Röhl v. Hammel, Round One

It's New Years' Day 2020, and Bettina Röhl is mocking me in a Swiss newspaper! And shedding any last traces of objectivity -- behind the scenes.

First, I’d like to thank everybody who gave me a tip on Ko-Fi since the last post! I really appreciate it. It helps me keep a steady supply of Scotch, which in turn keeps this blog running.

Now for a clarification:

Am I a Haysom-family shill?

People in comments keep asking me to reveal my dark, sinister connection with the Haysom family. I describe this all in my book, so it’s no secret. Here’s the straight dope: After I began blogging about this case, a few members of the Haysom family got in touch with me by email to express their gratitude that someone was actively countering Jens Söring’s misstatements and lies. They told me that their deepest wish was for the whole media circus to stop so they could live their lives in peace. But as long as Söring was making that impossible, they appreciated my efforts to correct the record and keep the focus on the victims.

I did not initiate contact with any member of the Haysom family, they reached out to me first. I have never had any direct contact with Elizabeth Haysom. I have never spoken to a member of the Haysom family; all contact has been through email. I have never asked the Haysom family for any sort of payment, nor has any member of the Haysom family offered any payment to me or paid me in any way. No member of the Haysom family has asked for any editorial input or control over what I write, nor have I offered any such privileges. I can prove all of these assertions and will do so in court if necessary.

That being said, I have come to respect the members of the Haysom family I have come to know through email. They are successful (retired) professionals and intelligent, thoughtful people who still mourn the loss of Derek and Nancy Haysom and have had to cope with a decades-long series of attacks on the family’s reputation and privacy. When I was actively practicing criminal-defense law, I was often forced by my duty to zealously advocate for my client to make arguments that I knew would offend the surviving relatives of murder victims. I am glad now to be able to make arguments which uphold the privacy and dignity of a family who has suffered such a grievous loss.

However, I follow the same rule as a journalist that I followed when actively practicing law: I make arguments which I believe best fit logic and the available evidence, regardless of who may delight in or take offense at them.

With that out of the way, now on to the main event!

2020: Röhl helps Söring behind the scenes and in front of them

As we saw in the last post, Bettina Röhl first made contact with Jens Soering in 2014, after reading his 2012 book “Not Guilty!”. She struck up a correspondence with him and published a 2016 essay in the conservative German website Tichys Einblick. The essay was 100% aligned with Söring’s own arguments as of that time period. Even from the 2016 article, we see that Röhl lacks objectivity. She cites no original sources in this article, which suggests most of the information came from Jens Soering.

Fast-forward to late 2019. There is good news and bad news for Team Söring. The good news is that he was paroled from prison on November 25, 2019 and landed in Germany just under a month later. The bad news, however, was that his case for innocence was beginning to spring leaks. The Virginia Parole Board had resoundingly re-affirmed Söring’s guilt even as it ordered his release. After researching the case for a year or so, it had also become clear to me that Söring’s innocence claims were “smokescreens”, in the words of German jurist and retired police chief Siegfried Stang. I wrote a 5,000 word piece for the German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (FAZ). In that piece, I pointed to the overwhelming evidence Jens Söring personally killed the Haysoms and criticized the credulous and misleading coverage of the case in the German press over the years.

By chance, this article was published the day the news of Söring’s release hit Germany. I had no idea this was going to happen, nor did the FAZ. Members of Team Söring, of course, suspected a conspiracy, showing the influence of his paranoid world-view on them. Söring landed in Germany on December 17, 2019, to great fanfare. By this time, I had already gained access to the Wright Report, and had read key parts of it. I published another article with the FAZ on December 17, 2019. In this article, I announced that I had gained access to a thorough report on the case from a retired London Metropolitan Police detective who was deeply involved in the case and had submitted a 450-page report on the case to the Governor of Virginia.

My Articles Raise Team Söring’s Hackles

Team Söring had been loosely monitoring my (old) blog and Holdsworth’s, but dismissed us as obscure cranks, of course without actually responding to any of the substantive arguments we put forward. Yet now this “Hammel” was publishing articles in Germany’s most prestigious newspaper. What was going on? Behind the scenes, my article of November 26, 2019 unleashed fear and loathing among Team Söring in Germany. The first response was a December 2019 letter to the editor from the “Jens Söring Circle of Friends” that was initated and co-authored by Karin Steinberger, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung journalist who had also published pro-Soering articles and even the pro-Soering documentary Killing for Love. Behind the scenes, she wrote to other members of Team Söring in a “panicked” tone suggesting they investigate my background to find “something fishy in his CV. Then we’ll have him" (six years later, they’re still looking).

