Chapter 27: Crisis Mode Behind the Scenes - Martyr or Murderer: Jens Soering, the Media, and the Truth

— Part Three: The Triumph of Time and Truth —

After Killing for Love was released, Söring had become convinced that his release was only a matter of time. He had definite plans for what would happen afterward: He would return to Germany a conquering hero, brandishing a gubernatorial pardon. He would exploit his celebrity status by writing a book, selling the rights to his life story, and giving prime-time interviews. Journalists, politicians, and activists would flock to his side. They would undoubtedly be able to arrange some form of non-demanding employment, perhaps as a speaker for a human-rights organization.

Söring would, however, make his primary living as a writer. Söring had been preparing his release for years, sending outside supporters outlines of various kinds of speeches he would give on subjects such as criminal-justice reform, survival in prison, the flawed American legal system, and what had gone wrong in his case. Söring planned to speak from the perspective of an innocent man who had been freed and pardoned by remorseful Virginia officials. That had not happened, of course. Yet Virginia’s insistence on Söring’s guilt could be seen as a product of officials’ unwillingness to admit their mistakes.

My article was a harder nut to crack. I had no involvement in the case. Further, I was an experienced criminal-defense lawyer who had filed and won habeas corpus appeals on behalf of death row inmates. Nor was I ideologically suspect: I had never been a prosecutor and had critiqued shortcomings in the American criminal-justice system—including restrictive appeals rules, racial discrimination, poor defense counsel, and prosecutorial overreach—in numerous scholarly articles and reports for advocacy organizations. Further, I openly welcomed Söring and Haysom’s release from prison, although I believe Haysom should have been released long before Söring. I oppose capital punishment and life without parole. To me, 33 years in prison was tough but fair sentence for Söring’s crime. On paper, in real life, I was no knee-jerk defender of American courts, and there seemed no reason for me to oppose Söring’s narrative except for the fact that I found it unpersuasive.

But there had to be some sort of catch. Members of Team Söring on both sides of the Atlantic began a frantic search to figure out who “Andrew Hammel” was and what his motivations might be. In the meantime, however, someone would need to respond to my article. Virginia, Sheriff Harding had my piece translated into English began a response to be translated into German. On the other side of the Atlantic, the “Friends of Jens” worked on their own response. No member of Team Söring reached out to ask me about my background, why I had written the piece, or where I had obtained my information. As I would later learn, Team Söring had decided not to engage with me or any other critics in any way. This attitude persists to this very day: Söring refuses to mention me by name and has instructed his supporters to never engage with me in any way, advice most of them have followed. Söring’s time in America had clearly taught him what the “Streisand Effect” was.

I was satisfied by the piece and the positive reactions it provoked. A FAZ editor highlighted it in his daily memo to readers, noting that I had uncovered “journalistic errors” in German coverage of the case. In the following months, many people who had private doubts about Söring’s claims thanked me for going public. I was expecting to be inundated with hate mail by Söring’s supporters, but aside from a few emails and tweets, very little arrived.

Dozens of people reached out to me privately to request more information. The tone of these emails was not so much aggressive as bewildered and dismayed: These people had followed Söring’s case for years thought they knew everything there was to know. The new facts and arguments in my piece shocked and disoriented them. Many simply could not believe that so much incriminating evidence existed. Why had no news articles even mentioned these facts? Could I prove what I had claimed? I was happy to share the (non-confidential sources) I had and even translated some documents into German on my blog, which saw a sharp spike in site views since Söring’s release and my article.

On 17 December 2019, Söring Virginia Public Radio published a revealing “exit interview” with Söring by Sandy Hausman, a sympathetic journalist. Söring tells Hausman he will be staying in German with a “host family” who had already found a psychiatrist to treat him for post-traumatic stress disorder. He notes with evident relish that there is “huge” press interest in his case in Germany, and that his arrival will be attended by “dozens” of people. Frankfurt Airport has even set up a “conference room” for him. When asked whether he has any relatives left in Germany, Söring insults his father and brother, saying he entrusted an inheritance from his maternal grandmother to them, but they decided the money “was theirs now, and they cut me off”. Söring says he was “stupid enough to trust my own father” and has “no desire to have any contact with those people unless they bring me the money back”.

Söring then unveils Part 1 of his two-part explanation for why he was denied a pardon: Politics. If Virginia had granted Söring a pardon, the victims’ families would have been on TV, complaining. It would also have been a “slap in the face” to the Bedford County Sheriff’s Department, who would also denounce the pardon, trying to save what Söring calls the “tattered remnants of their honor”. Söring then takes aim at Ricky Gardner, registering his amazement at the fact that Gardner “still denies” that the FBI profile exists, and that Stan Lapekas had accused Ricky Gardner of lying on this point: “That’s one cop publicly saying that another cop lied. That’s so damn rare.” Söring concedes that nobody has ever located the FBI profile, but insists that it exists and that it was intentionally suppressed by Gardner and Jim Updike, who “unfortunately” is a Bedford County judge.

Hausman asks some anodyne questions about the case (How did you learn about the crime scene? How could Elizabeth have killed her parents?), which Söring answers with practiced ease. He then turns to the future, telling Hausman he already has an “agent for public speaking” in Germany. His agent has told him he has already received “book offers” and there’s an interest in “made for TV movies”. People want “stories of resilience, coming through struggle”. People in Germany, unlike in the U.S., “understand DNA”, so they understand what an “enormous injustice” Söring’s case was.

