Did Ricky Gardner and Donald Harrington Conspire to Commit Perjury?

Söring quotes Chip Harding and Chuck Reid to (ahem) strongly imply (cough) that they did just that.

Housekeeping: I’m delighted to share the above image which thanks listeners for having downloaded episodes of the podcast “Das System Söring” over 1 million times. The English-language version will be released shortly.

Now down to business. Since Jens Söring started his German-language Youtube channel a few months ago, he’s shied away from direct attacks on the police, prosecutors, and witnesses who put him behind bars. But now he seems back on the warpath, as the latest video (g) shows. (Tellingly, Söring has disabled the feature allowing his YouTube videos to be embedded elsewhere). It’s only 10 minutes long, and in German. The title is:

“Did I have Wounds”?

In the video, he addresses the testimony of Donald Harrington, an executive and friend of the Haysoms who testified, during Söring’s 1990 trial, that (1) he had seen a bruise on Söring’s face and bandages (quite possibly discreet, flesh-colored American Band-Aids, which are hard to spot from a distance) on his fingers at the memorial service for the Haysoms; and (2) he was contacted by Ricky Gardner and Jim Updike about a week or 10 days afterward and notified them of this fact. Söring says that if he did in fact have such injuries, it would be “compelling evidence” against him. (He may come to regret this admission later). He also says that “Internet experts”, “female podcasters”, and “a former lawyer” have cited Harrington’s testimony despite knowing it was inaccurate/perjured. Söring, for some unknown reason, has never spoken or written my name in public (perhaps he considers me some kind of Lord Voldemort, which I find flattering). He has promoted me from “Texan blogger”, which he called me in his 2021 book, to “former lawyer”. He’s still no closer to the truth, though.¹

As we know, Jens Söring injured his hand during the murders of the Haysoms and left Type O blood at the crime scene. The injury was severe enough to leave a scar which was still visible over a year later, when Söring confessed to Ricky Gardner and English detectives. Söring showed Gardner the scar to corroborate his confession, something he later regretted (“Showing Detective Gardner those scars during questioning in 1986 was stupid even by my standards…”, Mortal Thoughts, p. 177). Söring now claims that the scar he showed Gardner had nothing to do with the murders, claiming it was some kind of childhood injury, if I recall correctly. Yet Söring’s own statements were corroborated by Donald Harrington, who saw Söring with hand injuries shortly after the Haysoms were killed.

Söring is no dummy and knows that Harrington’s testimony is a problem (Problem #1), which is why he made a YouTube video more than 32 years after his trial to call Harrington a liar yet again. The problem (Problem #2) is that Söring cannot explain why Donald Harrington, a stranger, would risk prison by giving perjured testimony in a capital murder case. Perjury is a Class 5 felony in Virginia punishable by up to 10 years in prison. Of course Harrington, as a corporate executive, would have been immediately fired if he had been charged with perjury. Any company which kept a senior executive employed even though he was under suspicion of a “crime of moral turpitude” such as perjury — especially perjury in a capital murder case — could be sued by shareholders and investors, not to mention government agencies.

But nevertheless, for whatever reason, Harrington risked prison himself to frame Söring. Söring tries to undercut Harrington’s sworn testimony as follows: First, Söring was in close contact with many people directly after the Haysom murders, including Elizabeth’s friend Christine Kim, and none of them have said they can remember seeing him with wounds. Second, the “lead investigator” on the case, Chuck Reid, told Sheriff J.E. “Chip” Harding in 2018 that Harrington never contacted the Bedford County law enforcement agencies, because if that had happened, they would have made a record of it in the file, and Reid — over 30 years after the fact — says he wasn’t aware of any such report.

Harding and Reid Attack Harrington’s Testimony

Söring even provides a link to a three-page report written by Harding, then Sheriff of Albemarle County, Virginia, on official Albemarle County letterhead. It is dated July 12, 2018. Söring blacked out the identifying information in the report but apparently wasn’t aware that the layer of recognized text under the black marks remains and can easily be selected and copied. I presume Harding didn’t want the world to know that he had written a report — on official Sheriff’s Office letterhead, no less — which claimed that a respected local businessman had given false testimony in a capital murder case. (“Based on the information I have obtained concerning Harrington’s testimony I highly suspect it is not correct….”).

