Chapter 29: Campaign for a Media Pardon - Martyr or Murderer: Jens Soering, the Media, and the Truth

My piece for the FAZ was published on 22 January 2020 and including a link to the full Wright report. It took some time for reactions to arrive, since both the Wright Report and my German-language article summarizing its findings were so long. By this time, Söring had been back in Germany over a month. He had already hired lawyers and PR agents and was eager to sell his story. The offers were rolling in, and Söring’s agents played off publishing houses and TV channels against one another. They split up rights packages up depending on who wanted to tell Söring’s story and how. Söring eventually signed a book deal with the German division of Random House for over €100,000. He received a five-figure sum for the dramatic rights to his story. Netflix wanted to do a documentary about him, and he was eager to oblige, although Netflix insists they paid Söring only a modest fee to secure access to his archive of personal documents.

These projects were based Söring’s tale of betrayal by a femme fatale, his “twisted sacrifice” (in Jason Flom’s words), and the miscarriage of justice which robbed him of three decades of his life. Yet problems were appearing on the horizon. For one thing, Elizabeth Haysom had hired a Berlin-based German lawyer named Markus Goldbach. Elizabeth was still not interested in publicity. However, she soon realized that Söring was intent on continuing his attacks on her in freedom. Both she and members of her family who had forgiven her were disgusted by Söring publicly accused of killing her parents with her own hands.

No longer a penniless prisoner, Söring was shortly going to come into large sums of money with which he could pay legal judgments. German law offers more protection for personal reputation than American law does, and Elizabeth intended to take advantage of this. Elizabeth arranged for a lawyer to serve Söring with a cease-and-desist letter: If he continued to accuse her of killing her parents, she would sue him in Germany. The lawsuit threat dismayed Team Söring, who referred to it as Elizabeth’s “hand grenade”.

Yet Söring and his lawyers found a clever way out. In early 2020, Söring was living with his host family in Hamburg and had yet to register an address under his own name. Goldbach had sent his cease-and-desist letter to Söring’s last known address: Dr. Frieser’s law firm in Bonn, which had represented Söring for years, mostly pro bono. In the meantime, however, that firm had notified Söring that it intended to begin charging him. Söring then found a Hamburg-based law firm which offered him better terms. The Bonn law firm wrote back to Goldbach, telling them that they no longer represented Söring. In Germany, cease-and-desist letters must be delivered to the target’s home address to be legal valid. Söring, as yet, had no home address. His new lawyers suggested a tactic: He should register his residence in some random German city. There is no nationwide registry of addresses in Germany; Goldbach would thus have to call up local registry offices one-by-one asking them whether they had a “Jens Söring” living there.

In an email, Söring told his inner circle he was pleased with this plan, saying “this way, no letter from a lawyer will ever reach me”. Söring did not actually go through with this plan. However, Eva was dismayed that Söring, so protective of his own reputation, would contemplate a plan which frustrated Elizabeth’s ability to protect hers. Her doubts would only grow in the coming months. To deal with the Elizabeth issue, Söring and his lawyers devised a new strategy. When asked about Elizabeth, Söring would say that when he was in the U.S., the American First Amendment protected him. Now that he was in Germany, he must follow German law, which means he could no longer attack Elizabeth directly.

However, Söring could point to his 1990 trial testimony, since it was a public document which had been quoted thousands of times. At this point, either Söring or a compliant journalist would quote what he had testified to in 1990: That Elizabeth had killed her parents. This solution was awkward, but it allowed Söring to continue attacking Elizabeth. This was crucial: For three decades, Söring’s innocence narrative had been based on a claim that Elizabeth had murdered her own parents. Remove that keystone allegation, and the rest of his story crumbles. For more than years, all German journalists would accept Söring’s convoluted excuse for not talking about the night of the crime except by quoting his 1990 testimony.

Meanwhile, however, Team Söring had to devise a strategy to deal with my FAZ article and the Wright Report. Söring, of course, read the report. He assured supporters, in the paraphrase Eva Beck (from Episode 6 of The Söring System): “I skimmed the report, not worth reading, contains no new information.” He added that I obviously didn’t understand DNA. In an email, Söring claimed he was eager to debate me on the DNA issue, and would wipe the floor with me using the McClintock and Schanfield reports. Yet after much internal discussion, Team Söring decided to make no public statements about either document. Neither the Friends of Jens nor Chip Harding has said anything publicly about Söring’s case after January 2020. Indeed, the Friends of Jens seems no longer to exist.

