Chapter 11: Elizabeth Stands Trial - Martyr or Murderer: Jens Soering, the Media, and the Truth

During late 1986 and early 1987, Jens and Elizabeth’s relationship foundered. Both were, of course, being held separately, and letters were their only means of communication. Further, neither had a precise grasp of how much the authorities knew. The record contains no indication either that Söring told Elizabeth he had confessed to the murders, or that Elizabeth told Söring she had confessed to her role in constructing an alibi. Ken Englade summarizes what is known about their relationship during this stage:

As time went on, their relationship quickly unraveled. It was not strong enough to survive the strains and pressures of separation, imprisonment, and the conflicts inherent in preparing their cases for trial… Basically, the problem was that each had totally different ideas about what they should do next. Elizabeth, burdened with guilt, wanted to go back to the United States and be punished. The harsher the punishment, the better it would be. She had adopted a martyr complex: She acted as if she wanted to scream mea culpa on prime time and put it on page one of the New York Times and the Washington Post.

On the other hand, the United States was the very last place Jens wanted to go. The thought of being electrocuted gave him nightmares even in the daytime. All of Elizabeth’s instincts said “surrender”; all of Jens’s said “fight”—fight at all costs either to stay in Britain or be extradited to Germany, neither of which had a death penalty.

Englade also notes that Söring’s family was “very supportive” of him, while Elizabeth’s family largely “ignored her”.

Throughout the second half of 1986, Jens sent Elizabeth a number of letters which have been preserved. On 30 August, according to Ken Englade, he assured her that she would be treated “very leniently” in the U.S., since the authorities had no evidence she had committed any acts of violence. Elizabeth, according to Englade, “took this as a strong hint to not make waves”. In a postscript to this letter, Jens asked Elizabeth whether she had asked Ricky Gardner about “Annie”; i.e., Annie Massie.

Elizabath, Englade writes, “interpreted this as a way of reminding her that she could do both of them a favor by suggesting to investigators that Annie Massie may have played a role in the murders as well”. Jens had earlier told Elizabeth what he told Terry Wright: Jens believed Annie Massie had entered the house sometime after he left and done something to the bodies of Derek and Nancy Haysom. Jens kept suggesting far-fetched schemes to throw a wrench in the proceedings—such as claiming that he and Elizabeth had information about the Irish Republican Army. Jens claimed these schemes would also benefit Elizabeth, but she was not convinced. Jens also claimed that he had already convinced a federal judge and a district attorney in the U.S. to act on his behalf, but he never identified them.

On 11 December 1986, Elizabeth wrote Jens to tell him she would not fight extradition and would plead guilty in Virginia. On December 17, they both appeared in Kingston Crown Court to plead guilty to the fraud charges against them. They both received one-year sentences. Immediately after the plea, they were served with arrest warrants for the Haysom murders. On December 18, 1986—just two weeks before his interview with the German prosecutor—Jens sent Elizabeth a letter protesting her decision to consent to extradition and plead guilty. Terry Wright quotes the letter in his report:

You can never, ever purge your guilt in your family’s eyes. Even if you are found completely innocent or do 3000 years, they’ll never forgive you. So why, for God’s sake, sacrifice your future by refusing to oppose extradition and pleading guilty to charges which are far too high (especially considering we’re innocent)? And as for guilt towards me is concerned, of course I realize you’ve ruined my life. You also got a lot of help from yours truly, and if I had protected you better, you wouldn’t even be here either….

And if you insist on purging your imagined guilt towards me, please do it by not taking the easy way out (and that is exactly what your giving up represents)—show some backbone! You have nothing to lose and, secondly, you have my word that things are not half as bad as they seem—as long as you give your lawyers a chance to open their mouths in court….

I love you and things are quite nice legally; either you trust me when I say that and you act accordingly or you say you trust me and you don’t act accordingly, i.e. you give up. I won’t stand for that, Elizabeth.

The tone of this letter shows the strain on Elizabeth and Jens’ relationship, which was on its last legs.

The letter shows Jens’ alarm at the prospect of Elizabeth pleading guilty. Söring had to know that Elizabeth’s plan could have serious consequences for him. The return of a key witness to Virginia would strengthen the case for holding Söring’s trial in the U.S. Further, Söring could reasonably wonder whether, after Elizabeth was an entire ocean away and knew she would never see Söring again, her commitment to their “love” would survive. Her apparent desire to admit everything might induce her to testify against Söring, especially in exchange for a sentence reduction.

According to Englade, when the two again met in court for a hearing in February, 1987, Söring “growled at” her, causing police to handcuff Söring during subsequent hearings. On 14 April, Elizabeth confirmed that she would not contest extradition. She arrived in Bedford County on 8 May 1987, and immediately requested to speak to Ricky Gardner. Elizabeth had read the psychiatric reports on Söring by Bullard and Hamilton, which portrayed her as a cunning, manipulative, unstable femme fatale who had manipulated a naïve young man into murder. Wherever and whenever he when to trial, it seemed, Söring planned to present himself as a dupe. According to Englade, this portrayal made her “seethe”, and kindled in her a commitment to ensure that Söring’s own guilt be acknowledged, and that he receive no less a punishment than she did.

Elizabeth had a strategy for downplaying her own responsibility: drugs. In 1987, for the first time, she claimed that she had bought heroin on the day of the murders. This puzzled detectives, since Söring had repeatedly denied that Elizabeth had used hard drugs in 1986. As we have seen, Elizabeth would later admit these lurid tales were lies. Elizabeth told Gardner that after Jens returned to the Marriott after the killings, Söring ordered her to clean the car both inside and outside. In the early morning hours of 31 March, he described the killings. Because his glasses had flown off during the fight, he couldn’t give a precise description, but he did emphasize how strongly Derek Haysom had fought. When asked to describe what it was like to slit Nancy Haysom’s throat, he said it was much harder than it looked “in the movies”.

