Sandy Hausman's Error-Filled, Defamatory Söring Article

Hausman gets about 75% of the facts wrong, with assists from ill-informed or duplicitous Söring supporters.

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Here in Germany, most journalists now know that Jens Söring’s innocence claims are meritless, and that they must take anything he or his supporters say with a truckload of salt. Some journalists, such as Karin Steinberger, have learned this lesson the hard way. Mainstream news sources are no longer interested in Söring. Whenever Söring appears on a podcast or posts online, many of the comments point out how implausible his story is on its face.

Back in the USA, though, time seems to have stood still since 2019, when Söring was deported to Germany. This is why Söring now tells people here in Germany they should ignore the German-language journalism about his case and concentrate on what American journalists have written.

With good reason. Söring could hardly have asked for a more custom-tailored press release than a recent article by Sandy Hausman, a reporter for Virginia Public Radio who has been covering the Söring case for years and conducted a fawning interview with him before his departure in 2019.

Her latest piece plumbs new depths of journalistic incompetence. We’ll have to go through it nearly line-by-line, there are so many errors, distortions, and deceptions. The article begins:

More than 40 years ago, a prominent couple from Bedford County – just outside Lynchburg – was murdered in their home. A court would eventually convict their daughter’s boyfriend, a UVA student from Germany, but he insisted he was innocent.

Friday, an attorney representing Jens Soering will file suit, asking the state to overturn Soering’s conviction based on new DNA evidence and testimony from a member of the victims’ family.

There is no new DNA evidence in this case. The only official DNA test that ever been conducted happened in 2009. Since then, there have only been contested interpretations of that one test. Jens Söring himself has refused to request new DNA testing, even though two Virginia journalists hired experts and lawyers to prepare a request and a testing protocol, identifying pieces of evidence which had never before been analyzed.

Let me repeat for clarity: Jens Söring has refused to apply for new testing, despite the fact that (1) it would cost him nothing; (2) it cannot have any negative legal repercussions for him; and (3) there is a chance it could vindicate his innocence claims. Any wrongfully-convicted persons would jump at the chance to get cost-free, risk-free new testing of the DNA in his case.

As for the “testimony” from the victim’s family, there is none. Testimony occurs when someone takes the stand at a trial or hearing, is sworn in, and gives evidence subject to cross-examination. Sheena Haysom has done none of these things. She has merely made a YouTube video and written a letter to the Virginia Parole Board.

When Jens Soering became a suspect in the murder of Derek and Nancy Haysom, he and his girlfriend— Elizabeth Haysom— left the country. They were eventually arrested in England, and after hours of questioning, Soering told police he was responsible for the crime.

Wrong. Söring told police he was responsible for the murder of the Haysoms almost immediately. As Ken Englade reports in Chapter 26 of Beyond Reason:

As soon as he walked into the interview room and sat down, he looked defiantly at Beever and asked him to turn off the tape recorder. He let them know immediately that he was more concerned with getting information than giving it.

“What’s going to happen to me?” he asked.

“Are you worried about it?” Beever responded with a chill in his voice.

“Yes,” said Jens.

“Why?”

“Because I murdered two people,” he said matter-of-factly. “You know that, don’t you?

Söring confessed the crime “[a]s soon as he walked into the interview room”. How can Hausman not know this?

Beever would later testify under oath about this confession, and it was also corroborated to me by Beever’s colleague Terry Wright.

“He thought that he had diplomatic immunity. He would not be tried in the United States but would be sent to Germany,” says lawyer Gail Starling Marshall, who represented Soering on appeal.

I try to be indulgent of my fellow lawyers, but this is grossly misleading. There is no evidence at any time before Söring testified in June 1990 that Söring thought he had diplomatic immunity. The idea someone might enjoy diplomatic immunity for a vicious double-murder is absurd; why would a country sign a treaty which allowed foreigners to commit murder with impunity on its soil?

Söring, of course, knew this. In his interrogation on October 6, 1985, in Bedford County, Söring said:

“Okay, now the state department has the right to actually deport me for as much as like a speeding ticket, they can do that okay and they keep files on this sort of thing, so that if you do enough things which the state department doesn’t like, they will deport you okay. (p. 55)

“Right now, I, I don’t think that y’all think you know I, I, did it [i.e., murdered the Haysoms], just because I’m a foreigner okay. Um. Unfortunately diplomatic immunity is something that you know that is long past, unfortunately, I guess.“ (p. 84)

During his 1986 confessions in London, Söring never once mentioned the word immunity. He repeatedly stated he was “terrified” of being sentenced to death. Scotland Yard detective Kenneth Beever agreed this was a very real possibility, telling Söring explicitly that there was a “90% chance” he would be extradited to Virginia and face the death penalty.

