Katja Mitic's Disregard for the Truth

Katja Mitic interviews Daniela Hillers, and the result is (another) embarrassment for German journalism.

Mar 09, 2024

A few days ago, the German daily Die Welt published another embarrassing piece of journalism by Katja Mitic, an interview with Daniela Hillers, who claims she is writing a book about the Jens Söring case, although there is still no sign of it. Actually, we should probably call this anti-journalism — after reading this interview, the reader knows less about the Söring case than before. Mitic reliably seeks out the worst conceivable sources of information about the Söring case, whether they are a biased judge who makes mistake after mistake when talking about the Söring case, a criminal defense lawyer with a terrible reputation in the legal community, or Jens Söring himself.

Now, inevitably, she has interviewed Daniela Hillers. Before I do any further editorializing, here is a list of errors and misleading statements in the article. All errors are by Hillers, unless I specify they were by Mitic:

(Mitic) “The German Jens Söring sat in prison for 33 years in the USA for the double-murder of his girlfriend’s parents.”: False. Söring spent only 29 years in American prisons, before that he was incarcerated in the UK.
(Mitic) “The German was convicted for killing the parents of his ex-girlfriend in 1985, when he was 19 years old.” : False. Söring was born on August 1, 1966; when the Haysoms were murdered on 31 March 1985, he was only 18 years old.
“There are many disputed points, many small inconsistencies, and finally the forensic clues at the scene of the crime which exclude Söring.” False. Nothing “excludes” Söring from being at the crime scene.
When Elizabeth left him on Saturday the 30th (in Söring’s version) “[Söring] assumed she had gone to deliver drugs to Charlottesville, where both had studied.” False. In Söring’s version, Elizabeth was going to meet a drug dealer in Washington, D.C. to pick up the drug shipment. Then both would drive the drugs back from Washington, D.C. to Charlottesville the day after, March 31, 1985. (Mortal Thoughts, page 62: “Of course I insisted that I accompany her when she went to pick up the shipment from the dealer in Washington.”)
Söring could not have had intense emotions toward the Haysoms because “he was not close to them and had only met them once.” Misleading. As I pointed out in my last post, Söring told detectives and psychiatrists over and over that he “hated” the Haysoms and felt “intense anger” toward them. Hillers appears totally unaware of these statements even though they’ve been available to anyone online for years.
“An FBI profile prepared at the time…” False. Bedford County never requested an FBI profile, and none was ever created.
(Mitic) “The autopsy reports showed that Nancy Haysom was stabbed more than thirty times with a knife or a similar blade in the chest, throat, and face. Derek Haysom suffered several deep stab wounds in the upper body.” False. Here, Mitic confuses Derek with Nancy Haysom; it was Derek who was much more severely injured. Three basic errors in the first pages of the interview, all from the interviewer herself.
“Söring, however, did not know how to find his way in the neighborhood [of Loose Chippings] and could never have found the house, even with a map scribbled on a napkin”. False. Söring had visited Loose Chippings twice with Elizabeth before the murders:
”Q: Now had Jens ever been to your parents' home on Loose Chippings before the last weekend in March of 1985?
A: Yes, he had.
Q: On how many occasions?
A: Twice.”
(Source: Trial of Elizabeth Haysom, Testimony of Elizabeth Haysom, pp. 410-411 in the .pdf numbering). Soering was so familiar with the area that he was able to draw an accurate diagram of it from memory. Ricky Gardner testifies on pages 113-117 of the transcript of June 6, 1990, about his conversation with Söring on June 6, 1986: “I was really curious to see how Jens knew about those dumpsters” — that is, the large trash containers Söring threw his bloody clothes into. Gardner continues: “And I asked -- I knew where they were, and I was just curious to see if he in fact knew where they were. So I asked [Söring] to draw me a little diagram on a piece of paper of the roads, and which he did, and they were quite accurate…. [H]e used a dot for Loose Chippings. He started at Loose Chippings, Holcomb Rock Road and came, and he had curves in the diagram that he drew for me, which it came like this. Right here he drew in Trents Ferry Road, which goes off of Holcomb Rock Road. And here he drew in the main road, which is 501. [Question] And is this accurate, the location from your own observations and familiarity with this location? [Answer] Yes, sir, it is accurate.”
“However, Ms. Haysom could have driven the distance in her sleep, which would fit the odometer reading.” Misleading. Söring’s own story was that Elizabeth did the crime under the influence of a drug high so intense that it literally drove her to murder. One assumes this would have affected her driving ability.
“Further, nobody could have committed such a brutal murder without leaving at least one DNA sample. That is simply technically impossible.” False. As any actual detective or crime-scene tech will tell you, finding usable DNA at any crime scene (much less amid 40-year-old samples collected before forensic DNA testing even existed) is the exception, not the rule. As this scientific study reports: “The proportion of all reported crimes that produced DNA was 2.4%. About 63.5% homicides, 13.3% domestic burglaries, 11.3% theft of vehicles, and 7.8% rapes yielded DNA.”
“Wright, this is rarely mentioned, had nothing at all to do with the investigations at the crime scene, but was only assigned to the check-fraud case of Haysom and Söring.” False. Wright of course didn’t visit the crime scene, but he was a key witness in the murder trials of both Söring and Haysom.
“However, with his report, Wright raised many questions — and also put many false statements out there.” False. Hillers doesn’t identify a single false statement from Wright’s report. The only error of any consequence (who spoke to Keith Barker at 4:30 pm on 5 June 1986) was caused by a misleading entry in the custody log book, and I publicly corrected that error years ago with Wright’s knowledge and permission.
Söring cannot ask for DNA testing because “If he did so, he would commit perjury, thus opening himself up to criminal prosecution”. This is “often not mentioned in reports, which in my view is a falsification of the facts”. False. Bedford County District Attorney has explicitly stated in public, repeatedly, that he will not subject Jens Söring to any legal consequences if Söring asks for DNA testing. He has said this to CBS Mornings, Netflix, and the German broadcaster NDR. Nance has even gone farther — not only will he not charge Söring with anything, Nance himself will not oppose testing if Söring asks for it. Nance has said this over and over in documentaries which Hillers, astoundingly, does not appear to have watched.
“It’s often reported that Haysom and Söring took flight immediately after the crime.” False. Hillers does not cite a single news report that says this, and I cannot find one. Of course, Söring fled the USA months after the crime, right after police asked him for fingerprints and blood samples.
“It is also often reported that Söring’s DNA was found all over the crime scene.” False. Hillers doesn’t cite a single report which says this, and I can’t find any. Further, her statement itself is illogical: If Söring’s DNA had been found all over the crime scene, nobody would have ever taken his innocence claims seriously, and we would never have heard of him.
Did Söring “manipulate” the media? Hillers notes that Söring once had an active circle of supporters, and says all they did was advocate for him, which is not problematic. For that matter, I agree. She then says Söring’s Friends of Jens no longer exists, so she considers the manipulation theory “nonsense”. Misleading. first of all, it’s a non sequitur: The fact that Söring has lost almost all of his supporters by 2024 doesn’t mean he never had any. One his previous supporters has documented at first hand how Söring tried to influence the media, very successfully. Whether you call it “manipulation” or something else, it happened. Heck, the boss of the Sueddeutsche Zeitung recently had to publicly apologize for his newspaper (i.e., Karin Steinberger) falling victim to it.
Asked about Söring’s trial, Hillers says “It was a huge mistake not to call the chief investigator [i.e., Reid] to the witness stand.” Misleading. Hillers offers no argument or evidence to back up this statement. It’s an absurd argument for any number of reasons, for instance the fact that even without Reid’s testimony, the prosecution easily won its case — the jury quickly convicted Söring and recommended the maximum sentence. Further, Chuck Reid quit the Sheriff’s Office in Spring 1986 (before Söring was interrogated in London) to start working for a trucking firm, and to my knowledge never returned to law enforcement. Söring was tried in 1990. You’re hardly going to call a witness who hasn’t been a cop for the four years prior to trial unless only he can testify to something nobody else can. There was nothing Reid knew that Ricky Gardner didn’t, and not only was Ricky still a cop, he also took Söring’s confessions. The prosecution did request Reid to be prepared to testify just in case, but they never needed him — because they won the case hands-down without him.
Another problem with the trial was that it “used a ‘Junk Science Method’ to clearly attribute a supposedly (angeblich) bloody sockprint to Söring.” False. First of all, there was nothing angeblich about the bloody sockprint — it very much existed. Second, Hillers has obviously either not read the record or understood it if she had. As Terry Wright and I pointed out four years ago, Judge Sweeney explicitly forbade anyone to say the sockprint was Söring’s. The prosecution even agreed this would be inappropriate. It’s all there in black and white! The prosecution was only allowed to say the sockprint was “consistent with” Söring’s foot, which is accurate.
“There are traces at the crime scene which indicate that at least two unknown assailants were at the crime scene… I believe there were two male assailants.” False. Hillers appears not to have read or listened to a single investigative report about this case since 2019. This theory has been so decisively refuted that even Jens Söring doesn’t bring it up anymore — at least when he’s speaking to relatively intelligent, well-informed audiences. I’d provide links here, but the list would go on so long that I’d need a brand-new post.
“There is forensic evidence of Elizabeth’s presence at the crime scene.” False. Once again, for the millionth time, the cigarette butts and the fingerprints on the vodka bottle prove nothing, because Elizabeth spent the weekend at Loose Chippings the weekend before the murders and there was no evidence any of these traces were left at the time of the murders.