The advantage of the “no acknowledgement” strategy was clear; it avoided calling attention to my and Terry’s work, which challenged the narrative Söring was pushing to journalists all over Germany. Yet the disadvantages of the strategy were also stark: My articles in the FAZ (for German readers) and the Wright Report (for English-language readers) soon established themselves as authoritative sources on the Söring case. Since nobody from Team Söring had produced any counters to my and Terry Wright’s arguments, readers assumed they must be accurate. And if they were accurate, Söring could not be trusted.

As for Terry Wright, Team Söring chose an adventurous defense: Terry Wright hadn’t written the report at all! Owing to Terry’s extremely low profile and suspicion of publicity, Team Söring hadn’t been able to confirm his authorship. Eva Beck, analyzing the style of the report noted that it mixed English and American spelling, which struck her as suspicious. But if Terry Wright hadn’t written the report, who had? Perhaps I had written it, or Holdsworth had. Some even speculated that Matthias Schroeder, the German prisoner to whom Söring had confessed in 1986, had written the report. Schroeder had followed Söring’s fate closely, and had written a letter to the Parole Board opposing Söring’s release. Had he also written the report? This theory showed Team Söring’s desperation. If Schroeder had written the report, he had somehow not only gained access to a trove of documents and spent hundreds of hours analyzing them, but had also learned perfectly fluent English.

Team Söring would not go public with the “Terry Wright wasn’t the author” theory, but they did suggest it to journalists who asked what Söring had to say about the report. Terry Wright inadvertently helped sow doubts about his authorship. He had no social media presence except an outdated LinkedIn page. This is understandable for several reasons. First of all, retired detectives always keep a low public profile: You never know when someone you helped convict 20 years ago will be released from prison, intent on revenge. Second, as Wright told me and Holdsworth, he had said all he had to say in the report. If people wanted to know what he thought about Jens Söring and his innocence claims, it was all there in the report.

I understood Wright’s position, but it put me in a slightly uncomfortable position: I could assure curious journalist colleagues that Wright existed and had written the report, but I could not give them contact details to verify these facts. Team Söring tried a few approaches to try to discredit Wright, but never challenged his report, because there was no way to challenge it. Wright had facts, logic, the law, and personal experience on his side. Team Söring simply hoped that few Germans would have the patience to read a long, fairly dry English-language report. Those who did, however, were almost always convinced. A few months after it was published, I helped prepared a crude but effective German translation, which increased the report’s impact.

Meanwhile, Jens Söring prepared himself for his first journalistic coup: An interview in Der Spiegel., Germany’s leading news magazine. Der Spiegel is an icon of the German journalistic establishment whose motto is derived from the description of the purpose of journalism advanced by one of its early editors-in-chief: “Say what is” (Sagen, was ist). It is one of the only German publications with its own in-house fact-checking department. In early 2020, journalistic outlets were competing to host the first broadcast or print interview with Germany most famous convict. More commercially minded outlets offered Söring tens of thousands of dollars for an interview. After consulting with his supporters, his lawyer Stephan Grulert, and his PR firm Oliver Dederichs, both based in Hamburg, Söring decided to initially pursue prestige, not payment. His first print interview would be with Der Spiegel, and his first television interview would be with the most prominent talk-show host on German television, Markus Lanz.

I learned Söring would be interviewed by Der Spiegel in January 2020, when a Spiegel reporter I’ll call Bettina* telephoned me. The magazine wanted to get the perspective of a critic of Söring’s claims before the interview, so they could have an independent perspective on what he might say. The magazine’s caution was notable: Der Spiegel had just gone through the deepest journalistic crisis in its history. A reporter named Claas Relotius had written numerous features for Der Spiegel in the mode of narrative/storytelling journalism in fashion at the time. His articles were startling, compelling, and dramatic. Relotius won almost every award a mainstream journalist could hope for, including the 2017 European Press Prize and four instances of the German Reporter Prize.

