Chapter 26: The Coincidence of a Lifetime - Martyr or Murderer: Jens Soering, the Media, and the Truth

In 2018, I was looking for topics for essays and articles to publish in German newspapers. About that time, I read a book which provided me with an idea. The book was Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK, by Gerald Posner, a Harvard-trained lawyer turned investigative journalist. After watching Oliver Stone’s 1991 movie about the Kennedy assassination, Posner immersed himself in the world of Kennedy assassination conspiracy theories. He came away not just unimpressed but also dismayed and even outraged: Stone’s film, and by extension the “independent research” which informed its every frame, was a grotesque falsification of history. The cottage industry of Kennedy assassination skeptics had caused a kind of collective historical hallucination in which millions of Americans had become convinced some sort of shadowy conspiracy had resulted in the assassination of the nation’s 35th President.

Building on extensive research and precise lawyerly reasoning, Posner dismantles every conspiracy theory and shows that the “official” version, derided and dismissed by thousands of authors, remains the only plausible explanation of events. Lee Harvey Oswald was no patsy. He was, in fact, deeply political, sociopathic, and driven. His motive for assassinating Kennedy was to win everlasting fame, upend the American political system, and change the course of world history. Oswald was a trained soldier and a good shot, the shooting angle he chose wasn’t challenging, and he had a workable plan for getting away after the crime which nearly succeeded. The “magic bullet” was no such thing; it’s routine for high-velocity bullets to take unpredictable trajectories when they hit obstacles, and the path taken by the “magic bullet” was physically possible and fit the evidence. Jack Ruby, for his part, was another Oswald: a deeply unstable person waiting for a trigger to take violent action. Ruby was plunged into hysterical grief by the assassination of the president he idolized, and shot Oswald to exact revenge.

Posner proves there is no reason to doubt the “official version”. However, Posner was not interested in merely correcting the record. As the book shows, Kennedy conspiracy theories has caused grave harm to many people. Clay Shaw, a New Orleans businessman, was dragged into a bruising legal battle when New Orleans prosecutor Jim Garrison brought frivolous charges against him for the Kennedy assassination in 1969.

To frame Shaw for the Kennedy assassination, Garrison suppressed evidence, intimidated witnesses, and endorsed outlandish stories peddled by shadowy figures with terrible reputations. Shaw was acquitted, but died shortly later, by all accounts broken by the years-long legal nightmare Garrison inflicted on him. Posner regards the positive portrayal of Garrison in Stone’s film as nothing short of obscene, and it’s hard to imagine anyone who has read Posner’s book disagreeing with that assessment. Posner also notes the corrosive effect of Kenney conspiracy theories: To this day, tens of millions of Americans believe, with no justification, that their government lied to them about one of the pivotal events of American history.

Posner’s book also provides practical insights into how conspiracy theories take root and develop their own internal logic. Conspiracy theorists “reverse-engineer” reality based on a preferred outcome: Oswald was innocent, 9/11 was an inside job, etc. The “official” story, therefore, must be incorrect. But how to prove this? The answer: By looking for inconsistencies in the record: conflicting witness statements, clashing timelines, ambiguities and errors in official documents, suspicious personal connections and motives, and apparently impossible coincidences.

These kinds of “anomaly hunts”, to use Holdsworth’s phrase, are invariably successful. As every experienced detective or lawyer knows, there are gaps and coincidences and loose ends in every complex criminal investigation, bar none. There are always witnesses who saw someone who doesn’t match the authorities’ description, or who saw them at the wrong time or the wrong place. There are always rumors, speculation, and gossip about other suspects and other motives. There are always seemingly unexplained phenomena: the magic JFK bullet somehow traversing two bodies, the collapse of World Trade Center 7 even though it was never hit by an airplane, the lack of any cyanide residue in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Eventually, the conspiracy theorist reaches certainty: The official version simply can’t be true because there are simply too many “unanswered questions”. They may not know exactly what happened, they will say with disingenuous reticence, but they know it can’t be the official version.

