Chapter 14: Mortal Thoughts - Martyr or Murderer: Jens Soering, the Media, and the Truth

Jens Söring now entered the Virginia State penitentiary system, where he would spend the next 29 years of his life. He would spend most of his waking hours trying to obtain his release, by one means or another. At the time, prisoners did not have access to computers, but could use typewriters. Söring started writing a book which would put forward his side of the story. This book, published online under the title Mortal Thoughts in 1995, contains the first complete narrative of Söring’s innocence for a general audience.

Söring had several advantages as a writer and advocate for his own cause. First are his formidable energy and intelligence. According to routine prison testing, Söring’s IQ is in the 120s, which puts him in the top 5% of humans in terms of cognitive ability. Second, especially after his trial, he had access to all of the crucial documents relevant to his case. He now knew exactly what he and others had said about every aspect of his case, and which damning facts he needed to explain away.

Time helped him in two ways. First, like other prisoners, he had plenty of it. Second, with each passing day after his conviction, his case faded from public consciousness. As the Internet was still in its infancy, there was no easy way for outside parties to review trial transcripts or review the hundreds of news articles published about the Haysom murders. Although it would be dangerous to directly contradict the evidence presented at trial, he knew that he could put his own spin on it. As we will see, few reporters would have the time, resources, or motivation to check his claims.

Mortal Thoughts was published online in 1995 as a sort of primordial “e-book”. It is a crucial document. First, it is the blueprint of Söring’s innocence story. In his many subsequent books about his case, both in English and German, Söring has drawn extensively on Mortal Thoughts, often reprinting entire passages. Second, it is “Version 1.0” of his innocence story, so to speak. In subsequent decades, Söring has abandoned some parts of this narrative, downplayed others, and added additional elements as needed. This has meant, inevitably, that Mortal Thoughts has become a millstone around Söring’s neck. One of Söring’s most active supporters told me that Söring’s support network had done their utmost to remove every copy from the Internet. It now survives online only in an archived copy of a website once hosted by the University of Kent in the United Kingdom. According to a 3 December 1995 Roanoke Times news article, the site was hosted by Richard Sanders, a friend and former schoolmate of Söring’s who had studied at the University of Kent. This version still survives, allowing us to compare it with later iterations of Jens Söring’s innocence story.

Mortal Thoughts is accompanied by the following disclaimer:

Note on Royalties

Since the first edition of “Mortal Thoughts” is published only on the Internet, the author will receive no royalties or financial benefit of any kind.

Note on Names

The names of all those persons without an official role in this case have been changed.

For the Curious...

Jens Soering does not have access to the Internet, or to any computers, and for that matter very few books, in prison. This on-line book has been made possible by a friend.

The “Note on Royalties” was necessary because Virginia has a so-called “Son of Sam” law which allows authorities to confiscate profits criminals make from books or other media products based on their crimes. These laws are named after New York serial killer David Berkowitz, who called himself “Son of Sam”. As for the name changes, Söring displays a curious tendency throughout his writings to not refer to people by their names at all, or if necessary, only by pseudonyms.

We then read an “abstract” of the book:

The autobiography of a young man imprisoned for a double- murder he did not commit.

As featured on TV’s “Larry King Live,” “Geraldo Rivera,” “Inside Edition,” and “Hard Copy.”

In “Mortal Thoughts” Jens Soering, a college honors student and the son of a German diplomat, tells how his older girlfriend, Elizabeth Roxanne Haysom, embroiled him in killing her high society parents in a small Virginia town. After fleeing the U.S. and travelling around the world committing check frauds, the young couple was eventually arrested in London, England, and returned to Virginia separately for two sensational televised trials. While Elizabeth pleaded guilty as an accessory before the fact, Jens protested his innocence and testified that he only covered up his girlfriend’s crime to protect her from the electric chair. The jury found him guilty of double-murder based on disputed a bloody sock print at the crime scene, but forensic evidence uncovered after the trial proves that this sock print and a bloody shoe print were more likely to have been made by Elizabeth than by Jens.

