Chapter 18: The German Media Picks Up the Story - Martyr or Murderer: Jens Soering, the Media, and the Truth

Karin Steinberger’s claim that her January 2007 article “started everything” is an exaggeration, but not by far. By now it has been read by hundreds of thousands of people. It sparked a wave of interest in Söring’s case in Germany, which until then was known only to a handful of supporters. More importantly, it influenced debate. From 5 January 2007 onward, German journalists could crib arguments and assertions from “Forgotten Behind Bars”, confident in the assumption that if a respected journalist such as Karin Steinberger had said it, she must have had her reasons. From now on, phrases such as “no DNA”, “no evidence”, “German monster”, “incompetent lawyer”, and “flawed trial” would be repeated in nearly every German-language article about Söring’s case, from leading broadsheets to small local journals. The propagandistic tone of the article was no hindrance here; German journalism is marked by a tendency toward activist journalism (Haltungsjournalismus) in which reporters do not even try to conceal their own opinions.

In his meticulous and convincing 2022 book on the case Smokescreens, retired police commissioner Siegfried Stang put the matter more soberly: “Newspaper articles like this created an increasingly positive atmosphere for Söring and his arguments. Whether intentionally or not, they fostered doubts about his conviction and criticized—sometimes harshly, sometimes not—the cruelty of the American criminal justice system.” Söring boasted about this article in his 2012 German-language book Not Guilty!:

At the beginning of 2007…one of the leading national newspapers in Germany published a very long positive article about my case and my books… The article “Forgotten Behind Bars”, published by the prize-winning journalist Karin Steinberger in the Süddeutsche Zeitung, became a turning point in my life, because it was one of the longest articles about me ever published in my homeland, and that after fifteen years. And who did I have to thank for this PR-Coup? My good friend Monsignor Bernd Kaut, who had been transferred from Washington to Stuttgart in 2006 and then immediately began to lobby for me…

After the article in the Süddeutsche Zeitung and the media reports which followed, I received a flood of letters… After I had lost all contact with Germany in the previous 21 years, I was excited to have so many friends back home. The only disadvantage was that I now had to maintain two networks of supporters: one in the U.S. and one in Germany—and that with only a pen and paper.

Yet Söring would soon land a much greater “coup”—two interviews on nationwide German television.

The first fruits of Steinberger and Kaut’s efforts was a 1-hour documentary, part of the series “37 Degrees” (the human body temperature in Celsius) broadcast on 22 May 2007 on ZDF, one of Germany’s two main news channels. The tendentious tone of the documentary starts with its title, “Buried Alive”. There follows a brief history of the case, interspersed with clips of an interview the directors conducted with Söring at the Brunswick Correctional Facility in Lawrenceville, Virginia. The filmmakers interview Ricky Gardner, who calls the Söring case “the case of a lifetime” and recalls that it was a “very stressful time” for everyone in Bedford County. Asked about his view of the case, Gardner says he has no doubt Jens is guilty, but that Jens has had twenty-one years of solitude to come up with a story that “sounds better than the truth” and has probably “convinced himself that he didn’t do it”. In a pattern which would repeat itself in every German documentary about this case, persons who endorse the jury’s verdict are given about 10% of the screen time that Söring and his supporters receive.

The errors begin early. We see archival footage of Söring arriving in the U.S. in January 1990, and the narrator incorrectly states that Söring had recanted his confessions by this time. Showing Elizabeth’s testimony at Söring’s trial, the narrator says that at her trial, she was diagnosed as a “schizophrenic” and “pathological liar”. She was actually diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, which has nothing to do with schizophrenia. “Pathological liar” is not a psychological diagnosis. Cut back to Söring, who complains that the judge was a friend of the victims and the prosecutor “spent years trying to personally kill me”. Söring invokes the “German Monster” myth: “I was described quite openly as a monster!”. Gardner now gets another 45 seconds of screen time, and shows the documentary team the exhibit with the overlay of Söring’s right foot compared to LR3. It obviously fits. Gardner correctly states that no expert testified that Söring left the sockprint, and that the jury was allowed to reach its own conclusions based on the evidence, including the overlay.

