Chapter 6: Did We Get Away with It? - Martyr or Murderer: Jens Soering, the Media, and the Truth

Jens and Elizabeth drove home from Washington, D.C. to Charlottesville on 31 March 1985. They resumed classes at UVA. After the Haysoms were found dead, Jens and Elizabeth expected to be arrested at any minute. Time went on without any signs they were under suspicion, and the fear abated. During her 1987 trial, Elizabeth recalled what was going through her mind at this point:

To be truthful, my first feelings were to save Jens, save myself from the situation. I didn’t think about going to the authorities for a while. I was stunned by the situation, it was so huge, so overwhelming, so definite, so final, so extraordinary. I mean Jens is a wimp, you can’t imagine him doing something like that, it’s extraordinary…

It was pathetic, my need of this person, my just total obsession and need for him. It was like a physical addiction, it overruled everything, it overruled all values, all concerns.

I would have done anything for him and I did do everything for him. I betrayed everything, I betrayed my family, I betrayed my friends, I betrayed my parents. And I sold my soul for him really because of this extraordinary need for him. And it sounds very peculiar, but after he killed my parents I needed him more…

My parents, for all the atrocious things I have said about them in my letters and all the resentments and frustrations that I had, they were my whole life, they were the center of my life. I made that comment about my mother said if anything ever happened to them that I would become a worthless adventurer; I recognized that. They were everything to me, I needed them desperately.

And after they were gone, I only had Jens, or I thought I only had Jens. I didn’t feel then that I could turn, I had no one to turn to other than Jens.

Along with this utter dependency, Elizabeth also noted that Jens had become more confident, assertive, and even controlling. Jens now had to worry that Elizabeth might “crack” and reveal what had happened. This fear became acute as the family converged on Lynchburg for the funeral of the Haysoms, which took place on 7 April 1985. Would Elizabeth be able to lie to her own close relatives for days on end? Elizabeth testified about the conflicting emotions she felt as she prepared to bury her parents:

The nature of our relationship changed a great deal and a number of things happened. One of the first things that happened is that he—one of the obvious things that happened was he was no longer impotent. He also became obsessive and very jealous of me and suspicious of me to some extent.

There was a problem because when my family came for the funeral, it was vital, it was absolutely vital for me to spend time with my family. It was the first time—when they came to the funeral, it was the first time I realized the full scope of what had happened, the implication for all their lives, not just my life, their lives as well, their children, the grandchildren that my father never saw. And I needed to spend some time with them.

And Jens, he was very nervous and suspicious of me spending time with them. And he made verbal threats about different things that he would do if I didn’t spend more time with him, and it became a source of contention between myself and my brothers and my sisters.

Elizabeth, Jens, and Elizabeth’s friend and roommate Christine Kim returned to Lynchburg to prepare for the Haysoms’ funeral. Elizabeth testified in 1987 that Jens went along because he “didn’t trust me out of his sight”. He also issued threats if she didn’t limit the time she was spending with her family and spend more time with him:

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.

During her first interview with Bedford County Sheriff’s investigators Ricky Gardner and Chuck Reid on April 8, 1985, Elizabeth had revealed she had a boyfriend named Jens Söring. Söring, Elizabeth testified in 1987, was “immediately furious about that because they had no idea that I had a boyfriend.”

Elizabeth’s conflicted state of mind comes through in a letter she wrote to him on the 18th of April. She starts by apologizing for “snapping at you last night and for being a dragon all of yesterday”. She then complains about his jealous reaction to her speaking to other men but adds: “Relax a little; I don’t see you as my jailer yet… Now you are probably fuming or contorting yourself over I don’t see you as my jailer yet. Well I don’t, but others do. I don’t care for their opinions, but they may have a point.” Again, she mentions Jens’ suicide threats:

You threatened to turn yourself in, to commit suicide. When we returned you placed this incredibly heavy responsibility of your life in my hands. I believe we’ll always be together; however, such statements as don’t worry, I’ll never do anything stupid because I’ll always love you don’t relieve the pressure, they add to it. And although I’m not sure you don’t mean it to be an ultimatum or threat, it is.

