Clearing Up the FBI Profile/Ed Sulzbach Issue Once and For All, Forever
A real-world example of Brandolini's Law.
Brandolini’s Law states: "The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it." The confusion surrounding Ed Sulzbach, the FBI profiler called to assist in the early phase of the Haysom murders investigation, is an example. Söring and his supporters have spread so much bullshit about what this fellow said and thought that it would take 20 pages to untangle it all.
This post won’t go on for 20 pages, I hope. Nevertheless, it will have to be fairly long, because…Brandolini’s Law. Let’s start with...
The Basic Facts
Here are the facts, as established by the historical record, including the Wright Report.
Shortly after the bodies of Derek and Nancy Haysom were discovered on April 3, 1985, Bedford County officials decided to call up the FBI and ask for someone from the Behavioral Science Unit to visit the crime scene. The Behavioral Science Unit does a few things for the FBI, but they’re most famous for producing psychological profiles of serial killers and other wanted suspects.
FBI Agent Ed Sulzbach visited the Haysom crime scene and talked to local investigators.
He then wrote down a few notes and observations for a possible later profile of the unknown assailant who murdered the Haysoms.
Bedford County never requested a formal FBI profile because the process for doing so was too complicated, and the investigators doubted whether it would be necessary.1
Years later, the German journalists Karin Steinberger and Marcus Vetter visited Ed Sulzbach and recorded an interview with him during preparations for their 2016 movie about the Söring case, called Das Versprechen: Erste Liebe lebenslänglich in German (“The Promise: A Life Sentence for a First Love”) and “Killing for Love” in English. They also recorded a telephone call from Chuck Reid to Ed Sulzbach.
The interview was probably conducted in 2014 or 2015. By this time, Sulzbach was very old. He died in 2016. Nevertheless, he did have some memory of his work on the Haysom murders.
The feature-length documentary “Killing for Love” runs about 1 hour 40 minutes. It has been released in many different versions, including the original German, an English version, and an edited German version later broadcast on German public television. A much longer four-part series was also broadcast on German public television in 2020.
In these films, the interview with Ed Sulzbach and the conversation between Reid and Sulzbach is presented in chopped-up, non-sequential form. Pieces of what Sulzbach said in the interview are mixed in with the phone call.
The filmmakers used the Ed Sulzbach interview to do two things: First, to suggest that a full FBI suspect profile was created in the Haysom murders case. Second, that Ed Sulzbach thought a “female” who was “very close” to the Haysom family committed the murders.
None of this is or has ever been relevant to Söring’s guilt. Sulzbach’s speculations are not proof of anything. No FBI profile has ever existed, and even if it had, it is not admissible evidence in American courts.
OK, still with me? Let’s dive into the details.
The Original Ed Sulzbach Interview
After the release of “Killing for Love”, a Canadian viewer who was interested in the Haysom murders contacted the producers of the film in 2019. Apparently this guy was aware, perhaps from Söring’s 2017 book A Far, Far Better Thing, that Ricky Gardner denied any FBI profile had ever been created (see footnote 1). Gardner is an honest man and would obviously know about any FBI profile. The Canadian viewer was thus confused by the suggestion that there actually was an FBI profile. Was Gardner lying when he said that no official FBI profile had ever been created?
The Canadian viewer sent a polite email to the production team of “Killing for Love”. He noted that the movie broadcast heavily-edited excerpts of the Sulzbach interview which strongly suggested that an FBI profile existed, although there was no such profile. A producer wrote back, adamantly denying there was anything misleading about the film’s editing. To try to prove this point, the producer sent the Canadian viewer a long excerpt from the subtitle file for the movie which shows various conversations relating to Sulzbach and the profile. These are apparently the original subtitles from some stage in the editing process. The Canadian viewer was kind enough to share them with me. I have included the entire excerpt he sent me in this footnote.2 However, much of it isn’t relevant to the point of this post, so I will just post excerpts below.
Question 1: Was There an FBI Report?
Question number one about these excerpts is whether “Killing for Love” suggested that the FBI in fact possessed a full psychological profile created by the FBI Behavioral Sciences Unit relating to the person or persons who killed the Haysoms. The Canadian viewer argued that the film clearly suggested this, even though no FBI report had ever been created. Ricky Gardner had adamantly denied, both in the film and in the book “A Far, Far, Better Thing” that any profile was ever created.
For me, this isn’t the biggest issue in the editing of these interviews. Why? Well, because of what the filmmakers knew at the time of filming. They had one guy, Chuck Reid, who insisted that a report had been created. What we know of Sulzbach’s interview shows that his answers were inconclusive — he agrees that there was some kind of “paperwork”, but doesn’t confirm any profile.
