police Chief James White held a press conference just a few days after her murder saying they found no evidence of antisemitism.

Jackson-Bolanos, who pleaded not guilty, has been charged with first-degree murder, felony murder, home invasion and lying to police officers.