Till Murder Do Us Part: Soering vs. Haysom (2023) s01e01 Episode Script

1
[foreboding music playing]
[in German]
A couple was murdered and mutilated.
[Gardner, in English]
That was hatred, hatred. Just anger.
[news reporter] The victims were
Derek Haysom and his wife, Nancy.
[news reporter, in German]
The couple's daughter
is suspected of murder.
As is her boyfriend,
a German diplomat's son.
His name is Jens Soering.
[Courteney, in English] The two of them
were a horrible puzzle
that fit together just right.
My parents died
because Jens and I
were obsessed with each other.
[Rachel] These were two lovers
who had turned on each other.
[Jeff] One day they said it was Elizabeth.
She said, "I've killed my parents."
[tense music playing]
[Jeff] The next day they said it was Jens.
He said that he'd killed my parents.
You lied, didn't you?
And then they switched back again.
I felt I didn't have any choice.
Jens acted of his own free will.
He had a choice.
Is Elizabeth Haysom
a beautiful and intelligent murderer
or the victim of an obsessive relationship
with a cold-blooded killer?
[Sweeney] Do you know of any reason
why this court should not
now pronounce judgement in your case?
I'm innocent.
[Tammy] This has so many twists and turns.
Oh, my goodness!
And so they've both lied,
but who's lying now and why?
[dramatic music playing]
[news reporter] A couple convicted
in the murders of a Bedford County couple
back in 1985 are being set free.
[in German] in the name
of federal police, welcome to Germany.
This is the best day of my life.
[news reporter] Soering still insists
that he has nothing to do
with the case for which he has spent
33 years in jail.
[Rachel, in English] This case
has captivated people
for the past 35 years.
[Beever] In the end all of this saga,
there's only two people
that know the real truth.
And that's Elizabeth and Jens.
[foreboding music intensifies]
[music concludes]
[in German]
I thought I was doing the right thing,
and did something very wrong.
[theme music playing]
[theme music concludes]
[soft music playing]
[Buzz, in English] This is family land.
I mean, I was born across the street,
lived in the same place all my life.
Parents live up the road
about three quarters of a mile,
so it's just a wonderful place to live.
[soft music continues]
[Tammy] You know, our town in the '80s,
I grew up
where you left your keys in your car.
You left your house unlocked.
You helped your neighbor.
You watched other people's property.
We were a little town
in the middle of nowhere,
and when this murder happened, it was
[tense music playing]
It was unfathomable.
[news reporter]
From the heart of Virginia,
this is News Center 13 at 6:00
with Jeff Taylor.
[Jeff] I was the, uh, managing editor
and the anchor of the newscast
at Channel 13 here in Lynchburg.
We were in our newsroom.
It was, uh, April, I believe, April 3rd.
[foreboding music playing]
[Jeff] We heard a call go out for a body
out on Holcomb Rock Road,
and they gave the address,
and I immediately knew
that was the Haysom's address.
I said, "We need to get a crew out there."
[car engine revving]
[Buzz] I had my radio on,
and I called my chief deputy,
"Ronnie, what have you got?"
He said, "Just need you
to go to Holcomb Rock Road."
"Something big has happened."
It wasn't long before there were
just lots and lots of people
on this narrow, windy road.
[news reporter] Authorities entered
the home of W.R. Derek and Nancy Haysom,
following a complaint from a friend
that hadn't been able
to contact the couple.
[Buzz] My whole job there that first night
was crime scene security. I
went through the house,
and it was as brutal
as anything I've ever seen.
[news reporter] Police found
a grisly scene inside the house.
The couple's throats had been slashed,
and they had been stabbed numerous times.
The murders took place at least two days
before the bodies were found on Wednesday.
[Jeff] I went in the house
as they were taking the bodies out,
saw everything. It was awful.
The fact that I knew these people,
I knew who they were,
I'd spent time with them socially.
I went back to the station, and I said,
"I cannot do
the eleven o' clock newscast."
"I just can't."
[news reporter] The victims were
Derek W.R. Haysom and his wife, Nancy.
Haysom was a South African native
who later gained Canadian citizenship.
He was the president
of the Sydney Steel Corporation.
[intriguing music playing]
[Tammy] The Haysoms were socialites.
