Söring's Innocence Story is Still Dead

Under the gentlest possible cross-examination, Söring's story dies. Again. Wait, was it ever alive?

Source: Reddit

First a short plug (gotta pay the rent): Please consider buying my book! It tells the whole story from the very beginning to just last week. People have already told me they enjoyed reading it. Here’s a German review:

The title is a reference to a Saturday Night Live news satire from the 1970s. Spanish dictator Francisco Franco took a very long time to die, so for months, newscasters informed their audiences that although he was gravely, terminally ill and on his last breath, he was still somehow alive.

After Franco finally died, news Anchor Chevy Chase began a long-running gag:

Söring Loses his Marbles

I once predicted Söring might have a psychological meltdown when his claims were exposed as meritless. Söring sued me for saying that and lost.

Turns out I was right. Here’s the latest from Söring’s online presences:

Isn’t there anyone in Söring’s inner circle who can rein him in?

Söring is also now asking for money for living expenses on GoFundMe:

Er, what new start? Söring has now been free for almost four years. By this time, he could have gotten a college degree, learned a trade, or established himself as, for instance, a translator or editor or journalist, since he speaks fluent German and English. He could even have established himself as a writer — his lifelong dream — if he had spent these four years researching some interesting subject.

Instead he’s asking for people to pay his rent and buy his food while he fights a battle to rewrite history which he lost decades ago. I’d have pity for him if he weren’t still smearing innocent people. In the rambling “F*cked by Netflix” interview, he says of Donald Harrington (who said he saw Söring with wounds at the Haysoms’ funeral, and is now dead): “He committed perjury.” As long as Söring continues to spew lies and defamation, he has nobody to blame when people defend themselves and the truth.

Söring’s Story Crumbles on Cross-Examination, Again

A principal reason Söring was convicted in 1990 is that Jim Updike asked him tough questions on cross-examination and Söring’s story was exposed as incoherent. Söring just underwent another cross-examination, this time by a much friendlier conversation partner. It didn’t go any better.

In Episode 10 of the German-language podcast “The Case of Jens Söring: A German Judge Rules”, President of the Hannover Regional Court Dr. Ralph Guise-Rübe “cross-examines” Jens Söring. Guise-Rübe asks Söring mildly critical questions, and Söring responds:

It sounds as if Söring was provided the questions in advance, so we are hearing the best answers he thought he could come up with. Guise-Rübe doesn’t ask any follow-up questions, even when Söring’s answers contradict his previous statements or the trial record.

Most of Söring’s answers are taken from the various versions of his story from post-2020:

• Why did you flee the USA? Because the police were on to us.

• What about the letters? Yes, they are disturbing, but they were fantasies and literary exercises.

• Why did you let your family believe you were a murderer for three years? (Or did he?) Because I had to let the ECHR decide my case thinking I was guilty.

Yet Söring introduces new twists and fatal contradictions. To back up his assertion that unknown men were at the crime scene, he says police found unidentified fingerprints on a bottle of “Old Plum” brandy. That is relevant, Söring claims, because both victims had high blood-alcohol levels.

That’s it — that’s the entire argument.

Because the victims had high blood-alcohol levels, they must have been drinking from that specific bottle of alcohol. And the unidentified non-bloody fingerprint must have been left by the perpetrator on the night of 30 March 1985, not by a cleaning lady or any of the hundreds of houseguests the Haysoms had every year.

Söring isn’t so much grasping at straws here as grasping at air, while the straws recede into the far distance.

Another example is the “Jim Farmer’s Birthday Party” theory. Söring has shared this privately among his inner circle for years, but generally has avoided broadcasting it to the whole world because it’s so ludicrous. Now, however, Söring has to scrape the bottom of the barrel. Here’s the story: Jim Farmer’s birthday happened to be 30 March. He had a birthday party on 30 March 1985 in Bedford — the very same city where the murders occurred (cue ominous music). So the murders went down like this: Elizabeth drove to the birthday party of “her drug dealer” (this time, Söring doesn’t mention Farmer’s name, a small mercy). Everyone takes a lot of “drugs” at this drug dealer’s drug party where there are lots of drugs that all these drug addicts like to drug themselves with. Did I mention Elizabeth was a drug addict?