Gail Starling Marshall, a Virginia lawyer who was then handling Söring’s appeals, contributed a foreword:

Jens Soering, though a young man, has spent his last nine birthdays behind bars for a crime he did not commit. This is a personal and strongly held conviction after a thorough review of the voluminous trial testimony and exhibits which I undertook in the advocate’s task of pinpointing the constitutional errors committed at his trial. And there were many. But this lawyerly task led me as well to the moral certainty that Jens is in fact innocent of the brutal double murders committed in Bedford, Virginia, when he was only eighteen.

I have reviewed the chapters that follow which pertain to the trial and can report that they portray the evidence with accuracy and thoroughness. The reader will no doubt conclude as I did that it seems beyond peradventure that either Jens or his girlfriend Elizabeth took the car they had jointly rented and taken to Washington, D.C., and made a round-trip to Bedford, and participated in these gory and brutal crimes. But which one? Was it Jens, a quiet and scholarly young man who neither drank nor smoked and who had barely met Mr. and Mrs. Haysom? Or Elizabeth, who admits to wanting her parents dead and had a long history of alcohol and heroin abuse and a personal experience with the netherworld as a runaway from her English boarding school?

This the framing Söring would use for the next decades: Jens was a young, inexperienced virgin captivated and dominated by an older, experienced femme fatale who single-handedly murdered her own parents and then manipulated Söring into falsely taking the blame. He had no reason to kill the Haysoms and was not at the crime scene. His only “crime” was a noble self-sacrifice born of love: Desperate to save his girlfriend’s life, he rashly vowed to confess to the crimes in her place.

It is worth noting that Söring’s own lawyer endorsed this book. American criminal defense lawyers are required to provide “zealous” partisan representation. They never publicly question a client’s innocence. But few endorse them, especially while appeals are still underway. Most lawyers tell their clients to avoid seeking press attention while appeals are underway. If a client manages to attract press attention, lawyers tell them to say nothing about their case. Clients may inadvertently or intentionally contradict a prior statement or undermine their legal claims. Press interviews often go wrong when prisoners face skeptical questions. In Söring’s case, his book was based on a story which a unanimous jury had concluded was a lie.

Most criminal-defense lawyers, hearing their client had published a book about his case, would be dread: What did he say, and how will I be able to limit the damage? Marshall’s endorsement of Mortal Thoughts is thus significant. It highlights a skill Söring has used on countless occasions: The ability to forge friendly relations with lawyers, journalists, writers, and other people of influence. By endorsing Söring’s book, Marshall went beyond what her professional obligations require, and put her reputation on the line. She would continue doing so for decades.

Why? Because she likes Jens Söring.

Söring’s ability to charm Marshall shows a pattern which recurred hundreds of times and eventually freed Söring’s. Söring convinced lawyers, politicians, and journalists to like him and see him as an equal—an intelligent and worldly man whose judgment can be trusted. His letters and emails are full of friendly greetings, expressions of concern and interest, anecdotes from his life behind bars, and expressions of frustration and anger at his unjust fate. They evoke solidarity and sympathy. Long-term prisoners understandably cultivate outside contacts by putting their best face forward. Further, what Söring writes about prison life, his emotions, and his friendly feelings towards his correspondents is often genuine. Why wouldn’t he thank people working to secure his release?

Söring had two aces up his sleeve: his intelligence and upper-middle-class background. Söring is lean, exercises regularly, avoids drugs or alcohol, wears glasses, has no tattoos, no gang affiliations, no long criminal record, and no history of violence before the murders. He is fluent in two languages, and reads and writes voraciously in both languages on a variety of subjects. People who meet him think: Here is a polite, well-spoken young man whose background is like mine. He’s interested in literature, politics, policy, music, and current events.

