Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Fast Forward

Suspect charged with murder in death of Detroit synagogue president Samantha Woll

“There’s not a shred of evidence to suggest this was a hate crime,” a prosecutor said

(JTA) — A 28-year-old man has been charged with the murder of Samantha Woll, the Detroit synagogue president who was found dead outside her home on Oct. 21.

Wayne County Prosecutor Kim L. Worthy identified the suspect as Michael Jackson-Bolanos, who was taken into custody on Sunday, according to NBC News. Worthy said there are “no facts to suggest” that the suspect knew Woll personally.

Worthy also said that the murder was not a hate crime. Claims had circulated in the hours and days after Woll’s killing that it was an antisemitic act connected to the Israel-Hamas war, which has been accompanied by a reported rise in antisemitism in the United States. But police have said since the early stages of the investigation that it did not appear to be a hate crime.

“There’s not a shred of evidence to suggest this was a hate crime,” Worthy said.

Woll, 40, had been found unresponsive near her house by police at 6:30 a.m. on Oct. 21 with evidence of multiple stab wounds and a trail of blood leading to her home. Worthy said investigators believe Jackson-Bolanos killed Woll during an act of larceny or home invasion, according to The Detroit News.

Jackson-Bolanos is the second suspect to be taken into custody in the investigation. Last month, another man had been held in custody and then released three days later with no charges or explanation.

Woll’s death drew national attention and caused an outpouring of grief in the local Jewish community and beyond. Woll was a Democratic activist and had been president of the non-denominational Isaac Agree Downtown Synagogue, one of the city of Detroit’s only remaining Jewish congregations, where she had spearheaded an ambitious expansion campaign.

Rabbi Asher Lopatin, the executive director of Detroit’s Jewish Community Relations Council/AJC, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that the arrest is a “great relief.”

“The entire Detroit community, and frankly the entire world that came to love and respect the incredible person that Sam Woll was, felt that justice must come to the person who would perpetuate such a horrible crime and take away such a precious life,” Lopatin said. “In our terrible sadness Jewish community is grateful for the work of the police, and we are grateful that the police found absolutely no evidence that this was a hate crime directed towards any community.”

This article originally appeared on JTA.org.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.