Why Jens Söring Has No Contact with his Family

A story in 10 original sources.

(Photo of an overgrown Jewish cemetery in the Vienna Zentralfriedhof, 2010, by Andrew Hammel)

In almost every interview, German journalists ask Söring what it was like to finally meet up with his family in Germany after being released from prison. They may also ask how often his family flew to Virginia to visit him, and what they did to help him broadcast his innocence story. Söring must then explain why he has had no contact with his family since 2001. Since returning to Germany in 2019, Söring responds with a practiced line about there having been an “unfortunate dispute” in 2001, which he “deeply regrets”. He gives the impression that the matter is private, and the German journalist, knowing no better, simply accepts this and moves on.

But it’s not a private matter. Söring has spoken about his relationship with his family very publicly, in books, articles and interviews which reached audiences of millions. That no German journalist has ever discovered this is speaks volumes about how German journalists approach their coverage of Söring: “Eh, who cares if what he just said was true.”

In this post, I will clarify the matter once and for all. I won’t refer to Söring’s father or brother by their real names. They have made it clear they have no desire to participate in his life, and I respect that. As you will see, they have their reasons. The purpose of this post is not to shine the spotlight on them, it is to highlight yet another way in which Söring exploits the complacency of German journalists to hide unflattering truths about his past.

First a brief summary, then a list of sources. As you will see, most of the information for this post comes from Söring’s own statements.

A Summary of the Facts

For his entire adult life, Jens Söring anticipated inheriting a large sum of money from his maternal grandmother. As he told detectives in 1985, she was very old and sick, and wealthy — she even owned a Gutenberg Bible. When she died, Söring would inherit a large sum, because, as he said, he was the only member of the family she liked. Yet according to Elizabeth Haysom, he wasn’t content to wait for her to die. During their flight from the law in late 1985-early 1986, Söring discussed plans to torture his grandmother with an electric device to force her to transfer money to Söring and Haysom to allow them to live comfortably while on the run from the law. After torturing her, they would kill her. This plan was, fortunately, not put into action.

During the 1990s, Söring’s father paid thousands to lawyers and investigators to help finance Söring’s many appeals. He even accepted remote, hazardous postings such as Mauritania and Papua New Guinea — and this as a senior diplomat nearing retirement age. He did this to earn extra “hardship” pay to finance his son’s appeals. Söring’s mother died in 1997, his grandmother died in 1999. After 1999, Söring fully expected to inherit a large sum of money. How this would benefit him while he served a life sentence isn’t really clear.

Yet instead of giving Söring his inheritance, according to Söring’s bitter complaints, his father and brother used some sort of legal maneuver to shut Söring out. Söring says he cannot legally call it “theft”, but he clearly regarded it as underhanded. (Söring’s family also decided that after the last of many appeals was denied in 2001 by the US Supreme Court, they would no longer finance any further legal action or help him financially.) Söring was so angered by being denied “his” money that he cut off contact with this family. In the late 2010s, Söring repeatedly insulted his father and brother as greedy tricksters in public interviews which have been heard hundreds of thousands of times and, as you’ll see, are still online. He has also stated, in an attempt to gain sympathy, that his grandmother told him that given the shame he brought on his family, the honorable thing to do would be to commit suicide.

Since his return from Germany, Söring has stopped openly insulting his father and brother in public. Instead, he now describes the matter as private. Söring also now claims that he has tried to take up contact with his surviving family members after his release in 2019, but they refused. Yet after his return to Germany, Söring could not help taking a passive-aggressive dig at his father and brother: he told interviewers and wrote in his 2021 book that he discovered that nobody had paid to maintain his mother’s grave, and that it was overgrown and neglected and about to be removed. One would obviously conclude from these statements that Söring’s father and brother had neglected to maintain the gravesite of their deceased wife/mother. Of course, given Söring’s history, this should not be taken at face value.