They were very well known
in their part of Bedford County
and in Lynchburg.
They liked to go to the country club
for drinks and dinner.
They liked to play bridge.
Basically, I was just their neighbor.
I helped them out. We were very social.
Derek was very, you know, quiet,
but you asked him a question,
you were going to get an answer,
whether you liked it or not.
He was very straightforward
and very proper.
He had been in South Africa
and turned this steel plant around,
and had been a tough taskmaster,
so he'd made a lot of friends.
But he'd made a lot of enemies too
in different places.
[birds chirping]
[Jeff] They lived in the East County.
This is where affluent people have moved,
so they can get a little space.
[Louis] My sister's home
was called Loose Chippings.
I don't know why you have to name a home,
but but that's
that's kind of the way she was.
[intriguing music continues]
[Louis] My sister's maiden name
was Nancy Astor Benedict.
Lady Astor is, in fact, a relative of ours
through my mother's side of the family.
[male voice] Lady Astor
was the first female member
of parliament in England.
She was born in Virginia.
She spent some time here in Lynchburg.
Her father was a tobacco baron.
[Louis] My sister really felt
the pedigree was very important,
and she wanted to be the
leader of Lynchburg Society, I think, and
[Howard] Mommy was a feisty woman
and Pop, uh, sort of
modeled himself after Churchill.
So, if you can imagine
a Churchill and a Lady Astor flashing,
loving each other
and raising a family together,
it it was a wonderful family.
[Louis] My sister had two children
with her first husband.
Derek had been married before as well
and had the three kids.
It was a good relationship.
[Jeff] Derek and Nancy
only had one child together,
Elizabeth Roxanne Haysom.
[punk rock music plays]
[Jeff] Elizabeth was ten years younger
than her half-siblings.
She dressed in all black.
And she had earrings, short hair.
It was very spiky.
She was just kind of punky and bubbly.
She lit up a room when she walked in it,
and you knew she was there.
So, she was a lot like her mom
in that respect.
[pensive music playing]
I think Elizabeth really loved her mother.
I would see them walking hand-in-hand,
you know, like schoolgirls,
down the street.
I'd see her spending time with her father
on the front porch, talking.
So, that night,
I really felt like, "This is awful."
She was 20 years old
and lost both of her parents
and in such a way.
[news reporter] For the Bedford County
Sheriff's Department,
their work has just begun.
They'll be working all through the night,
trying to piece evidence together.
[siren wailing]
I'm Chuck Reid. Uh
I've been in law enforcement for 30 years.
I originally started out in 1980
with the Bedford County Sheriff's Office.
[Reid] I'd worked several homicides
prior to that,
but that was probably the worst.
[suspenseful music playing]
-There it is, y'all.
-[indistinct chatter]
[Reid] You know,
I was, like, in my thirties,
and Ricky was in his twenties, I guess.
It's been many years ago.
I was probably the fourth or fifth officer
on the scene.
My first assignment
was to canvas the neighbors,
asking them if they knew the Haysom's,
and if they'd seen anything that day.
It was probably six o'clock that evening
when I was allowed
to go inside the residence,
um, walked in the front door.
[camera shutter clicking]
[foreboding music playing]
[camera shutter clicking]
It was just It
I'd never seen anything like that before.
I can still see and visualize everything,
just almost perfectly.
You don't forget things like that.
You step in,
and it's like a slaughterhouse.
[camera shutter clicking]
A scene like that,
you can smell it and you can taste it
[camera shutter clicking]
[Buzz] when there's that much blood.
[Reid] You were just
kind of overcome with emotion.
I was thinking it was a group
or a gang of people
who came in here and did this.
[Gardner] Mr. Haysom was stabbed 36 times,
and his throat was cut from ear to ear.
Severed every major structure in his neck.
They were almost decapitated.
[camera shutter clicking]
The thing that made
the biggest impression to me
was at how she died.
Her throat was cut from behind.
She had a gold necklace on.
It was probably about as big as my pinky,
and it was down in her windpipe.
The blood in the kitchen floors
was so thick and so deep
that it had actually pooled up
away from the floor.
These people were not simply killed.
There was a lot of hatred here.
[unsettling music playing]
[Reid] We took over a thousand pictures
of this scene.
Went to Richmond to get them developed.
