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

DATE: SATURDAY, April 1, 1995                   TAG: 9504030060
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: A1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Long

'I WILL NEVER UNDERSTAND'

``I just tell them the Haysom House,'' Thomson said. ``They know exactly where it is.''

Derek and Nancy Haysom lived there less than three years, but their names forever will be attached to the brick and clapboard cottage where they were butchered 10 years ago this week.

The Haysom murders captivated Southwest Virginia like no other crime in the region's history.

Nothing about the case was ordinary: a horrific crime scene; victims from society's upper crust; rumors of satanic cults and political assassination; the arrest of the Haysoms' privileged daughter and her German boyfriend, who had fled to London from the University of Virginia; international diplomatic intrigue; a three-week trial featuring a flamboyant prosecutor.

The drama was magnified through the lens of courtroom television, then a novelty in Virginia. The media frenzy surrounding the June 1990 trial seems quaint by O.J. Simpson standards, but for three weeks Southwest Virginians tuned into tape-delayed courtroom testimony on late-night TV.

Night after night, people lost sleep trying to figure out Elizabeth Haysom and Jens Soering - both UVa honor students at the time of the murders.

The seeds of trouble were obvious: Elizabeth was eager to gain independence and wanted her parents to "disappear" from her life. Jens, terrified by the thought of losing Elizabeth, was desperate to prove himself worthy of her love.

But how did it come to murder?

A clear answer remains elusive. Elizabeth, a storyteller who is as cunning as she is charming, has given different versions of what led her to manipulate Jens into killing her parents. Jens confessed, but at his trial claimed that Elizabeth was the killer and that he had taken the fall in a foolish attempt to save her.

Many people closely associated with the Haysom case concede they still have trouble comprehending these two intelligent and troubled, talented and twisted individuals.

"Her motivation for wanting them dead is something I've never understood," Bedford County Commonwealth's Attorney Jim Updike said in a recent interview.

"I will never understand."

\ Ricky Gardner would be the first to admit he was no true-crime hero, one of those seasoned cops who always outwit the killer.

Gardner, then 29, was a local boy who married shortly after high school and got a route selling Lance snacks to groceries and convenience stores.

He joined the Bedford County Sheriff's Department in 1979, and had been promoted to investigator only a few months before the Haysom deaths. It was his first murder case.

"I was just doing the best I could," he said.

Initially, Gardner was assigned the drudgery of knocking on doors along Holcomb Rock Road. He and officers from neighboring localities fanned out around Boonsboro, a relatively affluent area just north of Lynchburg where spacious homes straddle ridge lines that run from the Blue Ridge Mountains to the James River.

Few people knew the Haysoms, who had moved from Nova Scotia a few years earlier. Derek W.R. Haysom, 72, was born in South Africa and had worked as an executive for steel companies on three continents. Nancy Astor Benedict Haysom, 53, also had lived all over the world, first with her father, a nomadic geologist, later with Derek.

She convinced her husband to retire to Lynchburg, where she had attended high school and had ties to Virginia's aristocracy. Nancy was named after her grandmother's cousin, the spunky Nancy Witcher Langhorne of Danville, who became Lady Astor, the first woman to sit in the British House of Commons.

Derek and Nancy had married in Johannesburg in 1960. They had a total of five children from previous marriages. Their union produced a sixth child, Elizabeth.

After the murders, the children converged on Lynchburg for a memorial service. Investigators interviewed the children about their parents, their habits and - most importantly - any possible enemies.

Evidence at the scene suggested that the Haysoms knew their killer or killers. There was no sign of forced entry. No valuables were missing. Two place settings were on the dining room table - a plate of leftovers and a dish of ice cream.

The Haysoms had been dead several days before a family friend discovered the bodies. Derek was lying on his left side in the living room. He had been stabbed 39 times, his throat slit. Nancy was found face down on the kitchen floor. A slash across the throat nearly decapitated her.

Blood had been swirled on the floors of the dining and living rooms, as if the killer tried to cover his tracks. The most promising piece of evidence was a clear, blood-soaked sock print in the living room.

Sheriff Carl Wells made none of these details public. The bearlike Wells allowed only that robbery had been ruled out as a motive and that "some degree of hatred" had been reflected in the killings.

Gardner drew the assignment of interviewing the Haysoms' youngest child, Elizabeth. The interview took place April 8, 1985, at Boonsboro Elementary School, where officers had set up a command center.

Gardner was captivated by Elizabeth, a poised 20-year-old who talked with a pleasant accent cultivated in exclusive British boarding schools. Gardner felt his head swimming as her tale moved seamlessly from the political situation in Zimbabwe to union activities in Nova Scotia.

"I had never experienced anything like that," Gardner recalled. "I thought, `Lord have mercy, this girl has been around. And here I am.'''

His intimidation would show in the crucial weeks to come.

`She was my enemy'

As days passed without an arrest, panic swept through the Boonsboro area. Locksmiths installed deadbolts for people accustomed to leaving their doors unlocked at night. Gun dealers in Lynchburg reported increased sales.

The lack of solid information from police gave rise to all sorts of conjecture. Neighbors feared a serial killer was loose. Word leaked that the killer had drawn what appeared to be the number "666" in blood, which focused attention on a cult-like group of Lynchburg teen-agers who carved themselves with razor blades.

Given the Haysoms' international connections, there was talk of political assassins from Zimbabwe or a contract job by a steelworkers union settling an old score.

