Murder For My Love - Lynchburg, Virginia

Summary

Small Town Murder: “Murder For My Love – Lynchburg, Virginia”

Podcast: Small Town Murder
Hosts: James Pietragallo & Jimmie Whisman
Date: November 20, 2025
Episode Theme:
James and Jimmie dive into the infamous “Haysom Murders” that shook a well-to-do family and the rural community near Lynchburg, Virginia in 1985. With deep research, signature banter, and a wild ride through international intrigue, class disparities, and true crime tropes turned upside down, the hosts revisit a brutal crime, the obsessive young couple at its heart, and the decades-long controversy over guilt and innocence.

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1. Episode Overview

This episode unpacks the chilling double murder of Derek and Nancy Haysom—a cosmopolitan, wealthy couple—in rural Boonesborough, near Lynchburg, VA. The case became infamous due to its bloody nature, complicated suspects, and the global flight of two young, intelligent lovers: their daughter, Elizabeth Haysom, and her boyfriend, Jens Soering. The hosts offer detailed background, gallows humor, and a thoughtful look at the evidence and enduring doubts over who actually wielded the knife.

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2. Key Discussion Points & Insights

A. About Lynchburg, Virginia

• Lynchburg is an “independent city,” meaning it’s not part of any county, a rarity that causes jurisdictional headaches later in the case.
• Hosts riff on the region's reviews—everything from “ever increasing violence” (debated with actual stats) to playground and food complaints.
• Median home price, cost of living, violent crime stats, and local events are all joked about to set the scene for a “sleepy, hilly” town paradoxically rocked by gruesome murder.

B. The Haysom Family

• Derek Haysom: Born in South Africa, distinguished steel executive, dabbled in botany (notably, apple hybrids), described as “gregarious in public, authoritarian at home.”
• Nancy Haysom: Goddaughter to Lady Astor, socialite, American-raised, stylish, fond of gin.
• Both parents are established, private, and live comfortably in a house called “Loose Chippings” (fancy, not flashy).

C. Elizabeth Haysom’s Background

• Born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Canadian citizen, raised internationally, bright but troubled (self-harm, eating disorders, claims of sexual abuse by her mother).
• Attended elite boarding schools in Europe, often at odds with parents, especially over academic direction (wanted to study history, parents pushed engineering).
• Developed resentment and distance from her parents, which purportedly informed later events.

D. Enter Jens Soering

• German, son of a diplomat, raised around the world (Bangkok, USA, Brussels), brilliant (multi-lingual, top student, scholarship winner).
• Met Liz at University of Virginia, both outsiders, connected instantly over their intellect and shared sense of alienation.
• Relationship dynamic: Liz, charismatic and troubled; Jens, adoring and (possibly) easily manipulated.

E. A Relationship Turns Poisonous

• Intense, codependent love letters—escalating from romantic (and pretentious) to dark, discussing murder (“I would kill for you… burn the world down…” [59:22]).
• Liz repeatedly claims abuse by parents (emotional and physical), and introduces bizarre elements like voodoo rituals and nude photos allegedly linked to her father.
• “Sweet boy. The time is coming. I have been preparing you… make them suffer as they've made me suffer.”
  —Letter from Elizabeth to Jens, [120:24]

F. The Murders (March 30, 1985)

• Liz and Jens establish a solid-seeming Washington D.C. alibi, checking into a hotel, making themselves visible.
• Evidence (mileage, receipts, staff testimony) later suggests Jens could have driven to Lynchburg and back while Liz maintained the alibi.
• Scene at Loose Chippings:
  • Derek (stabbed ~36 times; decapitation-level neck wound; “like a slaughterhouse” [29:44])
  • Nancy (stabbed; nearly decapitated; found seated at the table set for tea/snacks [86:45]).
• No sign of forced entry. The crime is intensely personal and extremely violent—overkill indicative of rage.
• Forensic confusion: sock prints, four types of blood found (A, AB, B, O), but only two victims; missing jewelry and wallet.

G. The Investigations and Suspicions

• Jurisdiction issues muddle initial responses; FBI and state involvement ramp up stakes.
• FBI profile originally suggests “a female known to the family.”
• Talk of “cult killings” and Satanic Panic elements, given 1980s context and weird crime scene (V’s, blood patterns, candle wax).
• Elizabeth and Jens interrogated; alibi seems “too perfect.”
• Letters between the two (eventually found under Liz’s bed) reference planning the murder, including details matching the crime scene (specific date, staged robbery, injuring the victims severely).

H. The Lovers on the Run

• Feeling the heat, Liz and Jens flee to Europe, using fake names and running an elaborate international check-fraud scheme for cash.
• Eventually arrested in England after a botched scam, questioned about the Haysom murders—Liz immediately blames Jens; Jens confesses to spare Liz.

I. Confessions, Allegations, and Trial

• Jens confesses multiple times—details align with the crime scene (“I killed them. She didn’t know. Here’s how it happened…” [141:38-143:12]).
• Later recants, claiming he only confessed to save Liz (as a German, believed he’d only serve time in Germany and would be protected from the death penalty; misunderstands diplomatic immunity).
• Both extradited to the US:
  • Liz pleads guilty as accessory before the fact, blames Jens, sentenced to 90 years (parole eligibility after 45).
  • Jens goes to trial, claims innocence, argues Liz was the real killer; prosecuted with a bench trial (judge is friend of victim’s family), ultimately convicted, given two consecutive life sentences.
• Both legal and forensic controversies arise—questions about confessions, evidence, and blood samples never fully matching either.

J. Ongoing Controversy, Releases, and Life After Prison

• Over decades, numerous appeals, DNA tests, and documentaries (including on Netflix) cast doubt on Jens’s guilt—new DNA at the scene doesn’t match either Jens or Liz, but also doesn’t exonerate them.
• Both Liz and Jens eventually win parole (2019) after over three decades, each deported: Liz to Canada, Jens to Germany, never allowed to return to the US.
• Both have written extensively, maintain differing accounts of the crime, and live obscure lives—Jens in Germany (writing, reform advocacy), Liz reportedly working at a garden center in Canada.

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3. Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

On the Violent Scene

• “I’ve seen some shit, but this—this was something else.” —Chuck Reed [29:21]
• “The rug squished with blood when you stepped on it.” —James [30:41]

On the Couple’s Dynamic

• “Met the most extraordinary girl today… She quotes Nietzsche and Joyce from memory. She understands suffering in a way these American children never could. I think I’m in love.”
  —Jens’s diary [55:42]
• “My darling, I would die for you—no, that’s not enough. I would kill for you. I would burn the world down if it meant we could rule over the ashes together.” —Jens to Elizabeth [59:22]
• “Sweet boy. You say you would kill for me, but would you? Would you really? My parents think you’re weak. Prove them wrong.” —Elizabeth to Jens [59:53]

On the Investigation

• “Four blood types in evidence. Two dead people. The Hasams A and AB… there was B blood on a rag and O blood in the master suite.” —James [97:15]
• “I think we can also say there’s no affirmative indication of anybody other than the victims being present at the crime scene as well.” —DNA expert on 2020 documentary [171:21]

On Legal Shenanigans

• “He believed his diplomatic passport granted immunity… It’s a Die Hard movie.” —James [145:02]
• “We can’t stay here anymore. The truth isn’t what it seems. We’re innocent but no one believes us.” —Note left by Jens and Liz as they fled [131:01]

Other Gems

• “If you want to test a relationship, run from Interpol with somebody, driving a Fiat through Bulgaria…” —James [132:56]
• “She opened the murder door. The ‘I’ll kill for you’ door.” —James [168:19]
• “An 18-year-old boy hates it when you give him the best f*** of his life and then leave…” —James, on Liz’s manipulative style [63:09]

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4. Important Timestamps

• 00:41 – Episode theme set: “A really, really wild, twisty one…”
• 06:14 – 11:47 – Lynchburg background, stats, and host banter
• 23:31 – 30:03 – Murders discovered; crime scene details emerge
• 37:02 – 44:48 – Haysom family background, Liz’s troubled youth
• 49:36 – 62:49 – The Jens/Liz dynamic, letters, and obsession
• 85:01 – 93:16 – Gruesome crime scene details; investigators puzzle over possible cult elements
• 120:24 – 123:10 – Key evidence from diary, investigation closing in
• 129:59 – 132:39 – The couple’s international escape and eventual capture in Europe
• 139:23 – 143:12 – Interrogations, confessions, and blame games
• 148:29 – 149:10 – Liz’s plea/sentence and Jens's recantation
• 150:32 – 154:23 – Trial highlights, witness questioning, convictions
• 167:42 – 176:48 – Where are they now? Paroles, deportations, legacy of doubt

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5. Conclusion & Takeaways

This episode is as much a psychological exploration and legal whodunit as straight crime retelling. Between the hosts’ comedic takes on “old money,” academic pressure, and international runaways, and the endless forensic and moral ambiguity, the Haysom murders stand as a notorious (and still controversial) true crime. Listeners are left questioning whether the system got it right, whether love can truly turn deadly, and how—decades later—the truth remains stubbornly out of reach.

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For First-Time Listeners

This episode is packed with details, dark humor, and insightful asides—offering both a primer on the Haysom case and a hilarious, biting commentary on class, justice, and the human messiness underlying true crime.

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Resources

• Book: Beyond Reason (cited throughout for case detail)
• 2015 New Yorker article by Nathan Heller
• Netflix’s “Killing for Love” documentary
• The Promise (German doc)
• A True Report on the Facts of the Investigation… by Terry Wright

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Transcript

[A]

This week in Lynchburg, Virginia, a powerful couple is massacred in their home, leading to a huge investigation, including FBI profilers. But the real murder plot turns out to be very simple. Or is it? Welcome to Small Town Murder. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to Small Town Murder. Yay. Oh, yay indeed, Jimmy. Yay indeed. My name is James Petregallo. I'm here with my co host.

[B]

I am Jimmy Wisman.

[A]

Thank you folks so much for joining us today on another crazy edition of Small Town Murder. We have a really, really wild, twisty one where at the end you might go, I don't know what happened. Or maybe I do. It's crazy stuff. I can't wait to get into it here. Before we do, definitely head over to shut up and give me mur. No tickets to buy right now. The tickets for Philly and D.C. are sold out. But we are announcing our slate of 2026 live shows very soon. So keep an eye out [e-mail] Also, listen to our other shows for sure. Crime and sports. You don't have to like sports, we promise. It's just really funny. We like to make fun of somebody who screwed up when they don't have to. That's all it is. So do that. And also your stupid opinions where we make fun of the funniest reviews around the Internet of everything you can imagine.

[B]

Again, people that didn't have to.

[A]

Didn't have to. They did not have to get themselves in our crosshairs. Yet here they are. So it's a lot of fun. And also when you're done with all that, get yourself Patreon. Do yourself a favor. Patreon.com CrimeInSports is where you get all of the bonus material. It's a lot. Anybody $5 a month or above a cup of coffee. Honestly, that's all it is. For the cost of a cup of coffee, you're going to get not only, first of all, hundreds of back episodes of bonus stuff you've never heard before. You get that as soon as you subscribe, you can binge that. Then you get new ones every other week. One crime in sports, one small town murder, and you get it all. You get it all. This week for crime and Sports, we're going to talk about team relocations again, part two. A lot of fun stuff coming. We'll make fun of the whole Cleveland debacle and everything like that. Then why doesn't Seattle have a basketball team? Things of that nature. Then for Small town Murder, we are gonna talk about The American prison system, where it started, where it is now, what was the intent and where did we end up? And it's a wild evolution over the years. So a lot of funny stuff there. We'll get into all of that. Patreon.com CrimeInSports now, in addition to all of that content, you're also gonna get all of our shows. Crime in Sports, your stupid opinion, and both weekly shows of Small Town murder, all ad free with your Patreon as well. Ad free. Ad free. No ads.

[B]

Beautiful.

[A]

And. And you get a shout out at the end of the show as well, where Jimmy will mispronounce your name even though he would absolutely love to get it correct. There you go. So that said, disclaimer time. This is a comedy show, everybody. We are comedians. People are going to die and jokes are going to be made. There's nothing.

[B]

It's just how it goes.

[A]

All of this info is absolutely as accurate as it can be. There's nothing embellished for comedic effect or any garbage like that. You might go, well, how does that work? You're making fun of murders. Well, we do it very simple here. You don't make fun of the victims or the victim's families.

[B]

Why is that, James?

[A]

Because we're assholes, but we're not scumbags. I mean, come on. There you go. Come on. I mean, come on. What do you want from us? I actually did a whole shoulder shrug too. Come on, come on. Had the hands in the middle. What? I went, very old Italian guy there, like, hey, oh, I look like my dad doing that. Okay, so that said, if any. If you think true crime and comedy should never go together, maybe we're not for you. That's possible.

[B]

But probably don't stick around.

[A]

Maybe, though maybe it might be mistaken. That's the thing. Either way, no complaining later.

[B]

Put some zip in your lip.

[A]

There you go. That said, I think it's time to sit back, everybody. Yeah, clear the lungs here and let's all shout. Shut up and give me murder. Let's do this, everybody.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Let's go on a trip, shall we?

[B]

We've gotta.

[A]

We gotta. We have no choice. We can't do this from where we are. We're going to lynch. I mean, come on, we're going to Lynchburg. The more. The more Italian I put into it, the funnier Jimmy finds it with anything, really. I can. I can guinea something up and Jimmy will just laugh his ass up. So in our regular life too, not just on the show, he said, virginia, we're going Eh, Virginia. Lynchburg, Virginia.

[B]

Okay. There's a Lynchburg, Kentucky. There's a Lynchburg. Lynchburg.

[A]

Everything booze comes from, isn't it in Kentucky?

[B]

Yeah, well, yeah, that and whiskey.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, the booze. I said the booze.

[B]

Oh, I thought you said blues.

[A]

No, no, no. The booze. The booze. No.

[B]

Lynchburg lemonade.

[A]

Yeah, well, the booze will bring the blues. That's how that goes so well.

[B]

Yeah, they go hand in hand.

[A]

Hand in hand. Lynchburg, Virginia, is in central Virginia. It's about two hours over to Richmond, another about three hours and change to Washington, D.C. if you keep going that direction. And about an hour to Farmville, Virginia. Our last Virginia Episode, Episode 602 Real life murder songs. That was the one with that idiot rapper kid who was going out. Oh, that was a mess.

[B]

Farmville, like the Farmville Facebook game.

[A]

Like the Facebook game that you've been. That you've had to unfriend your aunt over in 2006, in 2011. So Lynchburg itself. Now, the murder itself doesn't take place in Lynchburg. It takes place just outside of Lynchburg in a place called Boonesborough.

[B]

Fair enough.

[A]

Yeah, but that's not a town. It's just an area. It's just like. It's not a town. There's no stats or anything like that. So we're gonna do Lynchburg, which is a little bigger than we usually do, but this is out in the sticks. This is kind of out in a rural area here. So Lynchburg is an independent city. It's not in a county. We've never encountered this before.

[B]

No county.

[A]

No county. No county.

[B]

What does that mean?

[A]

I don't know. There's no county. I don't know how it works.

[B]

How do you do that?

[A]

In the end, it's all basically math. It's just all, where's money coming from, who's collecting it, and then where's it being distributed? Who's plowing the roads? Who's doing shit like that? I have no idea how that works.

[B]

County's what each town's in, isn't it?

[A]

Usually, but not here. This is an independent, independent city. Now Boonesborough is in Bedford county, which is where this takes place. Area code here. 4, 3, 4. Nicknames of Lynchburg, City of Seven Hills, and the Hill City. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say there's hills here in the city. Seven of them at minimum. History here. First settled in 1757, named for its founder, John Lynch. Not named for, like an activity they enjoyed. Named for an actual man linebacker from Denver. Yes, that's the guy. Well, the strong safety from Tampa, really. When John lynch, this John lynch was 17 years old, he started a ferry service at a ford across the James River. You know, just like strong safety John Lynch. I believe he started a ferry service in his teens too. Well, he was a junior in high school. This was to carry traffic to and from New London where his parents had settled. So that's, you know, he can go back and forth. Now the city itself develops around the ferry because once there's a ferry and a way to get back and forth, then people start going places. In 1786, Lynchburg became recognized as a town by the General Assembly. We've never been here. We don't know anything about it. Let's hear from some people who have been here and may know more than us. Let's go to some reviews and find out what people think. Yeah. Okay. Here is five stars. A nice place. Exclamation point. It's weird to use the word nice and use an exclamation point because it's nice is real calm. That's a period word, you know, just put a dot on the end of it. Exclamation point is.

[B]

Might be an ellipses.

[A]

Yeah, something. Yeah, could be, yeah. It's surrounded by the Blue Ridge Mountains and is close to the bigger cities. Liberty University, Lynchburg University, Randolph College and Central Virginia Community College are all located in Lynchburg. So there is choices of local colleges to attend. Liberty, I believe, was the place that Jerry Falwell was all into. And I don't think they're accredited. Don't quote me on it. I don't believe they're accredited. So colleges and quotes on that one. Three stars here. There are cute and sweet little spots in town, but the violence is ever increasing. Uh oh, the violence.

[B]

Ever increasing.

[A]

Ever increasing.

[B]

Every day gets worse.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Well, we'll find out about that because we have stats. Mr. We'll find out. Lynchburg has amazing opportunity to become an amazing city that offers a lot to its citizens. But at this time, it's not the case.

[B]

Not good.

[A]

Not good. Here's two stars. It's too rural for my taste. There is almost nothing to. I thought the violence is increasing. What are they talking about now? It's rural all of a sudden. There's almost nothing to do here. Everything is about Liberty University, their sports, games and or events. There is no, in all caps, no food variety whatsoever. The food is just plain here. Just no spices allowed. Just plain Food. Boiled chicken. That's what you eat. That's it. There are almost no kids playgrounds in the area and only three of them are lame. Only three and they are lame. Sorry.