They have a unit down there
that investigates satanic killings.
They started picking out stuff
in the pictures.
[camera shutter clicking]
[Reid] Mr. Haysom
had a V cut in his chin.
Markings in the floor
beside of Mr. Haysom,
like a 666, the way the body was rubbed
and smeared
around the contour of the body.
And according to them,
that was another aspect of satanic.
[dramatic music playing]
From then on,
Bedford County was not the same.
Voodoo, black magic,
you know, fear of the unknown
when somebody dies,
that that gets your juices flowing.
Everybody was looking at everybody.
[indistinct chatter]
There were all kinds of stupid things
that came up,
and, uh, it was ridiculous, but
that's what happens.
We were so shocked about the whole thing.
We just didn't know what to think.
[eerie music playing]
[Buzz] We held onto
all of our information.
It was not a good time
to be wearing a uniform.
There was a lot of pressure.
[news reporter] Investigators
really don't know all that much more
than they did
when the bodies were discovered.
But it is hoped that by checking
every detail meticulously,
sooner or later,
a breakthrough will occur.
Ricky and I lived this case.
I'd wake up at two or three o'clock
in the morning,
just sit up on the side of the bed,
just thinking,
"What do we need to do?"
It was very obvious to us
there was no forced entry.
There was a little storage space
under the stairs.
And that's where we found
Mrs. Haysom's pocketbook.
Money was in it.
Nothing stolen, nothing taken.
And no forced entry,
then that tells you right there
that they didn't kill these people
because of robbery.
Well, of course, there were
there was tons of evidence.
We sent truckloads of things to the lab.
There was a local fire marshal here
and I was sent to him and got his saw.
I didn't even know
what it was for at the time.
I found out later
that they were actually
cutting the footprint up out of the
up out of the floor.
[tense music playing]
[Reid] In the bathroom,
there was blood found.
So, someone took a shower
before they left.
It was hair
that was found in the sink there.
That was tested.
It didn't match Mr. or Mrs. Haysom.
That tells me,
that whoever was there knows that place
and knows to be relaxed enough
that I can do this
and nobody is going
to be coming around to bother me.
You could see Mr. Haysom
lying out of the dining room,
just inside the living room door.
Into the dining room, you could see
where the floor
was just smeared with blood.
[Gardner] The place settings
were still on the dining room table.
The chairs were pushed back
from the table.
There was only two place settings there.
[Reid] You can see Mrs. Haysom
lying on the kitchen floor
with a similar wound,
as far as the throat was concerned.
We had 18 or 19 investigators
working on this case.
You know, we didn't
we didn't leave any stone unturned.
[music concludes]
[birds chirping]
Everyone felt
extremely sorry for Elizabeth.
She organized the funeral.
She arranged
what would happen at the funeral.
-[church bell tolling]
-[ethereal music playing]
[Louis] During the service,
she got up
and read a passage out of the Bible.
Everyone had a lot of empathy for her.
[Jeff] Everybody loved Elizabeth
because she was the youngest.
She kind of pulled all the
the family members together.
[birds chirping]
[Gardner] She came across
as a very loving daughter
who really loved her family, her parents.
Basically, expressed to us
that she worshipped her parents
and was thankful
for all that they had done for her.
I talked to Elizabeth
five days after the bodies were found.
It was just
an informational type interview.
It wasn't anything accusatory.
[Elizabeth on tape] Chief,
could I bum one off you?
-[Gardner on tape] Yes, ma'am.
-[tense music playing]
[Gardner] The front door to your house,
was that kept locked or
[Elizabeth] Only when they went to bed.
[Gardner] Did they have a maid or anything
that came in?
[Elizabeth] They tried that and
but he just found it uncomfortable,
having such a small house.
[Gardner]
Did your mother like to keep house?
-[Elizabeth] No. [chuckles]
-[Gardner] She didn't like to keep house?
[Elizabeth] She was brought up
with servants. Both my parents
were brought up with servants.
Her accent was impressive.
Obviously, she was very intelligent.
[on tape] Did your father
have money coming in?
[Elizabeth on tape]
He had a couple of pensions.
I think they were fairly pathetic.
I mean, I think he got something like,
I don't know,
150 dollars a year or something, you know.
Their money basically came from capital.