Jens Söring’s claim that he thought he had diplomatic immunity was a self-serving lie first unveiled to the world only in 1990, during his testimony. The purpose of the lie was to try to explain why Söring would confess to a crime which carried a potential death penalty: “See, I actually didn’t believe I would get the death penalty — that’s why I confessed.” But in June 1986, Söring was terrified of being executed, as he stated repeatedly in his confessions. And the police officers he was speaking with assured him that was indeed a possible, even likely outcome.

On this point, Gail Marshall must take the lion’s share of the blame. Lawyers are of course allowed to and even sometimes required to spin for their clients, but making public statements which are directly contradicted by the written record comes perilously close to deception.

She says German courts are usually lenient with young offenders – putting more emphasis on rehabilitation than punishment. He might have spent as little as a decade behind bars.

That is pure speculation. The German Youth Court Law allows juvenile criminal law to be applied to people who were between 18 to 21 at the time of the offense, but only if their overall character and background show they were unusually immature for their age and the offense is a “typical youth crime” (Jugendverfehlung).

Double murder, thank God, is not considered a typical youth crime in Germany. And the evidence shows Söring was unusually mature for his age: he had lived in numerous foreign countries, spoke two languages fluently, had obtained two college scholarships, and was living independently on the UVA campus. He would probably have been tried for murder as an adult in Germany, where the mandatory sentence for murder is life in prison.

“He was overwhelmed that this glamorous woman was attracted to him,” she recalls. “He also knew she would be tried in Virginia. Virginia had the death penalty, and so he thought ‘knight in shining armor! I can confess. I can be tried and give up ten years of my life, but it’s worth it for this woman I love.’”

This is the self-serving story he came up with five years after he killed the Haysoms. There is a mountain of evidence proving it is a lie. The jury at his trial watched Söring tell this story, and unanimously concluded that he was lying. As do 90% of the commenters whenever Söring tells this story on a podcast these days.

Instead, he was tried in Virginia and sentenced to life in prison. The judge, William Sweeney, was a friend of the Haysom family. He sentenced Elizabeth to 90 years as an accessory to the crime and scolded her for lying.

This is false. As judge Sweeney stated at the February 7, 1990 recusal hearing, he was friends only with one of Nancy Haysom’s brothers, Risque Benedict — and that friendship dated from Benedict and Sweeney’s college years in the late 1940s.

Over the next 40 years, Sweeney only saw Benedict “four or five” times, to quote his own words in open court. Sweeney was not friends with Derek or Nancy Haysom — he never visited to their house and they never visited his. Söring raised the issue of Sweeney’s alleged bias on his appeal and lost. The court found Sweeney was within his rights to stay on the case, and that there was no indication of bias in the way he conducted the trial — which was, of course, broadcast to millions of people.

Sweeney scolded Elizabeth for lying to try to evade her own culpability, but never suggested she had lied about Jens Söring’s participation in the crime. Or, for that matter, his physical abuse of her.

“I have been on the bench for 22 years – most of the time cases do not bother me too much, but I have lost some sleep over this one,” Sweeney said in court. “Many of Elizabeth’s accusations against her parents – particularly her mother – were the product of fantasy.”

That is true. Söring, as he repeatedly confirmed in 1986, believed Elizabeth’s exaggerated claims about her parents. His intense hatred of Elizabeth’s parents was one of his motives for killing them. In a private letter to a friend in 1987 Söring again stated he had believed Elizabeth’s lies in 1985, and that was the reason he developed an intense hatred for her parents.

Another motive for the murders was a desire to consolidate control over Elizabeth. As a panel of three forensic psychiatrists concluded in 1987 after an extensive analysis of the crime and of the relationship between Söring and Elizabeth Haysom: “It is likely that Mr. Soering killed the Haysoms not as an act of love—and certainly not at Ms. Haysom’s command—but, rather, as a means of retaining control over Ms. Haysom.”

In her testimony, Elizabeth said she was abused by her mom, and in searching the home, police found nude pictures of Elizabeth. Former Bedford County Detective Ricky Gardner told Radio IQ that those photos – which were sealed by the court – were not relevant to the case.

