Chapter 24: The Golden Age of Söring’s Innocence Claims - Martyr or Murderer: Jens Soering, the Media, and the Truth

In February 2018, Söring’s case was featured on the ABC documentary series “20/20”. Jason Flom had convinced ABC to address Söring’s case, and gave them two interviews. The reporter, Elizabeth Vargas, also spoke to Söring, Ricky Gardner, Terry Wright, Ken Beever, and Chuck Reid, among others. We see footage of Martin Sheen introducing a Hollywood screening of Killing for Love to a “dream team of A-list supporters”. Sheen tells them Söring “could not possibly have been at the scene”. Vargas plays the excerpt in which Söring says he might confess to “something he didn’t do”, then claims the “detectives” did not pursue the point. Vargas apparently never asked Wright or Beever about this part of the confessions, since they would of course have informed her that Söring was talking about the post-crime “atrocities”. Falling into an established pattern, Vargas adopts the “he-said, she-said” framing of a battle of accusations from two star-crossed lovers.

Jason Flom, described as a “multi-millionaire music mogul” (Flom is the son of legendary corporate lawyer Joseph Flom, a name partner in what Wikipedia describes as “one of the largest and most profitable law firms in the world”), delivers what can only be called a stream of soundbite-sized misinformation. Söring was questioned for “three or four days” without a lawyer, who would “presumably have told him to shut up”. Barker, of course, had done just that on 5 June 1986, as Söring himself admits. Calling Vargas “Elizabeth,” Flom lectures her on why it’s so hard for juries to believe people might confess falsely.

He then says Söring’s “twisted fantasy” was that he would serve “as little as a few years” in Germany, then come out “as her hero”, and then they would “ride off into the sunset together”. Flom is unaware that on 5 June 1986, Söring delivered Elizabeth up for a crime with a minimum of 20 years in prison, which would seem to complicate the “ride into the sunset” plan. Even the bare mention of the sockprint evokes sarcastic eye rolls from Flom, who asks “How the hell can you convict somebody based on a sockprint?” Flom shows he has internalized Söring’s bitter hatred of Elizabeth, actually referring to her as “the devil”.

Amy Lemley, the journalist who had profiled Elizabeth in 1990, now shows she has taken up Söring’s cause, arguing that the cleanliness of the rental car after such a bloody crime shows that there “has to have been another car” used in the crime. Lemley does not know that the rental car was first tested for blood 87 days after the murders. Lemley’s comment takes us, obviously, to Tony Buchanan, who tells his story. Ricky Gardner gets his obligatory handful of soundbites. He says Buchanan has “no credibility”, especially since he claims he remained unaware of a case that was “front page news every day”. Professor McClintock claims the DNA shows “at least one to two unidentified males” at the crime scene. Flom says what must have happened is Elizabeth took two men to the house, and things took a “very very bad turn”.

To 20/20’s credit, they hired an independent expert, Dan Krane, who states that the DNA tests yielded “no affirmative indication of anybody but the victims” at the crime scene, and that all the male DNA could have come from Derek Haysom. Flom is having none of it: “We know two guys did it. And unless they’ve died since then, they’re out there”. Ricky Gardner, asked whether he has any doubts about Söring’s guilt, says no. Jens, he says, “learnt the game of manipulation from a very good instructor, Elizabeth Haysom, and now he’s manipulated individuals into thinking that he is innocent.”

Söring prepared his own “review” of this episode in a document hosted on an obscure website whose web address begins “n.b5z.net”. During the program, Chuck Reid casually mentions that the “mug” Söring used during the October 1985 interview with police was actually a Styrofoam cup. Söring find this important:

What was new in the 20/20 program was that Chuck Reid said that I did NOT use a coffee mug during the Bedford interview, but a Styrofoam cup. I myself had forgotten this. This is significant because, if I had been involved in the writing of this passage in the travel diary, I would have corrected Elizabeth’s error. At the time Elizabeth started writing the travel diary, only a few weeks had passed since the interrogation in Bedford. So at THAT time, I would certainly have remembered that I used a Styrofoam cup, not a coffee mug.