She also asked them to make sure to delete any emails from her regarding her co-authorship of the letters to the editor: “We three should be sure to delete all the emails in which we sent the letter to the editor back and forth. Love, Karin.”

Source: ZAPP, das Medienmagazin: “Der Fall Jens Söring: Ein Mörder als Medienliebling?”

The first public commentary defending Söring’s innocence claims came from none other than Bettina Röhl, who had been in contact with Soering since 2014. Röhl published a piece named “Germany, your Murderers, Your Media” (an untranslatable German literary reference) in the Neue Züricher Zeitung (NZZ), a prominent conservative Swiss newspaper.

At this point, Röhl was not a member of what I call “Team Söring”, a core of between 5-6 key Söring supporters who collectively managed Söring’s publicity campaign, keeping in close touch by frequent telephone calls and emails. Yet Röhl was already completely committed to Jens Söring’s innocence claims. Back in November 2019, Röhl greeted news of Söring’s release from prison by tweeting: “Jens Söring is free! A moving moment.” In a follow-up to a since-deleted tweet she told a commenter: “i know him a bit, i’ve read his books and many documents. have considered him innocent for years…at any rate, his guilt has not been proven objectively.” She recommends his book “Not Guilty!”. On November 30, 2019, Röhl, apparently responding to Söring (the tweet has since been deleted, Söring would leave Twitter permanently later), expressed her relief that he could now “fight for the truth” in freedom.

But there was trouble on the horizon, in the form of my article from 26 November 2019. A user posted a link to the article on Röhls’ timeline and expressed his satisfaction that the “narcotized” media in Germany were finally waking up to Söring’s guilt. Röhl responded by asking where the “facts” were which the article was based on and pointing to the fact that Söring’s DNA was not found at the crime scene. She assures “RolfAus” that she has had the case on her radar screen since 2014 (Karin Steinberger got there 7 years before), has read “many documents” and knows the case better than him. She calls me (“the FAZ-author”) “over-engaged”, whatever that may mean. Apparently a polite way of saying obsessed? She claims it’s “crazy” (gaga) for anyone to rely on the “old verdict” in the case. Replying to other users, she states: “German journalists, politicians, and also people worldwide have good reasons to doubt the verdict from 1990. And most of them are not connected to each other, but rather are independent.”

On January 1, 2020, Röhl published the aforementioned NZZ commentary. The piece starts out with Röhl criticizing recent German coverage of Söring’s case. Even when one believes Söring guilty even in the face of “clearly preponderant doubts”, the reporting in the German “quality press” left “a huge amount to be desired”. Röhl then compares coverage of Söring to coverage of RAF terrorists, which often did not list their specific crimes or omitted incriminating details.

Söring, she complains, is getting much harsher treatment. Against this backdrop, Röhl argues, it is “discomfiting” that Soering is being “stigmatized” as a “double-murderer”, even thought he had served 33 years in prison, was only 18 at the time of the crime, and “had no criminal record”. This is incorrect: Both Elizabeth Haysom and Jens Söring had pled guilty to fraud in England and served a year in prison for it. Röhl admits that the coverage of Söring in Germany had been “somewhat favorable”, but claimed this was a result of celebrities and experts identifying “significant doubts” about his guilt.

However, Röhl continues, “two articles by the same FAZ contributor” (my articles from November 26 and December 17, 2019) had “shifted the momentum” (Schubumkehr) against Söring. The articles appeared to have fuelled the “media drumbeat” against Söring. She continues (my translation):

In his guest column, the author, a former criminal lawyer, who claims to know the case well, apodictically declares that Söring is not a victim of a miscarriage of justice. Yet he ultimately has no additional proof except for Söring’s long-recanted confessions. The two articles read like a new indictment, as if Söring had not already served much more than his sentence (seine Haftstrafe nicht bereits im Übermass abgesessen), but instead must now be condemned again.

