"Telling Details" and the Chuck Reid Report

There are large stretches of the Reid Report which read an awful lot like Soering. Coincidence? You decide!

Marriott Hotel, Washington, D.C., 1:59 AM, March 31, 1985

First of all, I think we can bid farewell to the upcoming revelations which will “turn the tables” on Soering’s critics. They turned out to be the delusions of an unfortunate woman who suffers from mental instability. Attempts to interest the press in them failed: The New Yorker and the Washington Post made some preliminary inquiries, but quickly realized there was nothing here but sad family trouble of no relevance to Soering’s guilt. The sexual-abuse charges have been investigated and the investigation is now closed without charges. The accuser hasn’t posted any follow-up videos or posts anywhere, as far as I can tell. There have been no more contributions to the GoFundMe campaign in weeks. Söring’s latest annoucenements for his new Autumn 2025 tour promise his “Am I a Murderer?” spiel and prison tales, not a “shocking revelation” from a Haysom family member.

I know that most reporters who have worked on the Söring case read this blog. I hope that the context I have provided here, in public, has helped them evaluate whether these allegations were worth pursuing.

In other news, the comment section is quite exciting right now. I like that, but please keep it civilized, people.

One theme in the comments has been the one mistake in the Wright Report. The “Chuck Reid” Report of course also highlights — nay, relishes — this error. But Chuck got there late. I corrected this very error years ago, with the explicit permission of Terry Wright. Here’s the proof:

Other than this error, which was caused by a misleading entry in Söring’s custody log, there are no other significant errors in the Wright report. That’s quite something to say for a report that’s over 450 pages long. This is a tribute to Terry’s careful, methodical work.

But what about the rest of the “Chuck Reid” Report? It’s a typical farrago of claims, insinuation, speculation, and smokescreens. Some of its themes are things Soering has been complaining about for years, some of the subjects appear to have been contributed by Chuck Reid himself (He appears to still resent the fact that he was kept on-call to testify at Soering’s trial but was never called.) The report is written throughout in a curiously stilted style that makes Soering’s influence obvious.

The Surveillance-Camera Remarks

Let’s illustrate this by looking at the “Chuck Reid” Report’s discussions of the surveillance cameras in the Marriott Hotel. This issue has an interesting history. At trial, Jim Updike mentioned the cameras in his examination of hotel manager Yale Feldman, who said that there were no tapes from the night of the crime because the video cameras were merely monitored in real-time, not recorded. However, Soering did not know this when he discussed the cameras in his June 5, 1986 London interview:

Beever: “Did you throw your clothes away that evening or early the following morning?

Soering: “Ah … I think both… I mean.”

Beever: “Are you saying both … both items or both …”

Soering: “Both times” Beever: “In separate places? I, what sort of place did you throw them away?”

Soering: “Ah … trash …(inaudible) …trash bin … and stuff like that.

Garder: “Trash bins?

Beever: “Between Loose Chippings and D.C.?”

Soering: “Um… “

Beever: “That would mean that you arrived back at D.C. with no trousers on, wouldn’t it?”

Soering: “Um … yes, there could be a video tape of the elevator, which does show me without my trousers on because that’s in fact what happened.

Beever: “You went back to the Marriott Hotel?”

Soering: “Yea.”

Gardner: “You drove all the way up from Lynchburg to Washington, from Loose Chippings to Washington with no britches on, no trousers?”

Updike could have seized on this statement during his cross-examination, but either chose not to do so or overlooked it.

But Terry Wright was nothing if not a top-notch detective, and he spotted the significance of this statement right away, devoting several pages to it in his report. Following on from Terry, I also pointed out the importance of Soering’s remarks in my January 2020 FAZ article about Wright’s report. I even spun out a hypothetical to illustrate the absurd consequences of combining Soering’s accusations against Elizabeth with this statement.

Let’s dive in. As so often the case with Soering’s claims, the only way to preserve your sanity is to start with the truth.

The Truth

As of June 5, 1986, Soering had no idea how much evidence the police had against him. However, he knew they had his incriminating statements in his letters, and the diary entries. He also obviously knew he had fled the United States in a panic, which itself is strong evidence of guilt in American criminal law. He knew the police were interrogating Elizabeth Haysom at the same time as they were talking to him. He knew he had bled at the crime scene. He thus suspected, but did not know for sure, that he had left blood and fingerprints at the crime scene. Of course, the police did not reveal their state of knowledge to him.

