Chapter 7: An Awkward Interview and Sudden Flight - Martyr or Murderer: Jens Soering, the Media, and the Truth

Shortly after the fall semester at UVA had begun again, Jens Söring drove from Charlottesville to Bedford County, Virginia to speak to Ricky Gardner and Chuck Reid. The interview took place on Sunday, October 6, 1985. It was recorded, and a transcript of the interview was entered into evidence at Söring’s 1990 trial. The interview started out with the basics. Söring gave the detectives his passport so they could take down his name (“That’s me in all my glorious beauty!”).

Söring told them he had lived in the USA for seven years, six of them in Atlanta and now one in Charlottesville. He was majoring in “Chinese and Commerce”. Jens had met Elizabeth in autumn of 1984, having been introduced by Christine Tan, whom Söring had unsuccessfully asked for a date. Elizabeth and Söring started dating. He met her mother and (half-)brother Julian once in 1984, then lunched with Elizabeth, Derek, and Nancy once in 1985. Söring had heard from Christine that the Haysoms were “pretty wealthy” and had connections in high social circles in England, but that was basically all he knew about them.

The detectives then questioned Söring about the rental car and the weekend in Washington. Söring seems somewhat startled by the fact that the detectives know the couple rented the car at precisely 1:18 pm on Friday, March 29 and returned it at 3:18 on March 31. Söring claimed not to know when the couple checked into the hotel, saying it was a “long time ago”. Reid retorts: “That’s the reason we wanted to talk to you a few months ago. It would have been a whole lot easier to remember these things.”

Söring then told detectives that he and Elizabeth had spent the 30th driving around Washington, but had gotten lost several times. He also claimed the two had taken the scenic route of “Skyline Drive” to get to Washington. Gardner notes: “Y’all must have been pretty lost and…and took a whole lot of scenic tours to put 429 extra miles on the car.” Söring was unable to come up with a more specific explanation, so the conversation turns to what the couple did on Saturday. Söring says they watched two movies, “Witness” and another one.

The conversation ranges around other topics, then Gardner asks Söring point-blank: “Okay. Okay. Without any further ado, let me ask you this question, did you and Derek ever have an argument?”. Söring denies this, saying he had only been in Derek’s presence for “one and a half hour[s]”. Elizabeth had earlier told Gardner that her parents would have disapproved of her going to Washington, D.C. with a young man, but Söring denied being aware of this. They then discuss various people in the orbit of the Haysom family and some of Elizabeth’s other suitors at UVA and from earlier. The conversation then turns to why there might have been friction between the families of Jens and Elizabeth. Söring explains: “I don’t think my parents were too pleased with our relationship.” Both of his parents were “very very middle class…and they do not think too highly of the idea that you know I was going out with somebody who was…nobility”. Söring added “it’s very hard for Americans to understand this kind of class consciousness”.

Gardner then brings the discussion back to the main reason Söring was in Bedford, to give fingerprint, blood, and footprint samples: “Jens, I’m, I’m really really curious to see what your objection is to submitting to what we have asked for?” Here is Söring’s answer in full (paragraph breaks added for clarity):

Okay, well, that’s really easy um I don’t know whether you are aware of this but there have been some um problems between our countries recently okay and it also comes into the fact that the state department is cracking down on diplomats. I don’t know if y’all you’ve noticed this but diplomats are required to have red, white and blue license plates now which was not the case before okay. Which means that doing anything like this would involve going to your state department, going to our state department going to our embassy, which could take an immense amount of time okay which I don’t want to spend dealing with something like this and I don’t think I have to which is why I am here because I think I can clear your minds and resolve your doubts about whether I’m involved in this. If it goes to your State department or our State department and our embassy, my father will find about it, my father will not be pleased. My father will make problems for me. I don’t want to handle that sort of problem okay.

And I’m not too sure about this but I think it may make some problems with him too okay. Because my father has, because we’re see in the point service, if you um stay in one country, the government pays for your education there and he wants us to finish our high school education here okay. If possible with me because I have a scholarship and he’s now doing the same thing for my brother, he’s requested an extra tour of duty to stay in the states and he had to pull a lot of strings to get that okay. Stay in the states for much longer than usually diplomats stay, usually they don’t stay in one location for six years so he’s, he owes people favors and the United States is considered a good post.