I mean, they still sent me on,
you know, a thousand-dollar trip
to Yugoslavia, you know.
She never showed any emotion whatsoever.
Which was a little strange to me.
[Gardner] We asked her
where she was that weekend,
and she explained to us
that she was a freshman
at the University of Virginia,
and she had a boyfriend
by the name of Jens Soering
who was the son of a German diplomat.
That particular weekend,
they rented a car in Charlottesville
and drove up to Washington D.C.,
you know, sightseeing around D.C.
and then drove back
to Charlottesville on Sunday.
[tense music playing]
[Gardner] We wrote that down and sort of
put that in a memory bank
for later.
Well, a couple days after
our initial interview with Elizabeth,
we got the rental car agreement.
[ominous music playing]
[Gardner] We found that there had been
669 miles put on that car that weekend.
[Reid] I'm sitting there thinking,
"Wait a minute,
it's about a hundred-mile drive to D.C."
But it was like 440
some extra miles on the car.
And that's another thing
was strange to me.
Myself and one of the other investigators
drove to Charlottesville
and met Elizabeth
to get a second interview.
[tense music playing]
Elizabeth gave her fingerprints.
She was more than cooperative.
I said, "We need to talk
a little bit more about this rental car."
She explained
that her and her boyfriend had gotten lost
several times over the weekend.
If you get on Route 29 at Charlottesville,
that's going to take you
straight into Washington D.C.
So, how can anybody get lost?
Things just just didn't add up.
[Gardner] It's approximately 120 miles
from Charlottesville to Washington D.C.,
240 miles round trip.
Then we added in the miles
to Loose Chippings back to D.C.
And Charlottesville.
And it was pretty close to 669 miles.
[Reid] That was the big thing.
That kind of threw up
a red light right there.
I said, "How can we get ahold
of this Jens fellow?"
And she said that he was quite busy
and she would have him contact us.
He never did that.
He never would call us back.
We would go to Charlottesville
to his apartment,
and he wouldn't be there.
[lighter clicking]
[Gardner] So, one of the priorities
we put at the top of the list
was to sit down
and talk to this, uh, Jens Soering
because he obviously was avoiding us.
[music concludes]
[upbeat synth music playing]
[Amy] I came to the University of Virginia
as an Echols scholar.
The Echols Scholars Program
brings in the top 6% of the entering class
and puts them all
in the first-year dorm together.
-[indistinct chatter]
-[upbeat synth music continues]
[Amy] It's an intense and
and heady sort of time.
You're in a whole dorm full
of the smartest kids in the school,
you know, coming from everywhere.
In 1984,
Jens Soering and Elizabeth Haysom
came to college as Echols scholars
one year behind me.
[music fades]
[Amy]
Jens was from a diplomatic household.
His father had been dispatched
from Germany to the Atlanta area.
[somber music playing]
[Amy] Jens went to
a very good private high school.
Jens was both an Echols scholar
and a Jefferson scholar.
The Jefferson Program actually provides
a full academic free ride.
The friends that Elizabeth and Jens
and I had in common
continue to marvel to this day,
continue to say,
"We don't know what she saw in him."
Everybody was surprised
that these two ended up together.
Many people have said,
"You don't even want
to be in the room with Jens."
He is so argumentative and so arrogant,
no one liked him.
[music concludes]
[sighs]
[interviewer, in German] Can you describe
the first evening with her? How you met?
Yes.
Yes, so
25th August,
1984 was my first day
at the University of Virginia.
We were all carrying our few belongings
into the student dorm.
And I saw a female student.
She was really hot.
So, I started chatting to her.
Um
Briefly, I saw her roommate.
That roommate was Elizabeth Haysom.
[soft music playing]
[Jens] She looked totally different
from all the other students.
She looked like she hadn't washed.
[chuckling] Um
With her ruffled-up hair. Um
She was always going outside to smoke.
Of course, none of us others smoked.
She spoke differently too.
She had this British accent.
[Elizabeth on tape, in English] I met him
the very first day I was there.
There was a barbecue
for the Echols scholars in the evening.
And I was introduced to him.
My very first thought of him
was that he was
he was very rude.
He was very hostile,
he was very aggressive.
But he was also very brilliant.
He was introduced to me
as the German. And I think
that appealed to me.
