Jens Söring was "Lynched" by Bedford County

A look back at one of the strangest documents Team Söring ever produced.

When I first became interested in this case, someone who’d been following it much longer than my gave me a piece of excellent advice: Whenever anything is posted online about this case, especially on Söring’s own website or social-media feeds, download and/or screen-cap it immediately. Söring (and his supporters) routinely blurt out things about his case which turn out to be problematic, either because they constitute potential defamation, or because they conflict with things Söring said earlier, or because they’re just so peculiar that they will have everyone scratching their heads.

After the statement’s been made, or the document released, people get in touch with Team Söring and say: “Wait, what?” or “But didn’t you say on page 157 of your book that…” The problem posting then disappears from the web — although not from the Internet Archive, which still remembers Jens Söring’s 1995 e-book “Mortal Thoughts”.¹ Following this advice, I set up a few programs to monitor changes on Söring’s website (both the old version and the new one). There are many different programs that can do just this. Alas, I set up the program just a bit too late to catch the document I’ll be referring to below, but other people were already on the case and downloaded it during the brief interval before it disappeared.

The document is a chapter (or “Episode”) of “The Soering Case Made Simple”, an analysis of the case written by Söring himself and formatted and e-published by members of Team Söring (the link is to Holdsworth’s sharp critique of this document). “Made Simple” still exists in various versions and forms all over the Internet and has been downloaded thousands of times. However, it’s not on Söring’s official website, since Söring now has paid professionals to maintain that site and no longer needs to rely on volunteers. The document is a simple pdf consisting of “Episodes” in which Söring discusses various aspects of the case, such as the bloody sock-print, the DNA, Elizabeth Haysom, Judge Sweeney, etc.

For a brief time in 2018, Söring also addressed the history of Bedford County, Virginia, where he was convicted in 1990. What’s remarkable about this original version is that it contains “Episode 8”, which contains Jens Söring’s own potted history of Bedford County, Virginia, and how that is relevant to his case.

Here’s how it starts:

Where did Charles Lynch commit these nefarious deeds? In Bedford County. Söring goes on: “Lynch mob ‘justice’ was invented in the very same place where I went on trial -- 220 years after Charles Lynch started stringing people up on trees. But if you think that was my only stroke of rotten luck, you ain't seen nuthin' yet.” This quote is accompanied by images of actual lynching victims which I will not reproduce here.

If you thought that comparison was a bit over-the-top, well, you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet. Söring goes on to note that during the D-Day invasion, 19 soldiers from Bedford County, Virginia died, which was a huge loss for a town of only 3,200 people. Söring concludes: “And who inflicted these awful losses? The Germans, of course. People like me.” “Germans” is in red text in the original.

Now what does any of this have to do with Söring’s trial? Well, he’s happy to provide the missing link. The next page goes on to note that the judge who presided over Söring’s trial, William Sweeney, was a teenager at the time of D-Day and that he must have “learned the hard way that Germans are heartless killers.” He provides a photograph of Sweeney and Risque Benedict, Nancy Haysom’s sister, dated 1945. Söring goes on:

Risque was the brother of Nancy Haysom, and Bill later became the judge who presided over my trial. I don't blame them for seeing me as a killer. That's understandable, from a human perspective.

But was it right for Bill to preside over the trial of the German accused of killing his friend Risque's sister?

Or was that a return to Charles Lynch's brand of justice?

Again, “German” is in red text in the original.

Söring seems to realize he’s gone out on a bit of a limb here, for on the very next page, he admits that “nobody hung [me] from a tree…but Bedford County tried VERY hard to do the next best thing.” This is accompanied by a picture of an electric chair. Söring finishes with a typical note of self-pity. Maybe being sentenced to life in prison is “not a lynching in the strictest sense of the term. But nowadays, as I wait and wait and wait for a pardon, I feel like a ‘dead man walking.’”

According to my sources, the publication of this “Episode” of “The Soering Case Made Simple” caused a stir. Virginians who were sympathetic to Soering’s case quickly contacted Team Söring and advised them that drawing attention to Virginia’s troubled past and implying that the people of Bedford County were prejudiced against Germans because of a war which ended 45 years before Söring’s trial might not be a wise decision, given that the Governor of Virginia was then considering Sörings petition for an absolute pardon.

“Episode 8” was quickly removed from “Made Simple”, but not before it was downloaded all over the world.

If Söring invoking the horrors of American lynching in relation to his case smacks of desperation and grotesquely bad taste, it’s worth noting that Söring, in a now-notorious passage of his testimony at his 1990 trial, invoked the Holocaust to explain why he supposedly stepped in to prevent Elizabeth Haysom from being executed:

[T]he only thing that comes to mind to anybody when you think of being German is World War II and the holocaust, okay? And that is something that's drummed into German school kids, it was drummed into me, the two main conclusions from that, there must never again be war from German soil, and secondly, the worst and absolutely worst form of murder is if a government kills people in the name of its citizens, all right, which is what execution is, all right? Now again, I understand that people may feel differently here, but that's a general feeling in Germany, and it's a personal feeling, because I mean my grandparents' generation were there, okay? And you know, if affects me personally as a German, it’s just as important to me as the idea of freedom is to Americans for example, okay? And you know, it's important to understand that.”

Direct examination of Jens Söring, June 18, 1990, p. 70.

1. Söring may be unaware that you can simply ask the Internet Archive to remove documents. I anticipate that after reading this, he will do just that. Alas, I have downloaded “Mortal Thoughts”, as have thousands of others, so it won’t do much good.