A Detroit judge on Tuesday found probable cause to sent Michael Jackson-Bolanos to trial for the murder of Jewish community leader Samantha Woll last October.
Jackson-Bolanos has been charged with felony murder, home invastion, and lying to a police officer. After two days of testimony, Judge Kenneth King added a charge of first-degree murder, WXYZ reported.
Woll, the president of Detroit’s Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, was found dead outside her home on October 21, as CrimeOnline reported. Investigators say she was stabbed inside the house and staggered outside, where she collapsed.
The death sparked a months-long search for her killer, as police insisted from the start that antisemitism did not play a role. Police took an acquaintance of Woll’s into custody and released him before arrested Jackson-Bolanos, who was already under investigation for a string of larcenies in the area.
Investigators testified on Tuesday about surveillance videos they used to identify Jackson-Bolanos as a suspect in Woll’s murder. The investigators also said that the suspect’s phone records put him near the scene, but his defense attorneys argued that it was a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time — particularly when investigators pointed to two spots of Woll’s blood found on Jackson-Bolanos’s jacket.
“It’s possible that he could have came across the body, maybe touched the body, and got blood.. if somebody leaned over and touched the body and had blood just on two spots,” his defense attorney said.
King acknowledged that the amount of blood on the suspect’s jacket was miniscule, noting that the scene “was literally covered in blood.” But he found probable cause regardless and set arraignment for later this month.
