Chapter 4: “I Freaked Out” - Martyr or Murderer: Jens Soering, the Media, and the Truth

Although the psychological foundations for the murder of Derek and Nancy Haysom were laid over months, the plan which led to their deaths took shape in less than a day. Originally, Jens and Elizabeth had no special plans for the weekend of 30 and 31 March, 1985. Elizabeth was supposed to stay in Charlottesville to sign the lease on the apartment she would move to in September 1985. Those plans, however, fell through, so the weekend was now free. Söring, still upset over Elizabeth’s plans to leave UVA for the summer, told her: “You owe me a weekend”. Since he had never been to Washington, D.C., they decided to visit the nation’s capital. They rented a car from Pantops Texaco in Charlottesville.

At this point in the story, we again confront the problem of unreliable narrators. During their weekend in Washington, the couple met no friends, nor were their movements recorded on surveillance cameras. The hotel they stayed at, the Washington Marriott, had security cameras, but hotel Manager Yale Feldman confirmed at Söring’s 1990 trial that these were merely monitored by guards, not recorded.

There is thus no independent corroboration of what happened in Washington, D.C. We are entirely dependent on what Jens and Elizabeth have said. Not only do Jens and Elizabeth disagree with one another, both have changed their stories. Overall, we have four different accounts of the weekend in Washington and the murders of the Haysoms:

Jens Story 1 (1986-1990): I drove to Loose Chippings and murdered the Haysoms alone while Elizabeth waited in Washington, D.C. and created an alibi suggesting we both stayed in the city the whole weekend.

Jens Story 2 (1990-present): I stayed in Washington, D.C. while Elizabeth Haysom, after telling me she was going to pick up drugs, instead drove to Loose Chippings and murdered her parents, returning with blood on her arms.

Elizabeth Story 1 (her testimony at her 1987 trial): I stayed in Washington D.C. while Söring killed the Haysoms, but I was in such a drugged-out haze I barely grasped what was happening.

Elizabeth Story 2 (her 1986 confession and her testimony at Jens’ 1990 trial): I exaggerated in 1987 to try to minimize her guilt. In fact, I did score some “dope”, but remained conscious and aware while Söring was away and constructed an alibi by buying two tickets to movies and ordering room service for two.

Here is where a rule of thumb used by detectives, lawyers, and judges helps: Choose the earliest stories. The earliest statements about an event are generally the most reliable, especially in high-profile criminal cases. Jens and Elizabeth’s first accounts of the weekend of the murders, delivered to English and American detectives in London in early June 1986, remain by far the most reliable. These initial accounts—each delivered independently, without knowledge of what the other person was saying—nevertheless mesh with each other and explain events coherently.

This is Jens and Elizabeth’s first story: On Friday evening, they checked into the Washington Marriott Hotel, a high-end hotel with an underground parking garage. On Friday they ate at a restaurant called Hamburger Hamlet and went to a movie called “Porky’s Revenge”. On Saturday, they drove aimlessly around Washington, D.C. for some time, and discussed Söring’s plan to confront and kill the Haysoms. Elizabeth described these discussions in Jens’ 1990 trial:

Q: At the time, now, that Jens Soering made this statement to you that you have described about he would go down, see your parents, confront them, am I correct there about that?

{Elizabeth] And we were sitting in the car, we had stopped, and he said, well I’ll go down there and I’ll pretend that I am just dropping in, going to see a friend in North Carolina or something, and see what they have to say, and if I don’t like what they have to say, then I’ll kill them. And I said fine…

Q: Did you want him to kill your parents?

A: Yes, 1 did. I think it would be—I think it would be true to say that when Jens left me on Saturday afternoon to go down to see my parents that I was much more concerned that he would not kill them than that he would, because—

Q: Why?

A: Well it was the whole idea of him killing anybody was so utterly fantastic.

Elizabeth went through with the plan to forge an alibi by buying two tickets to various movies, but instead of actually going to them, she scored some “drugs” and took them.