The documentary narration now claims that the sock and footprints “prove nothing”, and, in another error, claim that the jury never saw Elizabeth’s footprint, which was in fact admitted into evidence by the prosecution and discussed at length at Söring’s trial. The voice-over describes the Supreme Court’s rejection of Söring’s appeal in 2001 as the “last chance he had to obtain justice”.

According to the documentary, 2001 was also the year when Söring’s father “turned his back on [Söring]”. Söring disingenuously explains that he “understands” why his father did this because Söring had caused Johann “so much pain” by virtue of getting sent to prison for life: “My father never did anything to me, I did things to him.” The filmmakers then take a detour to the evidence storage facility where the material from Söring’s trial is kept in cardboard boxes and plastic bags. The narrator notes, correctly this time, that “even the manner in which the evidence is stored show the case is closed forever”. We then move to the German Embassy to the United States, where Ambassador Dr. Klaus Scharioth says he is working to get Söring transferred back to Germany, but that the chances are slim. The documentary ends with Söring saying that if he returns to Germany, he wants to stay at a Benedictine monastery.

The next German journalist to get in a plane for Virginia was Katja Gelinsky, whose profile of Söring was published by Germany’s most prominent newspaper, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ) on 14 August 2007. By now, the format of these articles is established: A description of Söring’s appearance (trim and tanned), a brief biography of Söring and account of the trial, and Söring’s innocence claims. Gelinsky uses the German grammatical technique of “indirect speech” to indicate she is merely recounting Söring’s claims, not endorsing them. The first mistake comes a few paragraphs in, when Gelinsky says Söring and Haysom fled the U.S. because of “suspicious diary entries”. Gelinsky also calls Elizabeth Haysom an American, although she is Canadian. Gelinsky paraphrases Gail Marshall as saying that Söring’s “lawyer” (no mention of Cleaveland) admitted he was mentally ill during Söring’s trial, and that this may explain why that lawyer failed to point out to the jury that there was no “convincing evidence” against Söring and that LR3 was “too small” for Söring’s foot. In fact, Neaton’s closing argument takes up 53 pages of the trial transcript and went on for hours.

Gelinsky then makes an odd argument. She notes that Söring’s chances of being paroled are minimal because the Virginia justice system expects inmates seeking early release to take responsibility for their crimes and express remorse. Gelinsky calls this policy “cynical,” even though accepting responsibility plays just as large a role in Germany. Gelinsky notes that Söring has taken responsibility for driving his own mother to drink herself to death, for ruining his relationship with his own father, and for entering into a dysfunctional relationship with Elizabeth. This is all “not enough” for the parole board, Gelinsky states, without explaining why the parole board would care about these matters. The article ends with Söring confiding, melodramatically, that he often wishes he hadn’t fought to be spared the death penalty: “I didn’t know that going on living would feel like the death penalty”.

As Gelinsky was leaving Brunswick Correctional Center, she might have brushed up against Johannes B. Kerner, another German journalist arriving in Lawrenceville to interview Söring. Kerner, a former sports commentator turned TV personality, hosted an eponymous nighttime talk show on German national television. His show ran up to four times a week, usually with lightweight guests. On 25 September 2007, Kerner broadcast an unusual episode. A few months earlier, Kerner had flown to the Brunswick Correctional Center in Lawrenceville, Virginia, to interview Jens Söring. Now, he would broadcast excerpts of that interview and discuss them with three studio guests. The first was Dr. Andreas Frieser, the German lawyer who had represented Söring during the 30 December 1986 interview in England. The second was Gail Marshall, then representing Söring in his attempts to obtain parole or transfer back to Germany to serve his sentence. The third was Msgr. Bernd Kaut, who had kicked off Söring’s “PR” campaign in Germany.

No representative of Elizabeth Haysom, the Haysom family, or Bedford County law enforcement appeared live or on tape. Later German talk shows would follow Kerner’s lead by inviting only neutral or pro-Söring guests. The program starts with a brief run-down of the facts of the case, then Söring’s blunt question to Frieser: Is Jens Söring innocent or guilty? We encountered Frieser’s response in Chapter 10: A court decided he was guilty 20 years ago, I initially thought he was guilty after I heard him confess, but now I’ve decided there are problems with his conviction.