Elizabeth also described a dramatic change in the relationship between her and Söring after the murders. After the murders, she would later testify, Söring had decided that killing was a “nice occupation”. In Englade’s telling, she said Jens “had, in fact, drawn up a hitlist of people he wanted to get rid of. Among those on the list were her half-brother, Howard, Jens’s grandmother, and his parents.” According to Elizabeth, Jens devised a plan to get money from his wealthy German grandmother. They would visit her, hook her up to “some kind of electric gizmo,” and torture her until she agreed to give them money: “Then afterwards we obviously would kill her.”

Elizabeth also described Söring’s plot to kill Gardner: Söring had followed Gardner home after the 6 October 1985 interview discover where Gardner lived. Söring kill Gardner at his home while Elizabeth provided an alibi for them both in Charlottesville. Gardner was initially incredulous, but then, as Gardner noted in a 2010 letter opposing Söring’s transfer to Germany, Elizabeth “described my house to me and where I parked my car.” When Elizabeth had mentioned this murder plot during her 1987 trial, Gardner’s wife, who was in the audience, had to be escorted out of the courtroom.

Elizabeth claimed Söring had been impotent with her until the night of her parents’ funeral, when he forced himself on her. Englade describes what happened afterward:

Once his sexual capabilities were awakened, Jens began making new demands on his lover. Previously content mainly to talk about his sexual fantasies, he now began putting them into play. He became a porn freak, toting home stacks of magazines with wild sexual themes, many of which included some sort of violence.

Gardner asked Elizabeth about nude photos of Elizabeth which detectives had found in the Haysom home. One depicted Elizabeth from the side, reading Shakespeare. These photos, Elizabeth said, had been taken by her mother. This marked the debut of the most titillating aspect of the case: Elizabeth’s on-again, off-again claim that her own mother had sexually abused her.

In further interviews with Gardner, Elizabeth assured him that Jens would try everything in his power to escape responsibility for the crime. Gardner had one final question for Elizabeth: Why had Jens kept all the letters? She professed to be as mystified by this as Gardner was, but she said Jens was obsessed by documents and papers. As Englade reports, she said “He was continually making files and gluing things and collecting documents.”. Elizabeth also suspected Söring’s ego played a role; he was proud of the murders: “For a long time he said it was the most notable thing he had done. It was like winning a personal kind of freedom. It was something he did on his own.”

This suggestion that Söring took pride in the Haysom killings is buttressed by Söring’s own words. Shortly after his June 1986 confessions, Söring had sent a letter to Terry Wright with the following postscript:

P.S.: One last suggestion/request: Is there any way of getting a photocopy of the little black diary [i.e., the travel diary] for me? Since the diary covers the events long after ‘America’, and since I’ve admitted all the further crimes committed in Europe, I cannot see what harm could be done to divert myself and perhaps millions of viewers or readers. Since I seem to be going back to America, I might as well think in commercial terms. This story must be worth something.

Söring would later write several autobiographies in which he denied killing the Haysoms. In 1986, he planned to sell the story of how he had killed them.

Elizabeth Haysom had no financial resources and essentially no support from her family, so she asked Bedford County Circuit Court judge William Sweeney to appoint counsel for her. Sweeney chose two local lawyers, Doug Jones and R. Andrew “Drew” Davis.

She insisted on pleading guilty to the charges against her, which were two counts of first-degree (non-capital) murder, which is punished by a maximum of life in prison. No matter how hard they tried, Jones and Davis could not budge her from this stance. For his part, prosecutor Jim Updike confirmed in court that “there are no plea agreements, there have been no negotiations on the part of me or my office with the defendant or her counsel”.

However, the lawyers found a middle ground. Instead of pleading guilty to murder, she would plead guilty to being an accessory before the fact to murder. The possible punishment—from a minimum of 20 years to a maximum of life—was the same, but this plea would strengthen Elizabeth’s claim that she had not been present at the crime scene. This was important to Haysom, because Annie Massie, Howard Haysom, and possibly some other members of her family believed she had been present during the murders. Elizabeth would confess to deep involvement in the plan to kill her (and their) parents, but has never stated she witnessed the deed.

Elizabeth ultimately agreed to the compromise. On 24 August 1987, she pleaded guilty to two counts of being an accessory before the fact to capital murder. She stated that she understood she was waiving her right to a trial, waiving any right to appeal her conviction, and that Judge Sweeney was free to impose any sentence allowed by law on her, up to and including life imprisonment. A jury had been chosen, but they were dismissed, since there would now be no formal trial. Sweeney had, however, decided that he needed to get a grasp of the facts to help him decide what Elizabeth’s punishment would be, so he set some time aside for a “mini-trial” in which Jim Updike would present the key pieces of evidence and testimony relating to Elizabeth’s role in the murder plot. Updike ran through the evidence, including the state of the crime scene and the autopsy reports on Derek and Nancy Haysom. Updike also mentioned a Haysom family friend named Don Harrington, who had attended the memorial service for the Haysoms. Harrington had noted a bruise on Söring’s left cheek which looked like “someone caught this man with a right cross”. Derek Haysom’s autopsy report, Updike observed, noted abrasions on Derek’s right hand. Harrington had also seen bandages on Söring’s left hand at the Haysoms’ funeral.

Ricky Gardner then took the stand and testified at length about the original investigation, the suspicious mileage discrepancy, the April interviews with Elizabeth Haysom, the October interview with Jens Söring, and the couples’ flight in mid-October 1985. Terry Wright, in his first trip across the Atlantic, testified about the apprehension of Jens and Elizabeth in London in 1986. Wright read excerpts from the pair’s correspondence, focusing on their comments about Derek and Nancy Haysom. Kenneth Beever described the questioning of Elizabeth Haysom. He related that Elizabeth had asked to speak to her solicitor, and was given a chance to consult with him before answering questions in his presence on 6 June 1986. Her answers were unhelpful, and the interview was terminated. She then agreed to speak after being told detectives were “perfectly happy” with the way the interrogation was going.

