Meet Söring's New(ish) Respectable Proxy #1: Bettina Röhl

Is German journalist Bettina Röhl preparing to triple down on her longstanding support for Jens Söring, even at this late date? The first in a multi-part series.

Röhl in 2005

A few preliminary notes

First of all, I’m happy to say I am making steady progress with my German translation of Martyr or Murderer. I had to leave it behind for a time because I was wrapped up in a huge translation project. I’m at 50%, but steadily adding new stuff. After I finish my translation, I will run it through all sorts of grammar checkers and AI tools. Then revise it again. I may deem it OK after that. Nevertheless, I’m still not a native speaker, and there will be inevitable mistakes. I may look into hiring an editor, or perhaps relying on volunteers (if you’re interested in going over a chapter or two, please let me know!) I’ll keep you posted!

I notice that the comment section is filling up with Söring trolls. Unfortunately, they’re nowhere near as good as the ones I had here a few years ago. Many of those people actually made arguments and cited evidence. Perhaps it was that very capacity that led them to realize Söring was guilty. The new generation is disappointing — they’re just trolls. As I like to say, being able to tell well-founded innocence claims from fakes takes a certain amount of cognitive ability which…is not possessed by every Internet user. Nota bene: I generally like to keep a loose rein on comments, but if your comment is illiterate or consists only of an insult, you’ll be blocked. I have to have some standards.

On another note, Jens Söring keeps trumpeting Prof. McClintock’s “new 2022 analysis” of the DNA as somehow relevant to his innocence claims. I’ve always been curious about this. When I first read it, it seemed so obviously irrelevant I don’t think I ever mentioned it here. So I’ll do that now. To the extent McClintock’s report has any relevance, it bolsters the arguments of the independent experts, who say the only male DNA at the crime scene belonged to Derek Haysom. Here’s the key part of McClintock’s report:

A stutter is an artifact seen when amplifying STRs and typically occurs at one repeat unit shorter in length than the parent allele. Once these stutter bands were removed (during the analysis) only one or two allelic bands were left indicating a single contributor to the sample. It should be noted that all the samples that were analyzed appeared as samples containing only one contributor and thus only contained one or two bands.

Let’s review: The 1985 serology report, which tests for antigens, identified blood consistent with Söring’s blood type. There may well have been some antigens from Derek Haysom mixed in, but at the particular locations which were swabbed and tested, Type O antigens prevailed. Forensic serology has long been superseded.

In 2009, a DNA test was conducted. DNA tests measure different substances using different methods, different chemicals, different protocols, different software, and different machines. Tennis and baseball could hardly be more different except that both use balls. DNA testing and forensic serology could hardly be more different except that both analyze bodily fluids. During testing of the DNA, the small minority of crime-scene samples which yielded any results at all yielded profiles which were all consistent with Derek Haysom.

Derek Haysom is the “single contributor” and “only one contributor” whom McClintock identifies. McClintock’s report confirms the thesis of every independent analyst ever to address the issue: The male DNA found at the crime scene all came from Derek Haysom.

Who is Bettina Röhl?

Bettina Röhl is a German journalist and author. She is the daughter of the infamous Ulrike Meinhof and Klaus-Reiner Röhl. Here’s a Wikipedia summary of the facts:

Known as "K2R", Röhl founded the left-wing monthly magazine Studentenkurier in 1955. Röhl had been a secret Communist since 1951, and the magazine survived due to funding from the Communist East German government.^[1] In 1957, the magazine was renamed konkret and rose to prominence in the 1960s as the primary magazine of the Außerparlamentarische Opposition and the German student movement. He had previously founded a weekly newspaper about and for the Hamburg sex trade, St Pauli Nachrichten. After the Communist Party of Germany was banned as unconstitutional in West Germany in 1956, he became a clandestine member of the then illegal party as an act of support.^[2]

He was married to Ulrike Meinhof from 1961 until the spring of 1968, before her descent into left-wing terrorism. Their marriage produced two daughters, Regine and Bettina Röhl, who became an author critical of communism and far-left extremism. Ulrike later co-founded the Red Army Faction, also known as the RAF or the Baader-Meinhof Gang, together with Gudrun Ensslin, Andreas Baader, and Jan-Carl Raspe.

