Daniela Hillers Doxes Elizabeth Haysom

All Haysom wants to do is live in peace. A German ghostwriter wants to make that impossible.

In my last post, I said Daniela Hillers wasn’t the sharpest knife in the drawer. I based that assessment on the fact she released a mistake-filled podcast on a topic she hadn’t the faintest understanding of. Her research skills are also abysmal, as is shown by her claim that Bedford, Virginia is “arch-Catholic”. This is like calling the Kit-Kat Club a great place to take the kids. It also shows her German parochialism: She associates conservative social attitudes with the Catholic Church because that’s what Germans do. In the U.S. the Church counts as moderate, since there are many far stricter Protestant sects.

On her Facebook page, she’s insulting me from behind a block. Nevertheless, it’s heartening to see that even on her own Facebook page, which was usually a pro-Soering echo chamber, a few voices have emerged to point to the overwhelming evidence of Söring’s guilt and to question the quality of Hillers’ work and her ethics (see below about doxing).

Here is Hillers’ response to a comment asking why I might think her not to be the brightest bulb in the marquee.

Here’s her response with my answers. Note what’s missing:

“You should ask him (i.e., me) that. Everything I say is speculation.

A few possibilities:

1) Maybe it’s a facade and he doesn’t really think that.

Nope, I’m afraid that’s my sincere opinion.

2) Maybe because I, as a woman, shake his self-proclaimed authority to pronounce on the case (Deutungshoheit — a great German word).

Guilty as charged. Just ask all the women who’ve ever worked with me. They’ll tell you how I routinely stumbled into their offices half-drunk, complimented them on their cleavage, and ordered them to re-write their legal memo or podcast script to fit my preferences: “Get it to me by 5:00 sweet cheeks, or you’re history.”

Team Söring has a hard time understanding irony, so let me say, all joking aside, that I have worked alongside women for decades as bosses and employees and colleagues with zero problems.

3) Maybe because in all the years he has completely dedicated himself to theories which he must now struggle to uphold at any cost — no chance of changing his mind.

This case doesn’t involve theories, it involves facts proven by admissible evidence in a court of law. Those facts constituted, in the words of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit from 2000, “overwhelming evidence that [Söring] personally killed the Haysoms”. Nothing which has been discovered in the meantime undermines that conclusion. This was a straightforward, open-and-shut case from Day 1, which is why the jury took only 4 hours to convict. The various arguments put forward by Söring and his supporters are side-issues and rabbit trails, or “smokescreens” (Nebelkerzen), in the words of Siegfried Stang, who analyzed the file with his decades of police experience and summed up his conclusions in an excellent book of the same name.

4) Maybe he’s working for someone.

Ah, the classic Söring conspiracy-theory chestnut: There must be some shadowy figure in the background pulling the strings. As I said in a part of an interview which ended up not being used, Jens Söring cannot understand why someone might be motivated by respect for the truth…because he himself has none.

Who knows — everyone can think it through for themselves. What is noteworthy is that 14 people involved in the case were happy to speak to me and are still in regular contact — including John Grisham. It is telling that none of them want to speak to Hammel. These people have good reasons for not wanting to get in touch with him.

A few well-known pro-Söring voices were indeed willing to speak to Hillers for the podcast, including Chuck Reid, Chip Harding, and Stan Lapekas. According to my information, none of them has read the Terry Wright report, so their state of knowledge remains mired in the fallacies of 2016-2019, the Golden Age of Söring’s innocence claims. So far in the podcast, I haven’t encountered John Grisham, although he apparently wrote a foreword for the book. He will, of course, soon regret that mistake, as have so many other people who tied their reputation to Jens Söring’s honesty and the research skills of his supporters.

The reason these people don’t speak to me is that Jens Söring ordered them not to, just as he ordered Small Town, Big Crime and Amanda Knox not to. The reason Söring orders them not to engage with me is that I have been able to convince dozens of people — using facts, research, and logic — that Söring’s claims are unfounded. Why some obey Söring’s orders — and even go so far as to tie their reputations to his truthfulness — is beyond me.

Did you spot what was missing? That’s right — any discussion of the facts or evidence. It’s all speculation, gossip, and dark hints about secret motives.

There is, however something much more sinister about Hillers’ podcast. In one episode, Hillers interviews a person I’ll call “Jane” who claims to be a former friend and co-prisoner of Elizabeth Haysom. We are provided no information at all to confirm what Jane says. Jane accuses Haysom of lying about various things, but doesn’t provide any background, details, or context. Obviously Jane dislikes Haysom for some reason, but we never find out what that is, why we should care, or why Jane is so eager to call Haysom a liar.

At one point, Jane states the new surname Haysom is living under in Canada. Hillers then claims it’s “easy” to find all sorts of professional profiles for Haysom under this name, and claims to have reached out to Haysom for comment, without response. So Hillers not only reveals Haysom’s new name, but practically invites Söring partisans worldwide to start harassing her: “Here’s her name. You can find out who she is really easily!”

Across the internet, case followers are reacting with shock, anger, and disapproval at this doxxing.

On her Facebook page, someone asked Hillers why she doxxed Haysom. This is her reply:

I didn’t intentionally look for this information. It’s completely normal to talk to all interested parties. I would not have revealed her name and did not reveal her name. It was solely [Jane’s] affair, whether she chose to reveal the name and ultimately chooses to be accountable for what she said. The use of the name also needs to be seen in context. The subject of the episode…was the credibility [of Haysom], the lies. In this context, the name was an important part of the whole picture, when someone tries to understand another’s personality. If it were pure sensation or populism, I would not have agreed to it.

How much more cowardice can you pack into one Facebook comment? I, Daniela Hillers, have no responsibility for doxxing Elizabeth Haysom — all I did was broadcast the name worldwide in English and German! I had no choice, you see — the “bleep” key on my computer was broken. If you’re mad at anyone, you should be mad at Jane — she’s the one who dished the dirt and named the name. Maybe what Jane did was immoral, but who am I to judge? I had no choice but to broadcast Haysom’s name far and wide.

The only thing Elizabeth Haysom wants right now is to be left alone in peace and privacy. Hillers’ decision to doxx her is cowardly and reprehensible, even by the standards of Söring’s new supporters. It may also have legal consequences.

Stay tuned for more up-to-the-minute coverage of Team Söring 2.0’s desperate, sleazy campaign. It’s sure not edifying, but it’s grimly entertaining.