In 2018, it all came crashing down. A Spanish journalist named Juan Moreno, who co-authored a piece with Relotius about Trump-loving vigilantes patrolling the U.S.-Mexican border, found some of Relotius’ contributions to the article implausible, and began trying to verify them without success. In another article, Relotius profiled a woman who supposedly traveled from state to state only to attend executions. Relotius’ articles, in other words, were confections of the kinds of anti-American clichés beloved by members of the educated German bourgeoisie.

Perhaps Relotius’ most thoroughly slanderous piece of fiction was a long piece about Fergus Falls, Minnesota, called “Where they Pray for Trump on Sunday”. Relotius, unsurprisingly, portraying Fergus Falls residents as Trump-besotted bumpkins. Relotius claimed that the mayor was a virgin who had never been to the ocean, thought Trump “kicked ass” and who carried a gun everywhere; that a hand-painted sign on the city limits said “Mexicans Keep Out” and that the movie American Sniper , although two years old by that time, was still playing to sellout crowds in the town’s only movie theater. Visitors to the local high school, Relotius reported, had to pass through “a security line, three armored glass doors, and a weapon scanner”. In a December 19, 2018 Medium blog post, Fergus Falls resident Michele Anderson said: “In 7,300 words he really only got our town’s population and average annual temperature correct.”

Relotius eventually admitted his fabrications and resigned, ending his journalism career. Der Spiegel conducted its own in-house investigation and published a damning 23-page report on 21 December 2018. The fallout was severe. U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Grenell commented: “These fake news stories largely focus on U.S. policies and certain segments of the American people”; journalist Jamie Kirchick accused Der Spiegel of “crude and sensational anti-Americanism”. What I found the most alarming about the entire affair was no such much Relotius’ inventions as the fact that nobody spotted them.

Many of Relotius’ claims would have been instantly recognizable as lies to any American, or even anyone with a working knowledge of American culture. Random strangers are of course not allowed to witness executions. A sign saying “Mexicans Keep Out” anywhere in the U.S.—much less a town with almost 300 Hispanic residents—would have caused a major national scandal and a federal lawsuit. Perhaps most ludicrously, Relotius claimed that the town’s gun-toting mayor was the only person in the city of 13,000 to subscribe to “national” news publications—as if the Internet were still a far-away vision in the trackless wilds of the Minnesota prairie.

In 2020, Der Spiegel was, in other words, still licking its wounds. I wasn’t surprised to receive a call from Der Spiegel, as I was the only German-speaking journalist who had ever written critically about Jens Söring’s innocence claims, and I had explicitly denounced anti-American bias in coverage of the case. We chatted for nearly an hour in German. I told Bettina that I personally found it to be questionable for Der Spiegel to give this much attention to Söring, who was only famous now because he had murdered two people in 1985. The Haysom family had expressed its desire for the case to fade into obscurity. However, I had to acknowledge that Söring was news, and that if he wanted to tell his story, he had the right to do so.

However, I insisted that Der Spiegel had a journalistic and a moral obligation not to publish a puff piece. Söring should be confronted with critical questions about his story. I suggested some, including why Söring had not recanted his confessions after Elizabeth’s case was over, why he had perjured himself to accuse Kenneth Beever of extortion, how someone as intelligent and worldly as he had been could possibly believe diplomatic immunity would protect him from the consequences of a double murder, why he fled the USA to avoid submitting blood and fingerprint samples, and why he had immediately implicated Elizabeth in a murder plot in his first London interview.

I urged Der Spiegel to focus on Söring’s comment about the video cameras, and ask him how he could possibly reconcile that remark with his claim to have learned everything about the crime second-hand. I also explained why the 2009 DNA report did not prove what Söring claimed it did. Bettina listened carefully, asked intelligent questions, and took notes. She described the focus of the article in a phrase which, in one variant or another, would become the mantra of the German press: We are primarily interested in Söring as a person (der Mensch Söring): his background, how he experienced prison, how he is adjusting to freedom, his hopes, his dreams, his fears. We may have to talk about his case, Bettina assured me, but that wouldn’t be our primary focus.

Behind the scenes, preparations for the interview were in full swing. Team Söring, now enriched by lawyers and PR agents, sent Der Spiegel the customary “media pack” of Söring-friendly materials, including twenty separate subfolders. The pack included crime scene photos, excerpts of trial testimony, previous media coverage of the case, “The Söring Case made Simple”, information about DNA, luminol, the “confessions”, forensic reports, trial errors, Neaton’s disbarment, a supposed “deal” between Jim Updike and Elizabeth Haysom, and even letters from Söring to New Yorker editor David Remnick concerning that magazine’s reporting on the case.