[Jens, in German]
We were all nerds. We were all the same.
But she'd led this crazy life.
She went to a British boarding school
and ran away with her lesbian friend.
They travelled back and forth
across Europe for a year and a half.
Um
And she shot heroin.
That's what she told us.
[upbeat rock music playing]
[Jens] So, here was a young woman
who was very attractive,
but who was also a foreigner.
So, like me,
she was also a bit of an outsider.
Elizabeth was two and a half years
older than me.
At 18, that's a big difference.
Lots of boys were in love with her.
Some girls too,
because she said she was a lesbian.
[music concludes]
[Jens] Of course,
we were always thinking about literature.
-[birds chirping]
-[Jens] I wanted to learn from her.
I only wrote articles
for the school paper.
She was writing a whole novel.
I thought that was great.
[voice actor as Elizabeth, in English]
"Dear Jens Jens, I love you."
"I love you selfishly,
and I love you with pain."
"For ten years, I've been despising myself
and you changed that."
"All my defenses are down."
"You are the only person I've ever loved."
[in German] It was a real shock for me.
I admired her so.
[voice actor as Elizabeth, in English]
"Age and decrepitude
can have no terrors for me."
"Loss and vicissitude cannot appall me."
"Not even death can dismay me."
"Fixed in the certainty
of love unchanging,
I feel utterly secure in you."
"I am a part of you."
"Elizabeth."
[typewriter keys clacking]
[voice actor as Jens] "Dear Liz,
I do love you."
"I do love you more
than I have loved anybody,
and I love you differently
than I've loved anybody before."
"You have been there to prop me up
as I was just about to go under."
"I love you forever and ever.
Yours, Jens."
[in German] For the first time,
I had the feeling,
"Here's someone who accepts me."
Despite all my weaknesses,
she loved me.
That affirmation was one factor.
The other, to be quite honest, was sex.
It was the first time in my life
I had sexual intercourse.
[dark music playing]
[Gardner, in English] On their return
from the summer break in September,
I phoned Elizabeth
in Charlottesville at school.
[intriguing music playing]
[Reid] Ricky and I, we went to UVA,
talked to Elizabeth
and we got her footprints and her blood.
[suspenseful music playing]
Everyone we had as a person of interest,
we got their footprints
and compared those
to the suspect prints at the scene.
That's what a criminal investigation is,
you're trying to eliminate people.
And if you eliminate people,
then you can move on to the next person.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Gardner] Jens finally did agree
to drive to Bedford County on October 6th.
[dark music playing]
[Reid] When he walked
into the office that day, he was like
a little nerd.
His cheeks were real rosy, real timid.
With the big, thick,
black-framed glasses and
He's a kid.
Just like a little momma's boy.
We took about
a four-hour interview with him.
[on tape] You've got about
400 unaccountable miles on the car, okay?
Y'all must have been pretty lost
to put 429 extra miles on the car.
[Jens on tape] Well, I don't recall
any major trips, but
we did a lot of driving around Washington,
looking at the sights.
Okay? Because it was drizzling.
And, um, it was really nasty.
It was It was cold and not nice.
It was getting to the point where I was,
you know, I was just
"I don't believe you."
[on tape] We need your fingerprints.
Then we need your anatomical footprints,
and we need your blood.
[Jens on tape] Um Being German,
I don't like police.
My grandfather was hassled a lot
by the Nazis, okay?
[Reid] He thought that he was
just smarter than what we were.
He didn't realize that we didn't
fall off a turnip truck yesterday.
[Gardner] We had decided
that we were gonna do
the good cop, bad cop.
I let it be known that I thought
he had something to do with the murders.
This guy, Reid, was taking Jens' side.
[Reid on tape] Well, I'm 99% sure
at this point that you did not do it.
I can't say 100%
because we haven't got your blood
or footprints to send for elimination.
[Jens on tape] Okay. Well, the thing is,
I feel very threatened by the idea
that it could have potential effects
on my family, on me and on my future.
[Gardner on tape] We could go talk
to the Commonwealth's Attorney
with the evidence we have right now.
Okay, I'm going to be point-blank,
-and it's on tape.
-[Jens] Sure.
[Gardner] And if if tit came to tat,
then there would be problems, I'm sure.
