ROANOKE TIMES

                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, May 26, 1990                   TAG: 9005260096
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A8   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD                                 LENGTH: Medium


SOERING'S ATTORNEYS SEEK TO KEEP PHOTOS FROM VIEW

Attorneys for Jens Soering, accused of killing Derek and Nancy Haysom, have asked that Soering's jury be prevented from viewing some investigators' photographs of the Haysoms' bodies.

In a motion filed Friday in Bedford Circuit Court, attorneys Rick Neaton and William Cleaveland said some of the photographs were "duplicitous" and would only inflame Soering's jury.

Some of the photos were taken after the Haysoms' bodies were moved from where they were found, the attorneys allege. "The result is that the wounds of the deceased are unnecessarily exaggerated," they wrote.

The Haysoms' bodies were found in their Boonsboro house April 3, 1985. Derek Haysom's body was found on the living room with 39 stab wounds and a slit throat. Nancy Haysom's body, found on the kitchen floor, had six stab wounds and a slit throat.

Soering, a 23-year-old West German national, faces two counts of first-degree murder at his trial set to start Friday. Soering's former girlfriend, Elizabeth Haysom, pleaded guilty in 1987 to her role in her parents' deaths and is in prison.

The defense motion will be considered in a pretrial hearing Tuesday. Neaton and Cleaveland have asked that Circuit Judge William Sweeney review the photographs behind closed doors.

The defense attorneys Friday also asked that Soering's prosecutor be ordered to produce a knife shown in photographs of the Haysoms' house.

As part of legal discovery, Bedford prosecutor James Updike has already showed the defense attorneys a list of the evidence.

But Neaton and Cleaveland said that one knife - shown in an investigator's photograph of the Haysoms' kitchen - did not appear on Updike's list.



 by CNB