Who was "Pardon"?

Whoever he was, he's perma-banned.

A soothing pastoral scene from the Unterbach Marshes near Düsseldorf

A few weeks ago, someone started posting comments on this blog under the moniker “Pardon I know the truth”. I’ll assume this person was male. From the comments here, it became clear the person knew a great deal about the case and had been following it for some time. At first I thought this might have been a specific person in Virginia whom I had earlier had contact with, perhaps using an auto-translation service to occasionally post in German. I didn’t pay too much attention, because I had plenty to do in my ordinary life.

However, as events developed, I formed the opinion that the person behind this account — and perhaps other trollish accounts — was likely Mathias G. Schröder. The last information I had, from this 2016 blog post, was that Schröder was under suspicion for procuring false academic titles. I devoted a long post to Schröder in English here:

As you can read there, Schröder has a long history of criminal behavior, including manslaughter and fraud. He also has a long-standing interest in, not to say obsession with, Söring’s case. In 2018, Schröder wrote a letter to the Virginia Parole Board claiming Söring had confessed to him while both Söring and he were on remand in England in 1986.

There are two sides to Schröder. On the one hand, he knows the Söring case well and is capable of making reasoned and cogent arguments concerning Söring’s innocence claims. On the other hand, it is my belief that he is also capable of coarse insults and nasty trolling. It is also my opinion that his preoccupation with Jens Söring is unhealthy and excessive.

In my view, these latter tendencies, along with Schröder’s documented decades-long history of fraudulent conduct and violent crime, render him an untrustworthy source. In my writings about the Söring case, I have rarely mentioned his account of Söring’s supposed confession, and when I do, I always make sure to insert very prominent caveats about Schröder’s credibility.

For legal reasons, I need to reiterate that I cannot prove Schröder is the person behind the “Pardon” account. However, that person’s communications and actions are consistent with what I know about Schröder.

In any event, I don’t want to take the risk that my work on this case will be tainted by even a possible association with Mathias Schröder. I want to state clearly that I have never knowingly communicated with Mathias Schröder in any way. I don’t know where he lives, what he does for a living, or anything else about his current circumstances, nor do I want to know these things.

I certainly have never knowingly worked with, for, or alongside him in any way. Like most people, I prefer not to associate with convicted criminals unless they have been exonerated or have expressed genuine remorse for their crimes and reformed their ways.

Perhaps Mathias Schröder has reinvented himself and is now living a blameless life somewhere. If so, I wish him all the best. If he believes my opinion about his association with “Pardon” is incorrect, I will be happy to publish any statement he might wish to make in full.

In the meantime, I will be monitoring comments a bit more closely to try to ensure whoever “Pardon” is does not appear again. Whoever Pardon is, his tone and style were inappropriate and damaging to the cause of truth. Much as Söring might disagree, this blog is not about tearing down Jens Söring as a person, it is about broadcasting the truth about the murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom and refuting Jens Söring’s misleading claims.

As long as he makes a conscious choice to continue asserting those claims in public, I and others will continue critically assessing them and highlighting problems with Söring’s overall credibility. But not by means of random insults or character assassination.