Gail Marshall then says she became convinced of her client’s innocence after reading the trial transcript and researching the case to file Söring’s appeals. She accuses Söring’s lawyers of committing “any number” of errors, then claims there was no “physical evidence” placing Söring at the crime scene. She then gives the rest of her plea for Söring’s innocence: His alternative history of the case is “quite plausible”, he had no criminal record, he did not abuse drugs or alcohol, he was a nice college kid, and he had no motive to kill the Haysoms, whom he barely knew, and signs of overkill point to a child taking revenge on an abuser, which fits Elizabeth more than Jens.

After this explicit plea for Söring’s innocence, Kerner then issues a disclaimer which has been repeated, in one form or another, by hundreds of German reports and media personalities: “We can’t say whether Söring is guilty or innocent; we’re interested only in the kind of person Söring is.” Kerner then turns to Bernd Kaut, who calls Söring “calm, relaxed, even friendly, who even likes to joke, which surprised me after the prison time”. Kaut says Söring loses his composure “very rarely”. Kaut says Söring is “a. very nice but b. knows exactly what he wants”.

Kerner then plays a long excerpt from his prison interview with Söring, allowing Söring to tell his tale. Söring says he was “fooled” by Elizabeth because he was so young. Söring loses no time working in references to Elizabeth lying to him, injecting heroin, and showing him nude photos her mother had taken of her. Then comes the story about the drug deal, Elizabeth driving to Lynchburg and killing her parents, Jens coming up with his “brilliant idea” to save her. As with so many German-language interviewers, Kerner steps in and helps Söring advance his story, prompting him to move on to the next element.

Kerner then asks the question which still bedevils Söring: “Didn’t you even once just ask [Elizabeth] what happened?” Söring responds: “No, actually not, at least in the form in which you just asked it. I actually never did. And that was the problem.” Back in the German TV studio, Kerner says that he „honestly” must confess that it bothers him (befremdlich) that Söring claims never to have spoken to Elizabeth about the murders. However, Kerner once again falls back on the cliché that we’re not here to determine “justice or injustice”, but rather to get to know Söring as a person. However, his very next question, to Gail Marshall, is why police took so long to arrest the pair. Because, she says, there was no physical evidence, and nobody imagined “children” could commit such a crime.

Coming back to how Söring could have known so much about the crime without ever speaking to Elizabeth about the events at Loose Chippings, Marshall then claims that Söring could have learned the details of the crime by reading the “newspapers”. Kerner attempts to help her out by pointing to a copy of Ken Englade’s “Beyond Reason”, suggesting that Söring could have obtained the details from that book—which, of course, was published four years after Söring confessed. Marshall pointedly refers to the book as “her [i.e., Elizabeth’s] story”. Bernd Kaut says that as a prison clergyman he is not primarily interested in the guilt or innocence of people who seek his counsel. Marshall jumps in with a few more “errors” in Söring’s confessions, including the position of the bodies and the clothes Nancy Haysom was wearing.

We then return to the Virginia interview. Kerner asks Söring why he fled the U.S., and Söring responds, as always, by talking about Elizabeth: The police had asked Elizabeth for her footprints and she had given them in late September. Then the police asked to talk to him, and Jens and Elizabeth both together decided “we” had to flee because “they’re on to us”. Kerner asks about the letters and diary, and Söring again begins by talking about Elizabeth:

She wanted her parents to die. She wrote that in one letter. And I wrote her back and says that love is a kind of magic weapon which can solve all of our problems and cause her parents to have a heart attack. Okay. The police found these letters and began having certain suspicions.

Kerner asks whether these suspicions were justified. Söring says the police were perhaps justified in believing his confessions at first, but that later they should have realized that Söring’s account did not match the crime scene, and the Elizabeth had left fingerprints at the house (on a vodka bottle) but police had not found any of his fingerprints. The police should therefore have realized Söring was confessing falsely, but did not.

About the circumstances of his confessions, Söring says: “It’s not as if I just went in there and immediately confessed.” He claims he tried to say as little as possible for “three and one-half” days, all the while asking for a lawyer. Then he had to confess to keep his promise to Elizabeth. When asked what she said, Söring says she immediately confessed to the crime, saying she “got off on it”. When did he recant his confessions? Söring responds that he “officially” did so only in the U.S. Söring claims he was “completely surprised” at Bedford County seeking his extradition, because he had a “diplomatic passport”.