Thus the fact that this passage in the diary refers to the wrong kind of drinking container shows that Elizabeth cooked this up on her own. I was NOT worried about a coffee mug; if I HAD been, I would have referred (correctly) to a Styrofoam cup!

Söring’s letters to his supporters are filled with this sort of minute, convoluted parsing of the evidence.

Söring goes on to list the subjects he thought should have gotten more attention, including “sexual abuse as motive”, Sweeney’s bias, and Elizabeth’s “confession” (“I got off on it.”). Overall, though, Söring was happy with the segment; true crime shows had “ALWAYS” treated him badly in the past, but 20/20 made a “FAIR” show about him. Söring ends with a typical statement of substitute remorse: “There is one thing that I would like to say here which I was not able to say in the 20/20 program: I am so very sorry for lying to the Haysom family and to the police in 1985/86. The Haysom family deserved to know the truth about what happened to their loved ones, and I kept that truth from them in 1985/86.” Söring realizes people want to see him show remorse, so he does so, but substitutes some other action for the Haysom murders.

By 2019, the campaign to secure Söring’s release had gained enormous momentum. He had the public support of John Grisham, Martin Sheen and Jason Flom, a mover and shaker in the entertainment industry. Christian Wulff, the former federal President of Germany, had flown to Virginia in 2017 to personally plead Söring’s case before the Virginia Parole Board. Söring now also had two experts and four current and former law enforcement officers pleading his cause. Regular letter-writing campaigns flooded Virginia Governor Ralph Northam with mail from all over the globe in support of releasing Söring from prison. Söring had also convinced several American journalists, including veteran Virginia journalist Bill Sizemore (who described Söring as a “friend”), Laura Vozzella of the Washington Post, and Sandy Hausman of Charlottesville Public Radio. These journalists produced a regular stream of news stories advancing Söring’s arguments. Vozzella’s participation was of special importance, as the Washington Post was a newspaper with an august reputation, national reach, and a wide readership among political elites.

Söring’s case was featured on two podcasts. Jason Flom’s Wrongful Conviction interviewed Söring, Chip Harding, and John Grisham on 5 February 2019 for a 67-minute episode. Söring’s case was also featured on Amanda Knox’s The Truth About True Crime. Knox, an American college student, had gained worldwide notoriety after being convicted of the 2007 murder of British exchange student Meredith Kercher in Perugia, Italy. The case made international headlines; Knox’s behavior and background were scrutinized by a scandal-hungry media. The case against Knox fell apart and she was exonerated by the Italian Supreme court in 2015. After her return to the U.S., Knox parlayed her fame into a series of media appearances and eventually a podcast series about wrongful convictions. Her eight-part series on Söring’s conviction was broadcast in mid-2019. As if that were not enough, a pair of Charlottesville journalists named Courteney Stuart and Rachel Ryan started yet another podcast on the case called Small Town, Big Crime, whose premier episode was released on December 17, 2019.

Flom’s and Knox’s podcasts are entirely partisan, operating on the presumption not only that Söring was wrongly convicted, but that this fact has been proven, and Söring’s continued incarceration is an injustice. The podcasts feature long interviews with Söring from prison in which Söring, his presentation by now well-rehearsed, states his case. For Flom’s podcast, Söring calls into a studio to chat with Chip Harding and John Grisham, which must have been a heady experience. Flom calls Söring “one of the most remarkable people I know” and a “brilliant young scholar”, again showing Söring’s ability to evoke warm partisan feelings from journalists and activists. Söring’s lays out his life history and his account of the crime, which is never questioned by any of the guests. In fact, Flom steps in to provide further justifications and explanations for Söring, saying Söring acted out of “twisted nobility” in volunteering to confess to Elizabeth.

