Much of the public attention to the case is about the killing and its lurid details: Blaze was openly gay, and a court affidavit referred to failed romantic overtures between the men. But in one of the few interviews given since her son's death, Bernstein's mother this week drew a more nuanced picture of her son as a young man who first excelled in writing and the arts, but who was discovering a new path in the sciences as a college student.