In 1990, she said she “wandered around” Washington that afternoon in a drugged daze, wondering whether she should try to stop Jens or warn her parents:

As far as I was concerned, it was junky’s heaven in Washington, you have got some money in your pocket, nobody to bother you, and every so often I threw off this little thought would come to me, is Jens killing them now, what’s happening, has he got there yet. And I wavered between oh, God, I have to do something, and I had a panic of I have to phone somebody, I have to get another car, I have to do this, then I would go to the other way, oh, my God, what if he doesn’t do it, and I played little head games with myself worrying one way backwards and forwards. Then I returned to the hotel, and ordered the room service…

The room service “skit” was also supposed to entrench Jens’ alibi: Elizabeth would order room service, appear at the door in a towel as if she were coming out of the shower, pretend to speak to someone else in the room and forge Söring’s signature on the receipt. She duly performed the “skit”.

One weakness in Elizabeth’s account is her supposedly scoring “drugs” (which she implies were heroin). How was she, a respectable-looking college girl able to spontaneously find people to sell her “drugs” in a strange city within minutes? How was she able to “wander around” in public under the influence of hard drugs without anyone noticing? Selling drugs was a serious crime in Washington, D.C. in 1985, and any dealer would have been suspicious of a well-dressed young woman asking to buy hard drugs. Elizabeth implies the “drugs” were heroin, but she doesn’t say how she took it, and nobody ever noticed needle marks on her arms. Further, people who have recently injected heroin tend to nod off, not “wander around” aimlessly. In an essay published online in 2019, Elizabeth admitted the drug claims were “stupid lies” which “gave Jens further material with which to fabricate his alternative history”. We’ll encounter that history in Part II.

While Elizabeth bought movie tickets and room service for two, Jens Söring drove to Loose Chippings. We have eyewitness testimony of exactly how the murders occurred, from the man who committed them. Söring’s first of many accounts of the murders was given piecemeal between June 5 and June 8, 1986, in questioning conducted in the Richmond, England police station by Detective Sergeant Kenneth Beever and Detective Constable Terry Wright of the London Metropolitan Police (better known as Scotland Yard), and Investigator Ricky Gardner of the Bedford County Sheriff’s office.

After previous interviews in which Söring came just short of a full confession, Söring decided, in the late afternoon of 8 June 1986, to give a full description of the murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom to Ricky Gardner alone. Söring later repeated the main portions of his statement in the presence of Beever and Wright. Söring did not permit these statements to be audiotaped, but all the detectives present took thorough notes. Immediately after the interview with Söring, Gardner dictated his recollections into a recording device. As always, Söring was advised of his rights before giving this statement. Gardner later testified that Söring “was talkative and very comfortable in our conversation we were having”. Jens Söring has never denied that this interview happened, nor has he claimed Gardner’s account is inaccurate. Gardner delivered his account of this interview under oath to Söring’s jury on 6 June 1990. Quotations are from Gardner’s testimony.

Söring told Gardner he drove alone to Loose Chippings on March 30th, 1985, to speak to the Haysoms. Elizabeth had previously told him that her parents didn’t approve of her relationship with him or with any plans the two might have to visit Europe in the summer of 1985. Söring planned to “find out for himself, and hear for himself what the Haysoms’ objection was to their relationship.” He knocked on the door and Derek Haysom let him in. The Haysoms had been drinking, and offered Söring a drink, which he accepted, and something to eat. The three moved into the dining room, where it was apparent the Haysoms were just finishing dinner.

Gardner describes what followed:

Jens said that [he and the Haysoms] started talking about Elizabeth, and Jens’s relationsip [sic]. and their future together, and the Haysoms informed Jens that they thought that he was too young for her and wasn’t good enough for her. There were also statements made that they would take Elizabeth out of the University of Virginia, or possibly have him kicked out of the University of Virginia, that they would go to any lengths to keep them apart and separate them. So Jens said in his opinion, that that meant that he would not be allowed to spend the rest of his life with the woman that he truly loved, and that they were going to ruin his life.

Jens said that he stood up and sort of put his hand down on the table and said that’s it, and he got up. Jens said that he tried to walk behind Mr. Haysom. Mr. Haysom’s back was up against the wall there at the fireplace, and Jens wanted to walk behind Mr. Haysom, and Mr. Haysom stood up and he pushed Jens Soering back into the corner. At this time, Jens stated that he fell back into the corner and he bumped the back of his head, hit the back of his head on the wall.