You can talk with Söring about anything: the thriller you’d just read, American history, trends in jazz, that course on existentialism you took in college, a recent gubernatorial debate, cultural differences between Europe and America, environmental policy, the list goes on. You enjoyed hanging out with him. John Grisham considers Söring a personal friend, and Germany’s most popular talk-show host, Markus Lanz, went jogging with Söring before broadcasting an interview with him in 2020, as a Söring confidante reported in Episode 7 of the 2022 podcast The Söring System. In the 2016 movie Killing for Love, a prison pastor, fighting tears, recounts how he was prohibited from contact with Söring after his letters became “too personal”.

After they come to like Söring, a lawyer (or journalist) sees a problem. Söring will not stop talking about his case. He insists Elizabeth killed the Haysoms alone. But wait, Söring was convicted, and his appeals were rejected. There seems to be much evidence against him, including those confessions. At this point psychology rears its head. First of all, consider cognitive dissonance. Söring seems to be such a nice guy; how could this bookish nerd possibly have butchered two people? I see many hints of myself in Söring, and I’m certainly no murderer. I also don’t want to offend Söring. Questioning his story will certainly offend him, and might destroy our friendship. What if he accuses me of abandoning him to rot in Virginia’s inhumane prison for decades?

This cognitive dissonance vanishes when I convince myself Söring is innocent, or thrust the issue aside. I don’t have to explain the incriminating evidence away; Söring has already done that in his books. If his story is true, he is innocent, and I can believe everything I want to believe: He really is a bookish, harmless nerd, and the victim of injustice. He really did sacrifice his own future out of misguided love. I will decide to believe Söring’s story because I want to believe it. After crossing this psychological Rubicon, Söring’s supporters advocate on his behalf regardless of any doubts they may privately entertain about his innocence story.

Their arguments, as we’ll see, take two forms. The most fervent supporters simply embrace his theory of the case, proclaiming him to be innocent. Others, in particular lawyers or journalists, take a more nuanced view: Regardless of whether Söring is innocent or not, his trial was so flawed that his conviction cannot be trusted. The psychological dynamic which led Gail Marshall to endorse Mortal Thoughts has gained Söring the backing of activists, lawyers, journalists, and politicians on both sides of the Atlantic.

What is interesting about the “Söring effect” is how it has led people to endorse such an unconvincing innocence claim. The story put forward in Mortal Thoughts and later books is riddled with logical gaps, misleading claims, futile excursions down rabbit holes, paradoxes, and absurdities. On those rare occasions when Söring supporters are pressed as to whether they genuinely believe Elizabeth Haysom murdered her parents with her own hands, they resort to hand-waving: Did you see Jens killing the Haysoms? There are so many inconsistencies. Who can say where the truth lies?

But in his books, Söring doesn’t beat about the bush. He plain says Elizabeth told him she killed her parents. He notices the dried blood on her arms from the brutal Loose Chippings cage fight in which Elizabeth Haysom butchered both of her parents.

Mortal Thoughts is relentlessly polemical. Söring wrote it to convince you he is innocent, and he pulls out the rhetorical stops: pathos, irony, sarcasm, earnest confessional, rueful recollection of happier times. Söring is fond of categorical statements, exclamation points, and adverbs such as “absolutely”, “always,” and “never”.

His portrayal of Elizabeth shows how his hatred of her had deepened in the five years since his conviction; he dwells at length on her drug use, bisexuality, privileged upbringing, snobbery, inadequate hygiene, intellectual pretension, and, most important of all by far, her dishonesty. Söring, by contrast, is always a hapless dupe or a selfless would-be hero. He injects self-deprecating asides about how his “brilliant ideas” and “careful plans” seem to blow up in his face, but his motives are always pure.

Söring starts out by describing how he fell in love with Elizabeth (as she played “her piper’s magic tune”), even though “intelligent and attractive girls” were pursuing him “quite determinedly!” He declares his love for her in December 1984, and suffered through their parting over Christmas. Little does he know Elizabeth is already planning his downfall: “[M]y 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.” However, the “drugs” soon rear their head. Describing a scene he says takes place in early 1985: “Slowly and very dramatically her left arm straightened and turned, until I could see the inside of the elbow. There, on that beautiful porcelain white skin, was a red needle puncture mark topped with a tiny scab.”