So the filmmakers could have assumed, in good faith, that a report did exist at the time they made the film. Reid said there was one, Gardner said there wasn’t, and Sulzbach, at least in the parts of the interviews we can see, doesn’t come down one way or the other. I don’t know what the filmmakers were thinking, of course, but it is at least possible they were acting in good faith at that time, so I’ll favor that interpretation, which is the most charitable.
Still, we should set record straight. Ricky Gardner was, as usual, the more reliable source here. Frankly, most all of the non-misleading scenes in Killing for Love are Ricky Gardner’s interviews, in which he also confronts Brandolini’s Law. Gardner said there was no profile and explained exactly why: Bedford County never requested one. So there is no profile. There never was. As both Sulzbach and Terry Wright confirm, the FBI never throws away anything. If a profile existed, it could have and would have been found by now. And at this point, after the Wright report and the revelations in “The Söring System”, we now know definitively, without a doubt, that no FBI profile ever existed. Period.
Question 2: Who did Ed Sulzbach Think Might be the Killer, and Why?
This, to me, also represents case of misleading editing. Here is the relevant portion of the subtitles to the original Ed Sulzbach interview and phone call footage from the producers of the film:
— cut to interview with Ed Sulzbach -
03:22:59:06 03:23:04:02
I got a phone call from
a sheriff in Bedford County.
03:23:05:00 03:23:08:24
And the different sheriffs and
chiefs around the state of Virginia
03:23:09:13 03:23:12:04
knew me and knew
that I was a profiler.
03:23:12:14 03:23:14:15
And I drove out to Bedford County.
03:23:14:23 03:23:17:06
And they were already
working on the case.
03:23:17:09 03:23:20:13
There were state police investigators
and county police
03:23:21:16 03:23:23:15
and myself from the FBI.
03:23:23:24 03:23:25:13
And my mission was to
03:23:25:18 03:23:27:04
study the crime
03:23:27:15 03:23:29:08
and come up with
03:23:30:07 03:23:33:03
possible suspects.
03:23:33:24 03:23:37:06
And Mrs. Haysom was a
very proper lady.
03:23:37:10 03:23:40:21
She was wearing
her nightgown with a robe.
03:23:41:19 03:23:46:24
And it occurred to me that Mrs. Haysom
would never entertain strangers
03:23:47:05 03:23:48:13
in such attire.
03:23:48:24 03:23:51:18
So immediately
I began thinking who might be
03:23:51:21 03:23:54:08
close enough to her
that she would feel comfortable
03:23:54:14 03:23:57:06
entertaining in a nightgown and robe.
03:23:57:23 03:23:59:23
We're dealing with
03:24:00:21 03:24:03:13
somebody who's close to these people.
03:24:03:18 03:24:06:22
And that I suggested to the investigators.
[*** Phone conversation between Chuck Reid and Ed Sulzbach ***]
I came to the conclusion pretty quickly
01:29:33:23 01:29:36:09
that it was someone they knew very well
01:29:36:23 01:29:41:03
because Mrs. Haysom
was dressed in a nightgown with a robe.
01:29:41:11 01:29:43:11
I settled on her daughter,
01:29:43:19 01:29:45:15
and that's who it turned out to be.
This is the critical sentence: “I settled on her daughter, and that’s who it turned out to be.”
What did Sulzbach Mean?
Does this sentence indicate that Ed Sulzbach thinks Elizabeth Haysom, not Jens Söring, physically killed her own parents? No. If Ed Sulzbach actually believed this, the filmmakers would have highlighted it over and over in the film, and in every interview. Killing for Love is a film whose sole purpose is to cast doubt on Jens Söring’s conviction and to insinuate that Elizabeth Haysom personally killed her own parents (perhaps with accomplices). If a former FBI profiler was willing to tell them this on camera, the directors would have interviewed him approximately forever, asking question after question, and allowing him to put forth his theory. He would have been a star witness for their argument. And Sulzbach, presumably, would be happy to be interviewed for this, because he would be helping to correct a miscarriage of justice: Bedford County put an innocent man in jail!
What Sulzbach means is that it “turned out” to be the daughter who played a leading role in the deaths of Derek and Nancy Haysom. She manipulated Söring and egged him on and fed him with misinformation to get him to hate her parents. She helped him plan the confrontation which ended in their deaths. “See?” Sulzbach is saying, “I suggested the perpetrator was a female with very close ties to the Haysoms, and ‘that’s who it turned out to be.’” Now of course Sulzbach is fudging a bit here: There is no evidence that he singled out Elizabeth Haysom as a suspect early on. He simply suggested it was someone with close ties to the family; someone whom Nancy Haysom would be comfortable meeting in her home while dressed casually. And in fact the police did examine two female suspects with mental problems and ties to the Haysom family, before ultimately exonerating them. Sulzbach seems to be ret-conning his initial speculations into a correct prediction of who was responsible for the killings (in the sense of spurring Jens Söring to commit them).