He said, I then bumped my head and became very angry, and I freaked out. I then cut Mr. Haysom’s throat. Jens Soering described to me how this happened. Mr. Haysom, after pushing Jens back into the corner, Mr. Haysom sat back down in his chair. Jens said that he got a knife and he walked up behind Mr. Haysom and he put his right arm over Mr. Haysom’s right shoulder and cut the arteries, or cut the left side of Mr. Haysom’s neck, cutting the main artery in Mr. Haysom’s neck. He said he did it like this: (Witness indicates motion.) At this time Jens said he looked down and he saw the blood from Mr. Haysom’s neck rushing down into Mr. Haysom’s lap. He said he also noticed that he had—the blood was falling onto his hand, his right hand.

At this time Jens said the only thing he could remember was Mrs. Haysom screaming, and she was coming at him with a knife. Jens said at this time he met Mrs. Haysom there in the floor, and he grabbed her right wrist and was trying to wrestle her knife away from her. He said he got behind Mrs. Haysom in the same fashion that he had gotten behind Mr. Haysom earlier, and he had his right arm over her right shoulder, and he had the knife in his hand, and he had her like this: (Witness indicates motion.)

He said about this time Mr. Haysom got up and started towards him, and he was trying—Jens said that he was trying to use Nancy Haysom as a shield to ward off Mr. Haysom. Jens said that Mr. Haysom hit him on the ride side of the face and it knocked his glasses off into the floor. Jens said that he was nearsighted and that he had trouble seeing at this point. He said he then cut Mrs. Haysom on the left side of her neck as he had cut Mr. Haysom.

At this point in the altercation, Jens said that everything was pretty vague … I asked Jens Soering if anything was being said while this was happening, and he says the only thing that he could remember anybody saying was Mr. Haysom said man—excuse me, God, you must be crazy, man. Jens said that he found his glasses laying in [sic] the floor, of course they were still in the dining room, and the last thing he saw was Nancy Haysom walking from the dining room into the kitchen. And Jens said that she was—he saw her back as she was going into the kitchen, and that she had her hands up and her arms up like this in this fashion. (Witness indicates.) He said at this time he turned and Mr. Haysom was standing there in the floor right there at the fireplace, and Mr. Haysom had his arms up like this, and Jens described it as like a big bear standing there.

So at this time Jens Soering said he exited the house. Jens said that he went out to get into the car, the rental car, and he realized that his clothes were very bloody, so at this point he took off his gray Members Only Jacket, his shirt, his pants and his tennis shoes.

He said he placed them in a bag in the back of the car, which he said he thought, or remembered at that particular time of having empty soft drink cans or beer cans in it. Jens Soering said after he took off these items of clothes he got in the car and was coming up the road, and when he was coming up Holcomb Rock Road a little gray dog ran out of front of him, and he hit the dog. And he said he was really upset about hitting the dog. that really bothered him. So he said he continued on and he got to the dumpster which sits across Holcomb Rock Road on the other side of 501. Jens said he arrived at the dumpster, and he realized that he had left the lights on in the house. And he said he was afraid that if the neighbors noticed the lights on all night, that they would become suspicious and go check on the Haysoms. So he decided at this point to go back to the house…

While Jens was still setting [i.e., sitting] at the dumpsters contemplating the light situation, he said he realized that he had injured himself, or he was injured in the altercation, and that he had cut his hand, or his fingers, and so he decided to go back and get some band aids for his hand also. So he drove back to Loose Chippings, the same route that he had traveled before, and he noticed the dog that he struck was gone, which he said he was pleased because he didn’t kill the dog.

So he went back to the house, and he went back in the front door, and he went into the kitchen to wash his hands in the sink. Jens said that when he walked back in the house Mr. Haysom was laying on the floor right there at the dining room and living room door, and that when he walked into the kitchen, Mrs. Haysom was laying face down, He said he just remembered seeing her back laying there, and there was a small pool of blood laying at Mrs. Haysom’s head. Jens said he washed his hands in the kitchen sink, and he was looking for band aids. He said he couldn’t find any band aids, so he decided to go to the back bathroom or the main bathroom on the first floor of the house, which is off of the master bedroom, Jens said about this time he realized that he was walking through blood, and he was leaving foot impressions, and in fact he said that there was some hand prints, I think a palm print on the floor, and at this time he started swishing his feet or shuffling his feet through the house so as not to leave any foot impressions or any physical evidence at all. He went into the bathroom and washed his hands. He could not find a—any bandages or band aids, so there was a towel rack there.