The next passage is important, because it contains another story Söring devised to explain a problem with his narrative: Why did he wait four years to tell the world he was innocent? Söring needs some way to claim he had always been innocent and his confessions had always been false. He found one. A dozen years before he told the story to millions of Germans, Söring had previewed his explanation in Mortal Thoughts. There, Söring claims that his lawyers visited him sometime in late 1986 or early 1987 and told him that he had no diplomatic immunity. Söring would thus have to resort to Plan B, which was convincing the European Court of Human Rights to force Virginia to give up the death penalty.

Söring continues the story in his trademark purple prose:

Hesitantly I asked the attorneys what my legal position would be if I were not guilty?

My lawyers’ eyes immediately widened in horror: Heaven forbid the possibility of my innocence! To have any hope at all of gaining a binding assurance that the death penalty would not be imposed, it was essential to maintain my complete guilt throughout the extradition proceedings. If we conceded that I might have a defence against the murder charges, the appellate judges would rule that I needed no binding assurance, because an innocent man would presumably not be convicted and executed anyway. The legal term for this was “the necessity of proving the ‘seriousness of risk’ of execution,” the attorneys explained.

So if I wanted to live no one could know that I had not killed the Haysoms. Even then I could not help but smile at the poetic irony of my position: my innocence, if it became known, would kill me!

Söring never identifies these lawyers. This is just as well, since the advice Söring claims they gave him is not just wrong, but would constitute legal malpractice. If Söring were able to prove his innocence with convincing evidence such as surveillance footage, Virginia would of course drop the charges and withdraw the extradition request. Of course, Söring did not have such evidence.

What effect would it have on his extradition proceedings if Söring merely claimed to be innocent? None. Söring was innocent at this point. He had only been charged with a crime, not convicted. No court had even ruled that his confessions were admissible. The only question was whether he faced the possibility of receiving a death sentence. Because he had been indicted for capital murder and the prosecution had stated it intended to seek the death penalty, the answer was “yes”. That was the end of the matter. Söring’s own claims of innocence were irrelevant to this question and the court would have ignored them, as his claims were irrelevant to the question before the court.

There is also a logical contradiction at the heart of Söring’s story. He claims that if he showed his innocence, the court would extradite him to Virginia confident that he would not be convicted. Yet then, in a “poetic irony” with deadly consequences, he would be convicted and executed. But wait—if Söring had evidence strong enough to convince the European Court of Human Rights that there was no realistic chance of his conviction (thus allowing them to extradite him), then Söring could not be convicted by Virginia in the first place, and thus would not be executed. Söring’s story is logically inconsistent.

No competent lawyer would have given Söring this advice, and Söring’s lawyers were much more than competent. None of Söring’s lawyers has ever come forward to confirm they gave him this advice. Söring has not signed confidentiality waivers which would let them discuss this issue. Söring’s story is thus incoherent and not backed by any evidence. However, it was the only way Söring could find to explain his four years of silence. He thus has little choice but to rely on it to answer Kerner’s question:

It’s hard to understand, since it’s one of these legal things. I could not at all say before the court that I was innocent, okay. Because then the English government would have said, the Americans don’t convict innocent people. Send him back, okay… Thus it was necessary while I was in custody pending extradition that I absolutely not say take it back, recant.

Kerner, who had shown a bit of skepticism during some parts of the interview, might have been expected to question Söring’s claims. Yet Kerner was no lawyer, and seems to have obtained all his information from Söring’s advocates. Kerner not only seems to believe the story, he jumps in, suggesting that Söring had to play a legal “trick shot” to “force” the European Court of Human Rights to decide his case. Söring, visibly delighted at having such a helpful interview partner, agrees.

Kerner asks Söring why “most of the population was so massively against” him when he returned to Virginia for trial in 1990. Söring says people who know he confessed but have “not carefully researched the case” would consider him guilty. Further, as a “foreigner”, he would be the object of suspicion in this “really small town”, which he “understands”. Kerner then asks an unexpected question: “During this time [i.e., between his arrest and his trial in Virginia], did you have any contact with your parents?” Söring quickly affirms “Of course! Of course!”:

The exchange continues:

Söring: “They visited me constantly.”

Kerner: “What did you tell them?”

Söring: “The truth. But I mean, well, that is…”

Kerner: “Did they believe you?”