A lot of people want to come over here so he’s not really too popular in hierarchy, and I don’t know how it’s going to affect his chance for promotion when he goes back to Bonn, when they find out that I’m involved in a murder investigation. That also ties in with the state department okay. Okay, now the 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. And that’s where haven’t done anything so far, you know, I don’t even have, I don’t even have a speeding ticket on my record, the thing is, um the point is the thing thought is that eventually I think I may want to become an American citizen okay and the state department already has a file on me.

They have a file on every diplomat. Okay. And every diplomat’s family member. I have to get those diplomatic license plates for my car, just because I’m my father’s son and if they have a file on me and something like this is in the file okay I may have problems when they evaluate me when I can be a citizen okay. Now the United States has gotten a lot tougher as you know about letting foreigners in okay. I think what my father told me is that you know this is what I’ve heard like I say is that it’s even the case that they will only give you citizenship either for political reasons okay political asylum, or if you’re necessary for national security okay, now I don’t think I’m ever going to be necessary for national security, I mean, I will speak Chinese by the time I graduate, but um I don’t think that qualifies me to be necessary for national security like I have to work like Albert Einstein (inaudible) for national security. So, it may be very difficult for me to get my citizenship here and I don’t want to risk having something like this on my record any association with this, okay. If I want to become a citizen and I think that with all those things combined okay, it would be really not good for me to do this. I would really, really, really not want to do this, cause you never know you know a war may start in Europe okay. I may just want stay here okay. Elizabeth has a green card and then she may become a citizen, I may want to stay here, too.

Whether with Elizabeth or somebody else, now with Elizabeth okay if I married her I could get a green card too. It would be easy, but what if I were to marry somebody else like Christine okay. Excuse me just a second. With whom I have a date, which I don’t want to be late for, where’s my watch. (Inaudible) Who does not have a green card herself okay or somebody else okay like my old girlfriend I had in Mexico and I need to keep make sure that I am completely clean, I want to be as perfect as possible at the review board process okay. And I think I can you know I can tell you some things about myself which I think will make you feel better about not making me do this [i.e., provide blood, fingerprint, and footprint samples], okay. Are you interested in hearing those?

This long excerpt reveals Söring’s tendency to ramble on in response to questions, which would continue during later interviews and his trial testimony. Söring’s monologues would land him in trouble, as they sometimes contained inconsistent statements or damaging admissions.

Reid reassures Söring that if he gives the samples, nobody at the German embassy will ever know. Söring then also suggests he is trying to protect Elizabeth: “[Y]ou know at this point you know I love Elizabeth a lot okay that may change… first of all my main interest to tell you the truth is getting you guys off her back.” Söring then again changes the subject to money: “Elizabeth told me that um you thought at some point this had something do with money so I brought all of my little things having do with my money okay. Um. Here I get a check for this amount $4275 every semester, that’s two a year, that’s, you know, $9,550, is that right, $9550?” Söring continued: “I’ll get that till I graduate cause I have to do something drastic like get investigated for a murder investigation to lose that.”

Still apparently concerned that Gardner and Reid suspected he had financial problems, Söring then discussed his wealthy grandmother:

I also have a grandmother who is wealthy, she has a house in Berlin and Switzerland urn also I’m the only family member she likes okay. She doesn’t like my parents, she likes me. I’ve gotten by now 6,000 [Deutsch]marks in presents, money presents for the car and she sends me checks at irregular intervals but they do come. In her will I am going to get a Gutenberg Bible from her along with other stuff. She really does not like my mother, unfortunately, I think to me this is really not very important but it may be important to you, that’s why I’m telling it to you… So I have no financial worries in other words … I’m completely taken care of for everything until I graduate. I’ve got a nice account. I’ve got a $10,000 sports car and I have a grandmother who’s going to give me money when she dies which will be soon. She’s old and sick.

Gardner reminds Söring that although what he has said “makes sense”, Gardner and Reid are working a double homicide “which is probably the biggest thing, the biggest crime that this county has ever seen”. Gardner reminds Söring that they need his samples merely “for elimination purposes”, to eliminate him as a suspect. Gardner adds: “I mean you’ve got your I.Q. is probably twice mine, the information that you have received through Elizabeth is probably enough to know that we need your fingerprints, that we need your anatomical footprints and that we need your blood, okay, that’s three things that we need.”