Let’s pause to identify the mistakes and misconceptions in this paragraph. First of all, I was then and still am a licensed attorney in good standing, Texas Bar Number 00796698. The fact that my license is inactive does not change this. Second, I did not “apodictically declare” (the word “apodictic” is much more common in German than English, but I left it in for authenticity, plus it’s also a cool word) that Söring’s trial was fair, I made logical arguments buttressed by evidence.

As for me not supplying “additional proof” of Söring’s guilt, I didn’t need to. Söring was convicted after a fair trial based on “the overwhelming evidence presented at Soering's criminal trial that he alone committed the murders”. Soering v. Deeds, Virginia Supreme Court, Record No. 971647, April 17, 1998. Yet of course I mentioned more than Söring’s “long-recanted confessions”. Röhl’s use of this phrase is telling: In 2020, Söring usually included the fact that he had “recanted” his confessions as one of the talking points in his Gish Gallop of supposed grounds for doubt about his conviction. I and many others pointed out that (1) he waited four years to recant his confessions, (2) recantation has no legal significance, (2) plenty of German prisoners had “recanted” their confessions with no effect whatsoever on the validity of their conviction.

Söring got the message. Now, if Soering mentions this point at all, he hastily concedes that recantation is legally meaningless. Röhl then bizarrely claims Söring served more time than his actual sentence. The exact opposite is the case: Despite being sentenced to two consecutive terms of life imprisonment, Soering was released after only 30 years in U.S. custody. In the next paragraph, Röhl presents a short list of supposed problems with Söring’s case, including the absence of his DNA at the crime scene, the supposed proof of “unknown third parties”, the lack of a murder weapon, etc. Of course no proof is provided for any of these claims, and they are either irrelevant (no murder weapon found) or misleading (there is no proof of two male accomplices at the crime scene).

Team Söring were a bit surprised by this article, since Röhl was somewhat of an outsider. Further, she was viewed as fairly right-wing, and Team Söring did not want to be seen as associating with a potentially controversial political tendency. However, they saw that Söring and Röhl called each other by the intimate “du” and seemed to be on very familiar terms. Team Söring wanted to post Röhl’s piece on Jens Söring’s Facebook timeline, but Söring was concerned that if the Söring site admin posted it, it might look as if they were “patting themselves on the back” (wir uns selber an die Schulter klopfen). Also, since Röhl’s article attacked me personally, if Söring himself were to link to it on Facebook, it might indicate to “Hammel” that Söring was “angry at [me]” (ich mich über ihn ärgere).

From this we see that as early as the beginning of 2020, Söring had decided that refusing to acknowledge my existence was his only viable option, which was probably correct. Afterwards, he would try to convince his fans and supporters to follow the same policy — with ever-diminishing success. The phrase “patting ourselves on the back” is also telling: One interpretation is that it might be just an attempt not to seem over-eager. Another interpretation is that quickly re-posting the link to the Röhl piece might leave the impression that Söring and Röhl were in communication. That impression, of course, would have been correct. But Röhl was not only communicating regularly with Söring, she was also giving him advice on his upcoming media campaign, just like Karin Steinberger.

Karin Steinberger, of course, is the journalist for the major German newspaper Sueddeutsche Zeitung whose coverage was so biased in favor of Söring that the editor-in-chief of the newspaper saw himself compelled to publicly apologize for her coverage as being tainted by her undisclosed close relationship to Söring.

I became aware of Röhl’s article in early January 2020. I posted a message on Röhl’s Facebook page alerting her to be on the lookout for a very long article from me (eventually published on 22 January 2020) addressing Söring’s innocence claims. Röhl reached out to Söring, advising him that my previous two articles had already caused a stir among German journalists including Markus Lanz and Der Spiegel.

As Söring geared up for his early 2020 interview with Der Spiegel, Röhl was in contact with Team Söring, asking for a follow-up interview with him for a German newspaper, perhaps the FAZ or the German center-right daily Die Welt. Team Söring decided not to offer the FAZ an interview, in part so as not to reward them for their “attack” on Söring. Die Welt, however, was also a center-right newspaper, so some of the same readers might read an article or interview arguing Söring’s claims, thus providing a counterbalance to my “attacks”.

Writing to members of Team Söring, Söring himself, in mid-February 2020, declared that he trusted Röhl, but that she would not be given an interview. Perhaps she could write an article, but in principle, this article could be written by anyone (Diesen Artikel könnte jeder schreiben). Söring stated that Röhl should be sent “documents” (presumably, a “Media Pack”) and that Söring would “help her with the research”. Söring then said Röhl had promised him she would not reveal the assistance he and Team Söring had provided to her.

