Chapter 23: International Fame and DNA Round 2 - Martyr or Murderer: Jens Soering, the Media, and the Truth

In her review of Killing, Connolly notes that Söring had sent German Chancellor Angela Merkel a Christmas Card every year, and that she reportedly sent him one in 2015. She also reports that Merkel had raised Söring’s case with Obama during a summit meeting. Connolly contacted Karin Steinberger, who gave a quotation which can stand in for hundreds of comments she made while promoting the film:

Despite having researched this case for 10 years. I still don’t know what happened the night the murders were committed. I don’t know if he’s innocent or guilty. But I do know that this was not a judgment beyond reasonable doubt as another man’s blood was found at the scene. The movie doesn’t say Jens is innocent, it says there are lots of things that remain unanswered. Not least the question: “is the real culprit still out there?”

Steinberger here executes a two-step. First, to preserve a veneer of journalistic objectivity, she says she doesn’t know if Söring was innocent or guilty, and that the movie is not intended to answer that question. Yet she simultaneously endorses Söring’s own spin that another man’s blood was found at the crime scene. Steinberger disingenuously denies overt advocacy while covertly pleading Söring’s case. She also doesn’t hesitate to state her opinion on the outcome of the trial, despite having no training in any legal system.

Markus Vetter, in his comments, went much farther than Steinberger. In an interview with the German daily taz from 27 October 2016, Vetter says: “In my eyes, Jens Söring is a fundamentally honest person. He hides nothing”. At the end of the interview, the filmmakers confess their affection for Söring: “Jens has long been a part of Karin’s life and now he’s a part of mine, too.” In a2016 interview with the German film reporter Deborah Ravell, Vetter said that Jens Söring had become a friend of his and confirmed that Killing for Love had been intended to help secure Söring’s freedom. The Söring effect at work again: Because they like Söring, Steinberger and Vetter want to believe him.

Vetter had even more extraordinary things to say in an English-language interview Vetter gave the BBC on the occasion of Killing for Love being broadcast as part of BBC Four’s prestigious series “Storyville”. Asked what the most surprising thing about the filmmaking process was, Vetter says:

Finding and watching the whole trial footage was eye-opening. Because you could see how this trial was very much about forcing Elizabeth to deny publicly that she was sexually abused by her mother and all this knowing that the presiding judge was a friend of the family. I really got the feeling that it was all about brushing away the rumors that a woman of the high society of Bedford County had abused her daughter.

Those who believed the trial was about determining who murdered Derek and Nancy Haysom were apparently misled.

Again, it’s helpful to spell out exactly what Vetter is implying. In his view, Elizabeth Haysom murdered her mother in revenge for the alleged abuse, then killed her father for some reason. Of course, this conflicts with Söring’s story that Haysom murdered her parents in a drug-fueled rage based on their controlling behavior toward her, but let’s return to Vetter’s version: As it becomes clear Elizabeth was the killer, Judge Sweeney, the Sheriff’s Office, and the Commonwealth’s Attorney sprang into action, devising some kind of conspiracy to frame Söring for the murders (which Söring assisted by conveniently confessing), all to protect Nancy Haysom’s reputation. The conspiracy failed, since the abuse allegations were publicly aired at both trials. Nevertheless, Söring still had to go down for some reason. It is impossible to make any sense of Vetter’s theories, a fact of which Vetter himself seems unaware.

In the 2022 podcast The Söring System, Eva Beck, recalling her interactions with Steinberger and Vetter, said she did not believe they actually understood the case. They claimed to have pored over thousands of pages of documents, but Beck could see no evidence they had gone far beyond what was contained in the Söring “press pack”, or that they had found any independent corroboration for the claims Söring made in the interview which had “floored” Steinberger and Vetter.

There is ample confirmation of the Killing for Love team’s ignorance of basic facts of the case. In the 2016 promotion interview with Deborah Ravell, which is still online, Vetter claims Söring was a minor, that his father was the “ambassador” to the U.S., that Tim Kaine granted Söring a “pardon”, that Judge Sweeney was a “good friend” of Nancy Haysom, that Elizabeth Haysom had a “deal” with the prosecution, that “half” of the German Bundestag had signed letters in support of Söring, and that convicted murderers “rot forever” in American prisons (in fact they serve an average of just under 15 years).