[B]

They are lame.

[A]

They are lame, these playgrounds. Lame playgrounds. Limping around all over the place.

[B]

It's for one footed people.

[A]

Yeah, my four year old saw it and was like, that's it. Well, Jesus, your four year old really has a high opinion of himself and what he's entitled to, doesn't he?

[B]

Incredibly exciting four year old.

[A]

If you're four and you see a swing, that's exciting.

[B]

And you go fucking lame.

[A]

That's it. Lame. You don't do that. That's the parent telling us. Yeah, the kid's like greatest slide. Awesome score. We recently moved from New Jersey and so did another couple and we are all homesick. Well, it seems like a lateral move if it's New Jersey. So anyway, two stars. Only lived here for one year. Had my motorcycle stolen and the church next to my house was broken into five times.

[B]

Five times.

[A]

Five times. Doing great here. Okay. God damn people in this town right now 78,973. There was less when the murder happened that we're going to talk about women. There's more women than men, 53.2% women, which a lot of that is because there is higher women, higher percentage of young women are enrolled in college than young men. So you're. If there's a ton of colleges, you're going to get more women than men. Median age here, 28.6 again because of all the colleges. Drives everything down. It's 39% married again, colleges driving it down. 21% are single with children though. They figured that out. Yeah, they figured out how to do that. Race in this town, 62.7% white, 28.3% black, 2.7% Asian, 3.7% Hispanic. 45.7% of the people are religious, which is actually low for this area. It's usually 50. 50 is the national average, especially with.

[B]

A megachurch right there.

[A]

You would think so. Yeah. But the highest percentage are Baptist as we know. Baptists are the Catholics of the south. They're everywhere. Yeah, there you go south, that's where they are. You go north, there's Catholics.

[B]

Was Falwell that thing too?

[A]

Yes, yes, I believe so. If I'm not mistake there. Yeah, yeah, so there's that. Unemployment rate is slightly high which tends to be normal in college towns too. Median household income here again lowered because of college students. $54,015 a year, which is about 15,000 under the national average.

[B]

It's not bad for college kids.

[A]

For college kids, yeah. Well, there's a lot of other people and there seems to be money in parts of the city too. It's interesting. Cost of living, 100 is average. Normal, regular. Here it is 80.9. So cheaper than normal. But the median, the home cost is the cheapest thing here of all the stuff. Median home cost here, $221,800. So less than the national average by a good amount here for sure. And if we've convinced you Lynchburg, Virginia is the only place to go, you love lame playgrounds and completely unseasoned food, we have for you the Lynchburg, Virginia real estate report. All right. Your average two bedroom rental here goes for $1,070, which is below the national average by a couple hundred bucks. Not bad for a college town. Your first house is a terrifying murder shack is the best way to describe it. It's a two bedroom. There's just a dash where the baths are. So it's a two bedroom. Shit in a bucket. 1958 square feet. Look at it.

[B]

Oh, wait, how many square feet?

[A]

Almost 200. Yeah, look at the inside. There's pieces of the ceiling are collapsed. It looks like, it looks like, like if someone kidnapped you and took you there, you know you're in trouble. You know you're in a lot of trouble.

[B]

Square feet. That thing must be deep.

[A]

It's got to be deep. Yeah. Up front it looks pretty small. Looks, yeah, like a little like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre house here. This place, it says attention train enthusiasts and investors, which tells me that this is right by the train. So you're going to hear a lot of trains going by. Love the train. Wanted to wake you up at 2 in the morning. Well, this is a spot for you.

[B]

Attention train enthusiast. Boy, if you love a train horn.

[A]

Oh man, you're going to love this place. And this, this is a big red flag in a real estate listing. Quote, here is your next adventure. No, a house should not be an adventure. Should be a place to move into. Here.

[B]

Peace and solace. If you can't come without the familiar whistle of a train, without the locomotive.

[A]

Choo choom, choo choom as it goes by. And also you can run behind it and pick up the coal that's fallen off it when it passes.

[B]

You bring your pennies and squish them on the tracks.

[A]

Oh, do it. Yeah. Property sold as is. There's another red flag. $23,000.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

23 grand for that.

[B]

23.

[A]

23 grand. But I mean, you can't live in that house. It's falling apart. Next up, this is a four bedroom, two bath, 1525 square foot house. Just a nice little suburban house there. Oh yeah, it's a cute little house. I don't like how they painted the brick gray. Like it's a brick house. Let it be a brick house. So paint it gray.

[B]

I think they. I think they sandblasted it down to the brick as well.

[A]

What they did. Yeah. That's no good, man. I like the brick. Look there. On 26 acres, this house, nice little house. 229,000 bucks for that 15, 25 square feet. And then finally, this is a big one. 6 bedroom, 6 bath, T bowl for each and every B hole that you got. 7,845 square feet. It's a big giant brick house. It's gorgeous. I like the driveway. It's got three car garage with granite headers.

[B]

That is crazy.

[A]

Yeah, this house is badass. It's real nice inside. Very well appointed, kind of classic. Not like all newfangled, but nice. This house, $1,750,000. 7,000?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

For on almost 8,000 square feet on about a half an acre of land. Now, things to do here in this town, we had the Lynchburg Wine and Music Festival.

[B]

Wine and music.

[A]

Yeah. I'll get drunk and listen to music. That Sounds good. Featuring 14 Virginia wineries, cideries and distilleries. Non stop entertainment. That sounds. That's too much.

[B]

I don't quit. Don't you show up unless you want to be entertained.

[A]

That sounds like it's against your will at a certain point. You know what I mean?

[B]

That's a warning. That's not an advertisement.

[A]

I picture me huddled in a corner while some guy just plays a guitar over me. Just over me with a guitar, singing. So please stop. I can't take it. Another guy's. Is this your card? I'm like, please leave me alone.

[B]

I need wine.

[A]

I need more wine. Local artisans, crafters, and fabulous food.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

The 15th annual Lynchburg Wine and Music Festival will have something for everyone to enjoy.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Except children who don't drink wine. Now entertain. No, they're not entertaining the music for 2025. First off, we got Cam' Ron Smith with a K. Cameron with a K. Oh, okay.

[B]

Not the other guy.

[A]

Not Cameron. That Cameron. No, no, no. He really tries to be relevant too. That guy. He's always out there talking. Oh, he's trying to Keep beefs alive and shit. You're like, calm down.

[B]

Trying to get something viral.

[A]

Yeah, calm down. Start worrying about retirement and blood pressure and things that other 55 year old guys do. Chill out.

[B]

I saw Benzino's doing that too.

[A]

Yeah. No, no.

[B]

Was he Vibe or double xl?

[A]

I don't remember which one he was. I don't want to.

[B]

I think it was double.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Probably the one that Jay Z was into there.

[B]

Dude, there's so many 60 man.

[A]

It's funny when these guys trying to start decent. Yeah, like no one would have cared about that.

[B]

Nobody cares.

[A]

No one cared in 2003. How about that? What do they care now? So Cam' Ron Smith, he was on American Idol. He's not a rapper, he's a cyclist guy. Tenfo T E N F O all caps. Tenfo is quote A new hard rocking modern outlaw country band from Lynchburg.

[B]

I am taking that note down. That sounds awesome.

[A]

A local new country band, I see.

[B]

Yeah. 10 foe sounds terrible.

[A]

But yeah, I don't trust it. Hard rocking modern outlaw. I don't trust it. I don't trust it.

[B]

Yeah, it sounds like they vi ripped jeans.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, that's what I'm saying. I don't try. It sounds like you want to be something a little more than you are. Possibly. They might be great. I don't know.

[B]

They might be.

[A]

The Mashup will be there also. They have a three hour set. Jesus Christ.

[B]

Three fucking hours.

[A]

Three, four to seven. That is a set.

[B]

God damn it.

[A]

Jesus. The Rolling Stones didn't play that much. They had 46 albums to choose from. They say only two words are necessary to describe the mashup. Energy and talent.

[B]

Oh, that's it.

[A]

That's it. The Mashup has compiled a brand new up to date show that will keep you on your feet from the first note to the last three hours. It's too much. Nonstop entertainment. It's too much. With a repertoire of tunes from the 50s to today. Oh no. We're gonna have Dion followed by Nicki Minaj. It's going to be awesome. You're going to love it.

[B]

From the 50s to today.

[A]

To today. You can't. Too much. It's just too much variety.

[B]

Frankie Valli right after fucking Lady Gaga. What's going on?

[A]

He just played the Wanderer and now he's gonna play fucking Pink Pony Club. Yeah, he's gonna play Chapel Roan. What's happening right now? So that's weird. The Mashup can accommodate any event from a low key wedding to A large corporate event and everything in between. All right. They're looking for private shows. They've given up on trying to be a band. They're just trying to get booked for private stuff. Then there's a lineup from the year before that featured Tony Kam and the Funk All Stars, Blair's West Band and the Dundees. Like Undies with a D on the end or a D in the beginning.

[B]

Oh, boy.

[A]

There's also the Greenviews Fall Festival in Lynchburg, which is where you can get homemade apple butter and strawberry jelly in a bake sale. They don't promise non stop entertainment though.

[B]

So is that hard to make apple butter?

[A]

I don't know. It seems like a lot of whipping. Probably a lot of churning.

[B]

Tenflo has 36 followers.

[A]

James, I don't know if you'll have more after today. I mean, we made fun of them a little bit, but in the end they'll make out any of these local bands. In the end, they end up getting like fans from us. So you're welcome.

[B]

They've got a whole bunch of shows coming up. Guess where they're all at?

[A]

Lynchburg.

[B]

Yes.

[A]

Hey, you're welcome. Ten foe. Let's sell a couple more tickets. Crime rate in this town, what we're interested in here, property crime, exactly average, right? At average. Violent crime, murder, rape, robbery, and of course assault. The Mount Rushmore of crime is actually a little lower than average. Oh, this person, this ever increasing violence that's happening.

[B]

They're wrong.

[A]

They're talking about here.

[B]

Maybe in your life.

[A]

Yeah, maybe in your house.

[B]

Stop pissing off.

[A]

Things are happening. That said, let's talk about some murder. We say that it's not violent there. Let's go back in time, everybody. What do you say? Let's travel. We are going back 40 years, which sounds like a long time. April 3, 1985, we're going to go back to.

[B]

Okay, isn't that when Back to the Future came out, that played Back in Time?

[A]

It actually is. Yes. We're going to talk about that. 85 now that's the thing. Number one song on April 3rd, 1985. You know what it was?

[B]

Was it Huey Lewis?

[A]

It is One More Night by Phil Collins. Oh, that's not a bad one. One of his most boring songs ever. This soft rock elevator, grocery store music from Phil Collins.

[B]

He probably wrote that with the intention of it being played on the loudspeaker at HEB one day.

[A]

That's it. Or like the background of a cruise ship or something.

[B]

Maybe soundtrack to a Lady Squeezing Honeydew.

[A]

Yeah. Right before that. The number one song before that was Can't Fight this Feeling by REO Speedwagon.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

I can't fight this feeling anymore.

[B]

Hooga hooga.

[A]

And then right after that is. We Are the world was number one for a few weeks. So that's interesting. Number one movie this week, Police Academy 2. Their first assignment is the number one box office movie that week.

[B]

That one wasn't bad. I liked Citizens of Control.

[A]

That's the best. Four. Yeah, four. Four is really where they hit their artistic zeitgeist. Really?

[B]

Was it Miami Beach? Is that the other one?

[A]

I don't remember. That was like six or something. Yeah. Who knows? Yeah, four is really where it ends. It's like Rocky movies. So also movies of that weekend. Mask, Remember that? With Cher. Oh, not the Mask. Not the Mask.

[B]

This is real sad.

[A]

Yeah, The Care Bears movie. And Friday the 13th part five, a new beginning. That is the top four oddest.

[B]

The fifth one.

[A]

The fifth one, Back to the Future was the number one movie that year, though.

[B]

Hell yeah.

[A]

And then Beverly hills cop. Now, April 3, 1985. There is some ladies are showing up for a bridge party.

[B]

Oh, yeah?

[A]

They're showing up to play bridge with their friend. There's a light on outside the house, but the door is locked. So they're like, okay, that's interesting. It's just three women arriving for bridge at a very nice, well appointed house, kind of out in a rural area here in Boonesborough. They're looking for their friend and they said they're ringing the bell and no one's answering. Cars in the driveway. Bridge game scheduled. Yeah, what's up? Yeah, why aren't you answering? What's going on? So it was daytime, but the porch light was still on. So they're like, that's weird. People don't. These are responsible people. They don't leave porch lights on during the day. So the women called their friend Annie. Annie Massey is her name. M A S S I E. Who was the neighbor who had their spare key? This is the plant waterer when they go on vacation. You know what I mean?

[B]

The cat feeder.

[A]

The cat feeder. The mail taker. That's who Annie is. So they call her and they're like, hey, their cars are here. Lights on outside. No one's answering. We don't see any activity going on. Maybe you can come over here and just make sure they're okay. Check on them possibly. So Annie said, I guess. I mean, she's known him for 15 years. She's been their neighbor. And she said, yeah, sure, I'll go check it out. She said she was used to not seeing them for a few days at a time because they're pretty private people that people are going to see. So they also. She comes up and notices not only is their mail kind of overflowing from the box a couple days worth, there's also three, four newspapers on the stoop as well. So they're like. Well, the cars are here though, so that's very odd. So she walks up to the front door, she knocks, no answer. Then a smell hit her, a big time. A big time smell. And she said, oh, shit. And she called the police after that.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

Immediately goes and calls the police. Now police arrived, arrive here, and right away there's a jurisdictional problem because it's not county exactly. The house has a Lynchburg mailing address.

[B]

Right.

[A]

But it's technically in Bedford county, outside of Lynchburg, in Boonesborough, which is not a real area. That's why we didn't do it as a town, because they don't have a mailing address.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So this is in the jurisdiction of the county sheriff's office. But there's also problems because it's also Lynchburg. So there's a lot of immediate jurisdictional problems here. But the investigators from Bedford County, Chuck Reed and Ricky Gardner. Chuck Reed sounds like a big flat top wearing highway patrolman, doesn't it? Old Chuck Reed.

[B]

A real great blues guitarist.

[A]

Chuck Reed. Or like a test pilot. Yeah, this is Chuck Reed. He's the first guy to break the sound barrier in an F14. You know what I'm saying? Something like that.

[B]

Everybody looked here. Look to the sky. You might see Chuck's last flight.

[A]

You might see Chuck's last flight. As he goes by at 700 miles an hour, he waves his cowboy hat out the fucking. Out the little. Whatever that is, the slider, the dome slider. Yeah. He opens that out wee like he's riding the bomb down. Now these two, they show up and Gardner. Ricky Gardner had never worked a homicide before.

[B]

Perfect.

[A]

So this is really. The A team has arrived, everybody. Hey, everybody. Just gonna take a quick break from the show to tell you how to get the best holiday gift you can get with aura frames. Auraframes.com oh, you know it. That's absolutely right. You want to give a gift that's going to. That's gonna bring your favorite holiday traditions and memories and help make more. And that's what you're gonna have with aura frames. This is A gift where you. It's like a memory that keeps going on and you can keep adding more memories to it. So it's like the holiday that keeps on giving. It's very cool. I love the holiday season and everything like that. I love Christmas. I love everything about it. And I have given everybody in my family and so have you. Aura frames. If we go to any of their houses for Christmas, there's the aura frames frame. They're always prominently displayed right there on the counter. And everybody. Oh, remember that? You remember that? It's actually something that everybody can gather around. It gets everybody off of their phones. It's really cool. Super easy to use too. Unlimited free photos and video. Just download the Aura app and connect it to WI Fi. You can preload the photos before it shifts ships. If you're, you know, maybe sending it to somebody who isn't that great with technology, maybe a grandmother, somebody like that, you can preload it and you can keep doing it. You can personalize it. It's to share photos straight from your phone or all year long. And it's included in a gift box. It comes packaged in a premium gift box. It's the best. It really is. You can't wrap togetherness, but you can frame it. That's what they say. I believe it. That's good stuff. Here. For a limited time, visit auraframes.com and get $45 off Aura's best selling Carver mat. Frames named number one by Wirecutter by using the promo code Small Town Murder at checkout. That's a U R A frames.com promo code. Smalltown Murder. This exclusive Black Friday Cyber Monday deal is their best of the year. So order now before it ends. Support the show by mentioning us at checkout. Terms and conditions apply.

[B]

Now back to the show.

[A]

No Doubt Live at Las Vegas. Due to demand six additional and final shows added in June 2026. Get tickets. Go to NoDoubt.com now to access ticket hotel packages. Now there's different reports of who's the first person on the scene. Some say it's Chuck Reed. Some say it's somebody else. But we're going to talk about Chuck here.

[B]

All right?

[A]

Chuck said, just because I like his name better, Chuck said, quote, I've been a cop for 20 years. I've seen some shit, but this Chuck Reed has seen some shit. You know what I'm saying? I've seen some shit. That's a nice, honest quote. Not a cleaned up quote. I've seen some shit, but this, this was something else.

[B]

Oh, it didn't take the cake.

[A]

Nope. So they get. They get inside the front door and he said the smell was like. Like a. Like a getting hit with a two by four when you walked in. Yeah, he said it was so bad he. Before he took one step inside and had to turn around and throw up on the front porch.

[B]

Oh, Jesus.