Posner’s fascinating book spurred me to contemplate performing a Posner-style debunking—a thorough, reasoned critique of some commonly-held belief about an important event. Since I write both in English and German, it would be ideal if the story had a transatlantic aspect. At some point, the name Jens Söring occurred to me. I’d known of Söring since 1989, when I first saw some American news reports on the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) decision in his case. I then watched parts of his televised trial on courtroom channels in the early 1990s. The trial fascinated me, along with countless others. In fact, Söring’s trial was one of the reasons I chose to go to law school in 1993. In law school, I studied the ECHR decision.

After I graduated and took up a job defending death row inmates, Soering v United Kingdom was an important case: We tried to convince American courts to follow the European court’s lead, but with no success. Most American courts held that a decision from a European court had no relevance in the U.S. legal system and also noted that the long wait for executions was usually caused by the prisoner filing multiple complex appeals. After that I forgot about Söring and relocated to Germany to teach common law at the University of Düsseldorf. In the early 2000s, my German students started asking me about Söring, since I was an American criminal-defense lawyer. These students were convinced Söring had received a grossly unfair trial in front of a biased judge.

I didn’t pursue the matter then. But in 2018, looking for stories, I typed his name into Google. There were thousands of results, virtually all suggesting Söring had been wrongly convicted. There were long interviews on Youtube, and innumerable articles and videos from supporters. Söring even had his own website, where he posted blog articles and essays. I also discovered he had written numerous books. Some of the arguments he and his supporters made seemed weak, but others made me pause: Perhaps Söring had been unfairly convicted.

I wanted to see if there was another side to the story, so I typed in “Jens Soering guilty”. The first was, predictably, Jens Soering Guilty as Charged. I immediately realized Holdsworth must be a lawyer. We lawyers can spot one another; it must be something about the dry prose, the careful formulations, and the obsession with detail. I wrote Holdsworth and accused him of being a fellow lawyer, which he admitted. We exchanged emails and gradually built trust. Holdsworth was initially somewhat suspicious of me. I would later find out that he had good reason for this. By the late 2010s, Söring had accumulated an international army of supporters working on managing his publicity campaign. Holdsworth’s blog was literally the only source of written arguments for Söring’s guilt. Dozens of Söring’s supporters were trying to figure out who Holdsworth was and where he was getting his information. It was thus certainly more than conceivable that one or more of Söring’s most devoted fans might try to dox or harass Holdsworth.

After proving my bona fides, I learned Holdsworth’s real name. Holdsworth turned out to be an English solicitor who had followed the Söring case for some time from a critical perspective. It soon became clear that he had ties to people who had worked on Söring’s case in Great Britain, in particular Terry Wright and Kenneth Beever. As these men had participated in all of Söring’s various legal proceedings, including his trial in Virginia, they had access to a huge archive of materials about the case. The case had long been resolved from the UK’s point of view, so these documents were no longer considered sensitive or confidential.

Holdsworth gradually confided in me that he was in close touch with Terry Wright, and that Terry Wright was writing a “report” about the Söring case to help the Governor of Virginia decide whether to pardon Söring. Wright had originally decided to take a second look at the case after the 2016 DNA comparison came out and news outlets reported that proof had emerged of two unknown males at the Haysom crime scene. Could Söring possibly be innocent? Was the case against him really as strong as we thought? Wright said that if his re-investigation of the case indicated serious problems, he would not have hesitated to support relief for Jens Söring. By 2016, Terry Wright had retired from the London Metropolitan Police after a long and successful career capped by a stint in Quantico, Virginia as the liaison between Scotland Yard and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He plunged himself back into the Söring case.

Wright began by reading some of the things Söring himself had published, including Mortal Thoughts. This material was new to Wright: After testifying at Söring’s trial, Wright hadn’t paid much attention to the case. Wright now began reading some of the millions of words Söring had written about his life, his relationship with Elizabeth, and his trial. After reviewing his archive and consulting with other key figures in the investigation, Wright’s doubts about Söring’s guilt vanished. Wright concluded that the supposed weaknesses in the case were either trumped-up or insignificant, and that Söring had demonstrably lied about his case over and over. Wright was astounded and dismayed by two things: First, the brazenness of Söring’s dishonesty, and second, the gullibility with which his claims had been accepted by journalists on both sides of the Atlantic.