Chuck Reid was willing to go further. According to the report, Harding contacted Reid, who had this to say in a direct quotation, presumably from an email:

“With all due respect to Mr. Harrington, I know he is deceased. What he testified to at trial is a total lie if he said that he gave Ricky this information ten days after the murders. Mr. Harrington wouldn't have known Ricky from me or John Smith at that time. The case wasn't turned over to me and Ricky until June of 1985. Mr. Neaton didn't question Ricky about any documentation in reference to their conversation as far as date and time. We never interviewed anybody without documenting who we spoke with, I know I didn't. There should be something in the original file for what that is worth. Ricky has also stated that Elizabeth gave her footprints and blood sample just a few days after the murders. That is not true either. I have documentation showing that we didn't get those until September 26th. I was there when we got them at UVA. Believe me, if myself or Ricky had been aware of any injuries to Jens or any information regarding this, we would have questioned him about it the day we interviewed him in October of 1985. I know for a fact that I wasn't aware of it and neither was Ricky. I never heard the first thing about this.”

Reid doesn’t explain where or when Ricky Gardner allegedly said that “Elizabeth gave her footprints and blood sample just a few days after the murders”. In fact, she gave her fingerprints to the detectives on April 16th, and her footprints and blood sample in late September. Ricky Gardner testified as much at Söring’s trial on June 5, 1990: “[Gardner]: Yes, sir, …. We got her fingerprints, I got her fingerprints in April, as a matter of fact it was April the 16th of 1985, and in September we got her blood and her anatomical foot impressions.” (p. 238). Even if Gardner confused the dates (three decades after the events in question) or said “footprints” when he meant “fingerprints” (Reid provides no proof of this), it would hardly be remarkable. In any event, Söring comes back to Reid’s statement over and over in the video: “I didn’t say this — Chuck Reid did!”

But wait, why would Harrington Lie?

Let’s return to the question of why Donald Harrington would have risked a decade in jail to help frame Jens Söring. Söring provides no explanation in the video, but he did have an explanation for this in his 1995 ebook “Mortal Thoughts”, a book which he and his supporters never mention and which they have fought to delete from the Internet. Alas, the Internet never forgets, and you can read this deeply compromising document in full right here. Here’s what he wrote about Harrington’s perjury in 1995, using pseudonyms for some reason:

[My] injuries seemed to account for the O type blood found at the scene of crime. In cross-examination my lawyers of course pointed out the many discrepancies between my "confession" and the physical evidence at Loose Chippings, which I discussed in Chapter 9. Next the prosecution called a witness named Fishton [i.e. Harrington; “fish”= “herring”] who testified that he had seen bandages on my fingers and a large bruise under my eye while I stood next to Liz's roommate, Karen Wong [i.e., Christine Kim], at the Haysoms' funeral service in Mrs. Waitie's [i.e., Annie Massie’s; “Mass” = “wait/weight”] house five years earlier. No one else could corroborate this man’s testimony: not college students with whom I had attended classes after the murders, not the many other acquaintances of the Haysoms who had attended the funeral service, not even members of the Haysom family. Prosecutor Updike even stipulated that Karen Wong could not remember whether I had any injuries at the service. Strangely enough, Mr. Fishton only went to the police with his tale of seeing wounds on me after I mentioned the scars on my fingers during my London ‘confession’, more than a year after the funerals.

Ah-ha! Now we have it. Donald Harrington waited to come forward until after Jens Söring, during his June 1986 confessions, had shown Ricky Gardner the wounds he received in the fight with Derek Haysom. This strongly implies, of course, that Harrington was part of some sort of perjured conspiracy to frame Söring, and his accomplice was almost certainly Ricky Gardner, who must have told Harrington about Söring’s wounds more than a year after the murders and convinced him to come forward and perjure himself four years later, in 1990. We are invited, as P.G. Wodehouse might put it, to imagine a conversation something like this:

Sometime after June 8, 1986

Gardner: Hello, Mr. Harrington? You don’t know me, but I’m with the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office.

