Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 17, 1990 TAG: 9006170142
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: D1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
At Soering's murder trial last week, Haysom testified she ordered room service at the Washington Marriott and forged Soering's name on the room-service ticket.
Several hours later, she testified, Soering returned to Washington covered in blood and said he had stabbed Derek and Nancy Haysom at their Boonsboro cottage.
The room-service ticket, however, was not among prosecution exhibits introduced to corroborate Haysom's account of the events of March 30, 1985.
The manager of the Washington Marriott testified that his staff had discarded the ticket in a routine purge of hotel records because Bedford County investigators had not asked for it until September 1986 - 18 months after the murders.
Soering's attorneys contend that the absence of the room-service ticket shows that authorities were concerned more with pinning the blame on Soering than with thoroughly gathering and analyzing evidence.
"The commonwealth was under intense pressure to find out who did it," defense attorney Rick Neaton told the jury in his opening statement. "When they got somebody, they didn't bother to check it out."
Bedford County Sheriff's Investigator Ricky Gardner was assigned to look into Haysom and Soering's whereabouts at the time of the murders.
Gardner said he verified that the young couple - then freshmen honor students at the University of Virginia - had rented a car and had driven to Washington for the weekend.
To confirm their stay at the Washington Marriott, Gardner made some inquiries through then-Bedford City Police Chief Theodore King, a retired deputy chief of the District of Columbia Police Department.
Gardner said the district police assured King that the Washington Marriott had records on file of the couple's visit.
Gardner apparently waited for more than a year - until after a grand jury had indicted Haysom and Soering - before he contacted the hotel himself.
It was too late.
Yale A. Feldman, general manager of the Washington Marriott, testified that his staff keeps room-service tickets for only six months.
From billing records, Feldman could say only that a $33.11 room-service tab had been charged to Haysom and Soering's room sometime before 11 p.m. on March 30. There was no way to tell who had signed for the meal or what had been ordered, he said.
Haysom, 26, testified that ordering room service was part of an elaborate alibi to cover Soering's trip to her parents' house. "We had this whole little skit planned out," she said.
Haysom said she acted it out by herself - answering the door wearing only a towel, calling into the bathroom to make the waiter think someone else was in the shower and then carrying the room-service ticket into the bathroom to forge his signature.
Bedford County Commonwealth's Attorney James Updike did not subpoena any other Marriott Hotel employees. With the prosecution having rested its case, it is apparent that investigators could not locate a room-service waiter on duty that night who could remember serving a meal to a woman clad in a towel.
With no room-service ticket, the jury has seen no evidence to determine conclusively who ordered the room-service meal that night.
In his opening statement, Neaton said evidence would show that it was Soering who stayed behind at the Washington Marriott - while Haysom drove to Boonsboro and murdered her parents. Haysom was so manipulative that she later persuaded Soering - who was 18 at the time - to take the blame, Neaton said.
It was unclear whether Soering, 23, would testify on his own behalf when the defense begins presenting evidence Monday.
by CNB