Team Söring was leaving nothing to chance: They knew this interview would be read by millions of Germans, and would shape perceptions about Söring and his case forever. Söring, his lawyer, and his PR agent had already developed an internal strategy for dealing with what they called the “Hammel/Wright” issue: Söring would not bring it up on his own during the interview. If he were asked specific questions arising from my article or the report, he would answer them, but he would not refute every point. After all, the interview was supposed to be about Söring’s story, not his critics. Der Spiegel had assigned three journalists to the interview: Simone Salden, Heidi Marie Engel, and Hauke Goos (who is male).

The interview was finally scheduled for 6 February 2020, in an apartment in a stylish historic building in Hamburg where Söring was staying. The night before, Söring had stayed up until well into the night rehearsing with his lawyer Stephan Grulert and his PR consultant Oliver Dederichs. Even though Söring had met them only weeks before, all were on intimate terms by now. The next day, Söring was joined in the apartment by the three reporters, two photographers, Grulert, and Dederichs. Thanks to a source who was in the room for the entire interview, I am familiar with how it went down. At the beginning of the interview, Grulert lay down some ground rules: Söring would answer every question the reporters asked unless there was a legal reason which prevented him from doing so.

Other questions Söring would answer only on the proviso that they be treated as background and not quoted in the final interview. The interview lasted for 10 hours, including a leisurely mid-afternoon break for Domino’s pizza. As usual, Söring gave long, sometimes rambling answers, volunteering more information than he likely intended. He would occasionally pause to give his lawyer or PR Agent time to intervene before he started answering. Most of the interview concerned Söring’s time in prison, his release, his resettlement to Germany, his current life circumstances, and his future plans.

Yet a problem soon emerged—one that would bedevil every one of the dozens of reporters to interview Söring or write about his case Germany. That problem was the Haysom murders. The three Spiegel reporters, like all the rest to follow, knew that readers wouldn’t be satisfied by a mere human-interest piece. They wanted to know whether Söring murdered Derek and Nancy Haysom. That conviction and it consequences were, after all, the only reason anyone was interested in what Söring had to say in February 2020.

Was Söring, as he claimed, the victim of a miscarriage of justice? Or was he mendacious killer cashing in on his notoriety and celebrity support? Who was right about his guilt—Team Söring, or Terry Wright, the detective who heard his confessions? Keeping Jens Söring the man separate from Jens Söring the convicted killer was as impossible as squaring the circle. Further, as reporters in Germany would find out, Söring often seemed more eager to talk about his case than he did about his time in prison. Söring invariably found ways to interject his wrongful-conviction claims into the conversation even when the interviewer was clearly uninterested or uncomfortable.

Both the Spiegel reporters and Jens Söring knew they had to talk about the elephant in the room—and they did, for hours. Söring recited the current version of his story. This prompted follow-up questions from the reporters. To their credit, the reporters posed some critical questions, mostly derived from points Terry Wright and I had raised. For instance, they pressed him on why he decided to flee the U.S. after the October 6 interview.

Söring employed his standard tactic, referring to himself and Haysom as an indissoluble unit and declaring that “they” had formed the plan to flee together because “they” realized the police were “on to us”. But wait, a reporter asked, hadn’t Elizabeth already been asked to give blood, fingerprint, and footprint samples? Why didn’t you both flee back then? Söring launches into his second line of defense: Elizabeth told me she hadn’t left any clues at the crime scene, so she wasn’t worried. But when the police suddenly started pursuing me, “we” realized “we” had to leave. The reporters seemed unimpressed by this answer.

Söring also ran into problems with his “diplomatic immunity” claim. As he began setting it out, one of the reporters stepped in, saying that she knew people who had grown up as diplomat’s children. Children of diplomats posted abroad, she noted, are constantly warned that if they violate the host country’s laws, they will be punished by those laws. Did Söring genuinely believe he might escape the consequences of a double murder under U.S. law? Söring was again forced to rely on his second line of defense, which was to admit that yes, of course he was wrong about that, it was a mistake, but he was young, naïve, he had a “blue” diplomatic passport, a German guy in English prison had told him he might have immunity, etc. Again, the reporters seemed unconvinced, but they let the matter pass.