-We could go that route.
-[Jens] Mm-hm.
[Gardner] You know, and ruin your future.
So, when he left that day,
he told me, he said, "Look."
He said, "Let me go back to university."
"I'll think about it and give you a call
and let you know what I've decided to do."
[tense music playing]
[Reid] I got a call
about ten o'clock, Sunday night.
We needed to get to Charlottesville,
that Elizabeth and Jens
had skipped the country.
And when they ran,
all suspicion went out the window.
Everybody thought, "Ah, they did it."
[tense music continues]
[Gardner] The car had been found
in the parking garage at the airport.
I contacted Interpol.
Just told them, "We don't have enough
to get warrants for them."
"We have no idea where they are."
[Jens, in German] We met up in Paris.
From there, we drove to Luxembourg.
From Luxembourg to Yugoslavia.
From Yugoslavia to Italy.
[voice actor as Elizabeth, in English]
"Dearest all, what is the point to life
if we forsake those
who love and trust us most?"
"I must destroy my way of life here."
"I must follow and support Jens."
"We believe in the same things
and are searching for a similar life."
[Gardner] Elizabeth and Jens
had left letters for their family
and for the investigators.
"Dear Officers Reid and Gardner."
"I'm certain that sooner or later
you will become involved
in whatever investigation
may be made into my disappearance."
[voice actor as Jens] "I assume that,
especially you Mr. Gardner,
will be very excited by now,
which is why I hate to disappoint you."
"Well, that's not exactly true."
"I'm afraid you must remain,
as Officer Reid put it,
only 99% sure of my innocence."
[Jens, in German]
And then we flew from Austria to Thailand.
We thought we could get jobs there,
and I could take Thai citizenship
because I was born there.
But it didn't work out.
So, we flew from Thailand
via Malaysia to England.
[tense music playing]
While on the run, we thought
the whole world was looking for us.
That meant we had no choice
but to stick together
and isolate ourselves from everybody else.
We couldn't talk to anybody
because we had this terrible secret.
We automatically assumed,
we'll let something slip.
Our money ran out.
And we were afraid of taking normal jobs.
Um We thought
"Oh, boy! You're in trouble now."
[music concludes]
[dark music playing]
[Beever, in English] I worked at the time
in a small police station
in Richmond, London.
I'd been working there for almost a year
in the criminal investigation department.
A lot of the time, it's not so exciting.
We're not racing around in fast cars
and doing this, and doing all sorts
of Starsky and Hutch moves. We're not.
A lot of it is paperwork.
It was just a normal mundane day.
But it was the telephone
on my desk that rang.
[telephone ringing]
[Beever] A store detective
from a local store
had become highly suspicious
of a young couple
purchasing goods in the store.
I knew the store detective,
and I knew she was very,
very good at her job.
And I said, "If she was suspicious,
arrest them and bring them
into the police station."
The female suspect
was most indignant, but
something was something was wrong.
[pensive music playing]
[Beever] We started to question them both
and we discovered an address
that they were living at.
[siren wailing]
[Beever] We took him, and we went
and searched the apartment.
We did find
several other bags of clothing.
Wigs.
False identifications.
We found his passport
in the name of Jens Soering,
and another passport in the name
of Elizabeth Roxanne Haysom.
From that point,
the picture started coming together.
[tense music playing]
Thailand was the place
where they had a lot of forgeries made.
Driver's licenses, student cards.
Which allowed them to get a checkbook.
They were buying clothing on a check.
And then they took that clothing back,
saying it didn't fit
or it wasn't the style
that they really wanted.
They were getting cash back.
Most certainly, the fraud was successful.
Their gain was in the region
of about 6,000 pounds.
I just don't know how they hit
on the idea, but they knew the system.
In the apartment,
we found lots and lots of lots of letters.
Diaries.
We didn't know whether the letters
were part of the fraud,
so we decided to put everything together
and study it at a later date.
Time went on, of course,
but my colleague, Terry Wright,
who was a detective constable,
he was reading the letters.
Picking out various extracts,
which really led him to think
that something untowards
had happened in Virginia.
[foreboding music playing]
[Beever] The letters were quite lengthy,
and some of them
were written in diary form.
[voice actor as Elizabeth]
"My dearest Jens,
a day of raining loneliness."