Söring compares himself to Sidney Carton from Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities, who agrees to be executed to protect his lover’s French husband. Söring goes even farther:

It’s a bit like at the end of the movie Titanic, right, where Leonardo DiCaprio lifts Kate Winslet onto that door to save her life and then he sort of sinks away and gives his life for her. Except I didn’t lift Kate Winslet onto that door, I lifted Sharon Stone from Basic Instinct.

In the 1992 erotic thriller Basic Instinct, Sharon Stone plays a psychopathic crime novelist who frames an innocent woman for her crimes.

Flom ratchets the attack on Elizabeth Haysom up a notch: “It’s such a strange fate that you happen to have been with only one woman and she turned out to be the devil”. Söring, of all people, steps in to call Flom’s remark “oversimplified”, noting that Elizabeth was later diagnosed with a “very severe personality disorder”. Of course, Söring then mentions “evidence” that “her mother had sexually abused her with the knowledge and cooperation of her father,” although he never specifies what that evidence was. The rest of the podcast goes over familiar ground: The flight from the law after the couple decides the police are “on to them”, Söring’s confessions, which Flom invariably labels “false”, Elizabeth’s treachery, Judge Sweeney’s friendship with the Haysom family, the new DNA evidence, etc.

Flom is bursting with breathless exaggerations. Flom claims Söring was unable to get “almost anything right” in his “false” confessions because he “wasn’t there”. Referring to Tony Buchanan’s “car in the woods” story, Flom says: “You would think this alone would be enough to send Jens home.” He refers to “overwhelming evidence of [Söring’s] innocence”. He notes that Germany’s former President Christian Wulff had personally flown to Virginia to plead for Söring and that Angela Merkel had raised the case with Barack Obama “on several occasions”: “[Y]ou have one of our most important allies in the word who have made it a national priority at the highest levels to extricate Jens from the impossible situation and bring him back to his own country.”

Harding and Grisham both engage in a rhetorical maneuver in which they first identify a problem in proven wrongful convictions—“junk science” expert testimony, tunnel-vision on the part of detectives, false confessions—and then immediately pivot to discussing Söring’s case. This creates an implied syllogism:

1. These flaws caused a wrongful conviction in Case X.

2. These flaws also occurred in the prosecution of Jens Söring.

3. Therefore, Jens Söring’s conviction must also be wrongful.

Söring employs this technique consistently in his post-release interviews. Grisham ends his part in the interview by calling Söring’s case one of the “top three” innocence stories and jokes that “I have this kind of a running gag [with Jens] that one day soon we’re going to be drinking a beer together in Munich at the Oktoberfest”. Jason Flom reports that he and Söring share the same gag.

2019 was the high point of Jens Söring’s transatlantic media campaign. For years, Söring had had to personally convince reporters that his trial was unfair in long letters or interviews. Yet he was only one of thousands of American prison inmates who pelted journalists with innocence claims. Now, in 2019, the “system” he had his supporters created had its own momentum. Instead of Jens Söring reaching out to reporters, John Grisham or Jason Flom would do so, and what reporter wouldn’t take a call from John Grisham or the music producer who had discovered Katy Perry? Journalists who might have doubted Söring’s claims before now had the imprimatur of four law enforcement officials and John Grisham, who was still a licensed Mississippi attorney, albeit on “inactive” status. News stories on both sides of the Atlantic began to discreetly drop the words “alleged” or “claims” from their stories, concluding that arguments which had convinced people such as Chip Harding and John Grisham must be well-founded. Journalists could simply “ride along” on the credibility of these men. Andy Griffiths was also a member of the team now. Griffiths, an English expert on interrogation techniques, who composed a report declaring Söring’s confessions to be unreliable.