A similar exchange occurred when reporters pressed Söring about why he signed forms to waive his right to a lawyer during the London interrogations. His response was similar to what he had said at his trial and books: He was just a 19-year-old kid, three “adult” officers told him to sign the forms, he kept asking for a lawyer during the interrogations, etc. Söring mentioned that U.S. law allows detectives to lie to suspects during interrogations, but admitted immediately that this didn’t apply to his case. In a major omission, the Spiegel reporters never brought up Söring’s claim that Kenneth Beever had threatened Elizabeth to force Söring to confess. Söring did not mention this claim. However, the Spiegel reporters should have known about it, since my FAZ article went into depth about Söring’s perjury. Either they forgot about the matter, or chose not to press Söring, afraid of ruining the friendly conversational atmosphere.

Söring’s attempts to convince the reporters of his view of the DNA evidence also fell flat. Söring unwisely chose to rely on Dr. Daniele Podini’s 2018 letter, which concluded that 351 males in Virginia, and “thousands” of males in the USA, could have been the source of the DNA which all independent experts had concluded belonged to Derek Haysom. Yet even Podini had to acknowledge that some of the DNA had to be Haysom’s. Which meant the “unknown male” DNA matched Haysoms’ own by “coincidence”, in Podini’s words. That was quite a coincidence, as the Spiegel reporters noted. One compared it to winning the lottery, plus the extra bonus “super-number”. Söring acknowledged as much, but asked whether the reporters could mention that it was at least theoretically possible. Discussion went back and forth with the reporters about a potential formulation, without reaching a clear conclusion.

After 10 hours, the interview finally wrapped up. The two photographers took a picture of Söring, a close-up of his face in shadow. Söring later joked it was so sexy it would have women rushing to support him. The parties to the interview parted on friendly terms. At first, Söring believed the interview had gone well. He told his inner circle that he was convinced most of the people there liked him. Indeed, he said one of the reporters had even started giving him job-seeking advice before realizing this might be inappropriate. Söring knew he needed to make the reporters want to believe him. This time, he also managed to charm one of the photographers; In a book Söring published in 2021, he relates that one of the photographers who took his profile pictures for the Spiegel interview wanted to take him on a tour of Hamburg’s jazz clubs.

Back in Germany, Söring had many ways to achieve this goal. Germans are fascinated by the American criminal justice system, which Söring can expound on at length from personal experience. There was also the time-capsule effect: Söring disappeared behind bars when there were two Germanys and no Internet. What was it like to re-enter society? It would be uncharitable to say Söring exploits this benevolent curiosity; the curiosity is genuine, and Söring’s descriptions of prison life and returning to society are insightful, dramatic, and entertaining. They are also generally truthful. Söring can build up a sort of “reserve” of credibility which he can then later use to bolster his innocence claims.

Yet the interview turned out to be only the beginning of a long and tortuous negotiation. Team Söring—now including professionals—insisted on reviewing a draft of the interview. The first draft they received in late February 2020 dismayed them. They replied with a list of corrections. Please change or eliminate: references to Söring as a “double murderer”, passages about Podini’s report, Söring’s current job and living situation, comments Söring had made about sex and masturbation in prison, the meaning of passages in Söring’s Christmas letter, the accuracy of Söring’s confessions, and his scheme of earning money in prison as a loan shark.

Söring was in the loop for these negotiations. At one point, he asked his advisers whether he should just cancel the whole interview. After all, he had other options. German law gives interview subjects the right to “authorize” their quotes. Söring could have simply withheld approval. The Spiegel reporters, aware of the risk, took a moderate line. They didn’t highlight certain awkward points in the interview, but insisted on providing an objective narrative framework to help readers understand the story. The framing paragraphs reported some facts Söring wasn’t eager to see reported to millions of Germans.

The result appeared on 28 February 2020 under the juicy title: “Show Weakness Once, and You’ll be Raped”. Much to Söring’s dismay, he wasn’t on the cover. The Spiegel authors had suggested Jens Söring might be the first interview to be featured on the Spiegel cover in years. His interview was ultimately not featured on the cover, which disappointed him. Editors had shaped the hours of source material into a series of questions and answers, a structure which Söring was happy with. Interspersed within the interview are paragraphs in italics conveying background information.