Söring briefly describes the Ramada Inn letter Elizabeth sent him during her March 1985 spring break ski vacation. In Söring’s telling, it ended with Elizabeth “[a]t great length begg[ing] my forgiveness for lying to me and not telling me these things earlier.” Söring, is magnanimous: “By now I alas [sic] well-used to her ‘p.o.t.’s,’ or ‘perversions of truth,’ and since she had promised not to lie again that issue seemed to have been resolved.” He describes Elizabeth as “ecstatic” after the visit to her parents on 23-24 March 1985: “Everything was going to be all right.” He describes the visit to Washington, D.C. the following weekend as a “mini-vacation”.

Yet it all goes horribly wrong on Saturday, when Elizabeth confesses yet another sin:

The conversation began as so many others had before: Jens, I have a small confession to make!

I was neither shocked nor worried. In the three and a half months we had been in love Liz had already had to confess quite a lot to me. Both of us saw my forgiveness as a foregone conclusion, I am sure.

Elizabeth’s newest little confession in the restaurant was that she was still using heroin. Two months earlier, after she had shown me the needle mark on her arm, she had promised me that she would stop. Of course Liz apologised profusely for her lying and her continuing addiction. She was throwing herself completely on my mercy, she said, but if I sent her away now she would understand. She knew she did not deserve me, but she would continue to love me from afar!

Söring forgives Elizabeth. Elizabeth then tells the story about owing money to her drug dealer, Jack Bauer. She drives off to pick up the load of “drugs” (of some sort) which she is supposed to transport for him. She returns much later, in shock, wearing different clothes, repeating over and over that “the drugs” made her kill her parents. There are “dry reddish-brown smears on [Elizabeth’s] arms…I dare not think of how that blood got onto her forearms.” Söring continues the narrative familiar from the trial: He has the “brilliant idea” to confess in her place to save her from “frying”.

Söring then writes the following passage, which has come back to haunt him:

During the remaining early morning hours we fleshed out our version of [the story]. I told Liz what I had done [in Washington, D.C.], so she could confess convincingly how she arranged the alibi. Then Elizabeth described the scene of crime, and I tried to imagine how I might have been driven to kill her parents. She did not tell me why she had driven to Lynchburg or what had actually happened at Loose Chippings, and I did not want to know. We never mentioned the murders directly to one another again.

Söring says Eliabeth only “described the scene of the crime” to him. Söring then tries to come up with some reason he might have wanted to kill Elizabeth’s parents. He gets no help from Elizabeth, who does not explain how or why she drove 300 kilometers to Loose Chippings, murdered her parents, and then drove back—all while under the influence of some combination of drugs so powerful it drove her to murder, but did not affect her driving ability. After this discussion, Söring writes, the pair never spoke about the murders again. The hours of confessions Söring provided police were thus all the result of one conversation in which Elizabeth “described the scene of the crime”, but did not explain how or why she killed her parents.

Why did Söring describe his conversation with Elizabeth this way? Perhaps he was trying to build “room for maneuver” into his innocence story. As we have seen, he claimed at trial that his confessions contained inaccurate descriptions of the crime scene. Later, Söring and his supporters would expand this list of supposed errors, claiming they proved Söring’s confessions were based exclusively on Elizabeth’s recollections, not on Söring’s personal experience. Yet Söring’s confessions contain dozens of statements which are consistent with the crime scene evidence, including the fact that he took off his shoes, washed in the downstairs bathroom, smeared the blood around the floor, cut himself during the fight with the Haysoms, etc.

Söring wants to have it both ways: Everything Söring says about the crime scene which is accurate comes from Elizabeth; everything he says which is inaccurate comes from his clumsy efforts to fill in the gaps in Elizabeth’s story. When asked how he knew so much about the crime scene, Söring says he and Elizabeth spent hours discussing it. When he wants to highlight the mistakes in his confession, he stresses that he and Elizabeth never spoke about the actual events at Loose Chippings, only the crime scene. Heads Söring wins, tails you lose. Söring had learned from his cross-examination by Jim Updike. He subtly amended his initial story to craft one with two escape hatches.