At her testimony in her trial in 1987, she explicitly denied her mother had abused her. According to Terry Wright, who saw them, the pictures were tasteful nudes taken from the side which Mrs. Haysom used as subjects for paintings. They were and remain irrelevant to the case.

“She had acknowledged that her mother had touched her and fondled her and had tried to have a romantic relationship with her,” Gardner admitted.

Asked if he did not think that significant, Gardner said, “It’s bizarre, but it doesn’t link back to the murder or anything.”

Gardner is correct here. Especially since if Jens Söring believed these allegations of abuse, they were an additional motive for him to kill the Haysoms, whom he referred to in his 1986 confessions as “monsters” whom he “hated” for “attacking” Elizabeth.

Now, however, Elizabeth’s niece – Sheena Haysom – says those photos were likely taken by a relative who joined another man in the family to help Elizabeth kill her parents.

“The truth is that Elizabeth herself actually participated in the murders, and it was another family member – not Elizabeth’s mother – who sexually abused her,”

In a video posted to YouTube, Sheena Haysom claimed “the same family member also sexually abused me. This is the horrible, dark truth that everyone in my family has been fighting to keep secret since 1985.”

Sheena Haysom alleges without evidence that Richard Haysom — who lived thousands of miles away from Virginia at the time of the murders — murdered his own parents along with Julian Haysom. This does not come from any personal experience; she was 6 at the time of the crime.

Her story is lurid, confused, and provably false. It conflicts with the physical evidence, with the eyewitness testimony, and even with Söring’s own alternate theory of the case. Her story cannot be true. The allegations she raised against Richard Haysom were investigated by the Canadian authorities, who confirmed directly to him that no charges would be pursued against him.

Sheena Haysom was sexually abused by her grandfather and has long struggled with mental illness and substance abuse problems, as she herself has confirmed online repeatedly. Her new allegations — lodged decades after the fact — are an example of the phenomenon of “recovered memories” which fuelled many of the “satanic panic” cases of the late 1980s and 1990s in the USA. The theory of recovered memories — that is, that they are memories of things which actually happened, rather than misapprehensions created by mental illness or manipulative therapy — has been debunked. Her allegations are a textbook case of false memory syndrome.

Did Sandy Hausman even watch Sheena’s video? Given the abysmal standards of journalism on display here, I have my doubts. Assuming she did watch the video, does she actually believe that Julian and Richard Haysom murdered their own parents/step-parents? How does she explain how Richard Haysom murdered his own parents in Boonsboro, Virginia when he was living in Canada at the time? Does she believe Elizabeth Haysom was present while her brothers/step-brothers slaughtered her parents? Does she actually believe that the Haysom family was a cesspool of sexual abuse?

Hausman does not have the courage or integrity to reveal whether she believes these allegations are plausible. Nor does she seem to have any thought to how they affect the Haysom family, which has already had to deal with Söring’s murder of their parents. How would Hausman react if her relatives were murdered, and then she was publicly accused, with no evidence, of being a child rapist and double-murderer? Why didn’t she at least contact the surviving Haysom family members for a response to this gross defamation?

Hausman should be ashamed of herself, and should remove this article from the Internet for this reason alone. Then she should publicly apologize to the Haysom family.

An FBI profiler theorized that Elizabeth was involved – a view shared by her uncle who spoke from the witness stand. He offered to explain his reasons but was never asked to elaborate.

Neither Sulzbach nor Howard Haysom had any evidence to back up their speculation that Elizabeth may have been at the crime scene, so they were not called to testify, because trials rely on evidence, not speculation. No FBI profile was ever created, and even if one had been, FBI profiles are not admissible as evidence and are wrong as often as they are accurate. Further, Howard Haysom has never wavered in his belief that Jens Söring murdered his parents. He only speculates that Elizabeth Haysom may have also been at the crime scene.

Former Albemarle County Sheriff Chip Harding devoted many hours to reviewing the case. A veteran detective, he says prosecutors often skip over details that don’t help them to win at trial.

“You have a young man who confesses, and then you get tunnel vision and you try to corroborate the confession in a legal way of doing that to get a conviction,” he reasons.

That’s exactly what Bedford County did. They heard Söring’s confessions, then presented evidence to corroborate it, including Söring’s sudden flight from the USA, his blood type at the crime scene, Elizabeth Haysom’s testimony, and the inconsistencies in the story Söring invented shortly before his 1990 trial. A jury found all of this evidence, put together, proved his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, and every appellate court has unanimously affirmed that judgment.