Söring speaks about adapting to life in freedom after 33 years behind bars. He could set an alarm clock to choose when he wanted to wake up. He put a sign next to his bed saying, “I don’t have to do anything”. He could close a door himself and decide whether to lock it. He didn’t have to shower, sleep, or use the toilet in front of other people. He describes the petty humiliations and simmering violence of American prisons: Needless strip-searches, dogs paraded before prisoners for intimidation, hazing by some guards. Söring found out that Virginia prisons got 69 American cents for every meal. The result was bland, starchy, nutrition-poor food: American white bread sandwiches with “baloney”, milk, tasteless potato mush, and bowls of moldy cherries.

The reporters write that Söring requested that no details about his apartment be released—not even the view from the window. He also declined to tell the reporters what he did during the first time he had spent truly alone in over 30 years. Söring says that after going so long without any privacy at all, he is now adamant about shielding his privacy. Der Spiegel asks whether Söring ever received proposals of marriage behind bars. His response: “Of course there were romantic letters from time to time. On the basis of my innocence.” Prisoners who claim innocence receive more attention and sympathy than those who acknowledge their guilt. This answer shows that Söring, unsurprisingly, understood this phenomenon.

The interview only turns to the crime more than 2/3 of the way through. Söring describes himself as a nerd who was surprised that the gorgeous, worldly Elizabeth Haysom had singled him out. He only met her parents for 30 or 45 minutes, and the meeting was pleasant. Söring describes his own family life as stressful: His mother was an alcoholic, his father yelled at her and other family members. Der Spiegel now inserts a few italic “context” paragraphs noting that Söring confessed the crime repeatedly in 1986, and that “the police say Söring revealed details only the killer could have known”, while Söring pointed to “other details” in his statements which were incorrect.

The reporters ask Söring why he has no contact with his family. Although he had explained the inheritance dispute to the reporters—and had gone into detail about the matter just weeks before, in Sandy Hausman’s interview—the answer in print is short and cryptic: “In 2001 there was a dispute between my father, my brother, and me… they have suffered a great deal from the situation as well, and they have a right to their privacy. Therefore I would like to say nothing more about this.”

The reporters then turn to the key issue: Did Söring kill the Haysoms? His answer, half in German, half in English: “Absolutely not. Nein, überhaupt nicht.” Who did, then? Söring replies: “I don’t know. I wasn’t there.” He then claims DNA evidence shows two unknown men at the crime scene. At this point, Der Spiegel inserts brief context paragraphs which recite Söring’s claims about protecting Elizabeth, and believing he had immunity. The authors use “indirect speech”, which distances themselves from Söring’s assertions. They also note that “other experts” have doubted Team Söring’s claim that the DNA evidence indicates two unknown men at the crime scene.

They ask Söring why he’s so intent on proving his innocence. Can’t he just enjoy his new-found freedom? Here is Söring’s answer:

Because it’s the truth. Because I fought 33 years for it. And because I have right for my story to be understood the way it really happened. It wasn’t me. And if the reporting in Germany had been balanced, if people hadn’t publicly insulted me, then it might well be the case that I would never have given this interview. I’m sitting here with you because people have insulted me on newspaper front pages as a double murderer. From a purely legal standpoint, that is correct, but it is not the truth.

The next question is who killed the Haysoms, if not Söring. Söring now says “Ultimately, we’ll never know”. The reporters ask him if that’s hard to accept. “Yes, but it doesn’t matter. I wasn’t there.” Asked about Elizabeth, he says he has no feelings of revenge toward her. The interview ends with Söring insisting he will never run away from his past or give up the fight to prove his innocence. He wants to make a living as a writer, he claims. He says he is proud of the fact that he acted to “save a human life”, but admits the way he did it was “incredibly bad”.

Söring was satisfied with the final print version of the interview when it hit German newsstands on the 28th of February 2020. It introduced the German public to themes which would dominate later coverage of the case: His insistence on his innocence, his disgust with the American prison system, his heroism in rescuing Elizabeth from execution, and his delight at his newfound freedom in Germany. Yet Der Spiegel largely ignored his arguments for innocence. They did, however, claim he was referred to as the “German monster” in the introduction, falling for that decades-old canard. The reporters also follow Karin Steinberger’s lead in casually dismissing all of Söring’s many appeals in one short sentence. On the other hand, the article summarizes Söring’s innocence narrative was summarized in a few sentences, not the dozens of paragraphs Söring had delivered in person. The reporters remained conspicuously agnostic on the DNA question.