These statements are false. The level of Karin Steinberger’s knowledge of the case can be judged by her covert contributions to the “Friends of Jens” letter to the FAZ in response to my November 2019 article. I was able to dismantle the letter’s claims and Team Söring never offered any further arguments. If Karin Steinberger and Marcus Vetter had indeed deeply studied the case, they seem to have forgotten most of what they learned—or at least everything which didn’t support Söring’s innocence narrative. A movie which influenced the thinking of millions of people worldwide was, we now know, made by people who lacked a grasp of even the most basic facts.

Söring, at any rate, was delighted by Killing for Love. As reported by Holdsworth on Jens Soering Guilty as Charged, Söring sent out a newsletter to supporters in 2015 complaining that the film came out too late to be used to support his latest campaign for transfer to Germany. However, he reported that Karin Steinberger had recently visited him to update him with the latest developments. The film is going to be “really fantastic”, Söring wrote. When prison authorities finally permitted him to see the movie, he was overjoyed. He still features the movie prominently on his website. After his release from prison in 2019, he presented DVDs of the film to lawyers, journalists, politicians, and other people whom he approached with various requests and projects. Steinberger and Vetter, for their part, had material they could not use for the film. They turned it into a podcast and a four-episode extended documentary feature, both broadcast on SWR, the German public broadcaster which had co-financed the original film.

Among the millions of people who saw some version of Killing for Love was a German paralegal based in London name Eva Beck, who spoke fluent English and German. Beck was gripped by the film. With her peerless language skills with an almost uncanny organizational talent, Beck soon became a close confidante of Söring and the de facto head of the “Friends of Jens”. Beck administered a Dropbox account filled with documents about the case, and also collected boxes of paper documents. She responded to interview requests, reached out to reporters, coordinated letter-writing appeals and petitions, and tracked down witnesses and documents. Söring had limited emails access in prison, so he sent Eva emails to be forwarded from her to other supporters. Using a clever semi-legal workaround, he was able to telephone her, and did so several times a week for years. She even designed a 90-page document called “The Söring Case Made Simple”, in German and English.

Another development in 2016 gave renewed impetus to the “unknown male DNA” argument. As we’ve seen, Söring was obsessed by the 2009 DFS report which he interpreted as showing that an unknown male bled at the crime scene. He frequently combed over his case files looking for things he might have overlooked. He was reviewing the 1985 blood-type test results when he discovered something: Two of the crime-scene samples which showed DNA from an “unknown male” had originally been classified by Mary Jane Burton as Type O, Söring’s blood type. They were 2FE and 6FE, both samples from the “Front Entrance” (FE) of the home. Each yielded a partial male DNA profile consistent at all but one location (TH01) (likely because of a “drop-out”).

Söring concluded the DNA evidence proved there were two unknown male assailants based on the following argument:

1. 2FE and 6FE are Type O blood.

2. Neither of the victims had Type O blood.

3. The DNA profiles developed from 2FE and 6FE are inconsistent with Jens Söring.

4. The DNA profiles developed from 2FE and 6FE are (slightly) inconsistent with one another.

In Söring’s view, this proved that the Haysoms were attacked by two separate unknown male attackers with Type O blood. He immediately circulated this finding to his lawyers and supporters. His lawyer Steven Rosenfield found two expert witnesses, J. Thomas McClintock, Professor and the Director of Forensic Science in the Department of Biology and Chemistry at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, and Moses Schanfield, Professor of Forensic Sciences and Anthropology at the George Washington University in Washington, D.C. Both prepared letters supporting Söring’s interpretation.

No new DNA testing had been done. The only basis for Söring’s new theory was a belated comparison of the 1985 serology testing and the 2009 DNA report. Nevertheless, Söring and his supporters immediately trumpeted this new theory, supported by statements from two scientists. If Killing for Love had rescued Jens Söring’s case from obscurity, the “new DNA findings” shone a brilliant spotlight on it. Every plea for his innocence was now prefaced by the claim that DNA evidence “proved” two males, neither of whom could have been Söring, were at the crime scene. Further, this finding was now backed up by two professors.