Harrington: Oh goodness, am I in trouble?

Gardner: Not if you help me out with something.

Harrington: How can I help?

Gardner: Well, you see, there’s this guy Jens Söring. You probably heard of him. He confessed to murdering your friends the Haysoms.

Harrington: Yes, I am definitely aware of him.

Gardner: Well, we were just in London, where Söring gave us that confession. During the confession, he told us that he and Derek Haysom had fought hard before Söring finally overpowered him. Söring said he’d cut his hand and bled at the crime scene. He even showed us the scar.

Harrington: That’s all very interesting!

Gardner: Yeah, but we can’t find anyone to corroborate that Söring had fresh wounds shortly after after the Haysom murders. He wasn’t a suspect then, he and Elizabeth seemed to have an alibi, and everyone was obviously focused on the horrible murders. Most people assumed they had been committed by strangers or some mentally ill person. So nobody was paying much attention to what Söring looked like. That’s a problem for us.

Harrington: And how can I help?

Gardner: Well, I want you to come forward and testify at Söring’s trial that you saw him with bruises on his face and injuries to his hands at the memorial service for the Haysoms.

Harrington: Uh, but I didn’t.

Gardner: Come on now, we’re trying to put this vicious killer behind bars. You’d only be on the witness stand a couple of minutes.

Harrington: But isn’t that perjury?

Gardner: Let’s not use ugly words like that. It would be a big favor to us, which you could call in later, for instance if your son gets caught with a bag of weed.

Harrington: Hmm. Committing perjury is a serious crime which could cost me my job and even put me in prison, but…OK, I’ll do it!

In the video, Söring no longer tries to provide a motive for Harrington to lie. On the one hand, that’s a good thing, since Germany has laws against defaming deceased people, and accusing Harrington of some sort of conspiracy to commit perjury would arguably be even more damning than simply accusing him of perjury. On the other hand, it’s a big problem for Söring. Granted, his “Harrington lied to frame me” story from Mortal Thoughts was hardly convincing, but at least it provided Harrington with some motive for his conduct.

Söring Fudges the Timeline and Flubs a Few Facts

The main logical flaw with Söring’s arguments in the video — lots of people saw me after the murders and didn’t recall seeing wounds — is that in early April of 1985, nobody even remotely imagined he could be a suspect. He was just some peripheral figure of little interest — the nerdy boyfriend of the victims’ daughter, neither of whom had any apparent motive to commit a crime like this. He was just some virtual stranger to the family caught up in a bizarre drama. Further, the victim’s daughter had provided him with what initially seemed like a solid alibi. Directly after the murders, the prime suspects were females with mental problems who knew the Haysoms. Neither of these women was Elizabeth Haysom, and as far as I know Söring had no contact with either of them. Söring, as he never tires of pointing out, wasn’t even formally questioned by police until October 1985, months after the killings.

Söring wants the viewer to imagine that everyone was eyeing him closely but saw no evidence of injury. The truth is that in April 1985 nobody had reason to pay special attention to him. They may have seen him with a band-aid, attributed it to a kitchen accident or something, and then promptly forgotten it. For that matter, the Bedford police could have noted Donald Harrington’s statement, but at the time, in April 1985, discounted it. At that time, they were hot on the trail of one of the two initial suspects, a woman who had (1) close ties to the Haysom family; (2) severe mental problems, and (3) a self-reported tendency to violence. She was taken so seriously as a suspect that Jim Updike wrote a sworn affidavit to justify obtaining evidence from her and the police made impressions of her feet to compare to the bloody sock-print found at the crime scene. The police may well have thought they were about the crack the case, and simply filed Harrington’s story away as likely irrelevant.