How did the Directors ‘Fix’ Their Sulzbach Problem?
So, as we’ve seen, Sulzbach’s original comments during the phone call with Chuck Reid contained a few things which, if you twist them a bit, seem to support the filmmakers’ theory (namely, that Elizabeth did it), but also one thing which contradicted their theory — Sulzbach reveals that he believed the official version of events — i.e., that Elizabeth Haysom played a leading role in the murder of her parents, but did not actually carry them out.
How did they solve this problem? As usual in this movie — by creative editing. what complicates matters is that there are many different versions of Killing for Love. The directors shot hundreds of hours of footage of their own, and got the rights to the broadcast tapes from the original trials, which are also hundreds of hours. They have used this material to make several different versions of the film. There’s (1) the 1 hour 58 minute German-language original theatrical release version, (2) the 2 hour 4 minute English-language DVD version, (3) a four-part documentary miniseries broadcast on German public television station ZDFInfo in 2020, which I reviewed here, and (4) a condensed 90-minute version of Killing for Love edited for broadcast on German public television and broadcast in 2022.
And this is where the fun begins. I have many of these versions of KfL, so I checked through a few of them. It turns out there’s a big change between 2016-17, when the original film was released, and 2022, when the most recent version was broadcast. Here’s the version from the BBC Storyville documentary showcase, which was broadcast in 2017:
“I settled on the daughter” [obvious cut] “because Mrs. Haysom was a very proper woman” [obvious cut] “and I came to the conclusion pretty quickly that it was someone they knew very well.”
Here’s the misleading version from 2020:
“I settled on the daughter” [cut] “‘cause Mrs. Haysom wore her robe and nightgown” [cut] “and I came to the conclusion pretty quickly that it was someone they knew very well.”
Both of these edits are, of course, doctored and grossly misleading. They are clearly intended to convey the idea that Ed Sulzbach thought Elizabeth Haysom was at the crime scene. If he had actually said that, as I pointed out above, the filmmakers would have jumped for joy and probably put Sulzbach’s face on the film poster.
Something big changed, however, when a 90-minute version of this documentary was broadcast on the German public television channel SWR (Southwest Broadcasting) was broadcast on 31 March 2022. The filmmakers finally portrayed this crucial part of the conversation honestly:
“…And Mrs. Haysom was wearing her nightgown and a robe.” [cut] “I settled on the daugher, and that’s who it turned out to be.”
These, finally, are the actual words spoken by Ed Sulzbach in the order in which he spoke them.
Did Vetter and Steinberger See the Light?
Why did the filmmakers finally decide to stop misleading their viewers? Well, we’ll never know. Neither Karin Steinberger nor Marcus Vetter have ever responded to any criticism of their now-discredited film. I’d like to think, however, that work I and others have done exposing its manipulations and ethical problems may have had an effect. William Holdsworth did a thorough job exposing the manipulative editing of the confession tapes in two posts from 2019.
For my part, I pointed out how the movie misled viewers about a courtroom scene and defamed a dead man by name, falsely implying he was a drug dealer, extortionist, and murderer. The Canadian viewer’s doubts about the dodgy editing of the Sulzbach conversation led the filmmakers to reveal the original tapes, allowing us to compare Sulzbach’s original statements with the way in which they were presented on film. As this post has proven, this is yet another case of manipulative editing designed to shore up Killing for Love’s discredited, dishonest narrative.
In any case, the latest version of this film finally shows what Sulzbach — who died in 2016 — actually thought. He speculated that whoever showed up to the Haysoms’ home must have been known to them, which was true. However, at the end of the day, he believed that the case had been solved correctly: Sulzbach (retroactively improving his guess, which we can forgive a miles gloriosus telling war stories) thought the “daughter” may have had a leading role in the crime, “and that’s who it turned out to be”. There is no evidence Sulzbach had any doubts that Jens Söring killed the Haysoms, and neither should anyone else.
To quote the blog Jens Soering Guilty as Charged: “Gardner himself cogently explained the absence of any such thing in an interview with Bill Sizemore for A Far, Far Better Thing:
“They can’t find it because it was never done. And I’ll tell you why I know it was never done. We talked about doing it, and it was volumes of paperwork… It would have taken three college professors to fill out the questionnaires that you had to do, and we just didn’t take the time to do that…” (Page 241.)