Söring: “Yes, of course!”

Let’s put these questions into context with what we know about the case. Söring confessed to killing the Haysoms in 1986. For the next four years, his parents visited him in various English prisons. Söring tells them “the truth”, which in Söring’s current telling means “Elizabeth Haysom murdered her parents with her own hands, and I confessed to her crime save her from the electric chair”. Söring thus claims his family knew for years that their oldest son Jens was an innocent man. They knew he had falsely confessed to a brutal double murder to save his lover Elizabeth Haysom. In October 1987, Elizabeth was sentenced to 90 years in prison. Jens had long broken off the relationship, and Elizabeth was already sentenced, with no hope of appeal. Nevertheless, even after October 1987,when Jens had no reason to protect Elizabeth, his parents—who knew their son was innocent, but was nevertheless still facing execution in the electric chair—remained silent.

But wait a minute, did Söring really tell his family he was lying to police to protect Elizabeth from the very beginning? Here is what Söring wrote in his German-language book Return to Life, published in 2021:

What I did to my family three decades ago is unforgivable. I was obsessed with saving my girlfriend’s life and accepted that I would bring misfortune to my parents and brother. Yet they all stood by me, even when I lied to the police and confessed to murdering Derek and Nancy Haysom. Initially, my family did not know that I had deliberately lied. So they had to assume I had really committed the crime. Later, after I told the truth and explained the circumstances of my false confession, they all continued to stand firmly by my side. True, they now knew that I was not a murderer, but after all, I had led them to believe that for years.

Did Söring immediately tell his family in 1986 or shortly later that he had falsely confessed to protect Elizabeth? Or did he lie to them “for years” (in his own words), committing an “unforgivable” offense against them? Söring’s inability to keep his story straight is evident.

There are a few more revealing excerpts of this interview. Kerner asks Söring what the principal “errors” in his trial were. After a theatrical sigh Söring says: “You mean during the trial? OK, let’s list them one by one. First, the judge was a close friend of the family, the victims, and lied about this in court.” When American judges speak in their own courtrooms, they speak under oath, and can be prosecuted for perjury if they say something they know to be false in open court. Söring is thus accusing Judge William Sweeney of a serious felony which, if true, would have ended his career. Kerner interjects: “But in America, if there are mistakes at trial, there are appeals courts…” Söring replies: “Yes, but you have to understand, Virginia appeals courts have, for example, never overturned a single death sentence. Virginia appeals courts believe trial judges in violent-crime cases never make mistakes.” Virginia courts actually overturn 6% of death sentences, which is similar to the rate that American and German courts overturn criminal sentences on appeal. Söring, of course, was not sentenced to death.

Kerner asks what other errors plagued Söring’s trial. Söring says the confessions were improperly admitted:

So, from the point of view of American law, the so-called confession should never have been allowed to come to court, because I repeatedly asked for legal assistance, while being recorded, and it was not granted, and that is what exists in America, this Miranda law. And actually these confessions should never have come to court. But the problem was that the judge, who was a close friend of the family, was the judge in my case. And he always ruled against us in such decisions about evidence matters.

Kerner now turns to the errors made by Söring’s lawyer. Söring cites the “sock-print”. He doesn’t explain what Neaton and Cleaveland should have done, but instead claims the evidence against him was “very thin” and turns quickly to the Jake Bibb affidavit, with the 6-6 jury split. Söring then goes into a long, excited explanation of why the “footprint” found at the crime scene couldn’t have been his, since there was a police report from mid-1985 saying it was smaller: “The report said it was 6.5 to 7 inches, but my foot was 8.5 inches. That itself should have been enough [to acquit me].”

Söring then claims this “scientist” wasn’t called, but Robert Hallett was. Söring claims Hallett “boasted” in court even though he was a mere “tire specialist”, not a footprint analyst. Hallett then allegedly claimed that Söring’s foot fit “like a glove” to the sockprint found at the crime scene. (Hallett never used this phrase, Updike did). Söring accuses “his lawyer” (he always uses the singular, to ensure the focus stays on Neaton) of not adequately explaining to the jury the weakness of the sockprint evidence. As we have seen, Söring presented this claim on appeal without success. Kerner appears not to know this, and Söring, of course, does not mention it.