That, gentle reader, is the full story of why Söring has no further contact with this family. The account sketched above, you’ll see, is based mostly on Söring’s own public statements. It casts an unflattering light on Söring, which is why he now sweeps it under the rug. And that’s where it remains, since no German journalist has ever bothered to investigate the matter by consulting open public sources available to anyone.

But this “German” journalist has!

The Sources Behind this Narrative

I’ll now present 10 sources behind the narrative I described above. I’ll highlight in bold for people who just want the gist.

1. Interview between Ricky Gardner, Chuck Reid, and Jens Söring, 6 October 1985, Bedford County Sheriff’s office. Söring is trying to convince the detectives that he had no financial problems and therefore no financial motive to kill the Haysoms. This interview was recorded with Söring’s explicit consent and entered into evidence at his 1990 trial:

I also have a grandmother who is wealthy, she has a house in Berlin and Switzerland um also I'm the only family member she likes okay. She doesn't like my parents, she likes me. I've gotten by now 6,000 marks in presents, money presents for [Söring’s] car and she sends me checks at irregular intervals but they do come. In her will I am going to get a Gutenberg Bible from her along with other stuff. She really does not like my mother, unfortunately, I think to me this is really not very important but it may be important to you, that's why I'm telling it to you. So my mother thinks that my grandmother is going to try to give as much of her wealth to my little brother and me and I guess especially because I'm her favorite grandson.

2. Ken Englade, "Beyond Reason”, Ch. 39. Englade here describes a debriefing interview between Elizabeth Haysom and Ricky Gardner conducted in 1987, after Haysom had voluntarily returned to Virginia to stand trial as an accessory before the fact to the murder of her parents:

[Gardner] invited [Elizabeth] to tell him in more detail about Jens’s murder plans.

She collected her thoughts. “Take his grandmother,” Elizabeth said. “He wanted her money.” He had a plan, she said, whereby she and Jens would go to his grandmother’s house in Germany and lock themselves inside. “Then he wanted to hook her up to some kind of electric gizmo and torture her until she gave us money.

Then afterwards we obviously would kill her.”

3 . Interview with Amanda Knox on the Amanda Knox Podcast, 10 July 2019, timestamp 20:10:

In 2001, after 16 years, I inherited a bunch of money from my grandmother, and unfortunately my father and brother helped themselves to that money and I’m not allowed to say that they stole it, because it was all done legally, so these are men of honor. But somehow they ended up with all of my money and I ended up with absolutely none of it. And then I haven’t heard from them since 2002. Not one word. And I hope they’re enjoying all that money. It’s really funny. Again, you think you can trust somebody. I thought I could trust Elizabeth – wrong there. I though I could trust my father and my brother, I was wrong there, too. Oh well.

4. Interview with Söring’s lawyer Gail Marshall, Amanda Knox Podcast, 10 July 2019, timestamp 19:30:

[Söring] may have told you, but he’s told some people and certainly told me, that his grandmother’s reaction to the whole thing was: “You should have killed yourself.” … “You’ve brought shame and dishonor on the family, and if you had been a true man, you would’ve killed yourself”.

5. Interview with Virginia journalist Sandy Hausman, December 17, 2019:

Hausman: Do you have any relatives left in Germany?

Söring: I have a father and a brother with whom I do not want any contact, because they broke off contact with me in 2001. I inherited money from my maternal grandmother, and I entrusted that money to my father, and then the two of them decided that it was theirs now, and they cut me off. I was stupid enough to trust my own father, and that was the second time in my life that I trusted the wrong person. The first time was Elizabeth Haysom, and the second time was my father and brother. And, uh, since 2001 I’ve made 3 attempts to reach out to them, and all three were rebuffed, and I have no desire to have any contact with those people unless they bring me the money back. They’ve had use of half-a-million dollars of mine — that’s what I inherited — for 18 years now.

6. Article in Der Spiegel, 28 Feb. 2020 (my translation):

SPIEGEL: Did your family support you during your imprisonment in Great Britain and during your trial?

Söring: Of course.

SPIEGEL: When did that change?