[A]

Which isn't great. It isn't great for the forensics team if you show up in an area where they might want to look. To look for also. Nice job, asshole. That doesn't work very well. So the living room looked normal at first. Expensive furniture. It's a very well appointed home. These people have money, obviously. Artwork on the walls, things like that. Then they see there's blood everywhere. Walls, ceiling. There's a big thick oriental rug that they have one of those. It's so soaked that it squishes when you step on it. Gross with blood. So it is disgusting. And we'll talk more about that scene a little bit later. But just know it's horrifying. I mean a real, real massacre here. Squish.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So the people in the home here that belong. Whose house this is. Yeah. Is Derek William Reginald Haysom. Quite the handle. He's born in 1913, so he's 72 years old at this point. He's born in South Africa, as a matter of fact. South African guy. He has been very successful in career and in everything in money and business. He's a former steel executive who served as president of two different Nova Scotia crown corporations about for steel, Sydney Steel and metropolitan area Growth Investments. He was a president of two different companies. So dude's got some money here. As we know now, he was married, had some kids and got divorced. And then in the 50s he meets another woman here, a woman named Nancy Astor. Benedict he meets now Aster, she derives. She is the goddaughter of Lady Astor.

[B]

Oh yeah, the lady that was on the boat.

[A]

No, no, no, not that lady. And not. Not the Astor from New York society who had the 400 list and all that shit in the late 1800s. This is Lady Astor who broke the gender barrier by becoming the first woman to serve in the British Parliament.

[B]

Yeah, that one.

[A]

So she's that one. But it's all the same family.

[B]

I believe Astor must be storied last name for.

[A]

Oh, it is back for in England and in America. Absolutely. So Nancy Benedict. Nancy Astor Benedict. She's born July 12, 1932. So good. Almost 20 years younger than him, which is good score for you there, Derek. They met in Johannesburg in South Africa in the 50s, when both of them were divorced. They had both just gotten divorced. Which back then there wasn't a lot of divorced people. So, hey, you're divorced. I'm divorced, too. She was born in Jerome, Arizona, which is very strange.

[B]

Born there.

[A]

Born in Jerome in 1932. I don't know how that happens.

[B]

I don't think I've ever heard of anybody being born there.

[A]

Me neither. I never heard of it either.

[B]

I thought that you just died there, apparently.

[A]

I don't know if she. Fancy parents who wanted to go someplace with a view. I'm not sure.

[B]

I don't think I knew that they had a hospital. I thought they only had a morgue.

[A]

Yeah, totally. That's the kind of place it is.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

That's the kind of place it is now. Later on, she'll be an artist, too, which makes sense if you're Jerome. There's a lot of art shit. So maybe it rubbed off on her. Anyway, they ended up getting married together. They both have kids, and they kind of join in that and make a little Brady family here. They have five kids between them total 1964. They have a daughter together. And this is Elizabeth. Roxanne Haysam. That's Liz. She goes by. She was born, apparently, in Rhodesia, which is Zimbabwe now, but it was Rhodesia when she was born in 1964 in Africa and then raised in Canada. I know she's a Canadian citizen.

[B]

So these people are traveled.

[A]

They are, yeah. This is nothing like our families who didn't go anywhere. You know what I mean?

[B]

This is three people already from South Africa to Zimbabwe to Jerome to Canada. When I grew up in Lynchburg, Virginia.

[A]

If you went to the Jersey Shore, that was something like you could.

[B]

That's a distance.

[A]

You could talk about that for days with. People would have shore traffic. This is. Oh, me went all the way down there. Was it busy? It's Memorial Day. Oh, my God. These people are going. Moving all over. So we do know Liz is a Canadian citizen, though. Canada is her home country. That's where her passport comes from and all that kind of thing. Now she has some problems as a kid. She has eating disorders. She cuts on herself a bit. And she claims to be sexually abused as a child. And we'll talk about by who. And that's the crazy part. She wrote real weird poetry about death and violence and shit like that. Sounds like somebody I would have, like, hung out with in high school.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Yeah. I went out with girls like this. This is when she's a kid. In the late 70s, early 80s, that kind of thing. Now at school, her grades are meticulously perfect. They're stellar. She does great. Very smart young lady. By the way. Personal life a bit of a mess. Kind of not real great at that point. There's a brother born in 1967 as well, a younger brother. Now, Derek's life here, a little bit about Derek. Derek the dad here. Neighbors said that Derek was a nice guy who had an interest in cars, who loved driving around his BMW. He's a rich guy who's retired and enjoying. He's enjoying being a rich guy who drives around a fancy car. He also. Apparently people knew him locally for his attempts to produce a new strain of apple on his property.

[B]

What's he marrying?

[A]

I don't know. He's trying to marry some apples together. He's gonna have a Fiji gala and you're gonna love it. Apple peach. That's it. He's gonna have a Portland Granny Smith apple peach.

[B]

It feels rotten, but it's not.

[A]

It's not. Apparently it's not hard to make a new strain of apple. I mean, it's hard, but people have done it all over the place. It happens all the time.

[B]

You just gotta weave the tree. Right. And then it makes different things that.

[A]

I don't know. I don't know how technically, I don't know anything about that. I'm not a botanist by any stretch of the imagination.

[B]

It sounds like you just got twist the.

[A]

It sounds like you just twist them up like you're making, like, cords in a speaker. Like speaker wires.

[B]

Unwire that. Yeah.

[A]

At the end you twist them together. And then now the speakers work.

[B]

Plug it right into the Phil Collins.

[A]

One More Night Blast out of it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Interesting.

[B]

I just assume that.

[A]

I know. Sounds logical. It sounds logical.

[B]

I've seen trees with the fucking trunk twisted and braided and then it has different fruit on it. So I feel like I'm onto something.

[A]

You know what? I can't think of a better way to do it. Can you? I don't know how else.

[B]

No, But I've seen trees that have, like, lemons and limes on them. But I think that's just two trees that are just kind of woven and they're. They just happen to be fruit.

[A]

They just happen to be next to each other. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think half the tree makes lemons and half the tree makes limes. That'd be a magical tree.

[B]

It's a Sprite tree.

[A]

It's a Lyman tree so that they.

[B]

Use the Flavor Sprite.

[A]

That's it. It's just. This is only 7 up. 7 up fuel here now. He also. He worked for Cisco at one point, and one of his former colleagues remembered him as an athletic family man who loved spending time with Nancy and his six children altogether now, by the time the 1980s roll around here, you have a teenage Liz who's 16 in 1980.

[B]

A little bit with a couple of problems.

[A]

With a couple of problems. Derek. At this point, he's retired steel executive. He made good money. He retires to the. Basically the Virginia countryside. The house. The house isn't like, insane, but it's really nice. But it's not overblown or gaudy or it's nothing. There's no spectacle. It's not like we bought this house to show everyone how rich we are. It's. We bought this house because it's the most comfortable for us.

[B]

But the neighbors in the neighborhood are going, damn, they're doing well.

[A]

They're doing well, Absolutely. But it's one of those kind of people who are successful, have that kind of confidence, or they don't need to show off where they're just like, sure, hey, it's just what's comfortable for me. And it's kind of an older money thing, too. If you're poor and you get money, you're like, I want to buy cool shit. But if you always had cool shit.

[B]

You'Re more one cool shit, at least something.

[A]

Yeah. To show, God damn it, I'm not poor right this minute. Maybe tomorrow, but not now.

[B]

Yeah. You got to remind yourself from time to time that makes you feel good. A sandwich is not that far off.

[A]

Yeah, totally. Absolutely. So she. Nancy is an artist, you know, much younger than him. She's retired, too. And she's 52 or something at this point, in her early 50s. She is known to like her gin and tonics quite a bit.

[B]

Hell, yeah.

[A]

That's one thing.

[B]

Not a bad choice.

[A]

Certainly likes to kick it and have some drinks. She's a very kind of stereotypical society lady when it comes to that. They live in Boonesborough, which is about 45 minutes away from Charlottesville, just outside of Lynchburg. Their house is at 2318 Holcomb Rock Road in Lynchburg. They named the house Loose Chippings.

[B]

They got a name for it.

[A]

They named it because there's gravel, so they named it Loose Chippings. That's she. Nancy named it. Now, they bought it a few years earlier for retirement. It's about 2,800 square feet so not like I said, not overblown. But their kids are like out of the house. It's pretty much just for them to retire.

[B]

That's a mansion for two folks.

[A]

That's what I mean. Their kids are nearing out of the house age. The last couple here in the 80s. It also has a tennis court and a swimming pool. So they have an in ground pool and a tennis court and a view of the mountains. So it's a very comfortable house for them.

[B]

Small house, lots of land.

[A]

Yeah. In a nice rural area and not even a small house. Almost 3,000 square feet. A good size house.

[B]

I mean in comparison to.

[A]

Not a mansion. Yeah, right, right, yeah. Now Liz here, we'll talk about Liz a little bit here. She would tell everybody that would possibly listen, like all of her friends and anybody else, that her parents are controlling and abusive and they don't want her to be happy. That's what she says. They hate me and they want me to be miserable.

[B]

He hate me, he hate me.

[A]

She goes to different boarding schools all over the place, which is some rich people shit.

[B]

Not a lot of hate if you're for school.

[A]

Dude, I've never thought to like just send my child away somewhere because I'm not rich enough to ever even have that thought of knowing those places exist. I never grew up with any money more. So whatever school you go to, whatever school that bus drop picks up, wherever the see that bus coming, wherever that goes is the school you're going to because that bus picks you up here. That's it. That was it. That's where you went. This is different.

[B]

Fascinating idea that you cut a check for your child. I mean I cut a check, it comes out of my paycheck for sake. It's called taxes. There's a school down the road.

[A]

Yeah. Or you cut a check for sports or something like that. But this is a different story and education and this is for like all over the world she goes to school. She doesn't just go to a private school, you know, two towns away. She's going to Switzerland for Christ's sake. Places like, like that. Her uncle, who is Nancy's younger brother, her mom's younger brother, said that their relationship between mother and daughter was contentious at best. She said, or this guy said. I would say they locked horns quite a bit is what this guy said. Now Nancy and Derek made arrangements with the school for Liz to be enrolled in a series of high level science and math classes. At one point, Nancy and Derek had decided their daughter would do what Derek's doing and be an engineer, even though she did not want to do that. She wanted to major in history. And they said, well, there's no money in history, honestly.

[B]

That's true.

[A]

Let's be. You're going to be a teacher.

[B]

Well, unless you want to be Ken Burns. And even he's probably not making that much.

[A]

No, he does fucking documentaries for pbs. Again, red flag. Words documentary and pbs. Two things that don't make money that much. There's not a big theater release of Ken Burns jazz where everybody went and it made $400 million there. It's on a public station where you send in $20 and they give you a tote bag. That's how it works. They send you out a coffee cup, it's probably fine.

[B]

But there's no way he's killing it, right?

[A]

No, I can't imagine. So they thought that if you push her, she just wants to major in history because it's interesting and she's whatever. But if we push her in the right direction, eventually she'll see the error of her ways and she'll see that she wants to make some money. But that's not what happened. No. This, by the way, is from a book. And we'll get into the. I'll tell you the title of that later on here. They said for Elizabeth, her parents decision resulted in disaster. She was unable to maintain the standards she set for herself and that her parents expected. She's not any good at that. You're either really good at math or you're not. You can be. You can be taught to be passable, but either your brain works math like, or it doesn't. It might work artistically or whatever. It depends. So she studied a lot, but her grades went in the shitter and so she got very depressed. So Elizabeth is complaining the school is sending letters home saying your kid's going to fail, all this type of shit. So eventually they said, fine, you don't have to do that. You can do a different course. But apparently the only way Elizabeth could get back on the history major track was to repeat her entire senior year of high school.

[B]

Oh, my.

[A]

And that's another thing that people who are trying to go to good colleges do is they will repeat things until it looks best on the transcript. Sure, there's people that take the SATs five, six times to get the best score. Whereas me or you would have went, well, that's what I got. Yeah.

[B]

That first score gives you a pretty good idea of what jar.

[A]

Yeah. If we bothered to take it.

[B]

Oh, if I knew where to go.

[A]

I didn't know where to go. I didn't know where they're.

[B]

I don't know what instrument you use to take them. I don't know if it's on a computer.

[A]

I assume a number two pencil when we were in school, but still, I don't know. I didn't know where they were having it. Yeah, they hid that shit from us. Yeah, they were hiding it. Nobody. Nobody wanted to tell us anything.

[B]

Hiding it. They're just.

[A]

No, they were hiding it. Don't let James and Jimmy show up. They're gonna fuck everything up. They're gonna distract the other kids. They're not gonna get great scores, and they're not going to college anyway. So why are we doing this?

[B]

Don't tell them. Don't give them anything.

[A]

Give them their $50 back and tell them to go home.

[B]

Did people have to pay to take it?

[A]

Fuck yeah. You got to pay to take the SATs.

[B]

Are you kidding me?

[A]

Yeah, I remember that. Or did you only have to pay to take the pre sats? I don't remember. I had. I had, like, one friend who was, you know, academically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Who was, like, academic, like, into stuff because he played sports and was, like, taking it for school. Like College. Shit.

[B]

It's $68. That's.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Fucking crazy.

[A]

It's expensive. It's probably 50. When we went, that's what I remembered it.

[B]

So to find out if a college will say no to me. I'm not taking that. I already know.

[A]

To find out how dumb I am. I don't need that. Hey, I'm an idiot, and it cost me $68 to find out.

[B]

$68.

[A]

I already know. I don't know the answers to these questions. I don't need to pay $68 to further. Further get into this. So, anyway, she's gonna have to spend an additional year at the Wycombe Abbey, which is a school she's going to. She was not graduating as she'd planned, but all her friends are graduating, so now she's gonna stay behind while all of her friends go off to college. So that's not great. Obviously, she started to resent her parents and hate them a lot. She apparently had issues with them before that, but this really didn't help. At least one of the. You know, this is one of the problems that she has, basically. So the relationship between her and her parents, really. Her mother is more uncomfortable with anything. Her mother more kind of lords over her dad's out driving the BMW. Or whatever. He's like, well, I'm paying for it. The mother is really on top of her. So trying to push her into engineering was kind of the last straw for her. So that's what's going on here. She's not thrilled with her mom, she's not thrilled with anything. Now the school she's going to is a boarding school outside London, England, Wycombe Abbey. So yeah, that's crazy. Apparently she, while she's there in her senior year, she had interviews for college. One was for Trinity College and one was for Cambridge. And she fucked up the interview.

[B]

Oh, that's one she has to go to.

[A]

Neither. She fucked up the interviews, didn't do well.

[B]

Both of them no good.

[A]

Then she blew off some tests she had to take, like the finals, basically. Then she ran away with a chick she was hooked up with, right? She was hooked up with some chick and ran away with her so they could travel through Europe and do drugs.

[B]

Just for funsies or like relationship, you know, whatever.

[A]

We finger each other in Brussels, we'll fucking drop some acid in Stockholm, whatever we got going on.

[B]

Get some kisses going on the. That's in the fucking.

[A]

Which sounds wonderful. Traveling Europe, doing drugs. Sounds terrific. That sounds great. She returns to the US and lives with her parents and feels like she's kind of fucked up her life at this point. Screwed up her senior year. But she does get accepted into the University of Virginia as an elite Eccles scholar.

[B]

What's an Eccles scholar?

[A]

Beats the shit, dude, we didn't even know that the SAT costs money. I think we know what the echoes. Who cares?

[B]

Do you think it's a kind of education, like a specific thing like law or something?

[A]

Does it matter really?

[B]

That doesn't matter. She's elite. That's amazing.

[A]

She was smart. Yeah, she's smart is what we're talking about. Even though she's fucking off, she's still smart enough. Smarter than the kids in Virginia apparently to get into the school, but not where she wanted to go. And she's real pissed off about going here. This is beneath her, is in her mind. She wants Cambridge, she wants Cambridge. She wants to rub elbows. Trinity, hoity toity fox. Yeah, whatever that is.

[B]

So Trinity's got to be nice too.

[A]

I'm sure it is. Yeah, it's got to be. If it's over there and it's in the same conversation as Cambridge, it's got to be. So August of 1984, first day of college. Here we go. Yeah, Liz is at. I guess this is there's orientation and then there's a class that she's going to. Apparently she's described that day as wearing a white dress that, quote, made her look like an angel.

[B]

Oh, angelic dress.

[A]

Angelic. She's got like kind of short blonde hair and she speaks within like a. Like a. Like a British accent sort of.

[B]

She was getting ready, like, remember when.

[A]

Madonna lived there in the 90s? And she was like, that's how she speaks. Or like Elizabeth McGovern on Downton Abbey, where you're like, she's an American, but she's playing an American who's lived in England for 30 years. So she's got.

[B]

Who was the lady from shallow. She pulled that shit too.

[A]

There you go. Yeah, that bullshit. Yep.

[B]

So annoying.

[A]

Totally. This is what a former friend said. Quote, she had an international background. She had a British accent. She had this great shock of blonde hair hanging down. So that's, you know, she's striking a striking figure in Virginia. You know what I'm saying? So she meets a young man this day, okay. Now he is all preppy, wearing his pressed khakis and he's got a Lacoste polo on with a little alligator and all that here. So they were in the same discussion group, apparently, on the topic was the nature of evil in literature. Oh, that was the topic. Now. His name is Jens Soering. Jens is J E N S. Jens and S O E R I N G. Sorry. Oh, yeah, he's from Germany. He's a German guy. He's born August 1, 1966. Two years younger than Liz. Sure. Because he actually. He didn't like repeat his senior year and then fuck off in Europe. Finger and his girlfriend for six months or whatever. So he's here. He was born in Bangkok, Thailand.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

But raised in Germany and America. His dad is a German diplomat.

[B]

That's why this is unbelievable how we traveled this whole group of people.

[A]

You could take one teenager from 1985 and he has been more places than the two of us combined. Yeah, teenager from the 80s, which is unbelievable. Very sad.

[B]

How old is Jens?

[A]

18 at this time.

[B]

18 years old.

[A]

Yeah. They're both entering the same program or whatever, but she's two years older because she fucked around a little more. But yeah, he's the son of a German diplomat. Very ambitious, too. Great student. Academic scholarship winners from a bunch of different places at this point. He speaks English, German, French and Thai all fluently. What? Yes, that's. He speaks four fluent languages, which is very common in Europe. Very common in Europe for People to speak three, four, five languages fluently.