[Chuck Reid] 03:20:47:22 03:20:48:12
Hello?
03:20:48:20 03:20:49:11
[Ricky Gardner] Hi, man.
03:20:49:16 03:20:50:17
Ricky, how are you doing?
03:20:50:23 03:20:52:18
Chuck, they're coming back now.
03:20:53:08 03:20:56:16
Chuck, we never did a FBI profile.
[Chuck] - Yeah, we did.
03:20:56:24 03:20:57:14
No, we didn't.
03:20:57:19 03:20:59:13
It was Ed Sulzbach
and another special agent.
03:21:00:03 03:21:01:13
See, that's how I got to know Ed.
03:21:01:20 03:21:04:05
But they never sat down
and did a report.
03:21:04:13 03:21:06:08
You're right, we sat and talked,
03:21:06:12 03:21:08:10
I think it was a Friday or Saturday night,
03:21:08:15 03:21:10:04
but nothing was ever written.
03:21:10:10 03:21:11:24
Now they're trying to make a big deal.
03:21:12:02 03:21:14:18
And I told them, I said,
"Chuck misspoke, we never did..."
03:21:14:21 03:21:16:16
He was furious with me!
03:21:16:24 03:21:21:07
He just came across the phone
like a rabid dog.
03:21:21:21 03:21:23:14
And I was being very nice, I mean
03:21:23:18 03:21:26:21
you could feel his teeth
coming across the phone line.
03:21:26:24 03:21:29:05
Chuck, if we had've done one of those,
03:21:29:15 03:21:32:20
that would have been exculpatory evidence,
but we never did.
03:21:32:22 03:21:34:04
I don't remember any of that!
03:21:34:07 03:21:35:13
I said,
"Well, Mr. Gardner,
03:21:36:03 03:21:39:19
this conversation's going nowhere.
I wanna talk to the county attorney."
03:21:46:08 03:21:48:18
We could do a FOIA request for
(Freedom of Information Act)
03:21:49:01 03:21:52:15
any and all documents they have.
- I don’t think you can do a FOIA request.
03:21:53:21 03:21:56:16
Oh yeah, I think we can.
- Well, then give it a shot.
03:21:56:21 03:21:58:08
I called Rosenfield. I said,
03:21:58:10 03:22:00:24
"Steve, you want a sharp stick in the eye
of the Sheriff of Bedford?"
03:22:01:02 03:22:02:12
He said, "Oh, sure."
03:22:02:14 03:22:04:23
So we filed what's called a mandamus,
03:22:05:03 03:22:06:13
Latin for "I order you,"
03:22:06:15 03:22:07:20
to turn over these public records.
03:22:08:11 03:22:10:06
Be honest with you,
I have a copy
03:22:10:11 03:22:12:03
of some old field reports and stuff.
03:22:12:06 03:22:14:15
But obviously,
there was nothing mentioned in there...
03:22:14:21 03:22:16:02
... the profile?
03:22:16:12 03:22:17:16
...to be a profile done.
03:22:17:24 03:22:20:13
Yeah, it's in there.
It's stating
03:22:21:00 03:22:24:17
that special Agent Ed Sulzbach
did this psychological profile
03:22:24:20 03:22:27:15
and came back to a
female acquaintance and a lot of...
03:22:27:21 03:22:29:20
There's four, five different things
that's in there.
03:22:30:15 03:22:32:21
So do you have a copy of that?
03:22:33:09 03:22:34:13
Yeah, mhhm.
03:22:34:17 03:22:36:15
"Give me an affidavit" -
03:22:36:23 03:22:39:03
from the sheriff,
not someone of his
03:22:39:15 03:22:40:13
underlings -
03:22:40:24 03:22:43:12
"saying that you didn't have
any correspondence."
03:22:43:22 03:22:48:00
I'm not sure if Jens's attorney's still
looking for that at the FBI office.
03:22:48:03 03:22:50:02
So you think they have still one out?
03:22:50:05 03:22:51:20
Yeah, I know they have.
- Okay.
03:22:52:01 03:22:56:00
They had talked to Ed and Ed had said, well,
"One thing about it's that FBI don't lose anything."
03:22:56:04 03:22:58:03
And Ed is pretty adoband [i.e., adamant]
about the fact of them doing it.
— cut to interview with Ed Sulzbach -
03:22:59:06 03:23:04:02
I got a phone call from
a sheriff in Bedford County.