Then Elizabeth, who is a drug addict, leaves with Jim Farmer, her drug dealer, and perhaps someone else (Ned B.?). Elizabeth has somehow convinced these honor students to help her murder her parents. Sounds crazy, but then drugged-out druggies do crazy things when they’re on drugs! They drive over in some other car (perhaps the one Elizabeth later took to Tony Buchanan) and do the deed. Elizabeth then returns to Washington, probably doing drugs the whole way.

In a few places, Söring leaves the path of silly speculation and enters the darkling forest of deception. When Guise-Rübe asks him why he immediately threw Elizabeth under the bus on 5 June 1986 by telling detectives the two had discussed “murder” and Elizabeth knew what Söring planned to do, Söring deploys the distinction he always uses to explain this apparent discrepancy: My plan was only to protect Elizabeth from the electric chair, not from a prison sentence. At trial, he claims that both of them agreed he had to implicate Elizabeth as an accomplice to murder (minimum sentence twenty years) because nobody would believe a version in which Elizabeth didn’t participate in the killings at all, since everyone knew she hated her parents.

Also remember: Elizabeth is a drug-addicted drug addict who uses drugs.

So according to Söring in 2023, the deal is: Elizabeth happily accepts a minimum of 20 years in the clapper — or possible life — while Söring goes on trial in Germany and gets maybe 10 years, of which he’ll actually have to serve about 5. That would come as a surprise to the Söring of 1995, who wrote in the eBook Mortal Thoughts:

But eighteen-year-olds like me can't get more than ten years under German law, I read that in the newspaper. They'll let me out on parole after five. We'll probably get out at the same time! It'll work! It'll work! The police will believe me because only guilty people confess to murder. And the police will believe you because only guilty people confess to arranging an alibi for the killer of their parents. It'll work!

In 2018, Jason Flom, obediently reciting a talking point from Söring, told a nationwide audience of millions watching the ABC newsmagazine “20/20” that Söring’s plan was to get out of prison after five years and rejoin Elizabeth. The two would then “ride off into the sunset together”. That sounds like a great plan, as long as Söring was willing to wait another 40 years to rejoin his “goddess” — Haysom was ultimately sentenced to two consecutive terms of 45 years in prison for the exact crime Söring implicated her in on June 5, 1986.

Does Gullible Guise-Rübe point out this gaping flaw in Söring’s story? No. Either he didn’t know that what Söring was saying conflicted with Söring’s own prior statements, or he didn’t care.

There’s an even more blatant lie which Gullible Guise-Rübe doesn’t spot. He asks Söring about the infamous “coffee mug” comment in the joint travel diary Söring and Elizabeth kept to document their thrilling Bonnie-and-Clyde like flight from the law. To recap, Elizabeth Haysom wrote an entry in the joint diary (which they both contributed to and read) saying Söring left the U.S. because he was afraid he might have left fingerprints on a coffee mug when he traveled to the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office for an interview on October 6, 1985: “The case is about to be solved [perhaps fingerprints on coffee mug Jens used in Bedford gave him away].” This sentence is part of a long, rambling diary entry dated October 12, 1985 (relevant passages highlighted):