The most persistent rumor, however, was that investigators had a strong case against an acquaintance of the Haysoms but were reluctant to arrest her because of her family's political connections. Angry readers began to phone The News & Advance accusing the Lynchburg newspaper of participating in a cover-up.

\ There was a suspect: a Lynchburg woman who had been jilted by one of the Haysoms' sons. Police thought the woman, who had a history of mental problems, could have blamed the Haysoms for the breakup and lashed out in revenge.

Investigators grew more suspicious when they spoke with her two days after the memorial service.

The woman - whose name is not being used to protect her privacy - had been engaged to Julian Haysom between Christmas Eve of 1983 and August 1984, when he broke it off by letter. She had recently learned that Julian married someone else.

The woman appeared agitated. She spoke of her love for Julian in the present tense. She admitted feeling "hatred" toward Derek and Nancy over their role in bringing the engagement to an end.

"I, I felt like I wanted to kill them," she said at one point. "To kill them, but I didn't."

Some investigators thought they had the killer.

The woman agreed to a second round of questioning. The interview took a weird turn from the start. The woman proclaimed that Nancy Haysom had been a "practicing witch" who was trying to turn the woman away from her Christian beliefs.

"In that sense," the woman said, "she was my enemy."

Realizing the woman was deeply religious, Sgt. C.R. Mayhew of the Bedford County Sheriff's Department turned the interrogation into a confessional. He took the woman's hand and began to pray.

"If you knew in your mind that what we're investigating, you did it yourself, would the good Lord have enough power - and I know he has - to make you tell us about it?" Mayhew asked her.

"Sure," she replied.

The woman then heard a voice tell her that she did not do it; later, she heard another voice that made her less sure.

"I don't think I did it," she said, "but if I did it, I need to know."

Investigators were not sure if the woman was guilty or just batty. But they would seek to talk with her again and to get samples of her blood, fingerprints and footprints.

"We were after [her] hot and heavy," recalled one member of the regional homicide squad.

`I am the devil'

Gardner was ready for a second conversation with Elizabeth.

He and his partner, Chuck Reid, had looked into the story that she and her boyfriend had rented a car and traveled to Washington, D.C., the weekend her parents were killed.

Reid confirmed that Elizabeth rented a car on Friday afternoon and returned it midday on Sunday, but the rental contract showed the car had been driven 669 miles - 429 miles more than a round trip to Washington.

On April 16, Gardner and Reid met with Elizabeth and asked her about the discrepancy.

She gave a rambling answer. She and her boyfriend got lost in Warrenton and did a lot of driving around Washington. They may have gone to Lexington. No, that was another trip. They got lost and drove around.

Neither Gardner nor Reid challenged her. They were eager to move to a more promising topic: the woman who had been engaged to Julian.

Eight days earlier, Elizabeth had described the woman as a "sweet, sweet person" who had coped well with the broken engagement. Elizabeth now portrayed the woman as so unstable that at any moment she might "flip out and try to kill herself or something."

Haysom added that her parents had gone to great lengths to keep Julian's subsequent marriage a secret. "My parents were really embarrassed about the whole thing. And they were also very worried that if and when [the woman] would freak out, and I mean I was told not to say a word to anybody."

Several months later, Gardner would learn about an encounter between Elizabeth and the woman a few days after the memorial service.

"I am the devil," Elizabeth told her, "and you are the sacrificial lamb."

\ Elizabeth and Jens made for an odd couple.

She was attractive, athletic and witty. He was pudgy, bookish and arrogant. She had taken numerous lovers, both men and women. He was a virgin.

But the pair found they had much in common when they arrived at UVa in the fall of 1984.

Because of their worldly backgrounds, they considered themselves superior to their classmates, even their peers in an honors program for the 150 brightest incoming freshman. Jens was part of an even more elite group - 15 Jefferson Scholars who receive four-year, tuition-free scholarships.

Elizabeth had been born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and lived in Canada, Great Britain and Luxembourg. Jens - the son of a midlevel West German diplomat - had lived in Cyprus, Germany and Thailand.

Both spoke with British-tinged accents.

Later, Elizabeth would say she was attracted to Jens because he was "European and weird."

They had their first date Dec. 10. Two weeks later, they were exchanging letters during the holiday recess in which they expressed a mutual desire to spend the rest of their lives together.

But they had different notions of love.

Jens, a romantic, was totally smitten. His past experience with girls consisted of a date to his senior prom. According to Elizabeth, he was sexually impotent.

The relationship with Elizabeth was exhilarating, but it also tapped into his deepest fears and insecurities.

"Thinking that you loved me madly was very (I can't emphasize this enough) disconcerting for my subconscious insecurity complexes and illogical for my conscious mind, which recognized me as a ... limited kind of guy," he said in a 34-page, single-spaced letter written over the Christmas holiday. "Part of me could secretly hope that maybe there was something in me which you, but not I, could see, which was somehow worth something."

Elizabeth put the letter aside without finishing it. She later admitted she found it "very boring, very dull and very strange."

Still, she was telling Jens that she loved him madly.

"I want to be with you, around you, in you, through you, tied to you, forever and ever," she wrote.

Love was a game to her. She admitted as much to Jens a couple of weeks before her parents were slain.

"Love has always been forbidden to me," she wrote. "Not for a daisy's whisper I have cared for someone. They passed through my life if I enjoyed them and when they bored me I abandoned them. Yes I have been cruel. I have revelled in being a stone."

Two lovers. One desperate to prove himself. The other a clear-eyed manipulator who despised her parents.

It would prove a deadly combination.

TOMORROW: The investigation hits paydirt