The “new DNA results” exponentially amplified the CSI effect in Söring’s case. Anyone who approached the case after 2016 did so under the presumption that the case had already been blown open by “DNA evidence”. The trial faded into irrelevance: If the Bedford County Circuit Court had concluded Söring killed the Haysoms alone, it had obviously reached a catastrophically incorrect result. The only remaining question was how that incorrect result had come about. Söring and his allies of course had a litany of reasons: the biased judge, false confessions, the junk science of the sockprint, etc. Yet these arguments could be slotted in more or less as an afterthought. The heavy lifting had already been done by the DNA results. Söring was clearly entitled at the least to a re-trial, or better still, pardon and compensation.

Reporters on both sides of the Atlantic, already conditioned by genuine tales of wrongful conviction, soon began taking up Söring’s case in earnest. Söring’s network of lawyers and supporters, which I’ll call Team Söring for convenience, needed a strategy. What a later podcast would call the “Söring System” took shape. The first step was often an inquiry from a reporter reaching out the “Friends of Jens” or to one of Söring’s lawyers. Team Söring sometimes took the initiative, pitching to reporters who seemed likely to be sympathetic. Team Söring had already assembled a “media pack”—a dossier of pro-Söring information, including excerpts from trial testimony and appeals briefs, Schanfield and McClintock’s expert reports, and prior favorable news coverage. The idea was to give journalists facing deadlines enough material to put together a story about the case in a few hours. New Yorker journalist Nathan Heller, who wrote a 2015 article about the case called “Blood Ties”, refers to the media pack as Söring’s “approved library of information,” and noted that Söring became “distraught” when asked questions which ranged beyond its safe confines.

Team Söring’s media efforts were successful. Every reporter on the crime beat wanted to be in on the next DNA exoneration. Articles trumpeting Killing for Love and the “new DNA results” in Söring’s case were soon ubiquitous in the U.S., Germany, and other countries. Team Söring could now gain supporters easily by what I call a “reputational cascade”. Prospective supporters were assured that Söring’s arguments had merit because reputable people—such as Chuck Reid, Söring’s lawyers, two professors, and others—had already endorsed them. Söring’s credibility had thus been “pre-cleared” by people whose business it was to know these things. Söring’s network of supporters soon grew to include best-selling author and lawyer John Grisham and record producer and advocate for the wrongfully convicted Jason Flom, Martin Sheen.

The most significant coup, however, was the support of Sheriff J.E. “Chip” Harding. Harding, a former social worker, had been elected the Republican Sheriff of Albemarle County, Virginia in 2007, on a platform of increased use of DNA to solve crimes and the creation of an inmate work force. Harding, who viewed himself as a reformer and by all accounts enjoyed publicity, remained in office 2019. A 16 April 2014 profile of Harding by Lise Provence for the Charlottesville Weekly—which also quotes Jens Söring’s lawyer Steven Rosenfield—reports that Harding had become a crusader for the wrongfully convicted: “Realizing he was part of a system that put innocent people behind bars—or worse, to death—was ‘humbling and shameful,’ Harding said. ‘And it induced a rage. From there I started wondering how often that was going on.’” By that time, Harding had already helped some few prisoners win release and participated in panels to study possible reforms. Harding now became a supporter of Jens Söring. In 2017 Harding sent then-Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe a long letter arguing that Söring’s trial was flawed and that he should be released.

The fact that a sitting Virginia sheriff—a Republican, no less—had taken up Söring’s cause gave his claims. Later, other law enforcement officers (mostly retired) would join the team. By 11 April 2018, Sandy Hausman, a reporter for Charlottesville’s public-radio station, reported that four “seasoned” law-enforcement officers were advocating for Söring: Harding, Chuck Reid, 25-year FBI veteran Stan Lapekas, and Charlottesville detective Richard Hudson. In the article, Lapekas derided the bloody sockprint trial exhibit as “nothing more than a magic trick that was purchased at a five and ten store.”

Hausman also quotes Lapekas as confirming that Ed Sulzbach, the FBI agent, had indeed created an “behavioral profile” of the Haysoms’ killer, and that the result pointed to Elizabeth Haysom. Hausman notes that both she and Lapekas had requested a copy of the profile from the FBI, but the agency replied none existed. Lapekas “went further”, requesting the entire FBI file on the case. Hausman notes Ricky Gardner’s reaction to persistent questioning about the profile: “‘I’m getting tired of hearing about this, because it never happened and Chuck Reid is wrong!’ Gardner shouted. ‘This happened 30 years ago. Chuck Reid is wrong. I’ve given you my side of the story. You can beat a horse to death. I’m tired of it!’”. As we will see, Gardner’s frustration was justified, since no FBI profile was ever created.