The prosecution claimed type O blood found at the scene could not have come from the victims and must have come from Jens Soering, who does have type O blood. But as DNA science evolved, Soering says, laboratory tests pointed to another man.

“We know from the DNA test results that this person with type-O blood was a male, because it had the XY chromosome, but we know with equal certainty that this male type-O person was not me. I’m completely and 100% eliminated,” he told Radio IQ.

Eliminated, of course, only means that Söring’s DNA was not found among the small number of highly-degraded samples which actually yielded some partial DNA profiles (most of the samples were too degraded for any results) during the 2009 DNA test. As every independent expert — and even one of Söring’s own — has confirmed, the handful of male partial DNA profiles detected during the 2009 test were consistent with the DNA of Derek Haysom, who left liters of blood all over the crime scene. There is not, and has never been, any evidence of unknown males at the crime scene. And Söring refuses new DNA tests which might shed light on the matter.

When Sheena Haysom came forward to accuse family members of abuse, a forensic scientist from Lynchburg, James Thomas McClintock, compared her blood with that of two unidentified samples from the crime scene. He could not rule out the possibility that they came from her relatives.

“Three times more probable that an individual from her family distributing that sample versus just some random person off the street,” McClintock explained.

Without access to McClintock’s actual report, it’s anybody’s guess what this means. I don’t and, I’m sure, neither does Hausman. If the results of Dr. McClintock’s analysis genuinely cast doubt on Söring’s guilt, Söring would have long since proclaimed them from the rooftops. He hasn’t.

As for McClintock, I wrote an open letter to him three months ago asking for his input on inconsistencies and apparent errors in his work on the Söring case. Several weeks later, his assistant claimed he would respond when he got enough time. He still has not responded. I doubt he ever will ever respond, because he doesn’t want to admit to mistakes.

A bloody sock print was also used to convict Soering, but that form of evidence has since been labelled junk science. That’s why Soering is asking that his original conviction be overturned. Sheena Haysom’s relatives have denied her claims, but she is asking the state to declare Soering innocent and open a new investigation into the case.

The sock print evidence cannot be “junk science” because it was never presented as science. Judge Sweeney (in a ruling which benefited Söring) held that the impression examiner could not testify as an expert at Söring’s trial because there was no known scientific procedure for attributing a sock print to a specific person.

However, there is of course no bar to claiming that the sockprint was consistent with Söring’s foot, which was what the jury heard. This type of corroborating evidence is used all the time: The presence of size 8 gloves at the crime scene is consistent with the defendant’s hand size, since the gloves were neither much larger nor much smaller than his hand. The videotape image is consistent with the defendant, because it shows someone who is between 5 feet 8 inches and 5 feet 10 inches tall, and the defendant is 5 feet 9 inches. The backpack the suspect was wearing is consistent with Brand X, since it has the same size, shape, and structure. I could list thousands of examples of this kind of relevant corroborating evidence.

Of course you could not support a conviction based solely on this type of evidence, but that didn’t happen in Söring’s case. The sockprint evidence was merely corroboration for his detailed confessions, which contained information only the person who killed the Haysoms could have known. The jury personally inspected Söring’s footprint (as well as others) and compared it to the bloody sockprint and held that Söring could not be ruled out, corroborating his confession.

Both Elizabeth Haysom and Jens Soering were paroled in 2019. She now lives in Canada and has not spoken about the case. Soering was deported to Germany. He grew up in Atlanta and Detroit where his father was stationed, and he would like to be able to visit this country – something he cannot now do as a convicted felon.

He will never be able to visit the USA, because he is on parole for the rest of his natural life, and one of the conditions of parole is a lifetime ban on visiting the USA. The only way to remove this restriction would be for him to receive a full pardon. That will never happen, because the evidence of his guilt remains conclusive and nothing in any of his many appeals and pardon applications has raised any doubts about his guilt. America has washed its hands of him forever.

As I said above, Sandy Hausman should retract this error-filled article and apologize to the Haysom family for drawing attention to the delusional — but deeply harmful — allegations of an unwell person. It’s especially unethical that she apparently did not even attempt to contact the Haysom family.

What kind of journalist publicizes accusations of child rape and murder against an innocent person without even contacting them to ask for comment?

The answer: Sandy Hausman.