Two incidents confirm the reach of Söring’s support at this time. From 2014 to 2018, Virginia’s governor was Terry McAuliffe. McAuliffe, a moderate Democrat with a business background and a network of 5,000 friends and supporters from business and politics, had long been a key player in American politics, “bundling” together massive cash donations for Democratic politicians. During the Clinton presidency alone, he raised $275 million for various political and social causes. During his tenure as Virginia Governor, McAuliffe pardoned 227 people, three times as many as his Republican predecessor Bob McDonnell. However, McAuliffe rejected Jens Söring’s pardon application, which, as a December 15, 2017 article by Sandy Hausman for Virginia Public Radio reports, “includes 87 exhibits and 1,200 pages of information based on DNA analysis and hours of study by legal and criminal experts and the head of the Innocence Project at the University of Richmond.” On that day, 15 December, McAuliffe confirmed rumors which had previously circulated that he would not act on Söring’s pardon application before leaving office on 13 January 2018.

Söring, enraged by McAuliffe’s decision, was out for vengeance. Throughout 2017, rumors had been circulating that McAuliffe intended to run for President in 2020. Söring hit upon an idea. He had found out that it didn’t cost much to register Internet domain names. By now, Söring had a fair sum of money in his prison account, thanks to his supporters. Söring devised a way to strike back at McAuliffe. Söring had his outside surrogates reach out to an Internet-savvy supporter named Becker*. Söring asked Becker to begin registering every possible variation of a “McAuliffe for President” domain in the name of Jens Söring. The proposals included “RealTerryMcAuliffe”, “Terry4President”, “OfficialTerryMcAuliffe”, “McAuliffe4Pres2020”, “McAuliffe4Potus” and every other imaginable variation, with both the “.com” and “.org” suffixes. Becker managed to buy up 16 domain names in an initial round. The plan was that when anyone clicked on these names, they would see a message from Jens Söring complaining that McAuliffe had let an innocent man languish in prison merely to advance his Presidential ambitions. The website would then link to favorable news articles about Söring’s case.

News of Söring’s plan began circulating among a wider set of Söring’s circle of supporters than the ones involved in the plan. The reaction was dismay. First of all, the supporters found out that owing to Internet registration rules, it would soon become clear that Söring and members of the Friends of Jens were behind the action. Supporters who had volunteered their own email addresses would be identified. Further, Söring seemed not to understand the potential ramifications of his scheme. The fact that a foreign double-murderer serving a life sentence had tried to interfere with an American Presidential election would hardly burnish Söring’s reputation. Indeed, it could furnish a convenient reason for denying Söring’s pardon application altogether. In late December 2017, therefore, Söring’s supporters reversed course and relinquished the domain names. Söring sent out an angry email to his supporters to protest the abandonment of the scheme, but could hardly prevent them from taking action to protect themselves and, as they saw it, Jens’ pardon chances.

Söring’s abortive plot to interfere with the 2020 Presidential election shows his tendency to overreact when angry, frustrated, or frightened. Previous examples include his bursting into Elizabeth’s room and talking of blowing her parents’ heads off, ignoring his lawyers’ advice and confessing, showing the detectives the wound on his hands, making various catty remarks during his trial testimony, insulting his own family throughout 2019. The McAuliffe scheme also shows a sense of entitlement. In his communications to supporters—especially from 2016 on—Söring expressed mounting rage at the refusal of Virginia governors and decision-makers to release him, and contempt for what he saw as the inadequate support he received from the German government. In his view, the 2016 DNA findings alone had proven his innocence, and he was entitled to immediate release. He interpreted every delay and negative decision as not just an injustice, but a personal insult.