This interview is an embarrassment to the newspaper which published it, which is something I take somewhat personally, since I have published in Die Welt also. Indeed, I subscribe to Die Welt and sometimes post links to articles in it. I know people who work there, and they’re generally conscientious, competent journalists. Unfortunately, at least on this subject, Katja Mitic does not fit that description. She has no idea what she’s talking about. Even after publishing four articles dealing with the Söring case, she still makes basic factual errors about important points. When it comes to Jens Söring, she only interviews other people who don’t know what they’re talking about, which just makes things worse. It’s anti-journalism.

As for Daniela Hillers, I’ve come to the conclusion she’s more to be pitied than condemned. She is a classic example of the Dunning-Kruger effect, “a cognitive bias in which people with limited competence in a particular domain overestimate their abilities”. She is simply not intelligent enough to understand when she is out of her depth.

She believes she understands American criminal law, but she does not. If she even bothered to read the trial transcript, she was intellectually incapable of understanding it. She has no idea about forensics, standards of proof, trial tactics, interrogation strategies, or any of the other fields necessary to understanding a criminal case. As this interview shows, she is incapable of recognizing when she is making internally inconsistent, illogical arguments or non sequiturs. Watching her try to piece together a coherent argument is like watching a 300-pound novice skier plummeting haphazardly down a triple-diamond ski slope — faceplant after faceplant after faceplant.

There is one interesting part of this interview, though: Hillers assures us that Chuck Reid is ready at any time to debate Terry Wright about the case. That’s not going to happen, but I suggest a substitute: I will be happy to debate Chuck Reid at any time, any place, publicly, about Jens Söring’s guilt. Heck, I will fly to Virginia at my own expense to do it. We can have a neutral arbiter design the rules and moderate the debate. No holds barred, no questions off-limits.

What do you say, Chuck?