Under cross-examination by Elizabeth’s lawyer Doug Jones, Beever explained how his interaction with Jens Söring on 6 June 1986 had begun:

Q: Okay, now Inspector Beaver, during the same weekend that you were questioning Elizabeth Haysom you also questioned Jens Soering, is that correct?

A: Yes, I did, sir.

Q: And there were one or two occasions in which you had conversations with him that were not recorded.

A: Yes, sir.

Q: But you made a written memorandum of those conversations, is that correct?

A: Yes, sir.

Q: And I’m showing you a copy of a written memorandum of a conversation on June the 5th at 11:14 p.m. [this is likely an error, the conversation probably occurred at 11:14 a.m.]; is that your memorandum of that conversation with Mr. Soering?

A: It’s a statement that I’ve prepared from the memorandum, but it’s a true account of what happened, sir, yes.

Q: At the bottom of that statement you state, “I told him that I couldn’t really discuss the matter with him but asked him why he was asking such questions”; and he was asking you questions about what might happen to him?

A: He was, sir, yes.

Q: And would you tell us what his response was to that?

A: This response here on the second page, sir:

Q: It’s quoted on your memorandum, so I assume it’s his exact words.

A: Oh, it’s his exact words, yes, sir.

Q: Would you read those, please?

A: He said, “Because I murdered two people, you know that.”

Q: Thank you.

This exchange could not be directly cited at Söring’s 1990 trial, as it occurred before he had been given Miranda warnings.

Since Elizabeth had already entered a guilty plea, the crucial portion of her trial was the hearing on what her punishment would be, which was held in early October 1987. Since most of the case had already been made in August, the prosecution called no witnesses except for Ricky Gardner. Jim Updike decided to make the state’s case primarily by cross-examining the witnesses the defense called. By October 1987, Elizabeth had been in jail in Virginia for 6 months. She had adapted well, corresponding actively with the outside world. Her attorneys also arranged for her to undergo a complete psychiatric evaluation supervised by Dr. Robert Showalter, then Associate Medical Director at the Institute of Law, Psychiatry, and Public Policy at the University of Virginia.

Elizabeth worked to counter the image of her as a rebellious seductress, appearing in court wearing no makeup, short hair, and long, shapeless dresses in subdued colors. The defense first called some Haysom family members and family friends who had positive recollections of Elizabeth Haysom. Two witnesses attested to Elizabeth’s alleged drug problem and her attempts to overcome it by joining Narcotics Anonymous (NA). One of them, an Englishman named Johnny Horton, was a reformed criminal and mental patient who claimed to have co-founded the British branch of NA. He testified that he had visited Elizabeth about thirty times in Holloway Prison in England and was convinced she was honest about her drug habit and the efforts she was making to overcome it. Updike got him to admit that Elizabeth had only shown interest in NA after it became clear she would be extradited to the U.S., and that she had pleaded guilty to fraud in the UK.

Elizabeth then called Christopher Keland, a UVA graduate and Echols scholar who had known Elizabeth Haysom since she had begun studying at UVA. He described her as outgoing but also hard-working, and recounted that she had dated several young men before Jens. Keland lived with Jens and Elizabeth in a rental house in July 1985, and kept up contact with them until they fled the country. Jones asked him:

Q: Did you ever know Jens Soering to use drugs?

A: No, I did not.

Q: How about Elizabeth?

A: Not while she was going out with Jens Soering, no.

Q: How about on other occasions?

A: Previous to that I think she undoubtedly used drugs but nothing particularly serious. There was other people in the dorms that would have done a lot more drugs than she would.

Veryan Haysom, one of Elizabeth’s half-brothers, testified cautiously that he was impressed by Elizabeth’s decision to plead guilty and accept responsibility. Updike asked him about allegations that Nancy Haysom had sexually abused Elizabeth: Veryan responded: “Those allegations are unfounded in anything within my experience within anything within my knowledge of my family, and I was very disturbed and upset by them.”

The core of the sentencing hearing, however, was Elizabeth Haysom’s testimony. Under friendly direct examination, she described her privileged, cosmopolitan upbringing, much of it spent in prestigious boarding schools from the age of 10 to 19 years old. The Haysom family was a patchwork created from the children of two previous marriages, and they lived in far-flung locations. Derek and Nancy Haysom also moved frequently. Elizabeth, being the youngest by far, did not have particularly close relationships with her five brothers and sisters, who were all half-siblings to her. She describes her breakaway jaunt through Europe, which Elizabeth admits caused her parents enormous anxiety and suffering. Defense lawyer Hugh Jones’ strategy here is to have Elizabeth portray Derek and Nancy Haysom in a positive light, to avoid any suggestion Elizabeth might try to justify her role in their murders by their supposed mistreatment of her.

The second component of the defense strategy emerges as Elizabeth describes the beginning of her time at UVA:

And once I got settled into UVA, I abused drugs extensively. I would party with a group of people and I would drink and I would do what they were doing and then come back to my room or somewhere and then abuse it… I was doing a lot of amphetamines, speed, and I was doing some heroin. And I began popping pills and there was quite a lot of hashish that had been soaked in opium so that it’s very powerful, and some acid.

Elizabeth then testifies Jens was adamantly against drug use, so she had to conceal her drug use from him, claiming she was going to class or meeting friends. Elizabeth describes meeting Jens, being fascinated by him because he was European, exchanging fulsome love letters, and eventually falling in love with him. Jones points out the references to voodoo and hypnotism and her parents’ deaths in the letters from early 1985. She admits referring to her parents so dismissively was wrong, but claims the references to her parents’ deaths were mere fantasies, and hints about voodoo and hypnosis were digs at Söring, who had a fascination with these subjects.