Söring’s descriptions of the Bedford County authorities in Mortal Thoughts are, predictably, sneering: Jim Updike won his cases with “flashy courtroom theatrics…so many of Virginia’s Death Row inmates came from Bedford that no one dared oppose his re-election”. It’s unclear what Söring means here; only three of the 110 people executed in Virginia since 1970 came from Bedford County. Söring’s narrative soon turns inward. He is aware that he must explain the threats to kill himself or turn himself in which Elizabeth had mentioned in her 18 April letter. This is Söring’s version:

My greatest crisis…was witnessing the two sets of siblings from Derek and Nancy Haysom’s previous marriages meet in a hotel room. Their grief and their love for their parents was so deeply felt that I nearly broke down. So much pain, so many tears, and I was the cause! If only I had somehow protected Elizabeth from her monstrous parents, then she would not have felt driven to kill. If only I had not agreed to arrange that ludicrous attempt at an alibi, then she would not have thought she could get away with the murders. If only I had earned Liz’s full trust, then she should have come to me and we could have found some other way. But I had failed, failed her and myself, and failed the Haysoms’ other five offspring who now cried forlornly as they hugged each other in the hotel room. Only my fear for Elizabeth’s life kept my emotions in check.

But I could not kill myself. Even if I left a suicide note claiming responsibility for the murders no one would believe that I killed the Haysoms! I was too much of a “wimp,” as Elizabeth called me at her sentencing hearing in 1987. To save her life I would have to “confess” live and in person; killing myself now would only throw more suspicion on Liz.

Frightened by the possibility of losing her fall-guy through suicide, Elizabeth wrote me a letter which I now consider her absolute masterpiece of manipulation. Only once did she slip and let her real intentions show, when she described my thoughts of killing myself as a “threat” to herself. Otherwise her technique was perfect.

This passage shows Söring developing a technique he would later use frequently: substitute remorse. Söring castigates himself for his fate and expresses remorse for his actions, but those actions are never the murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom. Söring uses substitute remorse to paint himself in a positive light: He claims to have experienced a suicidal “crisis” not because he killed the Haysoms, but because he could have prevented Elizabeth from killing them. Yet even so, he is so loyal to Elizabeth that he keeps his “emotions in check”. Predictably, Elizabeth responds to Söring’s dark night of the soul with a “masterpiece of manipulation”. We can see something else Söring learned from his cross-examination: His alibi was indeed “ludicrous”.

Söring describes the summer of 1985 trip to Europe as heavenly, and, in his account, he and Elizabeth buckled down to study during the fall 1985 semester at UVA: “When Liz and I began the fall semester of 1985 we practically never left each other’s side during the day.” Meanwhile, the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office was facing a crisis: “For six months they had tried to protect the reputation of one of Virginia’s oldest families by focusing on suspects other than Liz, but if [sock and shoe] prints from the crime scene turned out to be hers, their tact and discretion would become very embarrassing”.

During the fateful 6 October 1985 interview, Söring realizes his “feeble attempts” to explain the mileage discrepancy weren’t convincing: “Not only did the miles noted on the rental car bill correspond perfectly to Elizabeth’s murderous round trip to Lynchburg, but I kept blushing when the detectives pointed out that a Jefferson Scholar like me was unlikely to get lost on the drive from Washington to UVA.” In Mortal Thoughts, Söring justifies his refusal to give fingerprints with a paraphrase of his baffling trial testimony. Yet there was a fresh element. Mortal Thoughts shows Söring’s next approach to fixing this leak: He now begins to describes himself and Elizabeth as joined at the hip in October 1985, planning all the details of their flight together, because Elizabeth was growing fearful. The police are onto “us”, he invariably says, and “we” emptied “our” bank accounts and fled the country after devising a “joint” plan.

