DETROIT (WWJ) — A hearing to determine whether the man accused of killing Detroit synagogue leader Samanatha Woll will stand trial is set to resume next week after the judge heard several hours of testimony on Tuesday.
Michael Jackson-Bolanos of Detroit was charged with open murder, home invasion and lying to police at his Dec. 13 arraignment, nearly two months after Woll was found stabbed to death outside her home in the Lafayette Park neighborhood, just east of Downtown Detroit, in late October.
Detroit Police Sgt. Daron Zhou, among those who responded to Woll’s home on Oct. 21, testified Tuesday in 36th District Court he found “a lot of blood” after walking into the apartment, where the front door had been left open.
During Tuesday’s hearing, an FBI Special Agent testified that cell phone records place the cell phone of Jackson-Bolanos, 28, in the area of Woll’s home at the suspected time of the attack — between 3:50-4:20 a.m. the morning her body was found, according to a Detroit Free Press report.
Cell phone records show Jackson-Bolanos began heading west towards Downtown Detroit around 4:30 a.m. and had returned to an apartment, which he had been in earlier that morning, shortly before 5 a.m. Woll was found on the sidewalk by a neighbor walking a dog around 6:20 a.m.
Later testimony indicated that blood likely belonging to Woll was found on a North Face jacket that was found in an apartment linked to Jackson-Bolanos. The jacket allegedly matches that of a man, said to be Jackson-Bolanos, that was seen on surveillance footage from an elementary school near Woll’s home.
Defense attorney Brian Brown, in cross-examination, argued Jackson-Bolanos is never seen entering or exiting her apartment and there is no other evidence placing him inside.
Witness testimony is scheduled to resume on Jan. 23 at 1:30 p.m., with at least four more witnesses expected to testify.
Woll was President of the Isaac Agree Downtown Detroit Synagogue. In addition to her role as a leader in Detroit’s Jewish community, Woll had previously worked as an aide to Congresswoman Elissa Slotkin and with Attorney General Dana Nessel on her reelection campaign.
Because of her leadership role with the synagogue, some had wondered if her murder was motivated by antisemitism or sparked by the Israel-Hamas war that began two weeks prior to her death. Officials have said multiple times over the course of the investigation that no evidence has surfaced suggesting antisemitism played a role in the killing.
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