As we have seen above in Chapter 2, Elizabeth claimed not to have even read the Christmas Letter from Jens to her (calling it “very boring, very dull and very strange”), and claimed she did not know about the suspicious passages until her own trial, during which Updike had read them to the judge. Elizabeth confirms that in February of 1985, as Elizabeth’s parents were setting up a Spring Break skiing vacation which would not include Jens), he came into her room and said he could “blow their bloody heads off”. When he said it, Elizabeth testifies, “at the moment that he said it it was definitely apparent that he was serious. He was angry and he meant what he was saying”. She blames herself for taking warning signs like his seriously: “[H]e was not thinking the same way I was thinking. I was indulging in some grotesque, childish fantasies, I was feeling hate and resentment and frustration, but I wasn’t thinking about murder. And it seems that he was.”

The weekend before the murders, Elizabeth visits Loose Chippings alone for her father’s birthday, during which she gives him a cashmere sweater , a tortoiseshell comb from England, some silk handkerchiefs, and some dry-cleaning spray. As we saw in Chapter 3, the visit was surprisingly harmonious. Jones asks her: “[D]id you have any reason at all to expect that your parents would be dead in less than a week?” to which she responds: “Not at all, not at all, quite contrary.” The next weekend was the trip to Washington. On their first full day in Washington, 30 March, Elizabeth testified that Jens became angry and vowed to drive to Loose Chippings later in the day to confront the Haysoms.

In her testimony, Elizabeth now leans into her story of spending Saturday in a drugged-out haze. She claims she sold some jewelry and planned to score. How were you going to do that if Jens was still around? her lawyer asked her:

Well it was quite easy to do, just excuse myself from the restaurant [where the pair were having lunch] and—when you’re a junkie the dealers can smell you a mile off and you just make contact with somebody very—it just takes five minutes. It’s easy to buy the drugs and then it’s just a question of being in the bathroom and pretending to have a shower or something and using them.

The timeline is confusing because Elizabeth was inventing this. Elizabeth says she was eager to see Jens finally start his trek to Loose Chippings, since that would give time to get high. In her account, Jens said he could “kill” her parents, but she just said, “yes dear” because of her “selfish, tiny, stupid, irresponsible world of drugs and self-satisfaction”.

This was all a lie, and that’s corroborated by Söring. As we’ve seen, Söring was asked whether he had seen Elizabeth doing hard drugs during their relationship or on the weekend of the murders. Both times he said no, and the testimony of Christopher Keland backs this up. After 1990, Jens seized on Elizabeth’s drug stories, and his constant focus on them marked perceptions of the case for decades. Even taken at face value, Elizabeth’s story also makes no sense.

Drug dealers do not wait on street corners in the tourist neighborhoods Elizabeth and Jens were visiting, and would not have sold drugs to an unknown young woman who looked like a respectable college student. Further, Haysom never identifies which “drugs” she took, except for a hint that one of the drugs was heroin. Yet if she were routinely popping in and out of the bathroom to do amphetamines, speed, heroin, or for that matter opium laced with LSD—drugs she mentioned doing at UVA in her previous testimony—how likely would it be that Söring himself would not notice this? Both Elizabeth and Jens said Jens knew she had used drugs in the past and strongly disapproved. Assuming the “drugs” she bought were heroin, it’s also hard to imagine her wandering around Washington, D.C., instead of nodding off in an alley or the couples’ hotel room.

As Elizabeth would later admit, these dramatic tales were “stupid lies” intended to reduce her culpability before Judge Sweeney, herself, and perhaps also her family members. Söring later seized upon these stories when constructing his own innocence claim. Returning to Elizabeth’s 1987 testimony, she says Söring dropped her off at a movie theater somewhere, telling her to buy tickets to build an alibi. Instead, she went next door to a bar where she scored some “heroin”, then later scored yet more heroin and then some acid. She then returned to the hotel “tripping”, ordered food and a bottle of Johnnie Walker, and drank much of it. Later, high on alcohol, heroin, and LSD, she somehow found her way to the theater where the Rocky Horror Picture Show was playing, where she met Jens. The drugs wore off only the next day, during the drive back to Charlottesville. She testified that it was only then, Sunday, that the two retroactively constructed an alibi based on movie tickets and room-service orders.

Through April 1985, she testified, Söring was extremely concerned that Elizabeth might admit the murder plot under the stress of grief, remorse, and family conflict, so he kept up a stream of threats:

The threats were made around about the time, I think it was after the funeral or just before the funeral. As I said, I had these confrontations with him about spending time with my family and he threatened to turn himself in and make sure that I went down with him. threatened to kill himself and leave a message to convict me. He threatened leaving me, which was the terrible thing. He threatened lots of different things… But he was very obsessed with the notion that I might speak to somebody. And he would say that if he went down I would go with him.

As the summer progressed, Elizabeth reports, Jens began to regard his act as heroic:

There were other times when he thought it was the best thing he’d ever done, he was proud of it, he was—he thought it was—he was some sort of hero. I believe he describes himself in one of his letters as a hero, accomplishing this thing. And in those moments he would say—he would view that he had done the entire thing by himself, plotted it, carried it out, outwitted the police. He thought he was incredibly smart for having outwitted Investigator Gardner.

That confidence vanished as Gardner kept asking Söring for evidence:

Q: Why did you and Jens leave in October of ‘85?

A: Because Investigator Gardner and Investigator Reid had requested blood samples from Jens.

Q: He was getting scared.

A: Yes. And as I say, his attitude towards what happened changed as outside—as the investigation was progressing. And [t]hen he discovered that Investigator Gardner wasn’t as stupid as he thought he was and that he couldn’t just talk his way out of a situation as serious as this…

Elizabeth was then shown entries from the travel diary. She explained that the first diary entries were actually created weeks after the fact, when Jens and Elizabeth were already on the run. She admits that there are falsehoods in the diary. For instance, as we’ve seen, she invented the story of having a brain tumor, which is mentioned in the diary. She also inserted veiled references to an operative of the Irish Republican Army named “Rover”:

Because of his attraction to violence and his interest in things like Soldier of Fortune Magazine and his interest in hire for kill, whatever, it was an appropriate way to manipulate him to leave the country ahead of me. So I told him that I could get in contact with this fictional person, Rover, who was a member of the IRA and that I could get passports, money, whatever, and that I would go to England and I would do that. Of course that didn’t happen and it’s rubbish.