"This morning, I built my father a desk
for his computer."
"It took all morning."
"I didn't smoke."
[Beever] And then right out of the blue,
there were these little extracts
that gave us the clue
to what was happening.
[voice actor as Elizabeth]
"My parents began to drink."
"My mother begins her sixth gin."
"I pray she'll use the poker
on my cold, goading father."
"Would it be possible
to hypnotize my parents,
do voodoo on them, will them to death?"
"Why don't my parents
just lie down and die?"
"I despise them so much."
That letter was before
the Christmas of 1984.
And then, of course,
we found another letter
back from Jens to Elizabeth.
[voice actor as Jens] "Dear Liz,
I love you. Je t'aime. Ich liebe dich."
"Love is a form of meditation
and the ultimate weapon
against your parents."
"Depending on his mental
and emotional flexibility,
your father, for example,
could quite well die
from a confrontation with it."
"My God, how I've
got the dinner scene planned out."
[dark music playing]
[voice actor as Jens] "By the way, yes,
voodoo, etc. is possible."
There's no doubt about it.
Those letters turn this case.
If Terry hadn't gone
through those letters, word by word,
he would have never made
the telephone call to Ricky Gardner.
[Gardner] May 25th of 1986
[telephone ringing]
I received a telephone call
from a detective constable, Terry Wright.
Of course,
he'd seen the mention of two names,
of, uh, Gardner and Reid,
amongst diary entries.
From that point on,
he did a lot of work to to find him.
[Gardner] He asked me
if I knew Jens or Elizabeth Haysom,
and I said, "Sure, I do."
Second question he asked me was,
"Are her parents dead?"
And I said, "Yes, they are."
And he said, "Well, let me ask you,"
he said, "Were they murdered?"
"Yes."
And he said, "Well, perhaps you might
want to fly over to London."
"I believe we have
the murderers locked up here,
and you may want
to come over and talk to them."
Well, you know, I'm not believing
this is happening.
I said, "You stay right where you are."
And I said,
"I'll call you back within an hour."
"Don't move. Don't leave the phone,
I'll call you right back."
I mean, you know, "Who are you again?"
You know? Right.
So, I drove up to the courthouse
to Commonwealth's Attorney,
Jim Updike's office
and I started telling him. I said,
"I just got off the phone with
and then he told me And Jens
and Elizabeth's in jail in England,
and I You know,
we got to go over there".
[tense music playing]
[news reporter 1] The London Daily Mail
screamed the news,
Elizabeth Haysom and Jens Soering
are being held in a London jail.
[news reporter 2]
The two were arrested for writing
about six thousand dollars in bad checks.
The story exploded,
and media from all over the world
got interested.
The voodoo killings.
Suddenly, Elizabeth was, quote, unquote,
"an heiress of the Astors,"
and Jens was her lover.
[news reporter 3]
Sheriff's investigator Ricky Gardner
and Commonwealth's Attorney
James Updike are in London.
According to Scotland Yard,
they may question
the 23-year-old Haysom girl
and 19-year-old Jens Soering today
at the Richmond Police Station
in Southwest London.
More than a year after the murders,
police are hoping that by questioning
their daughter
and her boyfriend in London,
they're able to close the final chapter
on the bizarre case once and for all.
[dark music playing]
[Gardner] Over the next three days,
we interviewed Jens and Elizabeth
four, five times, keeping them separate.
They were never allowed
to be in the same room.
Elizabeth was brought
into the interview room
with her solicitor.
[tense music playing]
[Gardner] She saw those letters
laying out on their desk.
That was the ammunition
that we were gonna use.
She wouldn't answer any questions at all.
She would shake her head, nod her head.
She went from being very cooperative
to not cooperative at all.
And so, we had to start talking to Jens.
[Beever] He knew his rights,
and he chose not to have a solicitor.
Always, throughout the four days,
he maintained a level of confidence.
And he was always in full control.
[Gardner on tape] The following statement
is being taken from Jens Soering
on June 5th, 1986.
Okay, uh, Jens, let's start with Friday,
which was March 29th
-[Jens on tape] Right.
-[Gardner] 1985.
We picked up
from that interview in Bedford
and started talking
about the rental car again.