From a journalistic perspective, the interview was a mixed bag. The journalists did not endorse Söring’s innocence claims or help him formulate them—lines other German journalists would later gleefully cross. Nor did the Spiegel team copy Karin Steinberger in asserting without proof that Söring had a biased judge, incompetent lawyer, and flawed trial. Yet the interview was still a missed opportunity. In person, the Spiegel reporters asked Söring pointed questions —based largely on my research —and seemed unimpressed by Söring’s answers, especially on the immunity and DNA issues. Yet the reporters neither printed Söring’s contrived excuses, nor did they tell readers their honest opinion of Söring’s answers.

The published interview does not mention my name, Terry Wright’s name, the Wright report, or my FAZ articles, even though the reporters obviously knew of them. They didn’t even mention these things when Söring complained about being “insulted” as a “double murderer” on the “front pages” of German newspapers, an obvious reference to my FAZ articles. I found this not particularly collegial. As for the DNA, the interview also quotes Söring as saying: “The 2009 results prove very little.” This would have surprised the Jens Söring who, in 2012’s Not Guilty! wrote that these results “were my beacon, my weapon, my sun, moon, and stars.” The Spiegel reporters declined to inform the reader that Söring had claimed for over a decade that the 2009 tests results proved the presence of an unknown male assailant.

But the crucial missed opportunity came when Söring, in a startling change from his prior statements, now claimed that he “didn’t know” who had killed the Haysoms. The reporters should have sat bolt upright in their chairs at this answer, in which Söring abandons a claim which had been the centerpiece of his story until the moment of the interview. After the announcement of Söring’s release in November 2019, a new edition of Söring’s 2012 German-language book Not Guilty! had been rushed into print, this time featuring a new subtitle: “33 years for a crime I didn’t commit” and a red stamp reading: “German Victim of American Justice Finally Free”. In the Foreword to the new edition, written in late 2019, just months before the Spiegel interview, Söring wrote (my emphasis): “Since the night Elizabeth Haysom murdered her parents, I have found myself subject to external forces…” The Spiegel interview even mentions another part of this Foreword in which Söring speaks of his desire to start a family. Yet the reporters declined to inform their readers that Söring abandoned his claims about Elizabeth in the very interview they were reading.

Given the background information I’ve provided above, it seems clear why the reporters did not pursue these matters: They would have lost the story. Every word of the interview and article had been negotiated. Söring, as the magazine knew, was entitled to revoke his authorization at any time. In early 2020, Söring was at the height of his bargaining power: Other outlets had been prepared to pay him tens of thousands of Euros for his first interview in freedom. Der Spiegel had to negotiate the fine line between journalistic integrity and the desire to land a major coup. Indeed, the interview with Söring would prove to be one of the magazine’s most popular features for the year 2020. They managed to thread the needle, but only by denying readers context for evaluating Söring’s claims.

The negotiations over the Spiegel interview show another of Team Söring’s policies: Strict control of information and access. Söring’s public presence is the result of careful monitoring and control. One former supporter, talking to reporters in 2023, jokingly compared likened Team Söring to North Korea. Whenever a press inquiry landed in Söring’s inbox, Team Söring would research the reporter and the outlet they worked for, looking for signs that the reporter might ask questions about sensitive issues. If the reporter passed muster, he would receive the “media pack”, with its standard entries about the biased judge, incompetent lawyer, junk-science “sockprint”, etc.

Team Söring was also concerned that journalists may have encountered my FAZ articles or Terry Wright’s report, both of which were percolating through the German journalistic ecosystem. Söring was not interested in answering the questions those documents raised. The Spiegel interview had shown that his answers to questions about his innocence claims sounded contrived and unconvincing. He had dodged a bullet when the Spiegel decided not to discuss their doubts in print. In the future, he would need to make sure he didn’t land in a situation in which he was asked difficult questions, especially in a live format where he could not retroactively cancel the project, as he contemplated doing with the Spiegel.