Six Takeaways from Siegfried Stang's New Book

Söring undermines his own innocence story (again).

I’ve just finished Nebelkerzen (“Smokescreens”), the new book on the Söring case by retired Chief Inspector Siegfriend Stang. I’m working on a full review which I hope to publish in a newspaper somewhere, but I wanted to identify a few key points Stang makes that further cripple Jens Söring’s alternate history of his case. Some are not things Stang says, but things he gets Söring to admit.

Stang met with Söring on November 29, 2021, for several hours in Hamburg. The atmosphere was relaxed and friendly, but Stang did ask Söring some pointed questions about his innocence story. He asked no aggressive follow-up questions, because he wanted to keep the conversation going. Söring was evidently eager to convince Stang — Söring had even brought a laptop along to the meeting to show Stang various documents and photos. Söring also, as I noted before, agreed to answer follow-up questions from Stang by email. Stang received the impression that Söring wanted to convince him to become a spokesman for Söring’s innocence.

Here are a few interesting points from Stang’s book and his interview with Söring.

1. Page 609: Söring admits Tony Buchanan’s “abandoned car” story was irrelevant. Stang confronts Söring with the many weaknesses in Buchanan’s story: “[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.”

2. Page 678: Söring admits he confessed the Haysom murders to Matthias Schröder. “To my surprise, Söring simply told me that he had admitted the murders [in the Ashford Remand Centre] to earn the respect of the other inmates.” This bolsters Schröder’s credibility.

3. Page 733: Söring almost admits his (second) explanation for not giving the police fingerprints is nonsense. During the interview, Stang confronts Söring with one of the many problems with his excuse for fleeing the USA on October 13, 1985. Söring now says that he refused to give the Bedford County detectives his fingerprints on October 6, 1985 because he didn’t want to be tracked by his fingerprints during his international flight from the law.

   As Stang noted, there were several problems with this story. First, the evidence shows Söring only came up with his plan to flee the USA after the October 6, 1985 interview. Second, if Söring didn’t want to be tracked internationally, then all he had to do was not leave the country. No sudden flight, no suspicion, no fingerprints added to any database. Stang recounts Söring’s reaction: “His facial expression became darker, and he threw a scrap of paper he had been playing with across the table. In an annoyed tone of voice, he said (approximately): ‘There you see it again. You can try so hard…” [“man kann noch so sehr…”] He stopped suddenly. He was clearly very irritated that he hadn’t thought of this aspect. I changed the subject to avoid damaging the friendly conversational atmosphere.”

4. Page 707: Another Söring story change. During the interview, Söring, “somewhat lost in thought”, told Stang: “Only Elizabeth and I know who the true murderer is.” This is apparently Söring’s new method of avoiding directly implicating Elizabeth Haysom in the murders, which he cannot do because Haysom may sue him.

   But, of course, it’s inconsistent with Söring’s prior story — er, well, actually, with several of Söring’s prior stories. For example, he told the Spiegel magazine in January 2020: “I don’t know who wielded the knife”. Now he does! Second, what about the “two unknown males” at the crime scene? Wouldn’t they also know who committed the murders? Söring appears now to have abandoned any claim that other people were involved in the murders. Interestingly, Stang says that during the interview, Söring spun him yet another story about the crime, but told Stang it wasn’t “ready to be made public” yet.

5. Page 677-678: Söring does not deny that Matthias Schröder gave him the idea to claim immunity. During the interview, Stang confronted Söring with the evidence that he could not possibly have confessed in the belief that he had diplomatic immunity, because the idea of claiming immunity was only conveyed to him after his interrogations by Matthias Schröder. [That is only one reason to doubt this story]. Söring “refused to comment” on this argument.

6. Page 523: Söring wrote a novel in which a judge is murdered with his own gavel. I knew Söring had written a novel called “Son of the Promise”, but I didn’t know that the book had actually been published, and that the main story was about a judge who was murdered with his own gavel by an inmate who had been the victim of a miscarriage of justice!

That’s all for now, but “Smokescreens” contains many more interesting insights and observations, which I’ll be addressing in the coming weeks. For now, go buy yourself a copy for the very reasonable price of 9 Euros!