Yet Söring assures listeners his experience of the U.S. hasn’t soured him on the country; he likes Americans in general, and only has problems with the people who put him in prison (including Elizabeth Haysom, a Canadian). Söring now reveals Part 2 of his explanation for not being pardoned: Virginia wanted to save money. If his innocence had been recognized, Söring would have been entitled to $1.4 million in compensation. The Virginia Assembly has to approve such payments, though, and it would have caused a “firestorm” if the Assembly voted to give so much money to a “foreigner”. Söring has never provided any evidence to support these claims. He still repeats them in speeches and media appearances.

I started working on other projects, assuming Söring would ultimately decide to follow Elizabeth’s path and live out the rest of his life in anonymity. This assumption was wrong: Söring was still adamant about proving his innocence, and his supporters regarded my article as a grave threat. Behind the scenes, their counterattack was well underway. In the following months, I would be unwillingly transformed into the most prominent skeptic of Jens Söring’s innocence claims in Germany. I was the only German-speaking journalist who had the background and knowledge of the case required to counter Söring’s claims—and who was willing to publicly do so under his own name. I had never met Söring or even so much as exchanged an email with him, but he and I were now locked in an unwilling embrace, like two wrestlers unable to throw each other out of the ring.

In mid-December 2019, Team Söring—after briefly contemplating legal action against the newspaper—unleashed its response to my article. It took the form of two scorching letters to the editor of the FAZ: a four-page letter from the Friends of Jens, and a nine-page letter from none other than Chip Harding, who had gone to the trouble of having his response translated into German. My editor sent me an urgent email: The letters had broadly attacked my character and knowledge of the case, and alleged that I had made grave errors of omission and commission in my November piece. The newspaper saw these letters as a significant challenge to its reputation, and requested a public response from me. I was eager to oblige, but knew I would now need full access to Terry Wright’s report to refute the claims. In the next chapter I will describe how I got that access, convinced Terry Wright to publish his report online, and wrote one of the longest articles in the history of the FAZ.

I sent Holdsworth an email: Chip Harding and the “Friends of Jens” had wheeled out the big guns, and I needed to defend my work. Instead of Terry Wright indirectly feeding me documents and pieces of information, I needed to read his report. I told Holdsworth I understood Wright’s reluctance to join the media circus, and would treat the report as confidential, using it only to rebut Team Söring’s talking points. I finally received a copy in mid-December. The document was called “A True Report on the Facts of the Investigation of the Murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom”. In the preface, Terry Wright described how he had gone back over the case after hearing of Söring’s DNA-based innocence claims in 2016. He also confirmed that he had consulted Ken Beever at every stage, and that Ken Beever validated everything Wright had said. Terry Wright’s preferred name for the report was the “Detectives’ Report” because it was joint effort, but the moniker “Wright Report” had stuck.

The Wright Report is a 454-page pdf document. Wright notes that the Report was originally conceived as a letter to Virginia Governor Ralph Northam, to help Northam decide whether to pardon Söring. Wright tells Northam that, as a British police officer, he would never presume to tell an American state governor what decision he should make in such a case. However, as someone who knew Söring, had taken Söring’s confessions, and had been deeply involved in his case, Wright believed he had valuable insights. He wrote:

The constitutions of the Commonwealth of Virginia and the United States of America recognise the importance of jury trials as being fundamental to preserving democracy. I hope that your determination of this petition will be made in the context of the history of this fundamental right balanced with the need to apply clemency where an injustice has been done.

You are being asked to reverse a trial court’s judgement. A very serious decision to make, and one that should not be taken lightly… Presumably, your final determination on this petition will be based upon the information put before you by the parties concerned. It is essential that you have the true facts without any falsifications, omissions or misrepresentations…

The writing of this report was prompted by the petition made by Soering. It should be noted that Ken Beever and I do not represent Elizabeth Roxanne Haysom in any way…

The facts of the case need to be revisited and studied carefully looking for any confirmation or inconsistencies in what Haysom and Soering said in 1986, and in what Soering now says in his current version of events. The Soering petition should be determined according to the facts and without regard to the likely consequences.

I said at the beginning of this introduction that this report is not about whether or not Soering is released. What it is about, is making sure that you have the true facts presented to you, so that a just decision can be made.

I have spoken to Terry Wright for hours, and exchanged many emails with him. I have never had any reason to doubt he wrote his report for the reasons he cites.

Within Team Söring, emails about me ricocheted back and forth. Who was I? Where had I gotten all this information? Why was I attacking Jens Söring? How had I found out the precise day when the Virginia Parole Board would release him? In early December, Söring himself was going through the complex bureaucratic process of deportation, so he could only watch from the sidelines.

Karin Steinberger, though, was working behind the scenes. She never responded to my critique of her film. Following Jens’ instructions, she has never responded to any of my private or public messages, or acknowledged by existence in any way. Behind the scenes, however, she was deeply involved in the response to my article. As the “Friends of Jens” prepared their response, Steinberger read drafts and commented on them extensively. At one point, she told the “Friends” that she expected everyone to delete the emails about this process once the letter was finished. Presumably she felt that her reputation as a journalist might suffer if it came out that she was secretly collaborating with Jens Söring’s supporters. Like Söring and so many other of his supporters, Steinberger responded to my critiques not with open debate, but behind-the-scenes maneuvers. That pattern continues to this day.