Roanoke Times Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc. DATE: FRIDAY, February 1, 1991 TAG: 9102010788 SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A1 EDITION: EVENING SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Rick Neaton said today that he will file a motion next week requesting the new trial for Soering, convicted last summer of the 1985 slayings of his girlfriend's parents.
After completing research for Neaton, a Kent State University anthropologist has concluded that Soering could not have created one of several bloody sock prints found in Nancy and Derek Haysom's Boonsboro house after the killings, Neaton said.
Claude Owen Lovejoy, a professor of anthropology and associate professor of anatomy, will submit to the Bedford County Circuit Court an affidavit stating that Soering's foot could not have left one of the prints, Neaton said. Lovejoy could not be reached for comment this morning.
That particular print - identified at the trial as "LR-5" - was considered too smudged and blurred for comparison by prosecution witnesses at the trial. A different bloody print - identified as "LR-3" - was compared by a prosecution expert to Soering's footprint, and some jurors said that comparison was what clinched their decision to convict Soering.
Neaton's expert, Lovejoy, has also concluded that Soering's girlfriend, Elizabeth Haysom, could have left the LR-3 print in the house that night, Neaton said.
In his trial, Soering maintained that Haysom killed her own parents and that he confessed to the murders out of love for her.
"Lovejoy's saying he cannot exclude her from having made it," Neaton said. "That's unlike the impression [prosecution expert Bob] Hallett gave the jury: that Elizabeth could not have made it."
Asked why he had not presented such evidence during Soering's trial eight months ago, Neaton said he did not have access to the information. The prosecution only supplied Neaton with one sample of Haysom's footprints, Neaton said.
"As we progressed along, we were unable to recognize the significance of Elizabeth's other prints until after the verdict was in," Neaton said.
In retrospect, he said, he should have gotten an extension on the trial. "Hindsight is always 20-20," Neaton said. "Had I known then what I do now . . . ."
"We could not have discovered this evidence with the exercise of reasonable diligence at that time," he said.
Last September, Neaton filed a similar motion for a new trial based on new evidence, but Circuit Court Judge William Sweeney refused to set a hearing on the matter and turned down the request.
Neaton says he hopes the answer will be different this time.
"I don't know whether he will grant it," he said. "I think he should. If he would take the time to look at the prints, he would know."
"Any reasonable person who looks at the prints would at least have a doubt," he said.
Asked whether he planned to use the evidence in his quest for an appeal on the case, Neaton said that wasn't the purpose of the new evidence or the motion.
Neaton, who in the past has called sock print comparisons "mumbo-jumbo," said he hasn't really changed his mind. Mostly, the comparisons reveal whether someone can be excluded as the person who left a given print, he said.
Neaton said he has not paid Lovejoy for his work on the case, though he has offered to pay his expenses. Like any other expert witness, Neaton said, "We will pay him if he bills us, but he would not be being paid for his opinion."
by CNB