By late February 2020, Söring had changed his mind. Röhl still wanted an interview, and now he was inclined to grant her one. Söring was dissatisfied with the Spiegel interview that had been published, even though Söring had appeared at the interview with lawyers and PR agents (a fact Der Spiegel did not dwell on) and Team Söring had gone back and forth with the Spiegel reporters about how the article would be phrased. Söring had two problems. First, Söring hadn’t appeared on the cover of Der Spiegel, as he had hoped. Second, the reporters had not focused enough on his innocence claims.

In late February 2020, after the Spiegel interview had come out, Söring told Team Söring that he had known Röhl for years. She was extremely eager to interview him for a German news outlet. Söring said he trusted her, since she was “completely convinced” of his innocence — in fact, Söring stated, Röhl had privately assured Söring that the interview would be designed to highlight his innocence claims. That, Söring said, was very important to him.

As far as I can tell, no interview took place, and no interview or further article was published. At least until now, more than five years later.

There are a few takeaways from this whole story:

Röhl’s bias: If the 2016 article and her tweets were not already enough evidence, this post — based on documentary evidence and first-hand accounts which, I repeat, I will document in court if necessary — demonstrates that Bettina Röhl, like Karin Steinberger, sacrificed her journalistic objectivity when it came to Jens Söring. Behind the scenes, she was in Söring’s camp and (according to Söring) promised him that whatever she wrote would argue for his innocence. Yet like Karin Steinberger, Röhl was concerned to project an outward appearance of impartiality. That is why she extracted a promise from Söring that he would not reveal he and perhaps other team members had furnished her with documents and research.

Journalists are not supposed to act as unofficial PR representatives, but too many German journalists do. The best way to ensure accountability and foster informed critical news consumption is to highlight these cases and call for reform, including mandatory disclosure of personal relationships. Röhl can and should write whatever she likes about Söring, but she must voluntarily disclose her 11-year personal relationship with him and her firm conviction of his innocence, so readers can accurately judge the credibility of her arguments.

Team Söring’s secretiveness: The public appearances and media contacts of Jens Söring in early 2020 were carefully choreographed behind the scenes, including by professional PR representatives like Oliver Dederichs, whom Söring referred to by the intimate “du” form. In long email-chains and dinners, Team Söring and Dederichs debated every conceivable aspect of Söring’s media campaign: Who of the many supplicant journalists should get interviews? What was their attitude toward the case? Where should Söring establish social media presences? What should he post about? Who would get the book deal? Which documentary filmmakers would Söring cooperate with? Should Söring respond to Hammel? Should someone else? How? Or should we simply decline to acknowledge his existence?

All of this, of course, was done behind the scenes. To the outside world, Söring presented himself as a reflective victim of injustice just waking up to the wonders of freedom after 33 years behind bars. Which, of course, was part of the truth. Behind the scenes, professionals were helping him to stage a choreographed publicity campaign designed to maximize the audience for his innocence claims and counter the negative public image arising from the fact that he murdered two people.

“I never wanted to talk about my case!”: Jens Söring always wanted to be a star. After he murdered Derek and Nancy Haysom, he intended sell his story. Even in 1986, just after he had confessed to murdering Derek and Nancy Haysom, Söring wrote to Terry Wright and asked Wright to make copies of his notebooks and diaries, since he might be able to sell his story to an audience of “millions”. Preparing for release, he planned a series of lectures and wrote a vaguely autobiographical novel called “Son of the Promise” and even a play about his life. In his public-facing statements, however, Söring sometimes claimed that if he were ever sent back to Germany, he might live out the rest of his life in a monastery or disappear into ordinary life.

Söring claimed in his 2021 book that after his return to Germany in 2019, he found himself forced to talk about his guilt because “attacks” in the German press (i.e. my articles) had required him to “defend” his reputation. As we’ve seen, this was not true. Söring had always planned, long before his release, to broadcast his story to the most people possible if he ever got out, and he did just that. He is still doing this 5 years later.

Nevertheless, as we will see in the next installment of this series, some gullible German journalists still buy this “reluctant celebrity” line. Stay tuned!