03:23:05:00 03:23:08:24
And the different sheriffs and
chiefs around the state of Virginia
03:23:09:13 03:23:12:04
knew me and knew
that I was a profiler.
03:23:12:14 03:23:14:15
And I drove out to Bedford County.
03:23:14:23 03:23:17:06
And they were already
working on the case.
03:23:17:09 03:23:20:13
There were state police investigators
and county police
03:23:21:16 03:23:23:15
and myself from the FBI.
03:23:23:24 03:23:25:13
And my mission was to
03:23:25:18 03:23:27:04
study the crime
03:23:27:15 03:23:29:08
and come up with
03:23:30:07 03:23:33:03
possible suspects.
03:23:33:24 03:23:37:06
And Mrs. Haysom was a
very proper lady.
03:23:37:10 03:23:40:21
She was wearing
her nightgown with a robe.
03:23:41:19 03:23:46:24
And it occurred to me that Mrs. Haysom
would never entertain strangers
03:23:47:05 03:23:48:13
in such attire.
03:23:48:24 03:23:51:18
So immediately
I began thinking who might be
03:23:51:21 03:23:54:08
close enough to her
that she would feel comfortable
03:23:54:14 03:23:57:06
entertaining in a nightgown and robe.
03:23:57:23 03:23:59:23
We're dealing with
03:24:00:21 03:24:03:13
somebody who's close to these people.
03:24:03:18 03:24:06:22
And that I suggested to the investigators.
03:24:07:03 03:24:09:06
"All I need is an affidavit from you,
03:24:09:13 03:24:11:06
you see, and we'll dismiss the lawsuit."
03:24:11:14 03:24:13:12
And they did say
they didn't have anything.
03:24:14:20 03:24:17:05
But if I find out that they did,
03:24:19:01 03:24:20:18
you see, then the hammer falls
03:24:21:09 03:24:23:00
because it becomes perjury.
03:24:23:14 03:24:25:18
The FBI never throws anything away.
03:24:27:05 03:24:29:24
It's somewhere in the FBI's vast.
03:24:30:04 03:24:31:16
It's still there, somewhere.
——
01:28:59:12 01:29:00:01
Hello?
01:29:00:08 01:29:01:17
Ed?
- Yes?
01:29:01:24 01:29:02:13
Ed,
01:29:02:16 01:29:05:12
this is Chuck Reid, how're you doing?
- Pretty good, how are you?
01:29:05:21 01:29:07:08
I'm doing fine, man.
01:29:07:20 01:29:10:00
Let me ask you a question to you Ed,
do you remember
01:29:10:10 01:29:12:11
when you worked on the Haysom case with us?
01:29:12:22 01:29:14:06
I remember that well.
01:29:14:08 01:29:17:10
You and another agent did a
psychological profile for us.
01:29:18:04 01:29:23:10
Yeah, I remember when I got there, there was a guy.
He knew a lot about satanic cults or something.
01:29:23:23 01:29:27:06
And he's walking around the body.
"See this blood smear?"
01:29:27:09 01:29:30:09
He was reading this satanic shit into everything.
01:29:30:12 01:29:33:18
I came to the conclusion pretty quickly
01:29:33:23 01:29:36:09
that it was someone they knew very well
01:29:36:23 01:29:41:03
because Mrs. Haysom
was dressed in a nightgown with a robe.
01:29:41:11 01:29:43:11
I settled on her daughter,
01:29:43:19 01:29:45:15
and that's who it turned out to be.
01:29:45:23 01:29:48:02
Ed, did you all do any paperwork on that?
01:29:48:04 01:29:50:14
The Sheriff's Office couldn't come up
with this information, and I tell them
01:29:50:21 01:29:54:04
you all's profile came back
as a female and an acquaintance.
01:29:54:18 01:29:55:04
Yeah.
01:29:55:11 01:29:57:21
Contact the Richmond office.
01:29:57:24 01:29:59:11
They can pull the file.
01:29:59:13 01:30:03:07
The person I suggest to talk to
is Debbie Propst.
01:30:03:13 01:30:05:07
P-r-o-p-s-t.
Ja, los Herr Hammel! Erwähnen Sie die „Akte“ von Herrn Lapekas, die super beweist, daß damals zwei andere Damen , und eben nicht Elisabeth Haysom, tatverdächtig waren und die gar kein Täterprofil enthält. Los, schreiben Sie was drüber! ich freu mich drauf!
Profiles, even when (unlike this case) they actually do exist, are educated guesses, and not evidence. At best.
At worst, they are junk science tools used to help frame innocent people. Like the "profile" tailored by John Douglas was used to help frame Guy Paul Morin for a child murder of which Morin was completely innocent.