Söring now comes to the travel diary. He must now explain the passage about being concerned that Bedford County may have been about to “solve” the case based on the fingerprints he had left on a coffee cup during his 6 October 1985 interview. At trial, Updike asked him about this: “[Y]ou later became concerned that they would get your fingerprints off of that cup? A: No I didn’t, I made a joke about it.”

Five years later, doubtless after poring over the transcript of his 1990 testimony a hundred times, Söring had a new explanation:

Elizabeth eventually admitted the truth to me. The passage about my fingerprints had been intended as insurance, in case we were arrested! Because Liz would again be the prime suspect after our escape to Europe, she wanted to ensure that there would be seemingly objective evidence which pointed at me as the killer. My fear of being traced on the run through my fingerprints had given her the idea to include a paragraph about leaving fingerprints on the Bedford police’s coffee mug.

The normal reaction to such a deception would be anger, I suppose, but I only felt guilt. Somehow I must have given Elizabeth reason to doubt me. Somehow she had come to believe that I might let her go to the electric chair—Liz, the love of my life! There had never been any doubt in my mind that I would accept responsibility for the murders.

So I apologised profusely to Elizabeth and assured her that of course I would admit killing her parents if we were caught! As proof of my willingness to “confess” I even agreed to leave the passage about my fingerprints in the diary. But from then on I wrote all the entries, so our journal would be purely factual.

Such was the nature of the folie a deux! For the first time I had absolute proof that Liz’s “p.o.t,’s,” or “perversions of truth,” were not just fictionalised yarns about her past, but that she lied intentionally to create traps in complex schemes affecting both our lives. Yet I did not suddenly recognize her for what she was. Instead I made a grovelling apology for forcing her to scheme against me.

Pure of heart, Jens wallows in remorse for having let his goddess down, while faithless Elizabeth “scheme[s]” against him.

Söring then regales us with the pair’s worldwide adventures (including sizzling sex with Elizabeth), which we’ve already encountered in Chapter 8. Söring describes the London check-fraud scheme in detail, not without a note of pride. Then the two are caught: “That shock was compounded by the trauma of being ingested by the criminal justice machinery. Suddenly I was no longer a person but a thing, a lump of meat thrown into the maws of the meat grinder called law enforcement. I was not Jens Soering but a wrist, handcuffed to another wrist.” He admits he was warned by his English solicitor Keith Barker not to say anything to the police, but this confronts him with a problem: Now that Jens and Elizabeth have been arrested, and the police suspect them of involvement in the Haysom murders, it is time for Jens to “redeem” his “promise” to Elizabeth by confessing to the Haysom murders:

As Elizabeth had explained to me in the hotel fifteen months earlier, her parents deserved it, since they were child- abusers. The drugs made her do it, so the murders were not really her fault. And if I don’t help Liz she’ll fry! If I don’t help her she’ll fry! If I don’t help Liz she’ll fry!

Nothing had changed since the night of the killings. Either I could be the executioner’s accomplice, by telling the police the truth and sending the woman I loved to the electric chair. Or I could be the hero, by “confessing” to the homicides and spending a few years in a German youth prison under the partial immunity my father’s diplomatic status would grant me.

Söring now invokes the Holocaust, which he discussed during at his trial, but adds a new twist:

Even today I am glad I did not become part of the judicial process that would have sent Elizabeth to her death. I still believe the lesson of the Nazi era with which all German children are inculcated, that the worst form of murder is the killing of a citizen by his own government. But my “confession” cannot be retrospectively redeemed by interpreting it as romantic idealism. Sidney Carton understood the consequences of his sacrifice when he took Charles Darnay’s place on the guillotine in Charles Dickens’ A Tale Of Two Cities while I was just a mentally unbalanced and fatally misinformed nineteen year old.

Here is how Söring introduces his London confessions:

For three days, from June 5 to June 7, I told the detectives as little as possible; before I placed my head on that guillotine I wanted to ask my lawyer whether I would in fact be protected by partial diplomatic immunity! But even on June 5, the first day of questioning, I tried to protect Liz from execution by insisting that she had been in Washington when the murders occurred.