[B]

Americans are amazing. Even when they speak Spanish fluently, they go speak Spanish.

[A]

They don't even speak Spanish fluently. They see a sign that says Banyo and they're like, I don't know what goes on in that room, but I gotta pee. You know what I mean? Like they don't.

[B]

Watching somebody speak Spanish while they stutter is hysterical.

[A]

It's fun. It's wild. That's me. Yeah. And it's weird because it's not even like the education system. It's not like he was taught that because like my grandmother spoke five languages. I don't think she went to school past the third fucking grade. I think that was it pretty much for her. So. And she spoke five languages, so it's just normal. His father's name was Klaus, of course. Klaus Sahring, who was kind of a hot shit high level diplomat became a consul. Eventually the family moved around from Bangkok to Atlanta to Brussels, Belgium and all over the place here. And Jens loved the travel. He loved taking in culture. He loved learning new languages. He was the captain of the debate team, the chess club president in high school, all that shit. In high school he was in Atlanta. He edited the school newspaper, did photography, acted in plays, played guitar. Also he was in bands. This is on the side. He's in like garage just hanging out, forming bands. He won an art award. He's super well rounded, this guy. He's got a lot of talents, different talents here. His father had recently transferred from Atlanta to Detroit and basically all of these achievements were he's trying to meet the admissions requirements of German universities. That's his plan is to get into an elite German university. But he ended up being accepted at the University of Virginia as a Jefferson Scholar which is I guess the most elite of their program of their place. It's huge stuff. So he was given a full scholarship and even like room and board and spending money and shit. He is laid out so he couldn't turn that down. Essentially had to do it. So he gets accepted there full ride. Apparently the Jefferson Scholar is the most prestigious undergraduate scholarship that they offer. It's a big deal. It's like for the elite of the elite of their academic people. So college for Liz. She's studying English and history and doing great in college as well. She always gets great grades when she's trying and it's not math Now. Jens is real kind of blown away by Liz. She is well traveled, she's smart, she's like. Just seems cooler than the Other girls there. She's got, like, a real cool, like, cosmopolitan factor to her type of thing, which is different. And he was blown away by her. Man liked her stories, liked that she's been around, liked all that kind of shit. Hears that, like, her father's a Canadian steel magnate. Her mother's a member of the Astor family. Like, this is high society shit here. Yeah. He was obsessed with her. Fast, fast. That night he wrote in his diary.

[B]

Oh, he has a diary?

[A]

He has a diary. That night he wrote. We're gonna. Jens's diary, entry number one here. A lot of private writings we're gonna talk about today.

[B]

Oh, yes.

[A]

He wrote, met the most extraordinary girl today, eh? She quotes Nietzsche and Joyce from memory. She understands suffering in a way these American children never could. I think I'm in love.

[B]

Quotes Nietzsche.

[A]

Quotes Nietzsche and Joyce from memory.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

In other words, pretentious is what that says to me. If someone's. If I meet someone and one of the first 10 things out of their mouth is a Nietzsche quote followed by them saying, nietzsche, we're done. You're pretentious as fuck, and I don't want to hear it. Congratulations. You're smart and you have a great memory. I don't want to talk to you. You're also annoying. So she also wrote that night in her diary, she wrote, new boy in the program. German, intense. Might be useful.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Which is a very weird way to put that.

[B]

Might be useful.

[A]

You ever meet a chick and be like, wow, beautiful, smart, funny, cool to hang out with. Might be useful. Is that what you. I bet I can get a nut off in her. Is that what that means? That's what that means to me. It's gross. Yeah, that's bad.

[B]

She could be Candy later, maybe.

[A]

So by October, November of this year, they're meeting at the Treehouse, which is a snack bar on campus, a little cafe on campus. And they're hanging out together and just pouring their hearts out to each other. Now Liz tells Jens her story, and she's got a sob story for him. And, you know, I mean, that's kind of what everybody does. This is. You meet somebody. These are the experiences I've had in my life. And, you know, that's how you do it. So she told him that she has been sexually abused in the past. She told him that, first of all, she had been horribly raped in a boarding school in Switzerland and that she had fled with her lesbian lover to spend months in Europe, hiding.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

And then, finally, she wanted to get away from drugs. She was Doing like heroin and shit for a long time. So she wanted to get away from the drugs. And that is when she got back with her parents and all that. Now the other thing about it is she said that rape in Switzerland was not the first time she was sexually abused and that she had been sexually abused for years by her mother.

[B]

What?

[A]

By her mother, which is the rarest of the rare. That's rare. Mother on daughter. Sexual abuse is if you take all the combinations of how possible. That's probably the rarest one out of all of them. So very strange. Now they become a couple here and he thinks he hit the jackpot because he's like this hot, cool chick likes me because he's a fucking dork. I'll say that right away. He's a smart guy and all that, but he wears big stupid glasses and dresses, you know, Dresses. Real preppy. Yeah. And he's like a. You know, he's like a German dork, basically. Yeah, He's a nerd.

[B]

He's an Eccles scholar or whatever the equivalent was.

[A]

Yeah, there's like a cool. This cool chick likes me. Like, I doubt that he's sex done.

[B]

Drugs, for Christ's sake.

[A]

Yeah. I doubt that he has had many women like him that he feels this way about. You know what I'm saying? So this is probably the.

[B]

She's a rock star.

[A]

Yeah, exactly. So they write each other love letters. Even when they're on the same campus and are gonna see each other that night, they'll pass and hand off love letters to each other.

[B]

That's beautiful.

[A]

They're odd. Here's October 12, 1984. Yens to Elizabeth, quote, my darling. Which is a lot for an 18 year old. My darling. Calm down.

[B]

You better start with that, though. She's amazing, right?

[A]

My darling, I would die for you. No, that's not enough. I would kill for you. I would burn the world down if it meant we could rule over the ashes together. That is toxic shit right there. Yeah, that's how they. They're in that weird. That weird teenage like. You know what I'm saying? Like us against the world. Yeah.

[B]

Hyperbole.

[A]

Straight. Yeah, Strange. Like Natural Born Killers, Bonnie and Clyde, you know, as long as we're together.

[B]

Dine on whale blubber.

[A]

That shit. Yeah. The next day, October 13th. Elizabeth Tjens, Sweet boy. You say you would kill for me, but would you? Would you really? My parents think you're weak. Prove them wrong. Whoa. We'll talk about this. Her parents do not like him at all. By the Way he's weak. Yeah. Dad thinks he's a pussy. And also we'll talk about it, but doesn't like that he's German either. And we'll talk about that. So. November 3, 1984. Yens to Elizabeth. I dream about your parents dying. Is that wrong? Yeah. You know, it is fucking weird. Yeah, I would say. I've been out with women. I've never dreamt of their parents dying. I didn't give a shit what their parents were doing. Right. Have you ever had that thought?

[B]

I mean, I dated a girl whose parents were rich. And I dreamt about having all of your inheriting.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

I knew that would take 40, 50 years.

[A]

You didn't sit around fantasizing about them dying? Sometimes in the dreams, I'm the one doing it with my hands. I wake up and my fingers are cramping from making fists.

[B]

What?

[A]

Cause her parents have been so awful to her, according to her. So he's very much acting like I'm going to be this big protector, person, Savior.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

November 5th, 1984. Elizabeth to Jens. Those dreams you have, I have them too. But in mine, we do it together. And afterward we're finally free.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He also wrote her, elizabeth, I love you completely, passionately. Holy.

[B]

Right?

[A]

Yes. So anyway, they hang out at this treehouse thing and they act like a couple. Basically, she says she loves him and blah blah, blah, blah, blah. She leaves a letter in his dorm room in December that says this. This is Elizabeth deann's quote. I hated my love for you for a long time. First of all, they've known each other for like three and a half months. So there is no long time with this person. Anyway, again, when you're a teenager and I get that she's 20, but even at that age, three months feels like five years. It's dog years when you're a kid. Total dog years.

[B]

Hate anything.

[A]

I hated my love for you for a long time. I hated myself for discovering vulnerability. But as the weeks passed, I began to understand. I had always believed that I made men fall in love with me so that I could take out all the hatred I felt for them. By humiliating them. Well, I mean, that's. We know people do that, but they usually don't admit it. You know what I mean? I despised their cheap lust and easy passions. And in the end, I made them hate themselves for loving me and the torture I inflicted. I would make a man humiliate himself to obtain me. Then I would give him the best fuck he's ever likely to get and Then walk out.

[B]

She's telling this to her boyfriend.

[A]

Yeah. And also she's acting like that hurt the guys.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Let me get this straight. I like you. You're upset about it, so you give me the best fuck of my life and then I don't have to talk to you anymore. And this is to hurt me, right?

[B]

This is gonna destroy me.

[A]

It's real. Oh yeah. You'll screw an 18 year old up forever if you do that to him. An 18 year old boy hates it when you give him the best fuck of his life and then leave so he can has time to talk about it with his friends. That's really.

[B]

As a. As a guy, an 18 insecure piece of shit. I really love when my girlfriend tells me that she is spite fucked a lot of guys and gave them the best fuck of their life.

[A]

So many guys. The next paragraph was like, oh my God, if I could even go into numbers. The bills and bobs and franks and there's just so many I've had. You're my fourth German. I don't even know.

[B]

Remember that guy I said hi to at the soda shoppie last week?

[A]

Remember that?

[B]

Best fuck of his life. Me.

[A]

But she said with him it's different. She said, I love you and it may alter intensity.

[B]

I want to fuck you terribly forever.

[A]

Forever. But not the best fuck of your life. That's only for people I hate. And intensity and direction from time to time. But I will always love you with a part of me which no one else will be able to snatch. Snatch she uses. That's a weird word. After talking about fucking a bunch. She also wrote, I want to be with you, around you, through you, tied to you. She said very intense young relationship shit going on here. Now. December 1984. There's some sort of peace accord here. This is some international peace accord. We're gonna say the Germans are coming in, the South Africans will be there. The Canadian delegate is all invited. It's a sit down to have a dinner with Liz and Jens and Nancy and Derek. Yes, the parents. They're gonna sit down.

[B]

Sit down and show them that we've made a Sprite tree.

[A]

Yeah. And hope everything works out. So apparently everything was going fine until I guess Liz started an argument about money. And I guess Jens just sat there with a weird like European look on his face. Germans are goofy. Let's just be honest. I remember there was German exchange students in my high school and they were just fucking goofy. They were cool and everything, but they were goofy. They're just funny. They have a funny accent. They're just very funny to people in the States. So he sat there smirking and I think they mistook. Uncomfortable.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Because like, it's also, you know. I don't know how much his family argues and yells back and forth. But I think uncomfortable just kind of smiling like. I'll sit here and act like a grind. Yeah. But apparently Derek got pissed off. According to Jens, Derek got drunk and called him a quote from fucking Nazi. Which is hilarious. That's hilarious. Which I love. That's so funny. That is just hilarious. So. You fucking Nazi son of a bitch. And that's coming from a South African guy. So that's saying something.

[B]

Apartheid man's calling somebody a Nazi.

[A]

That's funny.

[B]

Jesus.

[A]

Wow. Then apparently, allegedly. We don't know if this is true or not, but Yen said Nancy then threw a drink in Elizabeth's face.

[B]

In Mom's face.

[A]

No, no. Nancy threw a gin and tonic in Liz's face.

[B]

How dare you bring a Nazi to my table.

[A]

Yeah, she's a Nazi. Okay. Elizabeth ran away crying and Jens followed her. So that wasn't a great dinner. Didn't really work out the way it was.

[B]

It started an effort for both parents.

[A]

To ruin this night totally. Now winter break comes around and Jens goes to stay with his dad. His parents in Michigan, which he never really had, lived there. He was in Atlanta when his dad moved to Michigan. So he doesn't really know much about Michigan or anything like that. His father, by the way, also. His father's got a big. A German guy named Klaus. Has a temper. Weird. His mother's an alcoholic, which would be why he's attracted to Liz. And so both of them are at home. Though one of her half brothers described Derek as a parent from a previous generation. And that's in 1985. A previous generation. So we're talking not even like the 60s, like the 40s and 30s. Publicly gregarious and reserved in private. Very authoritarian over the home. And also Liz and her mother, we know, don't get along here. So during the winter break they're writing each other letters. Here is one from the 21st of December. This is Elizabeth writing to Jens. A day of reigning loneliness. This morning I built my father a desk for his computer. It took all morning. I didn't smoke. Then I went shopping. I bought cigarettes. I bought other things too. My father fell down. I prayed. He got up. My parents began to drink. My father says that the juniper extract used to flavor gin is a potent poison drug. It causes similar aggression as speed, my mother begins her sixth gin. I pray she'll use the poker on my cold guiding father. Okay, so sitting home in the rain, watching my parents get drunk.

[B]

Fun day.

[A]

Fun. Jens writes back here. He says, where I were I to meet your parents. I have the ultimate weapon in quotes. Strange things are happening within me. I'm turning more and more into a Christ figure. Oh, whoa. And then in parentheses, a small imitation. Anyway, I think, I believe I could either make them completely lose their wits, get heart attacks, or they would become lovers in an agape kind of way of the. Of the rest of the world. Okay, so January 1985, he ends up going back to Virginia and during the next few weeks he and Liz would visit Loose Chippings. The home. Yeah, when the parents weren't there, they'd go and hang out, you know, like normal kids do. One evening at the university, Jens returned from the library. He says to find Liz alone in bed hugging her knees. You know that pose apparently on the inside of her elbow. He says there was a small needle mark in there and she said it was heroin. She said a friend of her dealer had come by and that she was sorry that she used the drugs. Now she says that didn't happen, but he says she was using heroin that day. So anyway, they, at one point Derek and Nancy come to UVA's campus in Charlottesville to take them to lunch. They were really getting into Jens's past and his family and trying to find reasons why they don't belong together. Essentially. About a week later there was one of Derek's nieces was there. They were still talking about to the niece how weird it was to have a lunch with this guy. They worried that Jens had quote, insufficient standing for their daughter. Not he's not a good guy, not he won't treat her well. He's not important enough. Not important enough. He's not going to make enough money. He doesn't. He's not what we're looking for. Like this is very old school. This is, you know, fascinating. So Nancy also said that she found him oddly jumpy at the table too. He's very jumpy. Which I'd be jumpy around these people too. They sound terrifying. If I was 18, called me a Nazi, couple fucking drunk. Some big drunk, fucking South African Canadian steel magnate yelled at me and called me a Nazi. I'd be like, I don't want to hang out with these people. 18 as an 18 year old boy you are not the pinnacle of confidence and inside you're a disaster. You have no idea where your place is in the world or what anybody thinks of you. It sucks. So they hated Jens. Basically. They told everyone they hated Jens. Derek would call him, quote that kraut boy to his face. You know, that kraut boy. Go get that Kraut boy. And he'd be right there. Nancy referred to him as Elizabeth's little German phase. Like, she'll get over it. She just wants to. Whatever.

[B]

She's going through a sausage phase at the moment.

[A]

That's, you know, that's all they thought. Her crouch phase? Yeah. Yeah. They thought that he was pretentious and weak and never gonna make anything of himself. They tried to take. Break them up and they. They threatened to cut off Liz's tuition if she didn't break up with them. This did not obviously drive them apart. Drove them closer together.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

The best thing they could have done is said, we love Jens.

[B]

He's get enough of this.

[A]

She dump him by the end of the weekend.

[B]

Yeah, yeah.

[A]

That's part of this is to piss her parents off. And she doesn't want to do anything they like. So even if she really liked him, if they liked him, that means that she would hate him. That's just the way it is. Yeah.

[B]

They don't want to like anything they like.

[A]

No, that's that situation. If you have that, you know, rebellious kid, the worst thing you could do is say, never see that boy again. That just makes him so attractive. February 1985. Here's some diary entries from these two. February 20, 1985. Elizabeth's diary. J is willing but weak. Need to strengthen his resolve. Showed him the photos again. Told him about the worst times he cried good tears. Means he's almost ready. Okay, photos, by the way, we'll talk about the photos and what that is. March 1, 1985. Jens diary E showed me the bruises again today. I know what needs to happen. I'm not afraid anymore. Love means doing anything for the person you love. Anything.

[B]

Yeah. So bruises. She's being abused again and she's got problems.

[A]

That's what she's saying and we'll talk about it.

[B]

Physical. Yeah.

[A]

She also claimed to be into and have control of voodoo.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Oh yeah, she's into voodoo here. Okay. Okay. She has books on it. She would perform rituals in their dorm room. All I can picture. The only thing I know about this is Serrano from fucking major League. So all I'm picturing is something's on the rum. And yeah, there's a cigar involved. Maybe a live chicken needs to be sacrificed? I'm not sure.

[B]

Maybe just some oregano and basil, but something. Something smoky.

[A]

She told Jens that she put a curse on her parents and that they're gonna die soon. Now, one way or another, they're gonna die based on voodoo. She would make Jens participate in the rituals as well. Or I'm sure he was a willing participant. I don't think she made him. There was candles, chicken bones that they took from the dining hall. And even menstrual blood.

[B]

God damn it.

[A]

I'm out at that point. I don't care how hot you are. If we're doing.

[B]

If you're dipping your pinky in that, that's crazy, dude.

[A]

If we're doing anything that involves chicken bones and menstrual blood, I'm out. I'm not doing it. What? No part of that shit. That is too much. She would even. She would smear these things on the photos of her parents while chanting things in what she said was Latin, but was just made up horseshit. She was just doing like when people speak in tongues. You know what I mean? Latin just. Yeah, like Andy Kaufman on Taxi when he was speaking. That's all she's doing. So the pictures are. These are. Elizabeth has nude photos of herself. Oh, okay. This is pre selfie stick. You know what I mean?

[B]

This is like developed photos.

[A]

Yes. She claimed they were taken by her father.

[B]

Oh boy.

