Interview, Book News, Söring Goes Silent, "Convicting a Murderer"
A round-up of recent and upcoming events around D-D day, Nov. 1.
This post is a grab-bag of various bits of news — things are heating up in advance of D-D (double documentary) day, and I’ve got tons on my plate.
I came across this James Baldwin quote in this fine essay by Simon Sebag Montefiore in The Atlantic: “An invented past can never be used. It cracks and crumbles under the pressures of life like clay.” Too late to use it as an epigraph for my book (which you can pre-order here), but in later editions…
Book News
Many people have asked whether there will be links on Amazon sites in other countries, and whether there will be a paperback option. The answer is yes to both; the paperback will cost $18.99. I have been assured that you can pre-order the book on other Amazon sites, including Germany and the UK. It might not show up there natively, but you can search for it and find it. In any case, it will have its own native page on these sites soon.
I’m sorry that I didn’t have all this worked out long in advance. To make a long story short, I hired a literary agent who turned out to be a big disappointment. I assumed this person was actively negotiating with publishing houses, and waited to put the finishing touches on the book so I could incorporate any changes the publishing house requested.
After a while, it became clear my agent had let the ball drop after a few initial inquiries. And then the release date for both series was announced. I had to get the book into final shape very quickly, and no longer had enough time to publish with a brick-and-mortar house, which would have added months to the process. I was too busy finishing the book (including late-breaking developments) to create a marketing plan in advance.
Yet the English version will be there on Nov. 1. I look forward to reactions, commentary, and critiques!
Söring’s Online Presence Goes Dark
Jens Söring’s professionally-designed website, jenssoering.de, is now down as of this writing. He hasn’t posted anything on his social-media channels except for a few English-language TikToks, apparently from October of this year (it’s hard to tell when TikToks were created). Perhaps Söring is re-designing his website to take advantage of the documentaries — after all, that’s what I’m doing with my website hammelwords.com. However, I’m doing the redesign on my own, since I don’t have a team of designers working for me. I would assume that if Söring still has web designers working for him, they would be able to revise the website without letting it go dark for weeks.
Perhaps Söring has decided to retire from the spotlight. If so, I wish him all the best. In my view, he should have retired into grateful anonymity in 2019, as Elizabeth Haysom has done. His “campaign for justice” could never have succeeded, because it was built on sand. The upcoming documentaries will expose this truth to the world. Even the Netflix documentary, which of course will try to gin up controversy and stress the “he-said, she-said” aspect of the case, will not be a whitewash; viewers will understand there are two sides to the story, and will know where to go to get the straight dope.
Over at Allmystery, case scholars have wondered whether Söring might be experiencing a mental-health crisis. If so, I hope he has people there to support him and gets professional help. He still has decades of freedom to enjoy in one of the most beautiful countries on earth. Cultivating a sense of gratitude and optimism is far more healthy than obsessing over the past. If he is experiencing a crisis, much of the blame lies with journalists. As I wrote in my book:
Had more journalists been as diligent and courageous as Amanda Knox and Christopher Robinson, Jens Söring would never have been given a stage in the first place. His meritless claims, which have harmed so many reputations and upended so many lives, would never have reached millions of listeners and viewers. In a sense, Jens Söring was harmed most by the journalists who bought (and sold) his story. For decades, they helped him construct a house of cards built on delusion and defamation. Now – long after the journalists have moved on to other projects – it is collapsing.
The best outcome for Söring would have been for journalists to examine the facts of the case, conclude that Söring’s claims had no merit, and ignore him. If that had happened, he would never have entertained the delusive hope of convincing the world of his innocence. His story would never have collapsed in such public fashion, because nobody would have propped it up in the first place.
Interview with “Paranoid Planet”
I recently had a long interview with Michel Jacques Gagné, a Canadian professor and expert on conspiracy theories, especially about the assassination of JFK. His recent book on the subject is fantastic, exploring the psychological and sociological dynamics of belief in conspiracy theories:
You can order it here on bucher.de. I go into the Söring case a bit, but we stick mostly to the case of Adnan Syed, another questionable “wrongful conviction” narrative which I analyzed in detail in two long articles in Quillette which were praised by none other than David Simon, producer of The Wire:
Gagné is interested in the overlap between conspiracy theories and movements which grow up around supposed wrongful convictions. As in the case of Jens Söring and Steven Avery (Making a Murderer), they sometimes devolve into irrational personality cults. Devoted followers rally around the “victim” at the heart of the case, and facts cease to matter. When challenged with information contrary to the “conspiracy”, followers merely dig in deeper, attempting to discredit the bearer of bad news and papering over the cracks in the victimhood narrative with ever more excuses, rationalizations, and justifications.