This passage raises a question which has bedeviled Söring for decades: Why, if he were innocent, would be threatening to commit suicide or “turn himself in”? The letter then becomes even more incriminating (emphasis added):

The death of my parents released me from that position [of subservience to them]. I was free to choose to whom I give my love. That free choice was essential because I gave it willingly. We both know, or at least you should, that I would have given it to you but you made the decision for me. I was truly appalled when you said ‘I didn’t do this for your brothers to take you away’. I thought we did it so that I could be free.

Elizabeth also mentions Söring’s demands for money after the killing, and his assumption that Elizabeth would shortly be receiving a large inheritance:

Never again demand money from me. To say to me I want 200 out of you tomorrow morning is to behave like a bastard. You only needed to say, at least to provide me with the thrill of giving you money unasked for as a token of our unity, was I am really short of cash, or could you loan me a couple of dollars. For you to sit there and say have you got the money and not to say thank you or anything, only to get like it was like the collection of taxes or something, those are the words of bastard. Remember that it is money I have sort of earned.

Also—yes there is more—don’t you ever assume, verbally to me anyway, that half of my father’s estate is yours. If you’re so caught up in making money out of my family you better reconsider. I will give you everything I get whether you force me to or not. The freedom to choose what I do with it, with my presents or even my life and possessions, with whom I spend my time, is all that I cherish. Do you have any understanding as to what I am saying?

Jens Söring carried this letter, like many other documents, across the world with him. Elizabeth would later claim Söring kept this letter as a form of blackmail, since it implicated her in the plot to kill her parents. Yet it also implicates Söring, as it shows him threatening to kill himself or go to the police, confessing “I did it,” asking her for large sums of money, and nagging her about how much she will inherit.

As the emotional turmoil of the funeral receded, Jens and Elizabeth resumed their relationship under outwardly normal circumstances. The spring semester at the University of Virginia ended with final exams in mid-May 1985. At that time, Elizabeth had been interviewed twice, but there were no indications the police suspected her or Jens. They did not have enough evidence to executed a search or arrest warrant against anyone. No restrictions were put on their movements.

After the semester ended, Elizabeth borrowed some money from the Massies and from a cousin, and cashed a cashier’s check she had found in her father’s papers. She first flew from Lynchburg to Detroit to spend a week with Jens and his family, which seemed to go well. She then visited some cousins in New York State. She then flew to Europe, where she spent a month with Jens before they both returned separately. They both returned to UVA and attended summer school.

During this time, Elizabeth testified in 1987, Jens had made it clear that she must not tell anyone about what had happened, and that if she did, “he would say that if he went down I would go down with him”. His mood swiveled from fear to a sort of perverse pride:

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.

Söring was reassured by the obvious lack of progress in the case. However, matters soon took a troubling turn. In late September of 1985, Bedford County knew that both Elizabeth and Jens were back in Charlottesville and waiting for the winter semester at UVA to start. Gardner asked Elizabeth, who had earlier volunteered her fingerprints, to also authorize a blood sample (the blood-typing results from the crime scene had only arrived in mid-August) and a footprint. She did so on 26 September 1985 at the UVA campus police station.

After Elizabeth had given these forensic samples, Gardner and Reid repeatedly called her and asked her to convince her boyfriend Jens to do the same. In her 1987 trial Elizabeth explained her reaction to these calls:

[Elizabeth]: It was sort of end of September, October [1985]. It was between when I gave my blood and fingerprints and footprints to Officer Reid and Gardner. I—at that stage the guilt was weighing very heavily on me and in my sort of odd way I was trying to help them to go and interview Jens.

I, for instance, I knew Jens was at my apartment when they wanted him and I tried to push them in the right direction because they were trying to get him at his place. And so I told one of the other officers he always lives with me, he doesn’t live at his apartment really. And they eventually got in touch with him there.

And during this period when—and they said to me, why won’t Jens have his fingerprints and all that stuff done. I said I don’t know, but I wish you would ask him instead of asking me. Because they always came to me about it instead of—they never went to him.

Eventually, Jens Söring agreed to drive from Charlottesville, Virginia—a drive of about 80 minutes—to speak to Ricky Gardner and Chuck Reid. The fateful interview happened on 6 October 1985. One week later, Jens Söring would flee the USA.