At this point, though, in mid-2019, Wright was still unwilling to go public with his findings. Söring’s case had become a transatlantic media sensation, and Wright wanted to enjoy his retirement without being harassed by indignant Söring acolytes. Wright had no online presence except for an outdated LinkedIn profile. Wright was also suspicious of this American defense lawyer calling himself “Hammel”. Who was he, where did he come from? At first, I could communicate with Wright only through Holdsworth; I would send out questions and receive answers—always carefully-reasoned and to the point. The author of this storied “report” about the Söring case existed, and knew much.

I began piecing together my own library of information about the case, collecting trial transcripts and documents, expert reports, and most of the many publications about the case of Jens Söring in both English and German. In the autumn of 2019, I felt confident enough to write to my editor at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung or FAZ. The Frankfurt-based FAZ is generally considered Germany’s most prestigious newspaper. Its editorial line is generally center-right. He was Constantin Baron van Lijnden. Constantin, a German, is an intimidatingly brilliant lawyer and journalist, almost as fluent in English as I am. He’s also a Baron, a minor German title of nobility which Constantin never invokes (it’s considered bad form). I’d written some articles for the FAZ (in German) at Constantin’s invitation. In one, I contrasted American and German legal education. In another, I reviewed a book about German immigration policy.

I asking him whether the FAZ might be interested in a contrarian take on the case of Jens Söring, by now minor star in Germany. Send me something, Constantin wrote. I imagined the piece as a review of Killing for Love which would then pivot to a broader discussion of true-crime documentaries. I began by briefly describing the background of the case: Who Jens and Elizabeth were, the love affair, the half-hearted alibi plan, murders, flight, 1987 and 1990 trials. Unlike every German-language news article until that time, mine included no evasions or qualifications: I had encountered nothing which made me doubt that Söring had killed the Haysoms, or that the jury’s verdict was correct, so that’s what I said.

Employing a legal technique called “common sense”, I pointed out the problems with Söring’s alternate theory of the crime. Why did Elizabeth suddenly decided to kill her parents? How did she overpower both of them alone, as Söring claimed in Mortal Thoughts? For that matter, why did Söring’s story keep changing? Which “drugs” allowed Elizabeth to drive 400 miles round trip under their influence to kill her own parents? In Söring’s version, Elizabeth stands up her “drug dealer”. Oddly enough for a drug dealer, he forgives her betrayal and never appears again. Despite its claimed neutrality, I argued that Killing for Love was a propaganda exercise. It simply ignored Söring’s confessions, playing only tiny snippets of the tapes. It did not divulge details which clearly placed Söring at the murder scene. More generally, I wondered at the fact that the filmmakers seemed to place so much faith in Söring, given that he is a convicted fraudster and killer who committed perjury twice and who had every reason to distort the facts.

Another problem with Killing for Love was its dismissal of American judicial system. Over a dozen experienced American appellate judges had considered numerous claims—including many of the issues raised in the movie. Those judges had ordered a hearing on the issue of Shiflett and Albright, just to make sure a full record was developed. They had then issued carefully reasoned opinions holding that there were no legal errors in Söring’s trial, and that there was, to quote the Fourth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, “overwhelming evidence [Söring] personally killed the Haysoms”. These appeals involved hundreds of hours of work and cost the taxpayers of Virginia an enormous sum. The filmmakers never mention any of this. Their view seems to be that the American criminal justice system is so obviously corrupt and unjust that its judgments can be casually ignored, like the rulings of some lickspittle tribunal beholden to a dictator.

I called the article “A Paradoxical Mixture of Cynicism and Naivete”: Cynicism toward the American criminal justice system, which the directors clearly distrusted but did not understand, and naivete toward the self-serving post-hoc fabrications of a convicted murderer who, given many chances, had not managed to convince a single juror or judge. The piece concluded:

The makers of Killing for Love insist that the Söring case reveals fatal weaknesses in the American justice system. Nonsense. Söring had a fair trial which was carefully reviewed by many judges. The evidence of his guilt would have been more than sufficient to convict him in Germany. There are thousands of German prisoners who, like Söring, maintain their innocence and point to long-forgotten arguments which went nowhere in the courts. This doesn’t come close to proving that the German justice system is systemically unfair. Reforms are needed, both in the USA and in Germany, but the case of Jens Söring is no evidence of this.