Bogus wrongful-conviction narratives often become conspiracy theories, since there is often no way to explain the evidence against the prisoner except by inventing conspiracies by police and prosecutors to invent or plant evidence. That’s what has happened in Söring’s case. He accused a Lynchburg executive of perjuring himself to convict Söring for some unknown reason. In his 2012 book Not Guilty!, Söring says Elizabeth Haysom’s conspiracy to frame him began even before she met Jens Söring.
In Söring’s telling, by autumn of 1984, before she even knew who Söring was, Haysom had already decided to kill her own parents and had found a male accomplice to help her do so. She just needed to find a patsy to take the blame. That patsy was Söring. Or, as Söring put it: “[M]y happiness was based on a web of Elizabeth’s lies which grew and grew until I was wrapped up like the spider’s meal in a little cocoon, ready for consumption.”
Convicting a Murderer
I just finished the 10-part Daily Wire series Convicting a Murderer. It is a critical analysis of the hit Netflix series Making a Murderer, which convinced millions worldwide that Steven Avery had been framed by a police conspiracy (again with the conspiracies!) for the 2005 murder of Teresa Halbach. The producer and director of Convicting a Murderer, Shawn Rech, shows that Making a Murderer, like Killing for Love, was propaganda. The directors of both projects claimed they were merely “telling a story”, not advocating for the innocence of Steven Avery or Jens Söring. But of course they were.
As producer Shawn Rech said in this interview, nobody would touch his documentary because they were afraid of pissing off Netflix. Netflix made a huge amount of money from Making a Murderer, and they’re still the 800-pound gorilla in streaming documentaries. No mainstream outlet would agree to distribute the series, because, according to Rech, they didn’t want to get on Netflix’s bad side. As a result, Convicting a Murderer is hosted on an American conservative website called The Daily Wire, and you have to buy a subscription to watch it. I did, and did not regret it. Convicting a Murderer is completely apolitical and also not one-sided; the directors give ample time to people who support Avery and encourage debate
Convicting a Murderer is textbook example of all that happens when a fraudulent innocence narrative takes hold. The directors produced a slanted series which simply ignored key pieces of evidence against Avery and advanced a hare-brained conspiracy theory invented by Avery’s lawyers. Millions of people around the world believe the documentary. They also swallowed the filmmakers’ claims that the Avery case highlights, in the phrase every reviewer feels obliged to use, “systemic problems” with the American criminal justice system. Viewers from as far as Scotland, New Zealand, and China agree, even though they haven’t the faintest clue how the American justice system works. A core of fanatical fans created a bizarre personality cult around Avery (one guy even gets a giant tattoo of the word “BRAVERY” on his arm with BR and AVERY in different ink colors. The real Steven Avery, as Convicting A Murderer shows beyond doubt, is a sinister psychopath.
In Episode 10, the filmmakers interview psychologists and media experts to probe the dynamics of these support groups. As in the Söring case, many of them are drawn to the “crusade” to free the prisoner out of a desire for their lives to have a deeper meaning. The convict becomes a sort of sacrificial lamb, or even Christ figure, offered up to the forces of oppression and conspiracy. By this point, facts have long since ceased to matter. Factual critiques of the convict’s claims just cause them to circle the wagons and become more defensive.
Instead of responding with arguments, supporters challenge the motives and identity of anyone who “attacks” their hero. I am familiar with this; Söring supporters have suggested I was actually someone else, whether it be Terry Wright, Holdsworth, or even Matthias Schröder, and have accused me of being in the pay of the Haysoms or Bedford County or even the State Department! Their minds have been so warped they see hidden motives and conspiracies everywhere. Any critique of their hero, no matter how soberly factual, is seen as a malicious personal assault by “haters” or “stalkers”. It’s all there in Steven Avery’s case, too — including a few supporters who investigate further, come to realize they have been duped, and take the courageous step of coming forward.
The “astounding disaster” that was mid-2010s true crime advocacy journalism is now facing a backlash as new series, articles, and books highlight the subtle manipulation which caused millions of people to believe lies and threaten innocent cops and witnesses. Producers concentrated on a handful of worthless high-profile cases, while doing nothing at all to advance the cause of justice. Convicting a Murderer ends with a plea for robust ethical guidelines to prevent future disasters like this. I hope that will happen; reform is overdue.