Röhl herself was spirited abroad at a very young age by allies of her mother before her father gained custody of her in 1970. The whole story is complex and fascinating. Röhl went to college and afterwards established herself as a journalist and author. She has published two well-received books on her upbringing and background. I’m fascinated by the RAF, so I plan to read them. Röhl’s upbringing has led her to reject left-wing beliefs and orthodoxies, and to be deeply suspicious of politicians whose roots lie in that sphere. Personally, I have no problem with that worldview.

In 2001, Röhl sparked a worldwide controversy by publishing photos of German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, clad in a helmet, among a group of protesters beating police with truncheons at a 1973 demonstration. Fischer admitted he had been part of the group and apologized. Röhl was attacked at the time by the mainstream German press, who had a soft spot for Joschka, but her publication of the photos was clearly of great public interest, so there were no formal repercussions. More recently, Röhl has identified herself with conservative media outlets and opinions. For example, she contributed to a critical book about “gender ideology” (Genderismus) and in 2024 said she expected Trump to win and felt his victory would be “good for America and the world” (in the words of the presenter).

Röhl is obviously highly intelligent and is a good public speaker. She is also a diligent researcher and talented writer, which is why her books win praise. She’s now clearly a Trump supporter, but that doesn’t bother me. I think Trump was and is a terrible President, but people had their reasons for voting for him. In the talk show I linked to above, Röhl very correctly singles out the severe shortfalls of Kamala Harris as a candidate and raises a good question: If Trump is as horrible as all that, how could the Democrats have lost to him? But I digress.

Röhl und Söring, an 11-Year Friendship

Bettina Röhl first took a deep dive into the Söring case in 2014, when she read Söring’s 2012 German-language book “Not Guilty!”. On 17 June 2016, shortly before the premiere of “Killing for Love” at Munich Film Festival on 24 June 2016, Röhl published an essay on the conservative German website Tichys Einblick. Röhl praises Söring’s book. She says she was awaiting a standard prisoner complaint, but instead found the book was surprisingly well-written and compelling. She reveals she had already started correspondence with Söring in 2014, after reading his book. She confidently reports Söring was convicted based on “extremely meager evidence, one could even call it absurdly meager.”

Röhl indicates no basis for this judgment other than her correspondence with…Jens Söring. Röhl does correctly identify Elizabeth Haysom as being convicted only of being an accessory to murder, not murder itself. Röhl has apparently since forgotten this, as we will see later. She also refers repeatedly to Söring’s “recanted confession”. She is apparently unaware “recantation” of a confession is meaningless. Jens Söring used to stress this point constantly before I pointed out online how hollow it was; Germany’s prisons are full of people who “recanted” their confessions. Now Söring freely admits “recantation” is legally meaningless. Also, there were at least four separate confessions, not just one.

This information is all conveyed in a confusing 75-word(!) sentence in which Röhl claims (removing all the fluff) that Söring “would never have been convicted” without the legendary sockprint. This false claim also comes straight from Söring: In his May 2020 interview on German television with host Markus Lanz, Söring said “I was convicted only because of this sockprint.” This is of course such a blatant lie that Söring has since backed off of it almost completely. After a complaint filed by myself and a German lawyer, this 90-minute talk-show was scrubbed from the German broadcaster’s archive, apparently forever. But the Internet never forgets.

Moving on to the crime scene, Röhl writes that the corpses of Derek and Nancy Haysom were “covered with flat, superficial knife wounds”, the only fatal wound she describes are the neck wounds. This is also misleading. The autopsy report of Derek Haysom describes various superficial slash wounds, but also “14 stab wounds present in the right, left and midback” including one which “perforat[ed]” Derek Haysom’s heart. The autopsy of Nancy Haysom revealed a “stab wound of left lateral chest with perforation of heart”.

The heart is one of the most protected organs in the human body. Stabbing a human being in the heart is difficult. You must enter the rib cage at the xiphoid process and point the knife upwards towards the left shoulder blade, or find some other, more complex way around the ribs and sternum. Here’s a scene in which Daniel Day-Lewis demonstrates to Leonardo DiCaprio how to stab directly into the heart (using a pig’s carcass):

Söring needed to finish Derek and Nancy Haysom off to make sure they would never awaken and phone the police. So he took aim and rammed his knife at the exact right angle to bypass the ribcage and sternum and penetrate their hearts.