Söring: My mother died in 1997. In 2001, there was a dispute between my father, my brother, and myself. Since 2001, I have no more contact.

SPIEGEL: Why not?

Söring: My brother and father have also suffered badly from this situation, and they now have a right to their privacy. I don’t want to say anything more about the matter.

7. Article about Jens Söring, London Sunday Times, 5 December 2021:

[Söring’s] old support systems were long gone. His family did everything they could to help him in the years after his conviction. His father took hardship postings in Mauritania and Papua New Guinea to try to help with legal costs. But Soering fell out with his father ten years ago over an inheritance dispute and they are no longer on speaking terms.

8. Article in Der Spiegel, 18 September 2021 (my translation):

But in 2001, after 15 years in prison, contact was broken to both [Söring’s father and brother]. The father ended his payments to his imprisoned son and refused to support his 2008 requested to be transferred to serve his sentence in Germany. Söring will not say what led to the dispute. He says that in the meantime, he has come to accept his family’s behavior. It doesn’t seem credible. [Man glaubt das ihm nicht].

A few weeks [before this interview] … Söring had telephoned his father. His stepmother answered. Söring had only met her once, in 2001, when she accompanied his father on a prison visit. She promised to relay the message from Söring to his father. The father never returned the call. Söring stares off into the distance: “Apparently he doesn’t want any contact”. Jens Söring looks sad as he says this. And just traveling to where his father lives and ringing the doorbell? “I would never do that,” Söring says. “That would strike me as intrusive, even aggressive.”…

Söring’s mother died in 1997 believing her son would never leave prison. He visited her grave in a cemetery in Bremen. The lease on the grave was just about to run out¹; Söring extended it and visited again once his book was finished.

9. Söring’s 2021 book Return to Life: My First Year in Freedom After 33 Years in Prison (my translation):

I have no more contact with my father and brother. When I take a walk and see how other families celebrate holidays, I miss my own (p. 81)

My mother died believing I would never leave prison alive. Her grave is completely neglected, stinging nettles, ivy, pine shoots, ferns, boxwood, even a few strawberry plants grow a half-meter high and cover parts of the headstone. It’s obvious that nobody has been here for years to tend to her final resting place. And according to a sign from the cemetery management, the lease on the grave will expire soon. (p.215)

Next time I visit, I will bring gardening tools to remove the plants which obscure my mother’s name… I would actually be living here now [i.e., near the cemetery, in a pleasant apartment his grandmother owned] if my grandmother’s will had been followed. But my father decided otherwise. He broke off contact with me in 2001, and suddenly stopped all financial assistance to me, which had a direct impact on my life in prison. (p. 218)

I hope that my father and brother can find peace one day. My door is always open to them. (p. 224).

10. Letter ²from Jens Söring to Elizabeth Haysom, December 1984-January 1985, p. 17:

I need to find a way to earn cash in a way that pleases me and doesn’t take up much time.

1. In Germany, the families of people who choose to be buried instead of cremated are obliged to “lease” graves for a period of years (usually 20). The time limit is designed to permit the deceased’s remains to completely decompose. If the lease is not renewed, the grave, including the headstone, is completely cleared away, and — assuming the prior occupant’s remains are now fully decomposed — the gravesite will be reused. If remains still exist, the family will be contacted, and if they can’t be reached, the cemetery administration will dispose of them respectfully.

2. Why can we quote directly from a letter which Jens Söring wrote almost 40 years ago? Well may you ask! The answer is that Jens Soring kept a private copy of the 40-page long diary-letter to Elizabeth Haysom which he composed in December 1984 and January 1985. He packed up this copy of the letter in a suitcase bulging with documents which he took with him through Paris, Germany, Thailand, Yugoslavia, England and other countries during the Söring/Haysom flight from the law. When he was arrested in London in 1986, the police found this letter. Because it contained fantasies of violence against Derek and Nancy Haysom, it proved to be important at his trial. He described his decision to carry this letter around with him and let the police find it as one of the dumbest mistakes of his life.