Since I critiqued Killing for Love in the piece, I sent an entire draft to Marcus Vetter and Karin Steinberger at the beginning of November 2019. I asked them to correct any errors they discovered and raise any points they thought important. I told them I would be happy to integrate any comments they might have into the piece, or to ask the newspaper, FAZ, to grant them room for a contrary perspective.

Marcus Vetter told me he was in the middle of making another film and would respond later when he had more time. In the meantime, Vetter assured me that Steinberger “would certainly respond at more length” to my article. I waited, but Steinberger never responded to me at all. Although Vetter responded with a few brief emails, he did not address any of the points I had made. Having given both directors a chance to respond to the draft, I put the article in final form and submitted it in mid-November. It was almost 5,000 words. Constantin advised me to be patient. The subject wasn’t topical, as Söring’s case appeared dormant.

That assumption turned out to be mistaken. In mid-2019, rumors had begun to circulate within Team Söring that Virginia might be close to making a decision on the latest pardon and parole applications from Söring and Haysom. Members of Team Söring had not only submitted voluminous petitions for parole or “absolute pardon”, but also established lines of communication to the Virginia authorities, including the Governor’s Office and the Virginia Parole Board. Team Söring ensured all of these decision-makers received a constant stream of requests to release Söring from prison. Team Söring had received veiled but promising hints that a decision was approaching, and that it might be favorable this time. Excitement mounted on both sides of the Atlantic, but Söring, who had been disappointed before, cautioned his supporters to restrain their optimism.

The rumors proved well-founded. On November 25, 2019, the Virginia Parole Board announced that it would simultaneously grant parole to both Jens Söring and Elizabeth Haysom. The Board attached restrictions: both would be immediately deported their respective countries of citizenship (Canada and Germany) and prohibited from returning to the USA for the rest of their lives. Both would also be required to show “uniform good behavior” and avoid any contact with the victims’ relatives. The parole board justified the decision on several grounds: Both offenders were young at the time of their crimes, had served 33 years in prison, had behaved well in prison, and had shown no further violent tendencies, and the State of Virginia did not wish to be responsible for their maintenance for the rest of their lives.

Söring’s supporters were overjoyed. Bernadette Faber, a religion teacher who had been a staunch supported for decades, wrote: “More than TEN years after the DNA evidence in September 2009, TEN years after Tim Kaine’s repatriation effort in January 2010, exactly THIRTY years after the Berlin Wall came down … Jens’ walls come down FINALLY!!!” Phyllis Workman, a third cousin to Elizabeth Haysom and one of her closest friends, told a Washington Post reporter: “She will be a free bird, and that’s wonderful. She has earned it. She’s been a model prisoner, and so has Jens. So it’s just time. The Lord’s working. The Lord is good.”

The Parole Board, however, explicitly rejected Söring’s petition for an absolute pardon:

The Parole Board made an unfavorable recommendation to the Governor on Jens Soering’s absolute pardon petition. The years-long exhaustive investigation for a genuine search for the truth revealed that Jens Soering’s claims of innocence are without merit. On Monday, November 25th the Governor denied Jens Soering’s request for a pardon.

The Parole Board had indeed done an independent investigation, looking into every claim Söring raised in his various pardon and parole petitions. Investigators for the Parole Board visited Söring almost yearly and spoke with him for hours about his case. They also maintained open lines of communication with Steven Rosenfield and other Söring lawyers, allowing Söring to raise new arguments and submit new evidence in support of his claims.

By sheer coincidence, my article on his case was published in the FAZ on 26 November, the very day Söring’s release made nationwide headline news in the German media. Constatin van Lijnden still refers to it as the most startling coincidence of his journalistic career. As hundreds of thousands of Germans searched the Internet to refresh their memories about Söring’s story, a 5,000-word article for Germany’s most prominent newspaper proclaimed the same conclusion that the Virginia Parole Board had just reached: Söring’s innocence claims were meritless.

My article was the first sustained criticism of Söring’s claims which had ever been published in German. It hit like a bombshell within Team Söring. They had been convinced not only that Söring was innocent, but that the press on both sides of the Atlantic was firmly on Söring’s side. Now someone had shattered those assumptions