So he got a towel, and he wrapped the towel around his hand. And at this point, I believe Jens showed me the scars on his hand, or on his finger that he cut. Jens showed me on his left hand, he’s got a cut on his left index finger and the left pinkie or small finger also on his left hand. The scars were there that Jens showed me, and he said that those were the scars of that night. So he wrapped his hand up in the towel in the bathroom, and he also, when he came through the bedroom, he said he removed a gray sweatshirt from a closet there and he put the gray sweatshirt on. Jens said he came back through the house, and as he was leaving the house exiting the door, he used a towel to wipe fingerprints, or to wipe blood off of the door as he was coming out. So when he got back in the car, or before he got back in the car, he also took his socks off, which he had gotten—he said he had gotten very bloody on the second trip in.

When he came back to the house the second time all he had on was his briefs or his underwear and socks. So when he left the second time, he removed his socks and placed them in the bag where he had put the other clothes that he had removed. At this time I asked Jens what he did with the knife that Mrs. Haysom had, and he said, oh, I threw that one away, too. And I said, what do you mean, threw that one away too? And he said, well I threw two knives away that night, the one that I used and the one that Mrs. Haysom used. I asked Jens again, if he took the knife to the scene with him that night and he wouldn’t answer my question.

I asked him where he got the knife from, was it laying on the table or where was it, and he simply refused to answer, he wouldn’t, talk about the knife at all, other than the fact to say that he did in fact throw away two knives. So Jens got back in the car the second time to leave, and all he had on was his gray sweatshirt and his underwear, and he drove back to Washington, D.C. I asked Jens was he afraid that he would be stopped by the police going back to Washington for speeding, and he said that he was very careful to drive the speed limit back, So he drove back to Washington, D.C. and he drove to Georgetown and he met Elizabeth Haysom in front of a cinema there, or a theater there where the Rocky Horrow [sic] Picture Show was playing.

Jens would tell this story at least four more times in 1986, twice to psychiatrists hired by his lawyers and once—in German—to a German prosecutor. The various versions differ on minor points, but the core of the story is identical.

All the detectives, psychiatrists, fellow prisoners, and lawyers to whom he confessed in 1986 believed he was telling the truth and talking about things he had personally witnessed. Former Bonn prosecutor Bernd König has recently confirmed he saw no reason to doubt Söring’s confessions. In 2007, Söring’s defense lawyer during the 1986 interrogation, Prof. Dr. Andreas Frieser, was asked point-blank by German talk-show host Johannes B. Kerner whether Söring was “guilty or innocent.” Instead of a “yes” or “no”, Frieser said “A court decided he was guilty more than 20 years ago.” Frieser then confirms that during his 1986 confession, Frieser believed Söring was telling the truth. Only after reading Söring’s appeals did Frieser change his initial view.

Söring maintained throughout his confessions that he did not drive down to Loose Chippings intending to kill the Haysoms. Like his refusal to talk about the murder weapon, this was strategy: The law punishes planned, premeditated murders more harshly than spontaneous killings committed during a heated argument. In any event, whether he planned to kill the Haysoms or not, killing them was the likely outcome. Jens already “hated” the Haysoms for the threat they posed to his relationship with Elizabeth, and for the abuse he believed they had inflicted on her. Elizabeth told Jens that getting them “out of the way” would lead to freedom and a financial windfall. He knew that Elizabeth knew he might kill her parents, and that this was acceptable to her. And finally, he knew that killing Derek and Nancy Haysom would bind him to Elizabeth forever. During the fateful conversation on 30 March, Derek and Nancy Haysom could only have saved themselves by enthusiastically endorsing Elizabeth’s relationship with Jens and promising the couple unconditional support.

That was not the response Söring received.

