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

DATE: SUNDAY, July 22, 1990                   TAG: 9007230291
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: B-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

FOOTPRINT EVIDENCE ISN'T CONVINCING

I'M A RETIRED police officer with 28 years of police experience, 21 years in the science of fingerprints. I have put hundreds of criminals behind bars with latent fingerprints, have written a good dozen articles on fingerprints and footprints, and am considered an expert.

Following the trial in the newspaper and watching it on television, I am not convinced Jens Soering did the killing. The homicide was too brutal, too personal - as if the killer really hated the guts of the victims and hacked away at them vengefully. If this was the case, the only one who could have done this horrible act of murder would have to be Soering's lover and conspirator, Elizabeth Haysom.

If it wasn't for the clear plastic overlay of Soering's footprint that the Bedford prosecutor, Jim Updike, presented so well to the jurors, there would have been a hung jury. A few jurors had doubts from all the lies on both sides. This overlay, according to the newspaper, was the only hard evidence the comonwealth of Virginia had.

For a fingerprint expert, an ordinary clear plastic overlay of a footprint with no distinguishing marks whatsoever (a deformed foot, missing toe, cut or scar, or anything outstanding) wouldn't be of any value.

In the science of fingerprints and footprints, one must be 100 percent sure that there is a match. An overlay doesn't do this, because there are no friction ridges or any of the other characteristics I described. That overlay Updike presented to the court could have fitted perfectly hundreds - no, thousands - of other footprint impressions, bloody or not bloody.

In other words, with all the lies being floated around on both sides, I am not convinced that the jurors came back with the right verdict: conspiracy, yes, but murder, no. RUSSELL W. JOHNSON VINTON

by CNB