[A]

She showed them to Jens as proof of the abuse and said, look what he made me do. This is why they have to die. See? This is why I pray for their death. I'm not just some shitty kid here. March 10, 1985. A letter from Elizabeth to Jens. Okay. The spirits have spoken. Oh, March 30th. It has to be March 30th. The moon will be right. Their defenses will be down. Will be in Washington. Perfect alibi. The universe is aligning for us, my love.

[B]

Uh huh.

[A]

Okay. Spring break, 1985. That month Liz goes skiing in Colorado. Oh yeah. Her life is so terrible. Her parents are still paying for skiing trips in Colorado. Jimmy, how many fucking skiing trips to Colorado did your parents send you on when you were a kid?

[B]

I went there and I still didn't go skiing.

[A]

I mean, if I said that, my parents would have went. I'm not buying you skis, never mind plane fare and all that shit. You're not skis. Those are expensive. Shut up. So that's what's going on. Yen stayed in Charlottesville to finish some school stuff. One was a screenplay for his creative writing class and he Was writing and he tried to smoke a cigarette because he thought writers smoked.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

So he's like. I'll be like, you know, like that. That didn't work out. His screenplay was about a brilliant detective who used Zen philosophy to solve crimes. Oh, yes. So that's what he was doing.

[B]

You got to get centered. And then you just know everything.

[A]

And then you just know stuff here. So it's a big mystery murder plot. Deal.

[B]

Somebody have a bowl I can drag a spoon around? I'll solve anything.

[A]

Who's got some menstrual blood? I think maybe we could use that. Chicken bones and menstrual blood. We'll put those together and solve this shit asap.

[B]

Jesus Christ.

[A]

So Liz says one day, quote, my mother went to her hair appointment. This is writing. My mother went to her hair appointment three days late. My father and I cut down Cedars for Christmas presents. Would it be possible to hypnotize my parents? Do voodoo on them?

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Will will them to death. So hypnotize them.

[B]

You just want it so bad they.

[A]

Die and then voodoo them to just die. I don't know if that's a verb or not, but I just made it voodoo something. I voodooed him real good, man. That's what happened.

[B]

I think I've got is like the doll, right? What else is there? I guess.

[A]

I don't know.

[B]

You just got to meet an eye of a new.

[A]

Yeah, she's got period blood. I feel like that's half of it right there. You get an eye of newt, you get an eye of newt and it's your time of the month. Really. You could rule the world at that point.

[B]

Can't imagine either of those smell very different from one another.

[A]

No. Oh, man. She continues to write. It seems my concentration on their death is causing them problems. My father nearly drove off a cliff at lunch. He nearly got squashed by a tree when he got home and keeps falling over. And my mother, in parentheses, drunk, fell into the fire. How will that mean they're just drunks?

[B]

Yeah. That wasn't so much voodoo as much as it was.

[A]

That shit was Bombay gin. It was Sapphire is what that was. The fuck are you doing, man?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

She said, I think I shall seriously take up black magic.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Because it's working. She said we can either wait till we graduate, then leave them behind, or we can get rid of them soon. My mother said today that if some accident befell them, she knew I would become a worthless adventurer. More maternal acumen.

[B]

So I know if we die, you're gonna take all of our money and dick off.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

Go around the world doing drugs, doing.

[A]

Heroin and making out with chicks.

[B]

Which.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

If I'm 20 and my parents are wealthy, don't you dare die. That's exactly what I.

[A]

Because I will be a disaster quickly. I'd be a mess real fast. It wouldn't take me long at all. Of everything. Yeah. So March 29, 1985. Liz and Jens rent a gray Chevy Chevette, which is a gray Chevette, is the worst car ever.

[B]

I want a baby blue one.

[A]

James.

[B]

Not much.

[A]

Not much better. Not much better. They drove to Washington D.C. where they used Jens father's Visa card to book a room at the Georgetown Marriott. Okay. Now they saved the receipts. Lots of people saw them. They checked in around four into room 427. Apparently they then went to see Porky's Revenge in the movies. Part two of Porky's.

[B]

That's a. Yeah. Porgy's Revenge tells you exactly how old these people are.

[A]

Yeah, well, I mean I think that's, that's who it was made for was 18 year olds.

[B]

You know, that's what I mean. That tells exactly how old.

[A]

Yeah, yeah. Nobody else is going to see that. They also went to the bar and had drinks at the bar, making sure the bartender would remember them as well. Elizabeth was wearing a very distinctive red dress that everybody remembers. And Jens, everybody said was being very German. Very much standing out, putting on a heavy accent and being very German. He complained about the wine list, shit like that. At 6:30 they went up to their room and ordered room service for two. Okay. At 7:15 Elizabeth calls down to complain about the room service. I don't know what she's bitching about, but something. She called again at 8:30 to ask about local theaters and saying that my boyfriend and I are thinking about catching a show. And I think she means like live theater type of thing. She had a conversation with a maid in the hallway around 9pm asking for extra towels and making small talk and saying, quote, Jens is in the shower. He takes forever. Okay. At 11pm Elizabeth and Jens are again seen at the hotel bar. Okay. Then at about 11:45 they go up to their room. So they're down there for about 45 minutes. Now the next day is March 30th. Elizabeth and Jens have breakfast in the hotel restaurant. This is from Elizabeth's diary. This that morning, quote, it's done. We're free. Jay was magnificent. Stronger than I ever imagined. The blood was more than expected, but we planned for that today we start our new life.

[B]

She wrote that in her diary.

[A]

Wrote that in her diary. So they spent Saturday wandering around the area. They went and ate lunch at a restaurant with a train theme. Jens made a joke about the dick like the dick like shapes of everything. Of trains and shit like that. Then Sunday, March 31st. By the way, that is the day WrestleMania 1 is taking place at Madison Square Garden. That is literally the first WrestleMania that day. 9:30am they check out of the hotel. They Drive to Georgetown. 10:30, they're seen shopping in Georgetown purchasing matching sweaters at Benetton.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Oh, that is the preppiest thing you could do. Let's get matching sweaters at Benetton. It's fancy store for rich people where you'd buy. Yeah, a clothing store from back in the day. Yeah. I remember in New York City they had those like fancy shit like that. Yes, they bought sweaters. Whether it was a. You know, doesn't matter. Really. Yeah, Yeah. I don't know what kind of sweaters they were buying.

[B]

That's gotta be some sort of fancy shit if it's at a place called Penton. Right.

[A]

That's what I know. It was a fancy joint. At 2pm they have a late lunch at a French restaurant. Then at four they return to Charlottesville. By six o' clock they're attending a party at a friend's apartment. And everybody says they seem unusually affectionate. They're just all over each other. Oh, all over each other. Monday, April 1, 1985. Jens and Liz go to classes. They go do social shit. They do all normal shit. Normal. College Day, April 1, 1985. In Yen's diary he writes, E is radiant. She hasn't looked this happy in months. We made love three times last night. She kept saying, we're free, we're free. I've never.

[B]

Sounds like she hates you, man. She's giving you the best fuck of your life.

[A]

Well, three times, though, she didn't leave. That's good. She said, I never felt more like a man. He goes on to say, okay, three times. Fucking and feeling strong.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

April 2nd. This is a letter from Liz to Jens. Even though they're together the whole time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

My prince, my warrior, my everything. Oh, man. You've given me the greatest gift anyone could give. Freedom. I'll love you to the end of time.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Crazy now. April 3rd. Here. There's a message to her parents here that says. Haven't heard from you in a few days. Hope everything's okay. Love, E. I don't know if that was in a letter or left it on their answering machine. But that was the message. April 3, 1985, is the bridge party.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

The ladies show up. Andy Massey calls the cops. Chuck Reed has seen some shit, right? But this, this was something else. He's throwing up outside. Blood everywhere. Now let's talk about what they find inside the house. Chuck Reed said it was up close and personal. To me, it was like a slaughterhouse. Okay? He said, the first thing I saw was Derek Haysom's body. It was lying there with his head up against. Basically up against the corner of this fireplace. So that's in the living room. Derek has been stabbed 36 times. Once one went through his chest bone and into his heart.

[B]

Okay, so this is rage.

[A]

Rage, anger. His throat was cut so deeply that his head was nearly severed. Basically a Nicole Brown Simpson neck wound where it's like, wow, a little more and that head wouldn't be attached. Defensive wounds were all over his hands, showing that he definitely fought back, at least for a while. Now, Nancy, this is Eve. This is crazier. Okay, Nancy, she's in the dining room. Yeah. But she's not on the floor. She is sitting in a fucking chair at the dining room table with a. With tea set up before her. Oh, there's like snacks and tea set up and she's sitting there. Now, there's different, varying accounts of her injuries. She's been stabbed to death and her throat's been cut to a near decapitation. But some say that she was stabbed almost 30 times. And then I've also read six stab wounds, so I'm not sure which is true either way.

[B]

6 and 30.

[A]

Her head's almost off. I think that's the big one.

[B]

That's the stab one that matters.

[A]

Yeah. So she's sitting at the dining room table like she's been positioned there, but she's been dead for a while, days.

[B]

There's no way she died like that at the table, right?

[A]

We don't know. That's what I mean. They're wondering, has she been? The blood evidence is going to try to tell that, but they don't know. Has she been? Who knows? You know what I mean? Posed or. Yes. Does this mean something or what's the story? Now, this is from the book Beyond Reason, by the way. Sergeant Jeffrey Brown here, who's a lab technician they said had gone that afternoon with grand plans to celebrate the early spring. He was in the backyard grilling steaks on the barbecue when the phone rang a few minutes later. He Said, I gotta go. And he said, it's a double murder over in Boonesborough. I gotta do it. She said, but that's Bedford County. Because he's a Lynchburg guy. He said, I know.

[B]

Not the guy that's seen the shit.

[A]

Who knows. They said they're activating the regional homicide squad, and that's me. Yeah, I've seen the shit. That's me. I'm the guy. He said, when will you be back? He said, no idea. Don't wait up for me.

[B]

Could be I'm on the shit I'm about to see.

[A]

Yeah, got a lot of shit going on. His first impression from the book says that as he was wading into a sea of gore, he looked around quickly. He estimated that 90% of the floor surface in the living room, dining room and kitchen was smeared with blood.

[B]

90, dang.

[A]

Wow. His second impression, once he began examining the bodies, was how terribly they'd been butchered. Moving first to Derek because his body was the closest, Brown squatted and examined the scene. Derek, he noted, was lying on his back, turned slightly to his left with his head resting against the wooden fireplace jam. His right hand was palm down with his index finger extended as though he was pointing to an object on the floor. His left hand was palm up, exposing a deep gash that ran horizontally, a cruelly ironic cavernous lifeline. There was no question he had died brutally. Someone with a large, very sharp knife had slashed and stabbed Derek Hasom unmercifully. There were two large, roughly parallel horizontal gashes on the left side of Derek's face. One began near his cheekbone, below the corner of his eye and angled upward and across, cutting through his ear. This is just mad slashing. The other ran from the corner of his prominent chin straight across to the back of his neck. There was another slash on his right cheek that began on his chin and went upward to just below the ear. Brown figured these cuts were made by the killer in efforts to slice his throat. Obviously they were preliminary attempts, because the killer soon found his mark. A huge, gaping wound ran right around Derek's neck. A glance at Derek's hands demonstrated how desperately he fought for his life, actually grabbing the blade in an attempt to wrest the knife away from the assailant. He had six cuts on his hands, including the one that traversed his entire left palm. On one of his knuckles. One of his knuckles was abraded, Brown noticed, indicating that Derek may have punched the killer at least once, or at least punched something. The autopsy report would later confirm that the killer's slash had severed every major blood carrying organ in Derek's neck. If he were alive when the wound was administered, he would have bled to death in a matter of seconds. Whether he was indeed alive at that time, no one knew, because that was not only what was not the only potentially fatal injury inflicted upon the retired executive. He was also stabbed through the heart. Besides the cuts on his cheeks, jaw and hands, there were 11 slash wounds on Derek's chest and 14 in his back. All told, he was cut, sliced or stabbed three dozen times. Nancy was not sliced as terribly as her husband, but there was no question the attacker meant to kill her. In addition to the grotesque slash across her throat, there were two stab wounds to her torso, which could have killed her also one to her heart and one to her side, which penetrated the peritoneal cavity. She would not have died as quickly from these wounds as she would die from the slit throat, which virtually guaranteed that she had dropped where she was cut. Besides those wounds, Nancy had a cut on her jaw, a superficial wound on her left breast, an incised wound on her left elbow, apparently inflicted when she raised her arm to ward off the knife's thrust. By the time Brown had finished his customary examinations, the first wave of what soon seemed like an army of police had begun to arrive. A deputies posted at the door to keep everyone out who didn't need to be inside until the lab techs collect their evidence. Since the murder occurred in Bedford, County Sheriff C.H. wells would be the man responsible for the investigation. Standing in the blood soaked dining room, he quickly surveyed the scene. Three chairs were pushed back from the table, which still held a dirty plate, bowl and wine glass, and a neatly folded paper napkin soaked in blood. On one end of the table was a stack of books, as though someone had been using it as a desk. On the tasteful gray upholstery covering the seat of one of the chairs was a large bloody palm print, looking for all the world, like the COVID illustration on a recent mystery novel, Thinner, which had that palm print on it. Almost immediately, Welles came to two conclusions. The first was that three people had been seated at the table. Okay, based on the chairs, since two of them were dead, that meant either the third party, the guest, was probably the killer, or there was another body somewhere that no one had found yet.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

His second conclusion was that the attack took place in the dining room where it started. Nancy apparently was gravely injured early on, staggered into the kitchen to die. But the killer and Derek fought around the dining room and living room until Derek was overcome. By his injuries, both bodies apparently were left where they fell. No third body was found. Observations were substantiated. They said Nancy and Derek knew their killer at least well enough to invite them into the house and serve them a meal. From the first, Wells was thinking a him. A her, he reasoned, wouldn't be strong enough to fight with Derek as viciously as the killer had done. And a her was not likely to slice up the bodies as badly as they'd been. When women kill, they get it over with. Yeah, that's why they poison. Then you're dead and that's that. They're not like, yeah, they generally don't start carving bodies up for fun. That's not really just.

[B]

They shoot you in the back of the head while you're eaten dinner or they poison you or.

[A]

Yeah, yeah, something like that. It's a different deal. They also said nor would a her be likely to perform what looked like a grisly coup de grace. Now, the chances were good that the Hasams throats were slit either after they were dead or when they were very close to dying. They said it would take an unusual woman to do that. It's just not normal in crimes. Throughout the night, law enforcement officers toiled at the crime scene. While Brown and other technicians worked on the bodies, Wells investigators spread out in the neighborhood to try to find some clue what might lead them to the killer or killers who had been friendly with the Hasams, who had seen them, and when. Had anyone seen a stranger or strangers lurking around the neighborhood? There were hundreds of questions and very few answers. But there was one thing no one connected with the investigation or ever forgot. The viciousness of the crimes. Whoever murdered them must have deeply hated them. The crime was the worst anyone could remember in a normally sleepy Virginia, Central Virginia. One LPD officer, a veteran of 25 years, was so disturbed by the ferocity of the crime that he did something he never had done before. As soon as he got off duty, he went home and put a pistol under his pillow and it stayed there for many months.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Freaked these people out. Now we don't know. See there again, conflicting reports of where Nancy was found. There are reports of her in the kitchen and there's reports of her at the table. Either way, we know there was like lunch or like snack things set up at the table, so we don't know. They say blood spatter analysis revealed the sequence of events. Derek probably attacked first, probably as he answered the door. Now, how would there be three chairs then? @ that point, the whole. That's Weird. The initial wounds were to his chest and arms. He fought back, which accounts for the blood all over the walls. He tried to retreat to the living room where he was overwhelmed. Nancy was likely attacked while trying to help her husband or trying to flee. She was chased into the dining room where the fatal wounds were inflicted. They said there was two distinct blood patterns, suggesting two distinct attack patterns. So they're like, did they change weapons mid attack or were there two killers? Two? Oh, yeah, I don't know. So also, they found no murder weapons at the scene here. Nancy's jewelry, her wedding ring and a distinctive sapphire necklace are both gone and missing.

[B]

Oh, robbery.

[A]

Derek's wallet is also missing.

[B]

Robbery. Yeah.

[A]

There no sign of forced entry though, so it's interesting. Now here's another thing. There is a bloody sock print on here. It's size eight and a half. Yeah. Okay. Male or women don't know. Eight and a half, you can't tell. It doesn't say men's eight and a half on the. On a bloody print on the floor.

[B]

Right, but I mean like a men's eight and a half.

[A]

A men's eight and a half. Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah. No, a men's eight and a half dot. A men's eight and a Half. But sometimes women wear men's sizes if they have sneakers on, shit like that, so who knows?

[B]

Socks.

[A]

So, yeah, okay, yeah, that, that size. The print they said was very perfect. Later on they're talking about. And it looks like someone had deliberately stepped in blood and then walked. Walked carefully across the floor.

[B]

Like a print.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

They did that for you.

[A]

Just for you. They said there was also tire tracks outside that didn't match any vehicles that the Hasoms owned as well. No forced entry, like we said, on the dining room table or place settings and the remnants of a meal. All they have is footprints in blood, like a bloody footed ghost. One looked like it was made by a tennis shoe. One of their footprints and one looked like two more look like they were made by a sock. Forensic study showed that the Hasams had blood alcohol levels of over. Both of them were over point two two, which is extremely shit faced.

[B]

It's pretty hammered. Yeah.

[A]

They said a vodka bottle nearby also had fingerprints on it, as did a shot glass had fingerprints on it. So that's something to fuck with. There was four blood types in evidence. Four blood types, Two dead people.

[B]

Hmm.