Even aside from this misleading emphasis, Söring also gets a few facts wrong in his own video (besides dating Harding’s report to 1975):

At timestamp 5:27, Söring says Chuck Reid was the lead investigator “from April 1985 to April 1986”. Yet in the very document Söring links to, Reid writes: “The case wasn’t turned over to me and Ricky until June of 1985.” (I have no idea who’s right here and don’t think it much matters).

At 6:44, Söring claims: “if Donald Harrington had come into [the police station] and told [the police]” that he had seen bruises on Söring’s face, the police would immediately have investigated. Yet in the testimony Söring links to under his own video, Harrington states: “I did not report it. They contacted me. I did not report it to the police, the police contacted me.” To be fair, I’d forgotten that point, too. But then again, I’m not the one accusing a dead man of perjury.

Keeping things in Perspective

As this post winds to its conclusion after far too long (remember Brandolini’s Law), let’s keep a few things in mind.

• Jens Söring wasn’t convicted because he had bruises on his face and wounded fingers in early April 1985. He was convicted because he repeatedly confessed to the murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom, and those confessions contained details only the person who killed the Haysoms could have known. When you have a valid confession to a crime, that gets you 90% of the way to conviction. You don’t need to prove everything from scratch, you need only prove that the confession is corroborated. Harrington’s testimony was merely corroboration. If Harrington had never testified, Söring would still have been found guilty, because there was plenty of other evidence corroborating his confessions (letters and diaries, Type O blood, suspicious flight from the law, testimony of Elizabeth Haysom, etc. etc.).

• Chip Harding himself writes: “I attempted to reach other suitemates but the majority would not respond or indicated they did not want to speak with me. Several did cooperate but like [redacted], mentioned above, could not remember seeing a bruised face or cut hand. They said they could not trust their recollection either way.” Harding found two people who say they didn’t see bruises on Söring at this time, but these statements were made over three decades after the fact, and not subject to cross examination. As I wrote in my January 2020 FAZ article (g), only one witness responded to police inquiries shortly after the crime, told the police what he had seen, gave sworn testimony under oath, and was subject to cross-examination. That man was Donald Harrington. And Söring still has never provided any motivation for him to lie under oath, much less proven that he did so.

• As Harding’s report also makes clear, the overwhelming majority of people who were interviewed by the police about this case did not and do not want to get involved. The Söring case has been a media circus from day one, and the normal, understandable reaction of most people is not to get involved in media circuses. This is why Christine Kim worked out a deal to avoid the witness stand, and has kept silent to this day. This is also why Ned B. wisely ran the other way when Team Söring tried to get in touch with him. Further, as this video itself proves, Söring will not hesitate to blacken the reputation of people who testify against him or publicly question his innocence claims. Harrington has been dead for years, but here Söring is still (this time through intermediaries) accusing him of perjury. The movie Killing for Love tries its hardest, despite a total absence of proof, to convince the audience that Jim F. — who died years before the film came out — had something to do with the murders of the Haysoms. Heck, Jens Söring even sued me for defamation, which of course ended in failure. Söring, and certain members of his team, will lash out vigorously when confronted with inconvenient truths. Most people don’t care enough to put up with the resulting hassle. I do it because I make questionable life choices.

So all in all, this video seems unlikely to convince anyone. Even if Harrington were lying or mistaken — and Söring provides no proof of this — it’s hardly relevant. Rashomon-like conflicts in recollection are a universal feature of all complex investigations, and the more people you ask, the more conflicts you find. Söring went to prison because he confessed to murder, and no amount of nitpicking and nutpicking will ever change that.

1. I get sort of tired of repeating this, but I am a licensed attorney in Texas, bar card number 00796698. I could re-instate myself to active status with a few mouse-clicks and a hefty fee (which is why I don’t). As you can see from this open public record available to anyone, I have no disciplinary infractions and am on “inactive” status. I went on inactive status for the same reason the Obamas did: I wanted to pursue other activities and also avoid paying active-membership fees and being forced to complete continuing professional education seminars, which, as any lawyer can tell you, are a bane of the attorney’s existence.