ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, December 1, 1996 TAG: 9612020073
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B-6 EDITION: METRO
Everything from soda pop cans and cigarette butts to an enigmatic single white feather were collected at the scene of Derek and Nancy Haysom's murders. Both Ricky Gardner, an investigator for the Bedford County sheriff's office, and Gail Marshall, Jens Soering's attorney, say the forensic evidence proves their cases.
Here's a summary of some of the evidence and their arguments for why Soering is or is not the killer:
* None of Soering's fingerprints was found at the scene, but Elizabeth Haysom's fingerprints were found on a liquor bottle not far from her father's body, Marshall notes. There were also unidentified prints found, and unidentified human hair, which Marshall said supports her contention that a third party helped Elizabeth Haysom carry out the murders.
Gardner says it's not unusual for someone's fingerprints to be found in their parents' house. Elizabeth's fingerprint was not bloody and forensic experts have no way of telling when the fingerprint was made. As for the hair, he echoed a remark from the trial, when former prosecutor Jim Updike told the court he'd hate to have to account for every hair in his sink.
* Drops of type O blood, Soering's blood type, were found at the scene. But a single drop of type B blood, Elizabeth Haysom's type, also was found on a washcloth in the kitchen, near Nancy Haysom's body. Nancy Haysom had type AB blood, and Derek Haysom had type A blood.
DNA testing was not available at the time, and the samples were destroyed when they were typed at the lab, according to state forensic scientists.
Marshall points out that more than 40 percent of the population has type O blood, and less than 15 percent has type B blood, meaning it was more likely that Haysom was there than Soering.
But Gardner says serontologists have testified that the type B blood spot could have been a false reading caused by the killer's washing out a stain of AB blood in water.
* A bloody sockprint was a key piece of evidence. At the trial, a state forensic examiner placed a clear plastic overlay of Soering's foot over a photograph of the bloody sockprint and the two appeared to match.
However, forensics experts who have talked to Marshall say it's impossible to match a sockprint without some abnormality or identifying characteristic, which was lacking from Soering's foot and the bloody sockprint. The same experts also say the print was not clear enough to determine who made it or exactly how long it is, and it does not eliminate Elizabeth Haysom as a possible source of the print.
In fact, a state forensic examiner estimated in an early report that the print likely was made by someone wearing a size 5 to 6 man's shoe or a size 6 1/2 to 7 1/2 woman's shoe. Soering wears a size 8 1/2 shoe. Soering's lawyers never brought up that fact at trial, and the state forensic report was never admitted into evidence.
LENGTH: Medium: 55 linesby CNB