Questioning then turns to their relationship after the London interviews. Elizabeth says she was initially convinced she was fully responsible for Jens’ actions, but she now believed she “didn’t have any control over him whatsoever”. She decided to help Investigator Gardner out by providing him with some letters Jens had written her. Gardner would learn from these letters that “Jens is very familiar with the idea of psychological warfare is what I call it of very, slow succulent [sic] manipulation”.

Elizabeth claimed she decided to separate her fate from Jens’ in late 1986 primarily because, as part of her extradition proceedings, she was provided with color photographs of her parents’ bodies: “And I lived with those photographs, they were in my cell, they were on my person, they were with me wherever I went and they were in my mind’s eye the whole time as well.” Elizabeth summed up the change in her attitude toward the case over the months of her incarceration:

As I said, I saw these photographs; my initial reaction was that my life didn’t mean anything at all because of what I had participated in, what I had caused, covered up. And I talked to some people and they said to me that the only way which I could even begin to move forward would be to face what I had done and to confront it and confront it publicly and to not try and deny it and to come to terms with the fact that what happened was just an appalling tragedy and it should never have happened and nothing justifies it.

Elizabeth claims that in September of 1986, representatives from the German embassy began visiting her, sending her books, and money for her prison account, and wrote to her about how she should “conduct her case”.

She claimed that even now, during her trial, “I’m still receiving money from them, I’m still receiving letters from them, I’m still receiving phone calls from them”, including just days ago, on Sunday morning before this testimony. This piqued Judge Sweeney’s interest:

THE COURT: You’ve been getting phone calls from the German Embassy at the jail here?

THE WITNESS: Yes.

THE COURT: what has been the nature of the calls?

THE WITNESS: They say things like Jens loves me, Jens needs me, I’m responsible for his life, his life’s in my hands. They say things like they fear for my life, that time is running out for me, that I should be quiet in thought and word and deed, to quote. I have letters to that effect as well.

American judges are generally forbidden to question witnesses directly during jury trials, but since this proceeding was held without a jury, more relaxed rules applied. After this intriguing exchange, Elizabeth’s lawyer Doug Jones returns the questioning to her time in prison in England. Elizabeth claims she was able to obtain myriad prescription and illegal drugs in prison.

Jones then clarifies that Elizabeth would not have inherited anything from her parents’ demise. He asks her whether this was important to Jens:

Q: What was Jens’ position as far as money was concerned?

A: He loved it, it was very important to him, it represented security to him and he could never get enough of it. And he also describes in several of his letters that as far as he’s concerned, the best way to get money is the easiest way which is to steal it or just have people give it to you.

In his Christmas letters, we recall, Jens himself had said similar things (“I worry about money a lot and come up with [get-rich-quick]-schemes for making it”; “I need to find a way to earn cash in a way that pleases me and doesn’t take up much time.”). Jones asked how Jens had responded to Elizabeth’s desire to consent to extradition to Virginia:

Q: Did Jens put any pressure on you to contest it?

A: Yes, he did.

Q: And again, was that through his letters to you?

A: Yes, through his letters and also at an appearance in February in court he made a scene about it. And after that he was handcuffed in court with me and kept away from me because of his outbreak.

Her direct testimony concluded with her affirming that she wanted Söring “brought to justice”, that she would be willing to testify for the prosecution at a later trial and that doing so would make her “afraid” because of the types of threats she had received from Jens.

Jim Updike began his cross-examination of Elizabeth Haysom on October 6, 1987. Updike stressed how privileged Elizabeth’s upbringing had been, and how many sacrifices her parents had made for her. Elizabeth readily agreed that she had enjoyed extraordinary privileges and opportunities, including top-notch boarding schools, luxury vacations, and financial support. Updike then addresses the allegations that Elizabeth Haysom may have been sexually abused by her mother, or at least that her mother may have acted inappropriately around her. Elizabeth confirms her previous statements to Ricky Gardner that her mother had taken nude photos of her, had occasionally slept in the same bed with her. Elizabeth testified her mother was extremely affectionate, but denied any “full-blown” sexual relationship. Elizabeth said: “This is a very private thing and if the newspapers and people have wanted to interpret what I said about my mother in a sordid way, that is their filthy minds.”

Updike pressed her on her previous statements about her mother:

Q: Well there was evidence, wasn’t there, that came out and as a result every article that we see now talks about you being sexually abused. Now—

A: Well I have never used that term myself.

Q: My question is simply this: Your mother’s been butchered.

A: Yes, she has, sir.

Q: During previous testimony yesterday you called her a liar and an alcoholic.

A: I did not call her an alcoholic.

Q: Was she a sexual abuser, did she sexually abuse you? If she didn’t for God’s sake clear her name now.

A: She did not sexually abuse me.

Q: Thank you. And maybe the press and others will be just as eager to print the recantation as what’s been printed previously.

Updike then asked Elizabeth how her parents had reacted to her running away to Europe for months. She responded that they had been grateful to finally have her back and did not punish her or even reprimand her: they didn’t “lay a guilt trip” on her, in her words. Elizabeth said her parents “had such high expectations of me, and I was so very imperfect and very far from what they really wanted me to be, and I felt guilty about that. So what I’m trying to say is that you’re quite right, the problem was with me, not with my parents”.

Updike then has Elizabeth read passages of her own and Jens Söring’s letters containing references to the Haysoms’ deaths. Turning to Söring’s outburst about “blow[ing] the Haysoms’ heads off”, Elizabeth admits that she believed Söring might be serious, but that she did “absolutely nothing” to stop him, and that’s what made her guilty. Updike leads her through the Spring Break letter written on Ramada Inn stationery, in which Elizabeth bragged about her family’s wealth and tried to convince Söring to leave university with her. Elizabeth admits that the letter is full of lies and fantasies and that she wrote it to try to “manipulate” him. Updike tries to force her to admit she wanted her parents dead, but she resists: “I wanted my parents out of my life. I had this immature, ridiculous fantasy of them being dead, not murdered, not in actuality, not in reality.” Updike hammers away, trying to force Elizabeth to admit that she knew Jens was going to murder her parents, but Elizabeth, in long, convoluted answers, denies this, saying that at the time, she couldn’t possibly imagine him actually committing murder.