Röhl then recites a slew of familiar complaints about the “sockprint” which Söring himself had already recounted in dozens of publications, including “Not Guilty” and “Mortal Thoughts”. These nitpicking complaints were all aired extensively at Söring’s trial. Röhl gives no indication she has ever read the trial transcript or inspected the evidence. She does not provide any fresh evidence about the sockprint; every claim claim she makes was already discussed at length at trial and rejected by the jury. Bizarrely, she claims the sock-print had no evidentiary value because…the sock was never found. Has she ever been in a courtroom?

Röhl then spits out her first torrent of insults against Elizabeth Haysom, whom she apparently had come to dislike based on the information provided to her by…Jens Söring, a man obsessed with hatred of “Elizab!tch” to this day. Here is how Bettina Röhl, who in 2016 had never met Elizabeth or read her testimony (see bet below) in 1987 or 1990, describes Elizabeth:

Rich, broken, with an affinity for drugs, a boy-and-girl seducing vamp who had left school at various times, staged a genuine escape from her home, had horrible stories about a rape she had suffered and abuse from her own mother, between superior intelligence and confined in absolute inner loneliness. Played music, acted, wrote, and inspired by the urge to reveal to anyone the most horrible experiences she could, and a personality disorder that was attested (she writes in German “testiert”/ “to dictate a will” instead of “attestiert” / “testified to”) in trial, and a confirmed severe tendency not to give reality priority.

This passage is confusing in the original German, so don’t blame me. For Söring’s narrative to be believed, Elizabeth must be demonized. She must be portrayed not only as someone capable of manipulating another to do her bidding — the despicable crime she actually did commit and was justly punished for — she must be portrayed as someone who was capable of murdering her own parents single-handedly.

Röhl then describes Söring’s account of watching the 1984 Jim Jarmusch movie “Stranger than Paradise” while Elizabeth, supposedly high on drugs, somehow drove 400 miles round trip and murdered her parents. The movie title is key here. Since Röhl had not bothered to read the 3722-page transcript of Söring’s trial (see bet below), she doesn’t note that Soering, in his trial testimony, thought the movie was called “Stranger in Paradise”, the title of a world-famous song from the hit 1953 musical Kismet. The titles are easy to confuse.

With typical arrogance, Söring, long after the trial, criticized Elizabeth Haysom for calling the movie “Stranger in Paradise” during her testimony, which he implies proves she never saw it. But when Söring’s own lawyer questioned him on 13 June 1990, he never corrected the error, even thought his attorney made it twice. Here is an example:

Söring didn’t know the correct title of the movie because he had never seen it. Further, even thought he had 4 years to prepare for his trial testimony, he still hadn’t managed to figure out the correct title. Röhl then describes Söring’s account of the pair’s “Bonny und Clyde” — her name was actually Bonnie — trip around the world.

Summarizing Söring’s 2012 book “Not Guilty!”, she then notes that Söring’s account of the trial against him was “distanced” in tone. There’s a very good reason for that: Söring is desperate to avoid calling attention to his own testimony, during which the inconsistencies in his account were mercilessly exposed by Jim Updike’s cross-examination. In the entire 1995 e-book Mortal Thoughts, which Söring’s partisans have desperately tried to erase from the Internet, Söring discusses the matter of his own trial testimony — the second-most important episode of his life — in exactly one paragraph. That’s one reason his supporters tried to erase it.

The other is Söring’s Freudian slip, found on page 178 of the original:

It’s unclear when Söring became aware of this slip, but he certainly did. His 2012 German-language book “Not Guilty!”, most of which is based on “Mortal Thoughts”, does not contain this phrase. Nor does it contain his accusation that English detective Kenneth Beever had threatened to hurt Elizabeth Haysom unless Söring confessed.

Röhl then describes how she sought contact with Söring after reading his book in 2014. Söring wrote back charmingly to this influential journalist and offered her the intimate “du” address immediately. For decades, Söring has used his intelligence and articulateness to charm people interested in his case. Röhl then references the 2011 statement of Tony Buchanan, the auto mechanic. Söring himself later admitted to Siegfried Stang that these statements were implausible: “[Söring] basically told me that back then, he had to seize on anything he could to try to get out of prison. That answer was enough for me.”

