Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, June 21, 1990 TAG: 9006210549
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE and MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITERS
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
"Could this be anything else other than a first-degree murder case?" Updike said, waving autopsy reports showing the Haysoms each had been stabbed through the heart and their heads nearly severed.
In his closing argument, Updike repeated many things from his opening statement from the first day of the 13-day trial in Bedford County Circuit Court.
With photographs, charts and footprint impressions spread in front of him, Updike walked the jury through the prosecution evidence he said had proved that Soering had murdered his girlfriend's parents in March 1985. "Ladies and gentlemen," Updike said, "it's just like pieces to a puzzle."
Updike noted that Soering and his former girlfriend, Elizabeth Haysom, had exchanged letters a few months before the killings in which they alluded to her parents' murders.
The letters show Haysom "manipulating" Soering into carrying out the murders during their freshman year at the University of Virginia, Updike said.
"She wants her parents dead," he said. " . . . If she could do it herself, she didn't need him."
Updike said Soering - who confessed to the murders in 1986 - was lying earlier this week when he testified that Haysom and not him killed her parents.
"He gets up on the stand and gives a performance," Updike said, noting that Soering showed no remorse. "He said he did it, and it fits, doesn't it," Updike told the jury.
Updike said the evidence found inside the Haysoms' Boonsboro cottage fit like a "jigsaw puzzle" with Soering's earlier confessions.
Blood matching Soering's was found inside the house and a bloody sockprint impression on the living room floor appeared to match a footprint sample provided by Haysom, Updike said.
The jury, which was imported from Nelson County, was to begin deliberations later today after Soering's lawyers gave their closing arguments.
Testimony ended Tuesday in the trial that has been beamed into living rooms across Western Virginia thanks to the presence of television cameras in Bedford Circuit Court.
The first surprise came during opening arguments, when Soering's lawyers told the jury that evidence in the case would show the killer was not Soering, but his former girlfriend, Elizabeth Haysom.
Over the next eight days, Updike methodically built his case with the testimony of forensic experts who testified about the multiple stab wounds inflicted upon the Haysoms and what investigators found in the Haysoms' house - from blood stains to beer cans in a bedroom wastebasket.
On June 13, the courtroom was packed when Updike called Elizabeth Haysom to the stand. Haysom had cropped her hair short since she pleaded guilty in 1987 to helping plot her parents' murders and was sentenced to 90 years in prison.
Updike, who had bullied Haysom during her testimony in 1987, treated his star witness with courtesy and even fetched her a glass of water.
Haysom, now 26, told jurors that she set up an alibi for Soering during a weekend trip to Washington, D.C., during their freshman year at the University of Virginia. Soering, she said, drove to Boonsboro and killed her parents.
Under two hours of cross-examination, Haysom admitted that she had fed Soering a steady diet of lies to turn him against her parents. She also admitted changing details about the murder weekend from the version she told at her sentencing hearing in October 1987. But she stuck to her contention that Soering killed her parents.
The prosecution rested its case Friday, leading to a weekend of speculation about whether Soering would testify in his own defense.
Soering was eager to tell his side of the story when he was called to the witness stand Monday. Soering told essentially the same story as Haysom - but with their roles reversed. Soering testified that Haysom took time out from their Washington trip to settle a drug deal. She returned several hours later and said that she had killed her parents, Soering said.
Soering, the son of a West German diplomat, said he agreed to take the blame for his lover. If arrested, Soering thought he would be deported to Germany, while she would face the electric chair.
"I loved the girl," Soering testified. "The decision to protect Elizabeth was immediate."
After the defense rested Tuesday, Circuit Judge William Sweeney called a one-day recess. After closing arguments today, jurors are to begin deliberations, which could start as early as noon.
by CNB