During the following passage, often broadcast in documentaries, Elizabeth becomes impassioned as she emphasizes that Jens bore the main responsibility for the murders:

A: Sir, what I want you to understand is I do not mean to minimize my guilt. What I did, what I said, what I failed to do, my irresponsibility, my manipulation of Jens, yes, I’m totally guilty, I’m totally responsible for my parents’ death, I accept that.

But what I want you to realize is that Jens acted of his own free will, he had a choice; he had a choice, he had a four-hour drive. No matter what I said to him before that, no matter what I had written to him in months before that, he had a choice whether he killed my parents or not.

He sat and talked with them. He had some kind of meal with them or something. He didn’t have to do anything, nobody forced him to do anything. And I never once believed that somebody like Jens could do something like that.

Q: Ms. Haysom, please don’t misunderstand me, I’m not trying to minimize Jens Soering’s guilt. And if I live long enough, the time’s going to come when he’s going to be here, his day will come, so I’m not trying to minimize his involvement. I’m trying to lay a foundation for the Court to determine yours, that’s why we’re here today.

A: I understand that, sir.

Updike then turns to the third main theme of his cross-examination: Elizabeth’s decision to stay by the side of the man who—supposedly against her will—murdered her parents. Elizabeth states that Jens had been impotent during their relationship until the night of her parents’ funeral, in which he forced himself on her sexually as she lay in a daze of prescription tranquilizers (“Q: What, are you saying he raped you? A: No, sir, because I didn’t struggle.”). Elizabeth then gives a series of confusing, contradictory answers about why she lied about buying a “butterfly knife” and what the movie-ticket alibi was supposed to prove. Updike’s frustration is palpable: “A: [T]he tickets wasn’t so much a story for an alibi about the killings, it was supposed to be an alibi to show where we were. So I’m not being very clear. Q: That’s my point.”

Updike then confronts Elizabeth with statements, especially the March 1985 letter, in which she hints that killing her parents will benefit the couple financially. Elizabeth claims that she had verbally told Jens that her only inheritance was funding for her college education. Updike notes that Jens’ obvious expectation of financial benefit from the murder belied her claim. Confronted with accounts from family members that she had talked about “pop’s brains” when cleaning Loose Chippings after the murders, Elizabeth denied this. She denied using this phrase and insisted she was so upset at finding some of her father’s hairs that she became ill.

Updike argues Elizabeth’s June 1986 police interview and May 1987 debriefing sessions with Gardner—in which she admitted active complicity in the murder plot—were truthful, but that after getting a glimpse at a future behind bars in the U.S., she has decided to “steadily retreat” from her former statements. Elizabeth denies this, but concludes her cross-examination thus:

I believe that I am thoroughly guilty, thoroughly responsible for what happened. And I believe that as I said in my statements to Investigator Gardner that I deserve life for what I’ve done. I agreed with all of that, I agreed that I betrayed, lied, deceived, and I wouldn’t be in this position today if I had not done those things.

And worst of all, I stayed with him, and worst of all, I stayed with him willingly, and continued for so long, even after we were in custody, to love him and to need him, and to support him, and to try every which way I could to prevent him from coming back here. But my attitude has changed on that.

Updike’s cross-examination damaged Elizabeth’s credibility. He forced her to admit she has lied repeatedly to Jens, her family, and to police officers, and had implemented a fraud scheme. Söring would later invoke these genuine credibility problems to argue that nothing Elizabeth said should be believed. Turning to her guilty plea, Updike accuses Elizabeth of wanting full credit for pleading guilty to her crimes while using hair-splitting excuses to minimize her guilt.

The final major witness at Elizabeth’s sentencing hearing was Dr. Robert Showalter, Associate Medical Director of the Institute of Law and Psychiatry and Public Policy at the University of Virginia. Under direct examination by Elizabeth’s lawyer Drew Davis, Showalter testifies that he agreed to do a “pro bono” evaluation of Elizabeth. Showalter met Elizabeth four times. Elizabeth was also evaluated by Dr. Janet Warren, a forensic social worker on the Forensic Psychiatry Clinic staff, and Dr. Lisa Hovermale, a Senior Fellow in forensic psychiatry. Showalter listed all the documents he and his co-authors reviewed, which consisted of basically the entire case file. Showalter testified that Elizabeth’s case was “one of our most involved cases” and took “a tremendous amount of work and countless hours of staff time to prepare”.

The result is a report of over 30 pages which provides a history of the Haysom family, Elizabeth Haysom’s background and personality, and her relationship with Jens Söring. The team’s concluded that although Elizabeth was not insane and was competent to stand trial, she displayed “significant symptoms of psychiatric dysfunction”, in particular borderline personality disorder (BPD) and substance abuse. Elizabeth fulfilled seven of the eight diagnostic criteria for BPD, including unstable and intense personal relationships; impulsive, self-destructive behavior (drug use, running away to Europe); severe mood shifts, including long periods of depression; self-mutilation and self-destructive behavior (cutting and overdoses); uncertain and unrealistic self-image and goals; chronic feelings of emptiness and boredom; and frantic efforts to avoid real or imagined abandonment.

Showalter found no evidence of the one remaining diagnostic characteristic: inappropriate intense anger or lack of control of anger. Showalter saw no signs that Elizabeth was a violent person, in fact he characterized her as “very withdrawn” and “meekly accepting”. Showalter then discusses how this personality characteristic affected her relationship with Jens:

Haysom also found herself unable to terminate her relationship with Jens, attempting instead to convince him that she had a brain tumor or a date with a member of the IRA when in Europe.