So Soering knew his goose was cooked — the cops already had plenty on him, and Elizabeth was sure to give them even more. As he was “terrified” of the death penalty, he decided his only way to avoid it was to curry favor with the detectives by helping them solve the case. We know this was his motivation because he said so repeatedly throughout his statements. It’s all there in black and white.

Soering’s comment about the Marriott surveillance camera was intended as a helpful hint to the detectives: “Here’s some more evidence you can use if you don’t have it already.” Soering obviously assumed the hotel might have had tapes. That was indeed a possibility:

In 1972, security professionals began to look at emerging technologies such as the VCR for potential use in CCTV applications. Although it’s easy to view VCRs as a novelty device of the late 20th century, it was actually a revolutionary piece of technology that helped to open the doors for the future of video surveillance.

With the ability to record and playback video, the security industry began to take notice. In the early 1980s, security manufacturers started to offer CCTV systems for general security applications.

The industry had developed specialized systems with ultra-long-play tapes (they stretched the time by only taking stop-motion photos every half-second or so, instead of 24 frames per second) to protect larger enterprises. Often, insurance companies would require taped surveillance or offer a policy discount if it was present. Smaller businesses would be likely to re-record over tapes on a daily or weeky basis. However, larger companies with more resources and more exposure might have a policy of keeping tapes for a certain period, or even indefinitely. Growing up in the USA at this time, you would see videotape surveillance footage on the local news just about every night.

So that’s the truth: Soering assumed the cameras were being recorded, and to show his helpfulness and candor, confessed he was probably caught on tape and advised the police to look for it if they hadn’t already found it. In this version, everything is logical and coherent.

Soering’s Alternate Universe

“She was playing a game that guilty people play, questioning the questioner, trying to convert the truth into a shuttlecock that could be batted back and forth and eventually lost.” — Ross Macdonald, “The Underground Man”

When he mentioned the cameras in 1986, Soering could not have known that just over four years later, he would be telling a different story. After all, he hadn’t invented that story yet. After every other strategy failed and it was time to play the Elizabeth-did-it card, Soering strove mightily to come up with alternative explanations for all the incriminating statements he had made over the years. Yet, like Jim Updike, he either failed to notice the camera remark or did not recognize its significance.

Soering’s failure to come up with an excuse for the camera comments was a major problem, because Soering’s 1990 story cannot be reconciled with his 1986 statements. In 1990, Soering testified that Elizabeth Haysom, acting alone, murdered her own parents and returned to the hotel room wearing different clothing than she had on when she had left. Her parents’ own blood stained her forearms. Thus, if surveillance recordings from the Marriott existed, they would have shown Elizabeth Haysom returning alone to the Marriott at 2:00 A.M., possibly with visible bloodstains on her arms. Yet in 1990, Soering claimed that four years before, on June 5, 1986, he was motivated by a desire to protect Elizabeth Haysom from the death penalty.

But if that were true, why would he point detectives to a piece of evidence which would directly implicate her as the sole killer of her parents? To images that might well show her literally with her parents’ own blood on her hands? This is where Soering’s alternate universe suffers its first fatal glitch:

Only after the Wright Report was published did Söring realize what a huge problem the camera comments were. Team Söring went back and forth about whether and how to respond to the Wright report. They eventually decided the best response — or more accurately, the least damaging response — would be to ignore it. As a result, the report sat there for years, convincing thousands of people Soering’s innocence claims were meritless.

By the time Soering got around to actually trying to challenge the report, it was far too late: the autumn 2023 documentaries had already come out, and the world basically decided Söring was guilty and moved on. The release of the “Chuck Reid” Report went largely unnoticed. One problem, perhaps, was that it was initially offered for sale by the same publishing house that released the book In Dubio Pro Reo, a book so error-filled that Soering still refuses to mention it even though the book is resolutely pro-Soering in tone.

The other problem with the Reid Report is that large portions of it read exactly as if they were written by Jens Soering. In certain places, the sock-puppeting becomes almost comical.

“Chuck Reid” Comes to the Rescue

One of those passages is the discussion of the cameras remark. In the 3 years after the Wright Report came out, Soering had plenty of time to try to come up with some explanation for his camera comments. Soering now says he knew all along there were no recordings from the Marriott. However, he wanted to convince the detectives that he was being forthcoming with them and that they could trust his story. Therefore, he inserted the comments about the cameras as a “telling detail” to make his story seem more detailed, and thus more authentic.

But wait, you might ask: If Soering wanted to make his story sound more realistic and to show his candor to the detectives, why would he waste their time by pointing them to evidence he knew did not exist?