[A]

Okay. The Hasams, A and ab. That's those two. There was a bit of B blood on a damp rag and on the screen door and in the Master suite. There were spots of O blood. Okay, so two types that aren't theirs are fucking floating around. Now, the next day, the police make a statement to the press and said this was not a random act of violence. The Hasams knew their attacker. This was personal, it was brutal, and whoever did this wanted them to suffer.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Now, believe it or not, that's a plea to everybody to relax. This isn't a random backup violence.

[B]

You can be targeted. Go ahead and relax.

[A]

Have a nap. So they sit down with Elizabeth on Monday, April 8, to talk to her. This is at an elementary school where they had set up a field station. Apparently. Apparently right away he was like, where the fuck is this accent coming from? From the street. She's got a British accent. Like, it's weird, it's bizarre. Yeah, that's strange. Now, she told them she'd been dating a German guy and they rented a car and spent that weekend in D.C. so that's where we were. They sent her home but then called her back later on as we'll talk about here. They said, well, there's some extra miles on the car you rented. And she said, oh, we got lost driving the there. They said, okay, for now. Okay for now. Now what she does, this is from the Beyond Reason book again, is they talk to her and they go, who could have, who could have done this? You know, your parents, who's mad at them, basically, Right. So they said that Elizabeth broke off another piece here and looking as poised as Maggie Thatcher, waiting for questions from members of Parliament. While they were talking to her, the first thing the investigators wanted to determine was where she had been at about the time her parents had been murdered. Elizabeth couldn't be helpful enough in carefully modulated I'm here to help in any way I can voice. Elizabeth told them that the last time she'd seen her parents had been the weekend of March 23 and 4. She said she'd taken a bus down from Charlottesville on Saturday to help her father celebrate his birthday. That night, she said her parents went out with some friends for dinner while she stayed home alone on Sunday. Derek and Nancy had driven her back to Charlottesville since she had talked to them once on the following Thursday just to say hello. She told them she'd call them again on Sunday the 31st, at about 8 o'. Clock. She said, I phoned and I didn't get a reply. But that's not unusual because, you know, they did what they wanted to. Sometimes if something came up, they'd just bypass the phone call. She said that and she tried. She said she tried to reach them late Monday morning and twice that evening, but again there'd been no answer. On Tuesday she tried at about 8 o' clock in the morning and late that night with no luck. And by then she said she was getting worried. She said, on Wednesday, as soon as I got up, I phoned Annie Massey to try to discover if she knew what was going on. At mid morning Wednesday, she left a message with Annie, Annie's maid, to ask her to ask Annie to check in on her parents. Soon after that, Annie went to the house and found what she found. So they said, y', all, you said y' all prearranged for you to call Sunday at 8 o'. Clock. The detective said, and she said, is that, Nor he said, is that normal? Do y' all normally do this? Elizabeth smiles. So she said, I mean, do we normally do this? She said, well, sometimes my parents find it quite hard to get ahold of me and I find it quite hard to get a hold of them. So if it was something specific we had to discuss, we'd arrange a time to call. This was something specific. So I said, let's get together Sunday at 8. And the cop said, what were y' all planning on talking about? And she said, I have my housing needs that I had to discuss. We had trouble with our landlady. She didn't want undergraduates in the house and we had to go and see her to try to bring her around to the idea that we were okay. So I had to discuss this with them, whether it had gone all right because if it had failed, I'd be up a creek for housing. I didn't have any university housing. So Gardner interrupted, sounding a little impatient. He was interested in motive. So far, the investigators had no idea why Derek and Nancy had been murdered. If they could find the why, the investigator reasoned, it would help them find the who. Yeah, so he soon discovered that he was going to. This was not going to be easy. To hear Elizabeth tell it, Derek had left a number of enemies back in Canada. Being a high powered businessman, she said for the next hour, virtually all the cops heard was about how many people that had it in for her dad, Derek. From fellow executives to union officials to members of the local news media, everybody. When Derek was working for Stanley Steele, Elizabeth said he invented a procedure called the submerge injection process, which she claimed revolutionized steel making retire. I had no idea about that. She said it was a fabulous process. Almost immediately, the Americans, the Japanese, the Germans, the British, all Bought it, really? So he said the cop's thinking wasn't that good. But before he could ask the question, Elizabeth told him why it was not. She said, the Canadian unions were upset with the idea. I think they felt like they were going to lose their jobs or something.

[B]

Yeah, probably. It probably took a union hands job away maybe.

[A]

Yeah, so Gardner told himself, okay, steel unions didn't like him. Who else? Well, the local politicians didn't think much of him either. She explained, quote, unfortunately, the political situation in Canada changed a year after Daddy came. Since Sydney Steel was a crown corporation, he had to deal with politicians, and that was something he didn't enjoy. He thought they were scum. Gardner could understand how an attitude like that might not endear him to local officials, but Elizabeth was just getting wound up. The local media didn't like Derek much either, she said. Some of them, Elizabeth claimed, criticized him sharply because he was a South African. She said they were asking, why do we have a South African doing this? He's obviously going to discriminate against black people. So in fact, Daddy got nothing, no credit at all for his invention. She said, that can't be why. No. So Gardner said, so he sort of got screwed out of the deal. And she said, yes, he got screwed big time. Once everything started to boom, everything, everybody started saying, well, now we're going fine. We can blow money on this, that and the other. And he was saying, no, the reason we're booming is because we're not doing that. And the cop said, I bet that didn't sit well. And she said, you're right. Caused a lot of strikes. Finally, he just couldn't stand it any longer. They started striking left, right and center. The abuse was quite something. I was threatened a couple of times at school. In fact, I had all my front teeth knocked out.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Whole fucking front 10 knocked out. So the cops said, oh, when did this. Why did this come about? Who did he make mad up there? She said, well, as I said, he started the idea that if you worked for the company, you had shares in the company. So as the company grew, you made more. The unions didn't like that. It was too abstract for them. So they just went on strike. Daddy's office was ransacked. Windows were broken. There were picket lines all over the place. We got phone calls. I answered a couple of calls. And some of them were threats like, don't think you're going to see your daddy tonight. Something like that. Things like, you better move. So she said, soon after the trouble started, she was attacked she said, I was at school playing in the playground during the break and a guy smashed my jaw and knocked out my front teeth.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

So the cop said, you said a guy. You mean a kid or an adult?

[B]

Right.

[A]

And she shrugged and said 16, maybe 17. So a teenager, what, his fists? I guess so. Who would say I'm going to hire a 16 year old boy to beat up an 8 year old girl? That's a weird thing to do. Right?

[B]

Some fragile ass teeth too.

[A]

Wow. Yeah. She said. They asked her what happened then. She said, I guess that was the deciding factor. Mummy and daddy decided I was definitely going to be sent away. They said, did the school know who did it? She nodded and said, the school knew who did it. My parents knew who did it? Actually, no, my parents did not know who did it. They had an idea of who was involved, but the school refused to take any action. She said the school actually went so far as to say it didn't happen. That I already had a broken jaw and broken teeth when I arrived.

[B]

Never had teeth.

[A]

Yeah. She came here not able to eat. She came here with her jaw wire shut and no teeth. That's what happens. They said, how did your father take that? And she said, my father? Well, his initial reaction was just to be totally out for blood, but after he calmed down, it was just as though he was, he were saying, well, this has happened and we're never going to be able to do anything about it and it won't do any good anyway. We're just going to have to send you away someplace. They said, well, was that the end of it? And she said, no, that the incident, along with her father's growing disenchantment with politics, convinced him he should quit. Sydney Steele. She said, he just cleared out.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

She then goes into another job her father took as chairman of Metropolitan Area Growth Investments. And there he got involved with a controversy over the finance of a ship called the Mercator IP. Mercator or Mercator 1. I'm sorry, my typing was off there. Gardiner was looking for a motive and now he's getting just all of these enemies that are. How do you check all of that politics in Canada and see if they're like, how do you even start today? Check this over from Virginia. So she went on about having to go away to boarding school and spending most of her time away from her parents. She also claimed that the school framed her on a drug charge.

[B]

Framed her?

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

How did they do that?

[A]

That's, that's interesting. Who knows? Well, we'll Talk about it, actually. So the investigators had not learned how to evaluate Elizabeth's information at this point yet. Yeah, they said, although Gardner and Kirkland didn't know it yet, most of what she was telling them was a skillful blend of fact and fantasy. A well woven tale craftily conceived to confuse and intimidate. This is from the Beyond Reason book. Elizabeth did in fact go to St. George's she did go to Riddlesworth and she did go to Wycombe or. It's pronounced Wickham, apparently. Wow. Y, W or I'm sorry, W, Y, C, O, M, B, E is Wickham.

[B]

No, it's not.

[A]

That is not Wickham. What the fuck? But her experience was nothing like what she had described to the detectives. All schools have their cliques and subgroups as the small coteries of students who stick closely together, pointedly excluding others from their circle. This is particularly true in boarding schools where students not only attend classes together, but live together, existing in a vacuum in an isolated world of their own. And probably in boarding schools of no other nationality. In this cliquishness as well developed as it is in the supremely class conscious Britain. You're an American, South African, whatever. You're not one of us. You're not.

[B]

What the fuck?

[A]

Yeah. She also told the cops here that after the drug issue at school, she just decided to go to Europe without telling anybody. And she also said that she got a job in Paris and worked for IBM. Oh, okay. She said she met a girl named Melinda Duncan who was also unhappy with her school and family. They toured around Europe getting odd jobs and running into nefarious characters and doing heroin. She said, not bad. She said there were hard times and all this type of shit. But this is what she did. Now, at 2:00pm this day, Jens shows up at the station voluntarily to support. Yeah, Elizabeth. Now this is from Chuck Reed's notes here, quote, soaring, extremely nervous, sweating profusely despite cool temperature. Offered alibi before being asked for one. That's a red flag there.

[B]

None of those are good. The sweating, despite it being 65 in here.

[A]

Wow. Offering an alibi before anyone asks you for one is certainly weird. He mentioned being in Washington D.C. four times in the first five minutes when asked about relationship with victims. Said, quote, they didn't approve of me, but I would never hurt them. No one had suggested he hurt them. That's from the notes. So he is sitting there going, I know you're suspecting me. Right away. They're like, we haven't even brought it out yet.

[B]

Yeah, well, I was over here.

[A]

Yeah. So, I mean, they look at that. They look at all these people. They're looking at Canadian steel magnates and members of the media, politicians, who knows? Then it comes up that maybe this was a cult crime. Oh, the cops look into this. This is from beyond reason. Again, they said, quote. A few days after the bodies were discovered, Sergeant Brown took some of the evidence to Richmond to be analyzed by the state crime lab. While he was there, on a hunch, he asked two Richmond detectives who knew specialized, who he knew specialized in cult activities to take a look at crime scene photos. One of them asked, what are we supposed to be looking for? And he said, just take a look at them and tell me what you think. It was a big stack of photos. So they said. Brown settled into his chair and watched silently as the two men spread the photos out on a desk and started picking through them. Their indifference changed to interest, which quickly changed to excitement. Hey, look at this. One said eagerly, pointing to a picture of a bloodstream stained section of the floor. Damn. And this. And look here. Here, too. Look at these chairs. One of them motioned to Brown. Which way is north in this picture? Oh, it was a photo of Derek's body taken from the doorway going into the house. Brown told him. The man shuffled the print so the body was oriented on a north, south axis. They said, and which way is it? Which way in this picture is a picture of Nancy's body. And he showed him again. So the guy said, mmm. And Brown said, what do you think? Is there anything that indicates cult activity? And one said, oh, hell yeah. And then he cracked a beer open, drank it, and smashed it on his forehead until it was flat. And then he gave Vince McMahon a stone cold stunner. Yeah, Right after that happened, he slapped two together. Yeah. Oh, hell yeah. He said, come here, let me show you.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

No, Brown said, you don't have to show me. I'm not an investigator. But I would like for you to come to Lynchburg, though, and talk to members of the homicide squad. They said, when do you want us there? Tomorrow night. Well, fucking A. Let's do it. So what the two Richmond detectives told members of the squad got their attention. Cults, particularly satanic cults. Remember, this is 1985, and they were. This was like 1995, basically. They were just. Everything was a satanic cult. This was peak satanic panic right here. They said that particularly satanic cults, they said, were much more prevalent than most people believed, which is the absolute opposite. Much less prevalent than Everyone believed. In fact, they were much more common than most law enforcement officers believed. Hotbeds of such activity in Virginia were Richmond and Charlottesville. But this didn't mean it was absent from the rest of the state. There's huge cults everywhere. They said, well, what do you have that shows Satanism in this case? And the guy said, okay, let's go down the list.

[B]

Where's north?

[A]

Yeah. Raising his right hand with his fingers pointing upward, he lowered them at one time and ticked off his points. First he said, there's the placement of the bodies themselves. You notice that both are pointed in the same direction. North. They said, what does north have to do with it? And he said, I'll explain that later. Let me make my points first. They said, what makes you think that wasn't a coincidence? Another one said. And he said, well, maybe, but let me go on. He said, second, look at the blood pattern. These bodies were outlined in blood. They didn't just bleed that. They didn't just happen to bleed that way. They said, how do you know that? And he said, I don't know it, but see how it looks like the bodies have been purposely traced in blood. Everyone looked. It could indeed be interpreted that somebody made a conscious effort to paint the blood into specific patterns. Heretofore, they'd been operating under the belief that the mopping marks throughout the house had been made by the killer in an attempt to destroy his footprints, not to perpetrate some obscure cult ritual. They found little like smeared stuff they thought that was just going around, something to clean up, hitting the footprints so you didn't see them for an hour or more. The Richmond detectives explained that they took what they took to be indications of ritualistic murder. Some of them seemed pretty far fetched. There was, for example, a mouse trap found near Nancy's body. It had been sprung, but it was empty. A small piece of cheese was nearby. The odd thing, though, was there was no blood on the bottom of the trap, even though it was resting on a surface covered in blood. To investigators, that could only mean that it was put there after the blood had dried. Furthermore, the trap pointed to the north, which pointed to the north, as was the silverware on the dining room table. Every candle in the house had been burned. Granted, they didn't know exactly when they had been lit. Could have been them lighting it while they were drunk, but that was just another piece to the puzzle. There was a puddle of black, waxy substance on the floor at one corner of the table between where Nancy and Derek sat to Eat dinner. The substance was never identified nor was its presence explained. The dining room chairs seemed to have been placed in a semicircle. There was a strange V shaped cut on Derek's chin. Further, looking closely at the blood smeared floor, one could see what appeared to be a. What is that? A6 inside a V. Three sixes is the recognized symbol for the Antichrist. The brand name on the mousetrap was Victory, which was represented in the product with a large V. The letter presumably also representing the word voodoo. Listen, guys.

[B]

Oh, God damn it.

[A]

You could go, you know what I'm saying? These things have significance in satanic rituals. So the local cop said, does this mean you think it was a cult killing? And he said, no, that's not what we're saying. Then what are you. Why are you here? What are you talking about? What we're saying is we don't know for sure. Some of the signs are there, some aren't, and some of those that are, some of those that are wrong. Said a lot could be just coincidence. But I'll tell you this, if it was a cult type slaying, it was done by amateurs, by a person or persons who didn't know what they were really doing. And they said, like someone who just started dabbling in it. And they said, yeah, like that.

[B]

All right.

[A]

They get an FBI profile here.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yes, because this isn't these. This is a rich guy. So FBI is brought in, they identify this profile identifies the murderer as female. A female who knew the family. Now for a minute, suspicion falls on the daughter of a local judge who was engaged to Liz's older half brother, Julian. But it ended up okay.

[B]

So.

[A]

Okay, so Chuck Reed heard it ended under pressure from his parents. So she is pissed, apparently.

[B]

Oh, so the parents just do not like who their children are choosing as partners.

[A]

They want to choose for them, essentially. So Julian says his parents were actually disappointed by the end of this. Not they didn't pressure the end of the relationship. Sure. This is the older brother. A few weeks before the murders, Chuck Reed was told this woman had brought knives to a friend and asked him to take them because, quote, evil spirits were pursuing her. This is the judge's daughter. Okay. Chuck Reed thought that the woman was skittish with a different drummer kind of imagination, but not a killer. And she had told them a story at one point she said Liz Hasam had approached her and said, quote, I'm the devil, you're the sacrificial lamb. This was after the murders. She said that's what happened. But Liz denies that, of course. Now, they need to check the Washington alibi, surely.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Seems solid at first. Hotel records confirm they checked in. Room service confirms an order. Staff member said, yeah, I saw the German guy and the chick in the red dress. Absolutely, we remember them. But the detective is bothered by it. One thing here, Detective Gardner said it was too perfect. Every detail covered, every timeline accounted for. Real alibis have gaps. People forget things. This was like they'd rehearsed it. Yeah, people aren't accounted for for every second, you know?

[B]

Yeah. You tend to lose track of people from time to time. That's what. Yeah, that's the point of catching up with them like that.

[A]

It's tough. It's tough. And ask anybody. It's like the Adnan Syed question at the beginning of serial. Like, if I asked you, where were you, where were you this day? You wouldn't fucking know. I asked you two weeks ago, where were you on this Tuesday? You have no goddamn idea.

[B]

I'm gonna lie to you.

[A]

That's exactly right. So who knows now? He said, also, the room service order, it was for two meals, but only one person's worth of dishes were actually dirty. The maids who saw Elizabeth said she saw her from behind and just recognized the red dress. The bartender who served them when they returned remembered them being oddly affectionate. Like they were putting on a show that could also. Because they're young and they're, like, playing.

[B]

Yeah, they're gonna touch a lot in public that looks like putting on a show now.

[A]

April 15, 1985. Elizabeth's roommate Christine comes forward with some shit to the cops. Quote. Elizabeth kept letters from Jens in a box under her bed. Some of them talked about killing her parents. I thought it was just dramatic writing, you know? They were both into dark poetry and that stuff. But now. So she gave them to the cops. Or she told the cops. And the cops got a warrant and found them. Basically, these letters. Here's some of the choice ones here. Yens to Elizabeth on Valentine's Day 85. Quote. My Valentine, my love, my reason for living. You say the word and I'll end them. I'll make it look like a robbery. We'll be in D.C. no one will suspect. This is my gift to you. Their death's your freedom.