In Europe she accepted physical beatings from Mr. Soering, his insults and participated in his bizarre sexual interests. Again, rather than separate from him, again, underscoring this fear of abandonment and demonstrating the ends to which one would put oneself through troublesome situations for maintaining…the relationship.

There is more detail about these matters in the report itself. It should be noted that Showalter’s team did not speak to Söring while preparing the report, but they did review many of Söring’s writings, including the Christmas Letter. In any event, the Showalter Report is invaluable. A team of forensic psychiatrists spend uncounted hours analyzing Jens and Elizabeth’s relationship and the question of why the Haysoms were killed. In the view of Showalter’s team, the killings were primarily the result of Söring’s own personality dynamics, not manipulation by Elizabeth:

According to the defendant, after killing her parents, Mr. Soering began “getting into the idea of violence as a way of life.” He was reading magazines such as Soldier of Fortune, Veteran Soldier, Handgun, as well as other torture and pornography magazines. In discussing executions, he would tell her “it was a job and somebody had to do it.” Ms. Haysom stated that Mr. Soering tried to make this attitude a part of her life as well, his fantasy being that she “would enjoy killing people too and that [they] could go out in the world together.” She recalled that it was “very frightening. . . very upsetting, pathetic” to watch Mr. Soering moving in this direction. His moods also reportedly became “difficult to handle.”

Ms. Haysom reported that, after leaving Charlottesville, they “went all over Europe.” During this time, Mr. Soering really got into this idea of torturing and killing people, “and wanted to do something to his grandmother.” Furthermore, he was “becoming more adamant and more graphic in his fantasies and angry at [her] for not participating in them.” Ms. Haysom reported that Mr. Soering also wanted “to torture women . . . particularly very pretty, pouting sort of sex kitten type creatures” with his favorite fantasy being that he would take a soldering iron to them. He stressed that he wanted to get “it down to a fine art to inflict torture” and tried to use the tenets of neuro-linguistic programming and self-hypnosis to further this goal. Ms. Haysom recalled that Mr. Soering “would always do what I wanted to do but it was getting harder and harder to come up with things to distract him.”

At one point during this period Ms. Haysom and Mr. Soering argued while driving through Bulgaria. By her account Mr. Soering pulled on the steering wheel, causing them to hit another car and flip over. That night Mr. Soering “beat the shit” out of her, and the next day, when she appeared in Court, she was found guilty of “hitting a car under extenuating circumstances.”…

Indeed, Ms. Haysom had less reason at the time of the offense than at any other time during her association with Mr. Soering to want her parents dead. Howard Haysom confirmed Ms. Haysom’s statement that Mr. Derek Haysom had initiated procedures to open a bank account for Ms. Haysom and also found checks among Mr. Haysom’s papers thought to be intended for that account. With this in mind, it is hard to doubt that a reconciliation was in progress. Her reconciliation with her parents during the weekend before the offense, with the promise of funds forthcoming, clearly eased her ill will. At the same time, this reconciliation likely aggravated the anxiety of Mr. Soering. Indeed, in our opinion Mr. Scoring's commission of the killings had more to do with his own personal gain than with Ms. Haysom’s.

There is a theme in Ms. Haysom’s relationship with Mr. Soering, also found in her relationship with her parents, of dominance and submission. A relationship of this type is not unusual in individuals with a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder. The locus of control in this type of relationship typically shifts back and forth between the parties Involved, but it is apparent that after killing her parents, Mr. Soering became the uncontested source of control in their relationship. He never could have held this position if Ms. Haysom had continued to have the option of returning to her parent's good graces. Indeed, the possibility that Ms. Haysom would reconcile with her parents threatened not only his relationship with Ms. Haysom but his own sense of psychological integrety [sic] as well.

Mr. Soering's sudden improvement in sexual function following the killings is consistent with the idea that he was able to perform only when he was completely assured of his control in the relationship. Thus, it is highly likely that H. Soering committed the killings not as an act of love for Ms. Haysom but as an act of control. Moreover, given his pronounced interest in sadistic violence (e.g. fantasies of sexual torture of women with a soldering iron, hopes of becoming a paid executioner, the desire to write a book on murder, and intense interest in stories and ads listed in the Soldier of Fortune) particularly after the killings, it is reasonable to assume that his threshold for committing such brutal acts is quite low. Accordingly, Ms. Haysom’s role—expressing the wish that her parents were dead —would appear to have been a leaser factor in the calculus of the Haysom killings.

Building on this analysis, the report concluded: “It is likely that Mr. Soering killed the Haysoms not as an act of love—and certainly not at Ms. Haysom’s command—but, rather, as a means of retaining control over Ms. Haysom.”

It bears repeating that Söring did not participate in the creation of the Showalter Report, and it is possible Elizabeth exaggerated his controlling and violent tendencies to explain why she stayed with him. Yet parts of her account are corroborated: Police indeed found copies of Soldier of Fortune and other military-themed magazines among the pair’s papers, in addition to sketches and plans for bombs and firearms which could be smuggled past airport security.

The reference to Soldier of Fortune (SoF) is particularly interesting. SoF was an American magazine dealing with counterinsurgency and mercenary work. It featured articles about every imaginable type of weapon, as well as first-hand accounts from mercenaries from all over the world. Even more notorious than its content were the advertisements in its back pages, in which mercenaries and hit men offered their services. SoF was sued in 1987 by a man who was injured in an assassination attempt by two men who advertised in the magazine. The judge held that SoF’s mercenary and hit man ads were not protected by the First Amendment, and the parties settled the claim. SoF also lost a $9.5 million claim relating to a 1985 contract murder, but the verdict was overturned on appeal. In 1992, SoF was again sued for an ad reading “GUN FOR HIRE”, which also led to a contract killing. As a part of the settlement in that case, SoF agreed to stop printing ads for mercenary or related work.

