Samantha Woll murdered in a “crime of passion,” the defense claims at the beginning of the trial

Detroit — Prosecutors say Detroit synagogue president Samantha Woll was brutally stabbed to death by a stranger breaking into her home after she left her door unlocked as she returned home from a friend’s wedding.

However, defense attorney Michael Jackson-Bolanos said his client did not commit murder, which appeared to be a crime of passion rather than an accidental killing. He indicated that the more likely perpetrator was Woll’s ex-boyfriend, who confessed to the crime but was released by police when they found no corroborating evidence.

“It was not Michael Jackson-Bolanos who did this,” Brian Brown said during his opening statement Tuesday afternoon in Wayne County Circuit Court in the trial against Jackson-Bolanos. “She was stabbed eight times in the neck, in the back of the head, in the back of the neck. For me, that would be a crime of passion. This wasn’t some random person who came into her house and tried to steal something.

Woll was stabbed eight times in her townhouse in Detroit’s Lafayette Park neighborhood after she made the mistake of leaving the door open, Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor Ryan Elsey said in his opening statement.

“There’s a reason we lock our doors at night when we go to bed. This is because of people who lurk in the night and can harm us,” Elsey said. “The defendant wandered around our community looking to enter spaces he did not belong in and take things that did not belong to him.”