He did, as we’ve seen in Chapter 9. But then he told police she was guilty of being an accessory before the fact to capital murder.

This passage shows something else Söring learned at his trial. Jim Updike asked Söring why, if he wanted to protect Elizabeth, he said at the very beginning of his interrogation that he wanted to “chat about Elizabeth’s involvement”, and then revealed that Elizabeth knew of the murder scheme and helped him by planning an alibi. At trial, Söring said that he had successfully “protected” Elizabeth because she had not been executed. In Mortal Thoughts, he must explain why he implicated Elizabeth in a crime which carries a potential life sentence. He does so by careful word choice: He invariably says his aim was to protect Elizabeth from the death penalty. He doesn’t say he wanted to protect her from imprisonment. And he in fact did not do so. Söring’s careful word choice solves one problem by allowing him to claim he indeed protected the love of his life from execution, as he had promised.

However, Söring’s story raises two other problems. One was raised by Updike at trial, in a cross-examination Söring never mentions. Updike asked why Elizabeth would agree to tell Söring, in effect: “I want you to confess to protect me from capital punishment, but you should feel free to implicate me in a crime that has a potential sentence of life in prison.” At trial, Söring said Elizabeth agreed to this plan because it was the only “believable” option. That is, nobody would believe Elizabeth had nothing to do with her parents’ deaths, because of people “knew” she disliked her parents.

Söring’s also clashes with his claimed reason for confessing. Söring says he thought that if he claimed responsibility for the murders, he would be tried in Germany and receive a sentence of five or ten years. Afterward, he and Elizabeth could continue their unique, history-altering love affair. Yet the crime he implicated Elizabeth in, accessory before the fact to capital murder, carries a minimum sentence of twenty years in prison. Söring’s thirst for knowledge also calls into question the other claim he makes in this passage from Mortal Thoughts; namely, that he believed he would be tried in Germany, be sentenced under juvenile law, and receive a sentence of only 5 or 10 years.

Söring never mentioned diplomatic immunity before his testimony in June 1990. Söring claimed he anticipated a light sentence in Germany because he needed a reason why he would confess to a capital crime. It’s hard to imagine a boyfriend—no matter how devoted—agreeing to be “fried” in the electric chair to protect a college crush. Add to this that Söring told detectives that he was “terrified” of being executed; his books are full of grisly descriptions of executions. Söring knew he had to find an explanation for his actions, and he found one: the diplomatic immunity “mistake”.

Here is his current story about diplomatic immunity. In the early hours of 31 March 1985, speaking to Elizabeth as her parents’ blood dried on her arms, Söring had the “brilliant idea” of confessing in her place. Confessing to a double murder in Virginia, a state renowned for its active death chamber, might seem suicidal. However, Söring believed he could escape this grim fate. Because his father was a diplomat, he believed he enjoyed some form of diplomatic immunity. He even had a “blue diplomatic passport”, as he often stresses. His case would be transferred to Germany, the country of his citizenship, and he would be prosecuted there under juvenile law.

There, he would probably receive a punishment of perhaps ten years, and gain release in five. In his 2012 German-language book Nicht Schuldig! (Not Guilty!) he says that during the discussion on the morning of March 31, he and Elizabeth agreed they would likely emerge from prison “at the same time”, and thus be able to continue their relationship. Yet, in Söring’s version, he had made a tragic mistake based on a legal technicality. Söring thought he had diplomatic immunity because his father was a diplomat. However, family members of diplomats only enjoy immunity if the diplomat works at an embassy. An embassy is the office of the ambassador, the boss of the entire diplomatic delegation.

There is only one ambassador to any country, and only one embassy, which is always located in the capital of the host country. Under the embassy are consulates, which may be scattered across a large country to handle more localized issues. Family members of consular officials, unlike embassy staff, do not enjoy any diplomatic immunity. Söring’s assumption was thus incorrect: Only after he had confessed did he come to the horrible realization that he in fact had no diplomatic immunity at all. He had confessed to a double murder based on a mistake!