On 9 January 2016, for example, Söring sent a fiery letter to Dr. Christoph Heusgen, a top-level German diplomat responsible for coordinating foreign and security policy for German Chancellor Angela Merkel. Noting that he and Heusgen had usually exchanged Christmas cards, Söring remarked he had not sent one this year because he had just received what was “effectively a death sentence” from McAuliffe, who had recently declined one of Söring’s recurring prisoner-transfer requests. Söring then complained that despite being promised that the German Ambassador to the U.S., Peter Wittig, would try to meet with McAuliffe to discuss Söring’s case, Wittig had not done so for “SEVEN MONTHS!” It was Wittig’s “task”, Söring insisted, to foster enough “courage” in McAuliffe to induce the governor to approve Söring’s transfer request.

The German Embassy and the German federal government, Söring charged, had broken their promises to him and his lawyers. Despite their promises, they had “NOT” pressured McAuliffe. As a result, McAuliffe thought: “This Söring’s just some jailbird with a couple of lawyers, he’s nobody important, there won’t be any political or international consequences if I deny his request.” The German government, Söring insisted, should have hinted to Virginia that there might be trade or tourism consequences to denying Söring’s request. Söring ended on a bitter note, declaring that he was sure Heusgen wouldn’t do anything. After all, Söring wrote, the German government had the task of integrating 1.1 million newly arrived refugees. Their interests were more important, as the women of Cologne knew. Söring here refers to the New Years’ Eve 2016, during which thousands of recent immigrants committed sexual assaults against female revelers.

Another marker of Söring’s growing influence was Söring’s telephone conversation with Virginia’s Democratic Lieutenant Governor Ralph Northam, who was in the middle of an ultimately successful candidacy to become the Governor of Virginia. The phone call was arranged by Jason Flom. Flom was a generous donor to Democratic politicians, so if Flom wanted a meeting, he got it. On August 10, 2017, Flom met with Northam in Northam’s office. Flom handed Northam a check, and talked to him about Jens Söring. Flom then put through a pre-arranged call from Söring to Northam.

The two chatted for about ten minutes. Northam told Söring he had been stationed in Landstuhl, Germany during his military service, and that his daughter had been born there. Northam also said he planned to visit Germany as Governor, and looked forward to meeting Söring there. Söring promised he would ask the Parole Board to delay any decision on his case until after the upcoming election, so that Northam’s political opponents could not use the decision as a campaign issue. If there is another case in American history of a candidate for governor chatting amiably with a convicted murderer whose pardon application would soon be pending before him, I’m not aware of it.

Yet Northam was not the only high-ranking politician to take an interest in Söring’s case. Christian Wulff, a member of Germany’s center-right CDU political party, had been elected President of Germany in 2010, an office he held for two years. The President of Germany is a less powerful position than Chancellor, but is not a mere figurehead: The President can veto laws if he or she believes them unconstitutional. Wulff left office before his term ended because of a scandal involving Wulff giving inaccurate answers to formal questions about his financial ties to a businessman named Egon Geerkens.

Wulff nevertheless remained a prominent figure in German law and politics. On March 27, 2017, Wulff wrote a letter to Governor Northam on Söring’s behalf. Wulff informed Northam that he, like many people in Germany, were “deeply moved” by Söring’s situation:

For many people in Germany, but also in the United States of America and Virginia, there is now considerable doubt as to Söring’s guilt who, himself, has claimed his innocence since the trial began. Not least the documentary “The Promise” [The original title of Killing for Love], which has been watched by a broad spectrum of people also recently here in Germany has meant that many are now asking themselves if sufficient weight was given to the presumption of innocence in Söring’s original trial…

In letters and through his supporters, I have, irrespective of the question of guilt, experienced Mr. Söring in recent years as a man displaying a great degree of human and intellectual maturity. To my mind, the conditions for his reintegration into German society are excellent. Should he be released, I have offered to serve as his personal mentor and, for a time, to cover his living costs…

It is intended to make clear to you the great support Jens Söring enjoys in Germany and in my person.

Yet Wulff was prepared to go much further on Söring’s behalf: In October, he flew to Virginia to make a statement before the Virginia Parole Board during a hearing on Jens Söring’s thirteenth parole/pardon application, which took place on 10 October 2017.