[B]

My gift.

[A]

My gift. Her to him. March 1st. Sweet boy. The time is coming. I have been preparing you. Making you strong. Remember, it has to be brutal. It has to look like rage. A crime of passion from a stranger. Many wounds. Make them suffer as they've made me. Suffer. That's all contradictory. A crime of passion from a stranger is impossible.

[B]

Is that not a thing?

[A]

No. When you see somebody that brutalized 36 stab wounds and all that, you go, well, that's personal. That's the first thing the cops say, is that looks pretty fucking personal. Someone was mad at him. If someone wants to rob people, they kill them. Just enough to kill them. And then they rob. They're there to rob. They don't want to fuck around with bodies and all that shit.

[B]

That's very rare.

[A]

Extra time.

[B]

Slit so many people's throats.

[A]

No. Unless it's some ritualistic posing or something like that. This type of attack is personal. I mean, every time. Especially the stab wounds, the throats. Overkill. Sure, it's overkill. So, April 20, 1985, Bedford County Sheriff's Office. We have Detective Gardner and FBI Agent Robert Huntsberry.

[B]

Oh boy.

[A]

This is interrogation day for Liz and Yens. Based on these letters and all this shit, they bring Elizabeth in at first and they think she's too calm. Right away they said, listen, we found the agreement for the rental car and we discovered the mileage was 669 miles. You put on that thing.

[B]

Oh, dang.

[A]

Now the distance between the campus and D.C. is 240 miles.

[B]

Okay, so she went back and forth.

[A]

That's 480. Yeah, there's another 200 there. They said if you went from Charlottesville to D.C. d.C. Back to Lynchburg, Lynchburg back to Washington, then back to Charlottesville, that's pretty close to 669 miles is what Gardner says when asked about the disparity in mileage. She said that we got lost, just like she said before. She also cooperated. She said, I'll give you my fingerprints and blood samples and all that. And they said, great. They said, hey, Elizabeth, we found the letters.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

She says, what letters? Ah, the ones between you and Jens. About killing your parents. She said, oh, those. Yeah. We were writing a novel together, A murder mystery. It's fiction. Don't worry about it. They said, this is a great line quote. Pretty specific fiction. You mentioned, Martha. March 30th. And that's when we think they died. So pretty specific on that. Fiction.

[B]

How'd you do that? Voodoo lady?

[A]

Yeah. She said, coincidence. That's an amazing coincidence.

[B]

Incredible. You are so.

[A]

Of all the days of the year.

[B]

Dumbass.

[A]

Yeah. Besides, we were in Washington. And they said, were you? Were you both in Washington?

[B]

That's what this paper says too.

[A]

It's. Were you both there? There's a long pause. And she says, I want a lawyer.

[B]

Ah, good answer.

[A]

Good answer. Should have said that first. Yeah. Jens is in a different room and he is sweating and fucking just not doing well.

[B]

Sweating in the cooler?

[A]

Yep. They said, jens, we know you weren't in Washington the whole time. And he said that's not true. We were there. Check the records. They said we did. Elizabeth was there. She was seen all over the place. But you, you left, didn't you? And he said no, I was in the shower. A long shower. I take three hour showers. I'm very. The Germans are known for cleanliness and efficiency. And the FBI agent said for four hours.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And he said I want to speak to the German consulate.

[B]

Oh the consulate.

[A]

I want the consulate involved in this. Now. They come in with some blood evidence. Lab results come back. Type O blood found at the scene doesn't match either victim. Derek's, type A. Nancy's I think ab.

[B]

Oh wow.

[A]

You know who is O though?

[B]

Who's that?

[A]

Jensoring.

[B]

Is he.

[A]

He's Type O. But 45% of the population is typo, so that means nothing. Elizabeth has type B blood. Remember the vodka bottle in the shot glass that has her fingerprints on it? Uh oh, but she visits. She was there last week. That we know of.

[B]

It's her parents house.

[A]

House. It's her parents house. So yeah. So that's not enough to arrest anybody. This is what police think actually happened. Okay. At this point they think at 6:30 they went from the bar, Jens and Liz up to their room, ordered room service for two. Elizabeth ate as much of both meals as she could while Jens snuck out the back of the hotel. He drove as fast as he could to Lynchburg. As they said, it's three hours if you're following the speed limits. If you're not, it could be a lot faster. Yeah. So 6:30 is room service ordered for two. 6:45, Jens leaves via a service elevator. That's what they think. 7:15, Elizabeth calls the front desk to complain about room service to show she's still there. 7:30 here. Yens. It can't be 7:30 that he arrived at the house because that's too late. It's too early. Way too early. It would have to be later. Yeah. Because they think that basically the murders occur between 8 and 8:45, which is a very short window from 6:30 to 8. That he would have had to get there in two hours to do that. Which you'd have to really be driving. I get cook.

[B]

You gotta do.

[A]

I get. The Germans have the Autobahn. And they drive fast.

[B]

You gotta do 90.

[A]

Yeah. At 8:30 is when Elizabeth calls the front desk about theater recommendations. Nine o', clock, Elizabeth seen in the hallway by the maid. By 10:30 he's back at the hotel. So that's two hours. So that's get there, kill immediately, do it quick, in five minutes, get right back in the car and boogie.

[B]

Does he know a quicker way?

[A]

That's what I mean. I don't know. I looked it up. It is 3 hours and 5 minutes to DC. 11 o', clock, Elizabeth and Jens are seen at the hotel bar again. Then they go up to the room at 11:45. May 1, 1985, we have a random witness here. A gas station attendant in Alta Vista, Virginia, which is 30 minutes away from the house, remembers a young man matching Jens description buying gas on the night of March 30th. Now here's something about Jens in fucking rural Virginia. He stands out like a sort a German guy, dressed like a. Give me a break. He is standing out. This guy. Said he was agitated. Kept looking over his shoulder. He had what looked like blood on his shirt sleeve. Paid in cash. Bought a bottle of water and paper towels. A lot of paper towels. Probably clean himself up. Clean the car up. The month of May, Elizabeth and Jens, they're still out there. They're seen together constantly. Always looking paranoid, always being conspiratorial, always.

[B]

Looking over shoulders and shit.

[A]

Yep. Friends report some weird behavior. A friend of Elizabeth said she asked me if I knew anyone who could make fake passports. I thought she was joking. Then Hans Mueller, who, surprise is Jens friend Hans Mueller said, quote, he sold everything he owned. His stereo, his books, even his clothes. Said he needed cash for traveling. So these two things add up to. Oh, shit. Where are they going? 6-1-85, they're off to Europe.

[B]

Oh, really?

[A]

Just for a vacation, though. They returned to the University of Virginia for summer school. Now back at uva, school starts again in the fall. And Jens basically moves into the place, into Liz's apartment. Okay, it's them, her roommates and a cat named Snark. So there we go. Snark. That's a good one. On October 6, he drove to the Bedford County Sheriff's office to talk with Reed and Gardner. They asked him for his fingerprints, footprints and blood to help eliminate him as a suspect. Liz had given hers. He said I have to clear it with the German Embassy first. The Germans, we don't like to give our blood to foreign countries is the thing. This is all very. No, no. We like to keep it all in Germany. Really? All the blood. Now the family is pissed off. It's been six fucking months now.

[B]

Yeah. That's a long time for your family to be dead and nothing done.

[A]

Especially if you're rich. You assume you just get results, you know what I mean? And you should get results if your family's dead. So Gardner was feeling pressured. That's the one cop here, this is his first homicide. This poor bastard. From the. Yeah, from the Hasom family. Especially from Elizabeth's half brother, Howard Hasom, who's a doctor in Houston and was due to Visit Lynchburg on October 15th. And they're like, oh, shit. Six days before the visit, Jens phoned Gardner to say that he was busy with schoolwork and that he could meet in a week to give his blood and prints. On the night of Howard Hasom's arrival, Gardner was working late in the field when sheriff's office patched through an urgent call. It was a very pissed off Howard, the brother saying, Elizabeth and Jens are gone. They're not at the house, they're not at the fucking. They're not at their apartment. They're gone. Everyone's disappeared. So investigators go to Charlottesville and Liz's roommate hands them a letter from Soering, from Yensian, and it reads, dear Officers Reed and Gardner. Hi. Very specific.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

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 suggest that you continue your investigation as before. Undoubtedly, you will find who you're looking for. As for me, I am afraid you must remain, as Officer Reid put it, only 99% sure of my innocence. From what Liz had told me of what you discovered at Loose Chippings, I can only say that I am incapable of such a thing. I do not have many friends. But I think they will substantiate this and my long standing dissatisfaction with my life here. That's why I'm leaving, not running away. So he read that and went, well, he did it.

[B]

There goes our winner.

[A]

Yeah, there's our guy. Now where the fuck did they go? They cleaned out their bank accounts, they sold all their shit and they disappeared. Yeah, they did leave behind a note in Elizabeth's dorm room that said, we can't stay here anymore. The truth isn't what it seems. We're innocent, but no one believes us. We're sorry, Ian. J. Oh, she left that to her roommates. Yeah. Yeah. E and J and Ginger Ale. Hasom and Sohring. Then followed separate itineraries to Europe. They didn't go together. Oh, wow.

[B]

Smart.

[A]

And rendezvoused under the Arc de Triomphe in Paris. That's where we're gonna meet.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yes. She. Liz dyed her hair bright red and from there they traveled to Edelbrook, which is in Luxembourg, which is the size of Rhode island. The whole country. Their plan was to go to Thailand to get Jens birth certificate, then marry and apply jointly for Thai passports.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Since he was born there, he could get a passport. They're married. There you go. They rented a Fiat, planning to drive through France, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey and onward until they got to Thailand. But it didn't work. At the Bulgarian border. They were told they would need to get a visa at the Bulgarian Embassy in Belgrade. So Liz turned the car around and a driver traveling in the opposite direction pulled into their lane. She swerved onto the shoulder where the Fiat blew a tire and careened back through oncoming traffic. And they got in a crash where Jens was knocked unconscious.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

Yeah. So they had to go to local traffic court. Then they decided we should probably just fly from here on out.

[B]

Isn't it pretty far from France to fucking Thailand?

[A]

Extremely far. It's in another continent. It's very far. That's crazy. That's like an eight day drive or something. It's like the Silk Road they're following. This is crazy.

[B]

It's gotta be longer than that, right? It's gotta.

[A]

So long. It's so long. So they use fake names. They're paying cash for everything. They're spotted in Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam. Always moving, always doing shit. By the way, they always say that if you want to test a relationship, you should travel with somebody.

[B]

Oh yeah.

[A]

If you want to test a relationship, run from Interpol with somebody with no money, driving a Fiat through Bulgaria. That's where you really find out if you're compatible.

[B]

From France to Thailand to Bangkok. Yeah.

[A]

Now they did get to Bangkok.

[B]

They made it.

[A]

They got to Bangkok.

[B]

They flew there.

[A]

They get to Bangkok. Liz hates it. Oh, really? Yeah, it's busy. It's nasty.

[B]

Doesn't like tropical, right?

[A]

Oh, it's hot there. Yeah, absolutely. Jens loves it.

[B]

Oh, there's a beach and shit.

[A]

He thought it was cool. Yeah. He said also everything's like. There's always like a. Everyone's got like some shady side gig that they're doing. This is cool.

[B]

Like Yakuza is from.

[A]

That's Japan.

[B]

Oh, is it?

[A]

I'm sure there's.

[B]

There's a Bangkok.

[A]

Yeah. Thailand is A really, really. People like go there on vacation and shit. But it's a hardcore. Like there's a king and you're not allowed to say anything about them or you get thrown in prison. It's not a. Not a good place.

[B]

Oh boy.

[A]

It's a fucking dictatorship. It's not good. So Bangkok, that's what's going on here. He bought books about British banking. He and Liz visited Bangkok's printing shops to obtain false papers modeled on her stuff, which is Canadian driver's licenses, citizenship certificates and certified passport copies. They had three sets of photos made, rearranging their hair between each set so the headshots would seem to have been taken at different times. Okay. As the year drew to a close, they took a thousand mile bus trip from Bangkok to Singapore, then flew to Moscow, spent New Year's Eve at the airport hotel in Moscow drinking vodka. Then they went to Canterbury where they assumed the false identities of Tim and Julia Holt, two married Canadian students at the University of Kent.

[B]

Canterbury, like in England or in like the tales.

[A]

Yes. From. Wow. Like tails. Wow. The Holt's, who they are, went to the local branch of Lloyd's to open a bank accounts as well. They wanted check guarantee cards, which back then are special bank, basically a debit card back then, which meant that you have money, you had to have a certain amount. They'd give you a check guarantee card. That way they wouldn't run your whole check and take forever to process. It was big in England here where they would basically, if you had one of those Lloyds would honor bounce checks of up to to £50 at the time. Now they had only made a small deposit, so they were given a four to six week probationary period during which they had to maintain a certain balance before you could get the card. So they rented a room with a local family. Jens said they even made sure to use their aliases when having sex. Tim and Julia, they'd shout out what? Oh, Tim fucks me. The best Julia gave me the fuck of my life. That's all.

[B]

You gotta call out an alias. Wow.

[A]

Wow. So they start writing bad checks, stealing from stores and doing shit like that because they're running out of money. Basically. February 24, 1986, they get their check guarantee cards and they go to London. So they spent 10 hours a day touring the city's different Marks and Spencer branches, which are a clothing store. They would do a con around a leather jacket that costs £49.50. Okay, 50. Not pence, I guess it would be. One of them would Enter the store, buy the jacket with the Lloyd's guaranteed check card. The other entering later would return a jacket previously purchased at a different M and S in exchange for cash bounce.

[B]

Yep, they got the cash.

[A]

It doesn't matter. Yeah, they would get its money. And Lloyd had a policy of not reporting frauds of less than £10,000 to the police. So checks accepted on a Monday took until Friday to clear. So when they started this, they had about 120halt checks. By the time the first check bounced, they had spent in cash, redeemed all of them, a profit of about £6,000.

[B]

So 100 times for 49.50.

[A]

It just kept doing it. So, yeah, they went to. Then they could deposit and get check guarantee cards from banks with no waiting. So they went to Bath and opened up accounts at Midland bank under the names Tara, Lucy Noe and Christopher Platt. No N O E Noe. By the way, their checkbooks came in a couple days. They rented a flat on Baker street as the Halts. They'd avoided being in the same store concurrently. This time they suggested let's go in at the same time, but stay apart, act like we don't know each other. One they visit on April 30, a store employee notices them at one of the M and S stores and grows suspicious, Followed them onto the street and flagged them down to a plainclothes officer. So Elizabeth gets caught trying to pass this stolen check and Jens is arrested trying to flee the scene. So they're arrested as Christopher P Ngo and Tara Lucy know. That's how they're arrested. Now back in the States, Chuck Reed had quit the police force that spring. Oh, he gave up. Not because he's done with this, because the cops, they don't pay him shit. And he took a job that pays better at a freight company and he's got kids and shit. Yeah, yeah, he's not even a good enough career. So now it's Ricky Gardner all alone on his first homicide here. So 5-29-86, Gardner gets a call from London and they said they wanted to know if. Are you acquainted with Elizabeth Hasom or Jensoring? He explained that they were in custody in southwest London and maybe you'd like to meet with them. He was like, fuck, yeah. So him and James Updike, the county prosecutor, flew over there. Now, they had no warrant or anything. It's a foreign country. They have no jurisdiction or anything. But a magistrate ruled that they could interview the suspects through the weekend if they didn't get what they were Looking for. They'd have to come home and they'd proceed with fraud charges in England, basically. So either charge them or we're going to charge them. So they're questioned in England. Separate interrogations. Anyway, they sit down and Liz says, I know why we're really here. It's about my parents.

[B]

Oh, is it?

[A]

Yes. And this is Detective Inspector Kenneth Beaver. B E E V R. Oh, damn. English guy says, well, what about your parents?

[B]

What are they?

[A]

And Elizabeth says, quote, jens killed them. Oh, I was in Washington. He did it for me. But I didn't know he was going to do it. I swear I didn't know. Now they're like, okay, this is how.

[B]

She wants to get out of a kite check kite deal.

[A]

Yeah, by throwing her boyfriend under the bus for murder.

[B]

Hey, will you guys let me go on the check kites if I tell you about the murder he did?

[A]

Jesus. So Jens is in another room, no lawyer present. He signed the waiver form for not having a lawyer and everything like that. He says later that he only signed it because they threatened to hurt Liz unless he talked to them. Some English cop is gonna go in there and beat the shit out of her. Wow, that's interesting. And Beaver called the claims in a very British fashion, quote, preposterous.

[B]

Absolutely.

[A]

That's preposterous. So Jens insists he's repeatedly asked for a lawyer, but they say he didn't. At one point, Beaver asked whether Jens would ever consider pleading guilty to something he didn't do. And he said, I can't say that for sure right now, his little accent. But I can see it happening. Yes, I think it's a possibility. And he said, I think it happens in real life. So Beaver talks to Gardner and he says that we talked with Soering without a tape recorder, and he told a very different story than what he told you. So now they sit down with him and Yen says while driving to Washington D.C. him and Liz had talked about the problem of her parents. They objected to her dating him. The idea of killing them mentioned in the written letters came up again. He thought. He said, he thought he could talk things through with them. And on Saturday night he driven to loose clippings alone.

[B]

Oh, Jesus Christ.

[A]

So that's the 30th. She stayed in Georgetown to create an alibi in case one proved necessary. She bought a pair of tickets to several evening movies. You buy a bunch of different ones and it's all with cash. You use whatever you need, whatever time period you need to have an alibi for you Got covered. He said Elizabeth had nothing to do with it. It was all me. I killed them. She doesn't even know I did it.