This is how Söring explains his seemingly suicidal willingness to confess to capital murder. Let’s see how credible it is. We should first note that Söring’s story, as usual, includes a few kernels of truth. There is in fact a distinction between the level of diplomatic immunity afforded to embassy staff as opposed to consular staff. German courts also have the option of sentencing 18-year-olds under the law applying to juvenile offenders. Söring’s story thus has some weak factual support.

However, there are many problems with Söring’s “immunity mistake” story. First of all, it is inconceivable that Söring was in any doubt about the scope of diplomatic immunity he enjoyed. When he advanced this story during his January 2020 Spiegel magazine interview (see Chapter 29), one of the journalists in attendance noted that diplomat’s children are constantly reminded that they have no immunity and that they must always obey the host country’s laws. A serious crime committed by a diplomat or family member could cause an international incident. Indeed, Söring’s own crime did just that.

Handbooks for diplomats’ families, she added, invariably warn family members in no uncertain terms that they must never assume they have immunity and must always obey the law and avoid scandal. As the U.S. State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual states: “Immunity is not a license for misconduct.” Further, even if a member of the diplomatic staff might theoretically enjoy some limited form of immunity, it does not apply to serious, intentional violent crimes. No country would agree to extend diplomatic immunity if it meant diplomats’ families could rape or murder citizens of the host country and escape its justice system.

In cases of serious violent crime, therefore, home countries virtually always waive any possible diplomatic immunity. In 1989, for example, a courier for the Belgian Embassy in Washington, D.C., Rudy van den Borre, murdered two people in Florida. Because he was embassy staff, he might have enjoyed some form of immunity. However, Belgium agreed to waive immunity and allow van den Borre to be tried in Florida, requesting only that the state not seek capital punishment. Van den Borre was duly convicted, and is still in prison. To believe Söring’s immunity story, therefore, one must believe that Söring disregarded the verbal and written warnings from his family, friends, and consular staff, never researched the issue of diplomatic immunity, and never learned of cases where diplomatic immunity is waived for serious crimes.

Yet even if we assume these things, Söring’s story faces other obstacles: His interrogations. During his interview with Ricky Gardner and Chuck Reid on 6 October 1985, Söring made the following comments:

Okay, now the [U.S.] state department has the right to actually deport me for as much as like a speeding ticket, they can do that okay and they keep files on this sort of thing, so that if you do enough things which the state department doesn’t like, they will deport you okay…

Right now, I, I don’t think that y’all think you know I, I, did it [i.e., murdered the Haysoms], just because I’m a foreigner okay. Um. Unfortunately diplomatic immunity is something that you know that is long past, unfortunately, I guess.

These comments leave no doubt that Söring knew precisely how far his diplomatic immunity reached, which was certainly not far enough to protect him from the consequences of murder.

What about his London interrogations? Apart from a few oblique references, Söring does not even mention diplomatic immunity. Further, the detectives, as we’ve seen above, warned Söring, accurately, that he would almost certainly be extradited to the U.S. and face trial in Virginia. Kenneth Beever even tells Söring the chances are at least “ninety percent” that he’ll be extradited to Virginia. Moving forward in 1986, did Söring mention immunity during his interviews with Dr. Bullard and Dr. Hamilton? No. Did he mention immunity during his 30 December 1986 interview with the Bonn prosecutor Bernd König? No.

Before June 1990, there is no evidence, whether from letters, journal entries, testimony, or interrogation records, that Jens Söring believed he might have diplomatic immunity for the Haysom murders. In October 1985, in a conversation about the Haysom murders, he says: “Unfortunately diplomatic immunity is something that you know that is long past, unfortunately, I guess.” Jens Söring first revealed the “immunity mistake” theory only in June 1990, when he needed to explain to a jury why he confessed to murder. They did not believe it.