Röhl then claims that the 2009 DNA tests “after evaluating a broad array of probes (eines umfangreichen Asservatenfundus)” found no trace of Söring’s DNA. Did Bettina Röhl ask Söring for a copy of this report to substantiate his claims? I doubt it. Did she write the Virginia Department of Forensic Sciences to request a copy of the 2009 findings? I double-doubt it. Otherwise she would have learned that 24 years after the crime, only a small fraction of the blood samples from 1985 yielded any results, and there were no full DNA profiles among them. Söring has since admitted these results do not prove his innocence, for obvious reasons. Of course, DNA testing has advanced by leaps and bounds since 2009, which is why Söring refuses to allow new testing to be conducted.

Röhl then concludes her essay under the heading “In Dubio pro Reo”, the same title Daniela Hillers used in her recent book on the Söring case, which landed like a lead balloon after I identified 27 errors in only the first half of the book. Even though Söring participated in a widely ignored and terribly rated podcast with Hillers, he never mentions her book. As non-lawyers, neither Röhl nor Hillers understand that the principle of in dubio pro reo (in doubt for the defendant, the equivalent of the American standard “beyond a reasonable doubt”) only applies before a defendant is convicted. After a defendant is convicted, and his conviction has been ratified by appellate courts, then his conviction is deemed final. After this point, the defendant bears the proof of proving his trial was unfair. The law here is the same in Germany as in America.

After 1991, when his direct appeal was denied by a Virginia appellate court, Jens Söring’s conviction was final. American law, however, is very generous to people who can afford to pay lawyers. While Soering’s long-suffering father was enduring postings in far-off Mauritania and Papua New Guinea to earn hazard pay to finance his son’s appeals, Soering’s first-class legal team filed appeals in the Bedford County Circuit Court, the Virginia Supreme Court, the Federal District Court, the Federal Circuit Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, and the United States Supreme Court. These appeals resolved 90% of the claims Söring still makes today.

Predictably, Röhl then fixates on the various conflicting statement Elizabeth Haysom made about whether her mother sexually abused her. Salacious claims of sexual abuse always attract attention, even now. Of course, none of this is relevant to Söring’s guilt. If Elizabeth Haysom had a “motive” to kill her parents, then so did Söring, since he confirmed repeatedly that Elizabeth’s reports of abuse contributed to his well-documented hatred of the Haysoms.

Röhl then spews more subtle vitriol against Elizabeth Haysom (interspersed with formulaic journalistic weasel-words), describing her as a victim of the anti-parent climate of the 1980s. She then claims Elizabeth Haysom presented herself “aggressively” as an “innocent victim”, which is of course blatantly false. That is, however, exactly what Söring did. This is a classic example of psychological projection. Elizabeth repeatedly emphasized her role in the crime and confirmed under oath before millions of viewers that it would never have taken place had she not manipulated Jens into doing it. But according to Röhl, Elizab!tch, (Söring’s words, not mine or Röhl’s), she of the “borderline” personality, convinced many trial observers to “lose themselves in feelings of concern for her” (in regelrech­ten Fürsorgegefühlen für sie verheddern). What possible relevance this might have to Söring’s guilt is beyond me.

Röhl continues: “Elizabeth is also entitled to the presumption of innocence.” Wrong. She confessed to and was convicted of the crime of being an accessory before the fact to first-degree murder. She has never challenged this conviction and could never challenge it because the evidence supporting it is overwhelming. But Röhl has more musings on Elizabeth: “Nevertheless, she may have been able, as in her first night out in college in the company of classmates unknown to her, who all celebrated her appearance at the university, to confuse everyone” (ihre Umwelt kirre zu machen). Again, what possible relevance does this unfounded speculation have to the trial? In any event, Söring couldn’t have written it better himself. In a sense he did, since Röhl cites no source for this claim, which seems to be based on what she read and heard from Söring, who uses similar language to describe Elizabeth’s “spider web” effect in books, blog posts, and videos.

Röhl then confidently proclaims that in light of the “evidence” and “more precise knowledge of the trial files”, the overall result tips in favor of the defendant. Of course, in 2016 — and very likely now — Röhl has no idea what the overall picture of evidence is, and had never read the 3,722-page transcript of Jens Söring’s own trial, much less analyzed the 350+ exhibits, or read the 1,300 pages of Elizabeth Haysom’s trial.

I offer a bet to Bettina Röhl right now: If she can prove she had possession of and read these trial transcipts in 2016, before she wrote this piece, I will pay her €500. That is a legally binding offer.

I hope you enjoyed this first dive into the history of Bettina Röhl and Jens Söring. Stay tuned for the next installment, in which I respond to Röhl’s attacks on me, which contain even more mistakes.