[Jens on tape] Well,
we drove to Washington D.C.
and checked into a motel.
And the next day, I drove
in a rented car back down to, uh
-[Jens] Lynchburg.
-[Gardner on tape] Lynchburg.
And to be
can you be more specific? Lynchburg
[Jens] At, um, the residence
of Derek and Nancy Haysom.
[Gardner] Okay.
He was always very, very careful
how he answered questions.
[Gardner on tape] Now was anyone with you?
[Jens on tape] No, absolutely not.
[Gardner] You left Elizabeth
in in Washington?
[Jens] Yes, Elizabeth stayed in D.C.
Um Going to cinema.
[Beever on tape]
Was she preparing an alibi?
[Jens] Um
He wanted to stress
that Elizabeth wasn't there.
He went alone.
[Gardner on tape] Did Elizabeth know
where you were going?
[Jens on tape] Oh, yes.
She knew where I was going, right.
[Gardner] Did she know
the reason you was going there?
[Jens] I don't think
that either she or I
were truly clear
about what was going to happen.
God knows, I was not at all
set.
[Beever on tape] Set to do what?
[Jens] Set to kill them.
He asked if the tape could be turned off,
and that happened numerous times.
[ominous music playing]
[Beever] Then the Sunday,
the 8th, I believe,
he made a confession
to Ricky Gardner but off tape.
[Gardner] He wouldn't let me record it,
he wouldn't let me take any notes.
So, then we went through it a second time
with Beever and Wright in the room.
[Beever] Jens re-enacted the murder
and told us everything
that had taken place.
And it got to the very,
very end of the interview
and Terry's made this note.
This is what Jens said to us.
"I fell in love with a girl."
"We talked about killing her parents."
"I drove to her house and killed them."
"I got caught."
[tense music playing]
[Gardner]
Today, we presented indictments on both
Jens and Elizabeth for murder.
After he confessed
that Sunday evening,
she rang the bell and wanted to talk.
She wanted to make it clear
that they were both equally as guilty.
[news reporter 1] Elizabeth Haysom faces
two first-degree murder charges.
Jens Soering,
two murder charges plus capital murder.
He faces the death penalty.
[dramatic music playing]
[news reporter 2] Prosecutor Jim Updike
says there's no timetable
on extradition proceedings.
It'll have to wait
until British authorities
are through with their own charges
before they will be released.
[Gardner] In jail in England,
Elizabeth wrote Jens a letter,
severing their relationship.
She said, "Look,
I'm going to go back to Virginia."
"I'm going to admit
to my part in my parents' death."
"I don't love you anymore."
"You're on your own."
We finally got her back in May of 1987.
[foreboding music playing]
[news reporter] At about 8:30 tonight,
the plane carrying
23-year-old Elizabeth Haysom
touched down in Roanoke.
The former University of Virginia student
was extradited by British authorities
and brought home by two US Marshals.
[Jeff] I went over to the jail
to visit with her.
She said to me, "I'm doing okay."
And, "I just want to take a deep breath."
And she took a deep breath,
and that was it.
She cut off all contact with everybody.
She was very remorseful
that her parents were gone.
[Judge] What say you, are you guilty
as charged in the indictment
or not guilty?
Guilty as an accessory before the fact.
There was no more worry,
no more rumor mill about,
you know, some voodoo killing.
That all went away.
Elizabeth had made her bed,
and now she's going
to have to sleep in it.
[eerie music playing]
She came into court,
very demure with a long dress.
[bodyguard] Back it up.
[Updike] With her hair back.
Wore black and white.
Black dresses, white dresses,
nothing of any color.
When she came into the courtroom,
I felt like she was assuming
the role of Joan of Arc,
that she was submitting herself
to the persecutors.
[Jeff] Here you have a young woman.
She was very bright,
she was very brilliant,
and her entire future blew up
right in front of her face.
[camera shutters clicking]
[Beever] I just cannot
wrap my head around it.
Why why she would want her parents dead?
People who have given you life?
The questions gotta be that,
why did Elizabeth go do this?
I mean, this this has got to be awful.
This has got to be
the worst thing in the world.
[Updike] Ms. Haysom,
the major question that I'd like to ask is
why did your parents die?
Why?
Why?
Why?
[theme music playing]
[theme music concludes]