In other words, at the very time Jens and Elizabeth were on the run, Soldier of Fortune magazine had a worldwide reputation as a place where mercenaries and contract killers could be located. In Elizabeth’s account, Jens contemplating becoming a hired killer for several reasons. First, he found violence fascinating, and did not feel any remorse about his first two kills. Second, “working” as a hit man would fulfill his long-held dream of having a job which involved considerable pay for very little work. Third, being a hit man would jibe well with the couple’s post-murder lifestyle, which already forced them to live underground under assumed identities.

In his own accounts, Söring of course denies all of these allegations, claiming that the “pathological liar” Elizabeth invented them. Yet in his 1995 book Mortal Thoughts, he writes: “Since we could not make money honestly in Thailand Liz and I turned our minds to crime. Looking for inspiration we wrote dozens of letters to small companies advertising in the back of the ‘International Herald Tribune,’ ‘Soldier of Fortune’ and ‘Venture Capital.’” Söring does not identify the type of “crime” he might have been “inspir[ed]” to by the ads in the back of Soldier of Fortune, but Elizabeth’s account fills in the gaps. In Beyond Reason, Ken Englade notes:

Once his sexual capabilities were awakened, Jens began making new demands on his lover. Previously content mainly to talk about his sexual fantasies, he now began putting them into play. He became a porn freak, toting home stacks of magazines with wild sexual themes, many of which included some sort of violence.

At Elizabeth’s trial, Showalter testified: “There is no question in my mind that throughout this relationship Mr. Soering was the dominant, stronger of the two personalities.” Showalter argued that Elizabeth was dependent on Söring and feared abandonment, especially after her parents were killed and her family alienated. Along with this fear of abandonment came fear of Jens Söring, who had shown her what he was capable of.

Showalter added that he perceived “intense remorse and sorrow” from Elizabeth. Asked why he believed Söring had killed the Haysoms, Showalter responded: “I think after extensive research and study, it’s my impression that Mr. Soering carried out the murders largely motivated by his fear that he was losing Elizabeth.” Jim Updike cross-examined Showalter at some length, arguing that Showalter had relied primarily on Elizabeth for his information and that he had downplayed Elizabeth’s many changing stories. After Showalter stressed how long his team had asked questions of Elizabeth, Updike retorted: “I asked her questions all day today, Dr. Showalter, got a number of different answers.” Updike also mocked some of the psychological jargon Showalter used.

Elizabeth’s half-brother Dr. Howard Haysom, a physician practicing in Houston, Texas then took the witness stand after having been called by the prosecutor Jim Updike. He testified that he found Elizabeth’s behavior after the murders somewhat odd. When asked how he felt the case should be resolved, he said he did not believe Elizabeth was remorseful, because “she continues I think to tell untrue statements, give twists, spins to pieces of information, data, that are favorable to her but not true…I think Elizabeth was in the house at the time of the crime and I have reasons for that, too.” Neither Updike nor Elizabeth’s lawyers asked Haysom to elaborate on this belief. Stuart Harrington, the colonel who had located Elizabeth in Berlin in 1983, then testified. We have seen excerpts of his testimony in Chapter 1. Annie Massie testified, and shared her belief that Elizabeth must have been at the crime scene. However, like Howard Haysom, she did not provide any specific facts to bolster this claim.

Judge Sweeney heard closing arguments the next day, October 7, 1987. The next day, the parties convened for sentencing. Elizabeth did not appear in a dress, but instead a bulky blouse and sweater. Sweeney told the packed courtroom that few cases in his 22 years on the bench had caused him to lose sleep, but this one had. Sweeney observed that Elizabeth appeared to be a “sensitive, poised, gifted, intelligent, articulate person” whose IQ probably exceeded his own. Sweeney was frustrated by the fact that the trial had not disclosed any motive for the crime which a rational person could understand.

He found three mitigating factors. First, there was no evidence Elizabeth had physically participated in the murders. Second, she had agreed to extradition and pled guilty, which is “the first step in rehabilitation”. Third, three of her half-brothers who had testified (Veryan, Richard, and Howard Haysom) could not agree on what they felt her sentence should be. Sweeney said he felt no sympathy for the manipulative, dishonest Elizabeth who had colluded in the murder of her parents, but saw signs of the emergence of a “new” Elizabeth. Sweeney discounted the more lurid rumors about Elizabeth’s parents, including mother-daughter incest, but gave Elizabeth credit for admitting at least some of these accusations were lies.

Ultimately, Sweeney sentenced Elizabeth to two 45-year prison terms on each count of accessory before the fact, to run consecutively. Under the rules in force at the time, she would initially become parole-eligible in 1999. Elizabeth did not visibly react to Sweeney’s sentence, and gave no comment outside court. After sentencing Elizabeth, Sweeney apparently became concerned that she might serve only a small fraction of her sentence. He wrote a letter to the Virginia Parole Board for inclusion in Elizabeth’s file. Although he acknowledged the Board would reach its own decision, Sweeney advised them that he believed it would be appropriate if Elizabeth were “required to serve a substantial portion of the sentence which I gave her”. Sweeney would get his wish: Elizabeth would ultimately serve thirty-three years in prison for her crimes.

After her sentencing, Elizabeth disappeared into the Virginia prison system. As one of the suspects in a legendary and highly publicized Virginia trial, she received innumerable interview requests. She declined almost all of them, making rare exceptions only for people she trusted. In a 2 April 1995 article for the Roanoke Times, journalist David M. Poole reported that as of that time, Amy Lemley, a Virginia magazine editor who, like Elizabeth and Jens, had been a UVA scholarship student, had been the only journalist ever to interview Elizabeth Haysom. The result was the long 1990 article for Albemarle magazine cited throughout this book.

Other than that interview, which she gave before testifying at Söring’s trial in June 1990, Elizabeth has maintained silence. The members of the Haysom family who are still friendly with her say this is because she vowed to forge a new life behind bars and do all she could to redeem her sordid past. Aside from the Lemley article, she only broke her public silence once—by testifying against Jens Söring.