While Jens Soering tries to fight his double-murder conviction with new evidence, his former girlfriend and accomplice, Elizabeth Haysom, says they are both guilty. He is charged with murdering Haysom’s parents, Derek and Nancy Haysom, in 1985.
The Associated Press reports that on Monday, Soering’s attorney sent a letter to Governor Bob McDonnell that included the statement of a Lynchburg man who says he worked on a bloody car brought into his shop by Haysom and a man. He did not identify Haysom’s companion as Soering, and said the man did not wear glasses and had a lighter hair color.
"I really thought that whoever was in my shop had something to do with it," Tony Buchanan is quoted as saying. "I know it wasn’t Soering."
In a letter to the AP, Haysom, however, tells of their crime.
“He is right to blame me. I involved him in a horrible crime,” she said. “The bottom line, however, is that we are equally responsible for the murder of my parents. And we both deserve incarceration.”
This is the latest attempt by Soering’s attorneys to win their client’s freedom. As one of his last acts as Governor, Tim Kaine agreed to ask the U.S. Department of Justice to let Soering finish his sentence in his native Germany. McDonnell withdrew the request.
In response to McDonnell’s decision, Soering filed suit against him in January questioning McDonnell’s constitutional authority to make that decision.
Soering, who was a UVA student at the time of the crime, is currently serving time in the Brunswick Correctional Center.
To read C-VILLE’s previous coverage of Jens Soering, click here.