After killing the Haysoms, Söring returned to Washington, D.C., careful to obey the speed limit. Elizabeth would later tell detectives and the jury that she had bought pairs of movie tickets for the 30 March evening showings of two movies, Witness, and Stranger than Paradise (she, like Söring, incorrectly refers to the film as Stranger in Paradise). She also called her friend Christine Tan* because Elizabeth had found that her MOST bank card wasn’t working, and she thought Christine might know the correct passcode. During Jens Söring’s trial, the defense introduced a sheet of Marriott Hotel notepaper one four-digit sequence crossed out and another, “6428”, scribbled on notepaper from the hotel:

The numbers, along with the “Jennifer Cinemas 1 & 2”, are written in Elizabeth’s handwriting. The hotel billed the couple for five local calls and one long-distance call from the couple’s room, although the bill did not identify the time or number dialed. Haysom also checkout out where the surveillance cameras in the hotel were located, because she and Söring had agreed that they “had to be seen on camera together”.

Elizabeth then took a taxi to the Rocky Horror Picture Show and bought one ticket to the show, since she did not have enough money for two. The Rocky Horror Picture Show is a 1975 American movie musical which is a flamboyant, over-the-top camp satire of 1950s “B” horror movies. It soon became a cult favorite, with tradition dictating that it was always shown at midnight, and fans were encouraged to show up in costumes from the film and sing along loudly to the musical numbers. Owing to its unbroken popularity, Rocky Horror boasts the longest period of general release in film history. Elizabeth began watching the movie alone. The plan was for Jens to buy a ticket to the ongoing performance after returning from Lynchburg and enter the theater. Jens and Elizabeth would then make “some sort of disturbance” in front of the movie-goers to make sure they were remembered. Elizabeth wryly noted that the plan was poorly-thought-out, since “everybody makes [a] disturbance at the Rocky Horror Show”. She became worried when Jens didn’t show up even after the movie had ended.

She waited outside the theater, where he eventually showed up, presumably around 2:30 AM. They then drove back to the Marriott Hotel underground parking garage. Since they believed the security cameras they had seen were being recorded, they performed “this little scene of him being drunk, and I was helping him, and we were young lovers and the rest of it.” Söring had disposed of his bloody clothes. Elizabeth testified in 1990 that he had “taken a piece of clothing or something out of my father’s drawers” and “had washed his hands, because they were bleeding”. Söring wrapped himself in a sheet or towel (it’s not clear which) which still had some residual bloodstains. He described the killings at length to Elizabeth, who was alarmed. She would later testify that she didn’t believe a “wimp” like Söring could have actually done the deed, yet he obviously had.

Elizabeth helped Söring clean up the remaining blood (from him and the victims) and re-bandaged his finger wound. Söring told her to take the elevator down to the parking garage and clean out the interior of the rental car with detergent and Coca-Cola. One ingredient in Coca-Cola is sodium benzoate, which, as American housewives know, is removes bloodstains well. Söring also told her to examine and clean the front of the car, where he thought he had hit a dog. Elizabeth would later return and clean out the car’s interior a second time in the early hours of 31 March 1985. When the pair returned the car later that day, Pantops Texaco employee Sylvia Moore testified at Jens’ 1990 trial, it was “spotless”. The ride back to Charlottesville was unusually silent. After the pair returned to Charlottesville, they took Söring’s “Members Only” brand jacket and his socks, put them in a trash bag, and dumped them in a random trash container. After taking care of this last part of the cover-up, they resolved to behave as normally as possible.

In his 1995 book Mortal Thoughts, Söring describes the period from January 1985 (beginning of the American “Spring” Semester) to March 1985 as follows:

The first two and a half months of the spring, 1985, semester were the happiest of my life. Liz and I were deeply, passionately in love, but our relationship was not yet as obsessive as it became after the murders. We were simply boyfriend and girlfriend—young, innocent and joyously filled with life and lust.

At least that is how our love seemed to me then. I was happy, often deliriously so, but my happiness was based on a web of Elizabeth’s lies which grew and grew until I was wrapped up like the spider’s meal in a little cocoon, ready for consumption. But I remained blissfully unaware of the deception and the danger, and if anyone had tried to warn me I would not have listened. Those early days of our affair seemed so right, so pure, so beautiful!