Gardner reassures Söring that he need not worry Bedford County will alert Interpol. However, he does raise the pressure on Söring: “[W]e’ve looking at Jens Soering down here, a double homicide in our county, which they all ready know about, this guy is avoiding us like the plague, which is the opinion that we’ve had up until today. Okay. Now that’s, that’s the opinion”. Söring says: “Uh-huh”. Söring then tries a new tack to explain why he didn’t contact the police earlier: “I don’t know whether you understand this but, being German, I don’t like police… Okay, since my grandfather was hassled, my grandfather on my mother’s side was hassled a lot, by the Nazi’s [sic]. Okay, so I’m not gonna come running to you, unless you come and find me.”

Letting this peculiar remark pass, Gardner and Reid return to the evidence samples, stressing they are merely for elimination purposes. If they exclude Söring, no one ever know he gave them. It will only take “thirty minutes” of Söring’s time. Söring still hesitates. The detectives then heighten the pressure by noting that they could obtain a search warrant, which would allow them to come down to Charlottesville and which would create a formal court record. Söring says he feels “very threatened by having to do this” because of the effects on his “family” and “future”.

Gardner again returns to the search warrant theme, suggesting that the unexplained miles on the car and Söring’s lack of cooperation could furnish “probable cause” for a search warrant. After more pages of back-and-forth, Gardner stresses: “I don’t want to intimidate you but we need it [i.e., the samples] Jens, we need it. Ah, … we need it bad.” Söring ultimately suggests he is open to giving the samples, but asks for some time to think about it first. The detectives greeted his decision, and asked him to contact them “by midweek”. On Wednesday, 9 October, Söring called Ricky Gardner and said he would give the samples one week later, on 16 October.

Within the Söring/Haysom relationship, the October 6 interview unleashed panic. A friend and former roommate of the couple, Christopher Keland, testified in 1987 that the pair became “very reclusive” in mid-October 1985, even though Elizabeth had been very outgoing before that time. At her 1987 trial, Elizabeth recalled the immediate aftermath of Söring’s interview in Bedford:

Because on October the 5th or October the 6th, I can’t be sure, Jens came down to Bedford and talked to Officers Reid and Gardner, and he had an interview with them and they wanted his physical forensic evidence, his fingerprints and his blood and everything. And when he came back from Bedford, he felt threatened by Investigator Gardner, he felt that he knew in some sort of way what he had done. And he plotted, devised a plot to kill Investigator Gardner at his home and I was to provide his alibi in Charlottesville.

And so there wasn’t any point in reasoning with Jens about killing people, it was bad, you shouldn’t kill people. He had killed people and I wasn’t in a position to moralize to him. So I devised a brain tumor. I went to the hospital—excuse me, I went to student health on October the 7th, I went to see a doctor, I spent some time there. I came back, told Jens I had been diagnosed as having a brain tumor. And I believe on the following day it says I have it out and that’s why I [couldn’t provide Söring with] an alibi.

Elizabeth later admitted she had faked the tumor story to avoid becoming involved in Söring’s plot to kill Ricky Gardner. Söring, however, believed the story as late as December 1986, when he told a German prosecutor: “During the Autumn term 1985 [Elizabeth] had a brain tumor.”

Elizabeth testified about Söring’s next plan during his 1990 trial:

Well, then that plan was dropped, because I had this brain tumor, and I was obviously no good for an alibi. So Jens decided that—both of us decided that the next course of action would be to call Bedford and tell them that Jens would be prepared to give the forensic evidence that they wanted, and stall them, and we would leave.

The following weekend, they put this plan into action. Here is Jens’ version (from “Mortal Thoughts”):

In late September, 1985, a few days after Liz provided detectives with ink foot print samples, the police called me and asked if I would agree to be questioned. So I drove to Bedford County one weekend and denied all knowledge of the murders. My feeble attempts to explain away the incriminating mileage discrepancy undoubtedly raised the investigators’ suspicions even further…

During the interview Detective Ricky Gardner told me that he had “probable cause.” Probable cause for what, I cannot now recall, but as far as I was concerned at that time I had just been given the final warning. Liz and I would have to go on the run. “Confessing” now was the only alternative, and I saw no need to take that ultimate step to protect Elizabeth until we were actually arrested.

Having made this decision I immediately stopped co-operating with the investigators.