Kerner has just allowed a convicted murderer to make numerous factual allegations about his trial, almost all misleading or false, and one defamatory. Instead of seeking an impartial review of what Söring said, Kerner returns to the studio and asks Gail Marshall what would have happened if Söring had had a better “lawyer”. This is another indication he got all his information from Söring and Söring’s partisans, who never mention Cleaveland. It also proves Kerner did not read any of the appeals judgments in Söring’s case, which stress the fact that Söring was represented by two lawyers at trial. Considering these appeals judgments were available for free on the Internet at this point, this is a serious omission. Marshall proclaims that with better counsel, Söring would have been acquitted because of all the factors pointing to “reasonable doubt”. She does not mention his confessions. Marshall then brings up the topic of why Söring did not voluntarily provide forensic samples to the police. Marshall says that to get these samples, police needed a search warrant, as provided for by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This is irrelevant, since the police were asking Söring to give these samples voluntarily, as Elizabeth had already done. Marshall then notes that although it might seem “inconceivable” to us that a person would falsely confess, it does happen.

Kerner now plays a portion of Elizabeth’s 1987 trial in which she reminds the jury that Söring had “four hours” to think about his plans while driving from Washington D.C. to Lynchburg. Marshall characterizes the case as a “he-said, she-said” affair: “The jury had the choice to either believe the girl from their own country, from their own city, who knew the girl and the family, or this alien foreigner with his strange accent who came from far, far away.” Here, Marshall misleads the audience. Elizabeth Haysom was not a U.S. citizen. She was born in Zimbabwe and had spent her childhood in boarding schools in Switzerland and England. She spoke with the upper-class English accent of a BBC announcer.

Söring had been in the U.S. since 1979, had attended middle school and high school in Atlanta, and spoke fluent English with almost no accent. Further, the jury was not chosen from Bedford County. Marshall is so committed to the pro-Söring narrative (a xenophobic jury convicted me because I was a foreigner) that she conceals any fact which doesn’t harmonize with it. This tendency would become universal among Söring supporters. In this interview, Marshall goes far beyond what was required of her as Söring’s lawyer. For one thing, she flew to Germany to put his case. Her presentation is grossly one-sided, verging on the mendacious. She obviously regards Söring as a victim, ally, and perhaps friend, and is incapable of viewing the case objectively.

Kerner’s show received mixed reviews. Both of the reviews in major newspapers ironically referred to “Detective Kerner” in the title of their pieces. Frederic Spohr, writing in the German daily Die Welt, noted that Kerner proclaimed the show would not be about the question of guilt or innocence, but that theme nevertheless dominated, which was the only thing that made it “really interesting”. Söring looked more like Harry Potter than a murderer. He praises Kerner for being the only thing preventing the show from becoming a “pro-Söring lovefest”. Yet even Spohr was convinced that Söring’s case was impossible to decide. The show “made clear that there can be no clear judgment in this case. This shows the inadequacy of the U.S. criminal justice system, which reached one anyway.”

This episode of Johannes B. Kerner, watched by 1.5 million people, drives perception of Söring’s case in Germany to this day. Söring was allowed to accuse Judge Sweeney of perjury, one of his lawyers (Richard Neaton) of incompetence, and Elizabeth of murder. Nobody defended them. Kerner’s cautious attempts to question Söring’s account were frustrated by his ignorance of the case. Kerner does, however, ask a few probing questions, which cause Söring to become somewhat flustered. Further, Kerner openly doubts Söring’s claim that he never spoke to Elizabeth about why or how she killed her parents.

At the end of the show, Kerner asks the panelists a peculiar question: is he allowed to be concerned that the victims can no longer speak up? There follows a general discussion about how the question of Söring’s guilt or innocence can never be resolved, which seems odd, given that it was the main theme of the show. This episode of the Kerner talk show was the only time any reporter subjected Söring’s claims to any critical scrutiny, however gingerly, until Söring’s release in 2019. On that occasion, in November 2019, Kerner took to the Bild tabloid to write that he was glad Söring was being granted a second chance, but was unwilling to comment on whether he believed Söring was guilty. Kerner wondered why it wasn’t possible to definitively resolve the case using DNA. And at the end of his short piece, he added, in bold letters, a reminder that Söring had not been released based on his protestations of innocence.