Oct. 12 Sat. Write letters (Jens). Lizzie throws fit with Chris + David over shopping. Jens wipes finger-prints from room. Passport photos done. Leaves C’ville at 1.00pm (late) for D.C. in Scirocco. Parks at National Airport, satellite parking lot B – wipes car. Barely catches People Express to Newark. Departs N. @ 7.00pm. Preppy Negro girl and Buddhist technician as passengers. E begins packing and writes letter. Jens calls (from Newark) to invite me ‘to join Richard and himself in D.C.’ E. cooks dinner with Chris + David, @ 10.00 Howard phones. He is arriving in C’ville (perhaps) tomorrow but will definitely be visiting Wed. 16. ‘The case is about to be solved……’ [perhaps finger prints on coffee mug used by Jens in Bedford interview gave him away.] E + C. + D go midnight shopping. Walk to corner > Barracks Road Shopping Centre to buy hair dye for E. Walk to Faulkner to pick up stuff > 803. Cook cookies while hair is colouring. @ 2.00am Rover phones. IRA feel their situation in London has been put in jeopardy by E. Angry and unco-operative. E spends rest of night cleaning and wiping total apartment. [Chris + David ‘decide’ to ‘be in love’.]”

Over the decades, Söring has twisted himself into knots trying to explain this entry. At trial, he claimed it was a “joke”. In Mortal Thoughts, he claimed it was an “insurance policy” — known drug addict Elizabeth had put it in the diary knowing it would deeply incriminate Söring. Therefore, if they were ever caught, the diary entry would force Söring to keep his promise to confess on her behalf. When Söring realized this, he decided to allow the diary entry to stand, as he was deeply ashamed that he had apparently done something to cause notorious junkie Elizabeth to doubt whether he would actually follow through on his promise to take the blame:

So I apologised profusely to Elizabeth [who is a drug addict — editor’s note] and assured her that of course I would admit killing her parents if we were caught! As proof of my willingness to "confess" I even agreed to leave the passage about my fingerprints in the diary. But from then on I wrote all the entries, so our journal would be purely factual.

I love that touch about stepping in to save the world from Elizabeth’s lies. Is there any limit to this man’s nobility?

Before Guise-Rübe, Söring now wheels out the latest explanation for this entry, complete with a precise citation to the trial record! Söring proclaims that Elizabeth’s own testimony “exculpates” him on this point, telling the audience that Elizabeth admitted this diary entry was false on page 163 of her testimony on June 14, 1990. This passage occurs during cross-examination, where Neaton is trying to establish that Elizabeth fled the U.S. with Jens of her own free will, not because Söring convinced her to leave:

Q: So you had already decided to leave before he called you, correct?

A: No, sir.

Q: Oh, you were packing just in case you might decide to leave?

A: No, sir. If you recall, this diary was written in retrospect with Jens, and at that time Jens did not know the reason why I had stayed behind was to think things out for myself. And so of course I had to write in here that I had begun packing before I considered packing.

Q: So that was a lie in the diary?

A: There are a great many lies in many of these diaries.

Q: And they were deliberately put in there by you in that October 12th entry?

A: I don't understand.

Q: You intentionally wrote what you did in the October 12th entry to deceive Jens, right?

A: It was a continuance of a deception, yes.

This is all in reference to the phrase “E begins packing” in the diary entry. It has nothing to do with the coffee mug or fingerprints.

Did Elizabeth ever say anything about the mug? Why yes! In the very same volume of the trial transcript, on page 48, as she is being questioned by Jim Updike:

Q: Then in single quotes, the case is about to be solved. In brackets, perhaps fingerprints on coffee mug used by Jens in Bedford interview gave him away. What is that statement all about?

A: Well as I stated earlier, the — it was our belief that the police had fingerprints, a partial fingerprint in blood, and we thought that it was Jens's, and we thought that when he had gone to Bedford and had his interview with Ricky Gardner, that the coffee cup that he had used, they had lifted the fingerprints off of the coffee cup and matched it to this fingerprint.

Does Gullible Guise-Rübe let his audience know Söring is lying to them? Of course not. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.

I could go on, but these examples should be enough. Söring’s innocence story is cold, stiff, and very, very dead. Yet 33 years later, he’s still straddling it, desperately pumping on its chest and breathing into its skeletal mouth. And still finding people to help him.

God help us.