THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, November 29, 1995 TAG: 9511290463
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B5 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ASSOCIATED PRESS
DATELINE: LYNCHBURG LENGTH: Medium: 57 lines
Jens Soering, the German diplomat's son who is serving two life sentences for the murder of his girlfriend's parents, claims he took the rap for the murders to save the girlfriend's life.
In a 150-page document available on the Internet, Soering said he thought the diplomatic status of his father would also protect him, so he took the blame for the 1985 murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom.
``Because I thought my diplomatic passport made me invulnerable, I played the role of MacBeth the murderer to save my girlfriend's life. I should have told the truth! But because of my foolishness, I will almost certainly die as an old man in prison. I could have saved my own life, but I failed,'' he writes.
The Haysoms were found stabbed to death April 4, 1985, in their home near Lynchburg. Their daughter, Elizabeth Haysom, disappeared with Soering. The couple was arrested a year later in London on bad check charges. Letters found in their rented flat gave Bedford County authorities grounds to file murder charges against them.
Elizabeth Haysom, who met Soering while both were honors students at the University of Virginia, is serving a 90-year sentence at the Goochland Correctional Center after their 1990 convictions.
Soering is serving his sentence at Keen Mountain prison near Richlands in southwest Virginia.
Soering claims that Elizabeth Haysom killed her parents, and his lawyer says an appeal to the state Supreme Court will be filed next month asking for Soering's release.
In the Internet document's forward, Soering's lawyer, Gail Starling Marshall of Rapidan, says Soering's writings accurately portray the evidence presented at the trial.
Marshall asked the question: which one committed the crimes?
``Was it Jens, a quiet and scholarly young man who neither drank nor smoked and had barely met Mr. and Mrs. Haysom? Or Elizabeth, who admits to wanting her parents dead and had a long history of alcohol and heroin abuse and a personal experience with the netherworld as a runaway from her English boarding school? Elizabeth, whose fingerprints were found at the crime scene along with a bloody shoe print too small to be Jens?''
Marshall did not know how Soering got the document on the Internet.
``I don't believe he has access to a computer where he is,'' she said.
The document is stored on a computer at the University of Kent at Canterbury in England. Soering spent nearly four years in London prisons fighting extradition to the United States. MEMO: The document can be accessed on the Internet at http://lucy.ukc.ac.
uk/Soering/Contents.html.
KEYWORDS: MURDER PRISON by CNB