Soering made this argument in the podcast with the German judge. He then later had “Chuck Reid” make it. Here is that part of the Reid Report. Pay special attention to the language and style:

In his confession, Soering said that there must be a recording from the video camera in the parking garage of the hotel showing him in bloody clothes after returning from the murder. No such video recording exists. Wright interprets Soering's testimony as if it must be the ultimate proof of his guilt.

In contrast to Wright, Ricky — who was actually assigned to the case — considered the alleged video camera recording to be unimportant. After Soering gave his confession, Ricky made no attempt whatsoever to secure a possible recording. (Trial transcript, June 7,1990, pages 189-190)

If the video camera were really the final, absolute proof of Soering's guilt, would Ricky not have moved heaven and earth to secure the videotape? And why doesn't Wright let his readers know that Ricky thought nothing of the recording?

Wright apparently forgets that these murders happened in 1985 — i.e., decades before digital video camera recordings were introduced. In the mid-1980s, video could only be recorded in analog with VHS tapes. This was very cumbersome and expensive, so it only happened in rare cases: bank vaults or larger jewelry stores, for example.

Telling details

Soering's confession contains several such "telling details": a detail that creates the appearance of truthfulness because it's just too good not to be true. Soering claims he incorporated three of these details into his false confession: the dead dog, the song "Psychokiller," and the video camera. None of them were true, he claims — and there is no independent evidence supporting their existence.

Haysom also incorporated "telling details" into her testimony: for example, that Soering was covered from head to toe in blood when she opened the car door on an open street in Washington, D.C. And that he ordered her to clean the rental car with Coca-Cola while he showered and went to sleep. In her diary entries on the run, Haysom wrote of "white slave transfer points," laser brain surgeries and contacts with IRA terrorists. None of this was true, either.

Soering and Haysom considered themselves artists and writers, and their letters contain long passages on this subject. Experienced investigators would have recognized that the two suspects displayed a great deal of imagination, to put it politely.

First let’s look at the substance. This new explanation raises even more questions. If the sole purpose of these “telling details” was to add verisimilitude to his story, then why would he add details that make him look guilty (the cameras) or which make him look like a sociopath (the injured dog and the “Psycho Killer” song)? He could have picked neutral observations: unusual weather, or a roadside landmark, or an advertisement for a then-current museum exhibition. You know what’s coming:

Instead, he chose to tell investigators that he was deeply concerned about having possibly injured a dog with his car, right after butchering two human beings. And he seemed to relish the irony of hearing a song about a “Psycho Killer” right after he had become a killer himself. Bible scholars evaluate the plausibility of historical facts in the Bible by the “criterion of embarrassment”: “[A] historical account is deemed more likely to be true if the author would have no reason to invent a historical account which might embarrass them.” It fits here. Söring would never have made these remarks unless they were true.

Now to the style of this passage. Anyone who has read Soering’s writing recognizes his style instantly: The exaggerations (“ultimate proof”, “final, absolute proof”, “no attempt whatsoever”, “thought nothing of”, “moved heaven and earth”), the peevish and insulting tone, the smokescreens (we were so imaginative!) and especially the instant pivot to Elizabeth’s perfidy. During his trial testimony Söring constantly tried to deflect attention away from himself and onto Elizabeth. In fact, it led to one of the lighter moments of the trial, when Soering testified under cross-examination that he was right-handed and then immediately added that Elizabeth was right-handed, too. Updike sarcastically thanked Soering for the information.

Also, why would Chuck Reid, of all people, be making these arguments? Reid was not present during Soering’s confessions, in fact he had left the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office a month before they were made. He did not testify at Soering’s trial. He never publicly doubted Soering’s conviction until Killing for Love, which came out 26 years after Soering’s trial. Was Reid really still interested enough in this case to read the entire Wright Report? Did he also read the trial transcript, as his citations to it imply? Why? What does he actually think about Söring’s claim that the camera remark was a mere “telling detail”? And would he really have written a sentence like “Experienced investigators would have recognized that the two suspects displayed a great deal of imagination, to put it politely”? I don’t know Chuck Reid’s prose style, but I do know Soering’s and that sentence — and the passage as a whole — has Soering written all over it.

There’s not much more to say about the “Chuck Reid” Report. It’s mainly a re-hash of stale complaints which have been overtaken by events or rejected by appellate courts. The Wright Report convinced thousands of people who believed Söring to change their mind, often at great personal and psychological cost. That itself is a tribute to Terry Wright’s integrity and persuasiveness. If the “Chuck Reid” Report has convinced anyone to change their minds, I’ve seen no evidence of this.

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