In 2017, veteran Virginia journalist Bill Sizemore collaborated with his “friend” Jens Söring to write a book entitled A Far, Far Better Thing: Did a Fatal Attraction Lead to a Wrongful Conviction? The title is taken from Sydney Carton’s final speech in Charles Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities. Martin Sheen contributes a Foreword in which he declares “Soering had been incarcerated since 1986 for a crime he clearly did not commit.” This new book, Sheen continues contains an account of Söring’s case marked by “minute detail and scrupulous honesty”.

The first half of the book is a reworked version of Mortal Thoughts, complete with references to Elizabeth playing her playing her “piper’s magic tune” and comparisons of her to an “evil spider” who had Söring wrapped up in “a little cocoon, ready for consumption”. Söring also keeps the splendid anecdote about sex-mad Elizabeth staging a public “wrestling match over [his] penis” in a bar, forcing him to plead with her to “relinquish her hold on my member”. Söring then quotes three full pages from an extremely sexually explicit letter she had written to him over three decades previously, advising readers they may wish to skip it because of its “pornographic nature”. How, the reader wonders, could Söring possibly have resisted the will of this female Rasputin?

At the end of the book, Söring refers to himself as “an immensely, titanically angry man”. He is angry because he believes DNA findings should have freed him long ago, and that his continued imprisonment is due only to politics. This would seem to explain the harsh tone of A Far, Far Better Thing. In addition to slamming Elizabeth with renewed gusto, Söring drops the pretense of calling Jim Farmer “Bauer” or “Ranchero”. Farmer had died three years earlier, so Söring no longer had to fear repercussions. Söring opens fire on Farmer’s memory, mentioning that the drug-dealing son of a Bedford judge had (as Elizabeth reported) “given [Elizabeth] some joints and asked her to join a menage à trois with his male lover”.

Farmer then threatened to “snitch” to Elizabeth’s parents, who would believe him because he “was a scholarship winner, a judge’s son, practically an old friend of the family”. There’s slight new twist in the narrative: Söring now accuses Bedford County law enforcement of focusing on him to divert suspicion away from Elizabeth, whom they wanted to protect at all costs: “Perhaps Sheriff Wells and Prosecutor Updike’s reverence for the … Benedicts [and] Haysoms was so great that they preferred leaving the crime unsolved to accusing the scion of those illustrious families of murdering her parents.”

Söring also revives his accusation that “Kenneth Beever threatened to harm Elizabeth,” which he had removed from the 2012 German-language book Not Guilty! Either Söring felt more protected by the American First Amendment than German law, or he was getting desperate. He ratchets up the rhetoric, accusing Ricky Gardner of “lying” in court and Terry Wright (or someone else on the prosecution team) of “tampering with interrogation transcripts”. He says he was held “incommunicado” in London, which was “a clear order to deny me my right to a lawyer”. Söring also renews his accusation of perjury against the hapless Donald Harrington, accusing him of only coming forward after Söring had told detective about his scars.

Söring does remove one part of Mortal Thoughts. As he wrote then:

Steve Rosenfield, an attorney representing Liz, had approached my lawyers to offer them an opportunity to speak with his client—for a sum of money. Since such arrangements were ethically dubious and embarrassing if made public, my attorneys contacted prosecutor Updike, and together they decided to inform Judge Sweeney of this development.

Of course, Söring is an unreliable witness, so this anecdote should be approached with caution. By 2017, Rosenfield was Söring’s lawyer, and had devoted countless hours of unpaid work to defending him. It was thoughtful of Söring to remove this tale from his new book. The remainder of the book, which is only about 1/3 as long as Söring’s revised Mortal Thoughts, consists of Sizemore’s brief summaries of “the issues” in Söring’s case circa 2017. The chapter titles tell the story: “The Star Witness”, “The Judge”, “The Sockprint”, “The Drifters”, etc.

A Far, Far Better Thing was the third book Söring had written about his innocence claims, but it would not be his last.