[B]

Oh, yes, she does.

[A]

Yeah, he said. They said, well, what happened? And he said, well, Derek answered the door at loose clippings and served me a drink or two.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

He and the haysom sat at the table together. Hey, remember three chairs, right? Soaring with his back to the window. Derek to his left. He said they were drinking and they began to argue. They threatened to have Jens expelled from the university if he kept seeing their daughter. He said he got up to leave. Now, why would he go there just to talk about this shit when they're at a hotel in D.C. that makes no sense whatsoever. You go there to kill or you stay in the hotel and fuck your girlfriend. One of the two, he said as he rose, Derek slammed him against the wall where he hit his head. He said at that point he grabbed a knife that was nearby and just started stabbing him in the neck and opened up a vein. He said that Nancy said, God, you must be crazy, man. And Nancy came at him with a knife of her own. He said he wrestled it away from her, grabbed her and began using her as a shield against Derek, who was flailing at him with a spoon.

[B]

Oh, he's got a spoon.

[A]

He's got a spoon against a knife. Yen said he slashed Nancy in the neck also, then to let go of her. He'd lost his glasses in the struggle, and Derek struck him in the head. He said the next thing with the spoon. Next thing he recalls was tossed tableware, his clothes and two knives was tossing. He said he doesn't remember anything after that. He just remembers tossing tableware, his clothes and the two knives into a dumpster at the end of the road. So again, two knives too. He hadn't noticed until then that he'd cut his hand. He went back to the house in his socks to wipe away any fingerprints and blood. He swirled the stains around them to obscure his fingerprints, which is what they thought to begin with the Occam's Razor version of it rather than the cult version of it. He washed his hand and bound a towel around it, then wrapped himself in a sheet, turned out the lights and went back to Georgetown to meet Elizabeth after the Rocky Horror Picture Show. At the end of his explanation, Gardner left the room and returned with the other two. With the British guys here. He repeated the account to them. Showed some scars on his fingers, which he said had come from the struggle. So on June 13, the grand jury convened in the circuit court of Bedford county indicted him and he remains in England, though now both he and Liz undergo psychological evaluations. Liz's diagnosis is borderline personality disorder, which is about right for her. And he was given a diagnosis of shared delusional disorder. Shared delusional disorder. So that is very interesting. There's also a guy. We'll skip that because it's not important anyway. Extradition we gotta get to. So extradition they have to extradite him from over there. He says diplomatic immunity. Oh, my dad's a diplomat. That's it.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

And he says that basically that's his idea. He can confess and he has diplomatic immunity so they can't touch him now. It's a Die Hard movie.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

It's ridiculous. So he said he believed that his diplomatic German diplomatic passport granted partial immunity, expecting extradition to Germany for a lighter sentence instead. Here. It's not how it works. He basically misunderstood everything and he's an idiot. So it does make a delay, though. Over the next eight months, Jens tries to claim diplomatic immunity for Jens father. Klaus tries to claim it for his son. But he's not a diplomat and his crimes were committed before his father's latest posting. So strike one, strike two. So it delayed things for months. On July 7, 1989, the European Court of Human Rights announced that the threat of the death penalty would constitute torture or inhuman or degrading treatment. Reluctantly and under protest, Virginia agreed to drop the death penalty. They basically said, unless you drop, we're not going to export someone for you to death penalty them. We don't do that here. So, okay, drop the death penalty and then we'll send them out. Okay. Which is how they do it in Europe. It's just. That's it. They won't send people here because. Yeah, yeah, we're. There's like. We're the only like, like organized first world country that executes people. Nobody else does that. Fucking crazy. No. Fuck no. They haven't done it for 100 years. We're the only people that do that by far and away. They've. They're like, that's a crazy thing we used to do. And we're like, we want more. So just different places.

[B]

January, I guess if you don't cut off a head and a guillotine 13 times before somebody has to throw a blade through their neck. That'll make you want to rethink it.

[A]

Yeah, they just thought that seems like old and barbaric. So anyway, January 12, 1990 is when he's finally extradited. To the US. He's going to sit in Europe for years, basically. Now the pictures, Remember the pictures of Liz that dad took and nude photos and all that? Investigators found the camera that took the photos. Oh no, it's Elizabeth's camera. And the self timer had been used. The angles are also consistent with someone photographing themselves putting it on a fucking book on the corner and saying, I did that. So then in October she writes him, well, I would say a Dear John letter, but it's a Dear Jens letter. That's how you dump a German guy. Dear Jens. She said, I'm writing him a letter. Sorry, but I'm gonna plead guilty and testify against you. Essentially that's what it's gonna do here. So she's extradited to Virginia and her story matches his confession on all the broad points. So they're gonna accept her plea. Here she described the weird part is in one of the talks that Gardner had with Hasam, she described in exact detail the exterior of Gardner's house.

[B]

What?

[A]

Yeah. She knew what it looked like. And she said Jens had followed Gardner home after their interview, wanting to kill him, but didn't.

[B]

He's just gonna kill everybody that questions him about this for the rest of his life.

[A]

Just keep killing him. Like they're not going to replace him with another cop.

[B]

What the fuck, Jens, he's dead.

[A]

So I guess that case is over. Fuck it. Moving on. So 87 is Elizabeth pleads guilty.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Testify against Jens in exchange for a reduced sentence. She pleads guilty to accessory before the fact. She admits she told Jens she wanted her parents dead, but insisted she didn't actually mean it. Oh, she is sentenced to. You, ma' am may fuck off. 90 years. This is two 45 year sentences. Consecutive with the possibility of parole. Or actually 45 years, it would be the. They have to let her out in 2032. Even though it's 90 years. You're only getting 45. So anyway, 1989, when Jens is in all this, you know, gonna get deported shit you're gonna get, he recants his confession.

[B]

Oh, he didn't do it now.

[A]

He said, not only did I not kill them, Liz killed them. And I took the blame. Oh, they went, yeah, well, we already did a thing with her and you know, we already have your stuff on tape, so. Too late, asshole. So May 20, the UK informed Germany. That's when they said they were going to extradite him. So they do that. He is extradited in June of 1990, pretrial. There's some Controversy with a magazine article. The presiding judge, William Sweeney, was a friend of Nancy's brother. Okay, okay, okay. In a magazine interview before the trial, Judge Sweeney said that Liz was surprised that Jens, quote, took the dare and killed her parents. This is before he's going to preside over the man's trial. You can't do that. Nevertheless, he refused to step down and presided over the trial himself.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

And it's a bench trial. It is not a jury trial.

[B]

No.

[A]

Okay, so it's all the judge.

[B]

Yeah. Trusting a judge for this.

[A]

So September 1990, here. This is his trial. The prosecution opening said, ladies and gentlemen, this is a simple case. Dressed up in complex clothing, Yen Soaring butchered two innocent people because his girlfriend asked him to. He's confessed multiple times in detail. Don't let the smoke and mirrors fool you.

[B]

Okay?

[A]

The defense said Yen Soaring is guilty of one thing, being a fool in love. He confessed to protect. Protect Elizabeth Haysom, the real killer. She manipulated him then and she's manipulating the justice system right now.

[B]

So she gashed up her parents.

[A]

Yep.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

She's strong enough to put a knife through her dad's chest bone breastplate and get to his arch. So the prosecution's key physical evidence. A forensic expert testifies that the print matches Yen's foot size and gait pattern, meaning how he walks his steps. The defense counters with their own expert who says the print is too perfect and was possibly planted there in their mind. Liz testifies. They said, tell us about that day. And she says, jens and I went to Washington. He said he had a surprise for me. We checked into the hotel. Then he said he had to run an errand. He was gone for hours. Did you know where he went? She said, not then. He told me later he'd gone to see a movie. But when he came back, there was blood on his shirt. He said he had a nosebleed. When did you learn the truth? And she said, when the police told me my parents were dead. Then everything made sense. Everything he'd said. The way he'd been acting, he'd done it. He'd killed them for me. Now, on cross, they said you're. You wrote letters discussing killing your parents, though. Remember that part?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

She said they were Jens's fantasies. I went along with them because I was afraid of him.

[B]

Oh.

[A]

They said, afraid. You wrote, and I quote, make them suffer as they've made me suffer. And she said I was reflecting his words back to him. It's what abuse victims do.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

She's been to too much Therapy, where she now knows how to use it as a weapon. Jens testifies against his lawyer's explicit advice. Dude, you're gonna look weird up there. Whether you're guilty or innocent. You don't have the same expressions, phraseology, nothing that Americans have. Jury's not a jury, but still, you're gonna freak everybody out. Shut the fuck up. They said, nope. And by the way, before his testimony, the air conditioning in court broke.

[B]

Shit.

[A]

So he looks like Nixon in the 60 debate, just covered in sweat.

[B]

He sweats in a freezer looking like a villain.

[A]

Yeah. They asked Jens in cross examination about this. They said he tried to underscore his arrogance. And he said, this is the cross examination. He said, is it an intellectual challenge for you, meaning this cross examination? And Yen said, no, it isn't. And they said it certainly wouldn't be a challenge for you with your intellect to outwit me, would it? Just a simple Virginia lawyer here. And he said, well, I think so far you've been outwitting me is what Yen said, which is funny. He said at one point here he was saying something and the guy, the prosecutor said, I just can't understand, sir, why you at times are sitting up there under these circumstances on trial for murder and laughing. What's wrong with you?

[B]

Yeah, that's a great point.

[A]

Weirdly affect having motherfuckers.

[B]

That's what Germans do. They giggle a lot.

[A]

They giggle a lot. He said, I didn't kill them. I confessed to protect Elizabeth. She was the one who did it. They said, you confessed in detail. You knew things only the killer would know. And he said, Elizabeth told me. She described everything. They said when he said, when, when she got back to the hotel. And he said, but you said she was in the hotel the whole time. And he said, I mean, I mean. And they said, which is it, Mr. Soering? Was she at the hotel or was she killing her parents?

[B]

Right.

[A]

And he said, I want to invoke my fifth amendment rights. And they said, quote from up Dyke, too late for that, son. Yeah, you're up here doing it now. So he said that he stayed at the hotel, she went and killed her parents. She hated her parents. And that his false confession was just an attempt to take the blame for Elizabeth to save her from a death sentence if she got caught. He said, I loved Elizabeth and I believe that the only way I could save her life from the electric chair was for me to take the blame and that I personally really faced no more than a few years in a German prison. Okay. He Said I was not at the house. I was not. Um. He did say also that Elizabeth came back to the hotel room that night, sat down on the bed and said, quote, I've killed my parents. It was the drugs that made me do it. Oh, well, they deserved it anyway.

[B]

It was the drugs.

[A]

It was the drugs that made me do it. The jury spends four hours deliberating.

[B]

Yeah, it's hard to. Hard to argue this. Right.

[A]

They find him guilty of two counts of first degree murder. He collapses, has to be carried from the courtroom. During sentencing, they say, anything to say for yourself? He said, I'm innocent.

[B]

That's what I have to say about me.

[A]

They said, you, sir, may fuck off. Two consecutive life sentences. Wow. That night, Yen said he put a plastic bag over his head and tied it in place with a shoelace. And then he panicked and broke the bag before he actually.

[B]

He couldn't even do it.

[A]

Couldn't do it. So following his time in the county jail, he's incarcerated at the Southampton Reception and Classification center, then in 91 at Mecklenburg, near the southern border of the state. In 94, his unit was transferred to Keene Mountain in the Appalachian hills. He hated that shit because he has to have a cellmate rather than a single cell.

[B]

And it's probably pretty fucking cold up there in the winter.

[A]

Yeah. But he ended up with another cellmate who ended up believing him and like trying to help him.

[B]

Oh, wow.

[A]

With his innocence here. So there's a Free Jens movement. That's big.

[B]

Really.

[A]

He, by the way, while in prison, writes multiple books, finds religion, maintains his innocence. Really. In Germany, a lot of people think he's innocent. Everybody. He's got. There's documentaries made, petitions signed. There's an alternate theory. Yen supporters believe that Elizabeth killed. What's the piece of evidence in the hotel? Well, her history of manipulation. This is what they have a list. The fact that she got a lighter sentence despite arguably being more culpable inconsistencies in her testimony and the fact that typo blood found at the scene is very common. Could have been anybody. 1995, Jens writes a book called Mortal Thoughts.

[B]

Oh, yeah.

[A]

Oh, boy. It's both an autobiography and a defense. He says, although I admitted during the 8:05pm interrogation that I had not been. That I had been at the scene of the crime. I retracted that partial confession the next day and did not admit to killing Derek and Nancy Haysom until the evening of June 8. He insists his early confessions were partial and retracted, only fully admitting on the June 8 confession under duress which counters the police narratives. And it's completely different here. He says Elizabeth and Jens. This is his thing here. Elizabeth and Jens drove a rental car to Washington D.C. discussed killing her parents. They were opposed to her seeing Jens. He decided to drive to Lynchburg to kill her parents. Drove the rental car there on Saturday night. Had the knife with him. That's what he originally had done that he also wrote. This is wild. This is from his interrogation. Exactly. Had not decided to kill the Hasams. Just wanted to talk. Elizabeth stayed in Washington to set alibi. Jens entered front door. Mr. Hasom served Jens one or two stiff drinks. Mrs. Hasom came down, big argument. They're yelling. Argument got more violent. Head was ringing, tried to leave, got up, he pushed me back, hit my head. Pulled a knife out, cut him across the throat. He grabbed his throat and yelled God, you must be crazy. And all that kind of thing. Okay, now there's an alternate suspect. According to Jens, that's a guy. It's a guy named Jack. Oh, a pseudonym by the way, for a fellow University of Virginia student who is a Charlottesville based drug dealer who is blackmailing Elizabeth over her unpaid drug debt. Jens describes Jack as someone who supplied Liz with narcotics including cocaine and heroin, aligning with her admitted drug use during the relationship. According to Jens narrative, Jack threatened to expose Liz's addiction and dealings to her parents unless she made a drug run for him from Washington D.C. to Charlottesville on the weekend of March 30th 31st. This alleged blackmail is central to his claiming alibi setup. He says Liz proposed he buy movie tickets for Stranger than Paradise to cover her absence, fearing Jack's leverage could lead to coercion. Okay, now anyway. The real identity is likely a man named Jim Farmer. And investigative analysis of the case, including Soaring's own claims, identifying Jack as the stand in for Jim Farmer. And they said Farmer was allegedly owed money by Liz for drugs. But they didn't think. They said he was interviewed by police in 85 but never charged. So there you go. Another book here, the Way of the Prisoner. He wrote as well about finding meaning in incarceration. Liz is requesting parole in 1995.

[B]

Really? That's awfully early, right?

[A]

Yeah. The Virginia Parole Board denies her there because the length of her sentence and violent nature they say. And it's been 10 years. Are you out of your fucking mind?

[B]

You're already trying to get out of here. Fuck.

[A]

She only has one small prison infraction which was in the use of a prison telephone the wrong way or whatever.

[B]

Then just Hang on. You'll be out.

[A]

Hang on.

[B]

In couple dozen years, you can.

[A]

She can apply every three years.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

So there's a 1996. There's Gail Starling Marshall, who takes on Jens case here. She used to be the Deputy Attorney General of Virginia, she said. When I looked at the transcript and did some research, I realized there had been multiple, multiple very prejudicial errors in the trial. She believed that were ripe for appeal here. She said that within days of the murders, he said, basically a former deputy in Bedford county approached her when she started with this. Within days of the murders. He said he'd picked up two vagrants in Bedford not long after the crime. And there had been multiple stab wound murder in nearby Roanoke. And he was suspicious. He had let the men go, but later discovered a knife in the back seat of his car. Like when they took him there, they hit it. In Marshall's view, disclosing nothing about this before the trial amounted to a Brady violation, a prosecutorial failure to share potentially exculpatory evidence. She also concluded that the footprints analysis was bunk as well. She said smeared socks are not unique, she told me, like gloved handprints, they lack dermal ridges, marks of skin to surface contact that show what part of the foot struck where and where it moved. I think they're going on mainly that he said he did it three different fucking times. Probably going more on that than what the sock analysis was. So for 1998, the Virginia Supreme Court denied her habeas petition for his stuff. She filed a Federal 1 in U.S. district Court, which acknowledged procedural errors, but disagreed they were significant enough to overturn or send back to trial. She is denied. The US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied the petition too. She went to the US Supreme Court, who refused to take it up. She retained what she describes as a moral certainty that Soaring didn't get a fair trial and also didn't commit the murders. She, you know. In 1999, Soaring was transferred again from Keene Mountain to Wallens Ridge, a supermax facility. He was there less than a year when he transferred, negotiated a transfer to another prison after being hit with a ricocheting rubber pellet from a guard shotgun. So that was his settlement was get me out of here. In that time, his mother died. He blamed himself. He didn't listen to music because it got sad to him. So he read the Last Temptation of Christ and became a Catholic after that.

[B]

Is that right?

[A]

Easter 2002, confirmed as a Catholic. 2004. Here he said he returned from breakfast to find his cellmate and hanged himself. His second book, An Expensive Way to Make Bad People Worse, was an extensively researched case against the American prison system because it makes no sense. Like other places in the world, they figured it out, how to do it cheaper and with better results. But here, everything goes on. The fact that people want retribution rather than what's best for society. They want to punish somebody because that makes them feel good. They don't care what the outcome is. You know what I mean? Like, I get it, if they kill your kid, you want to punish them, whatever, but they want, like, we need to go to jail for drugs and all that. But it's like, yeah, but if you looked at, if you were an alien and you came down and did it from a cost analysis success analysis breakdown, you'd go, that's a terrible idea. Sure. It just doesn't work very well compared to what other people are doing. That works very well. So it's interesting. And this was, by the way, he was trying to. He wanted this to be a cause for the physically minded conservative crowd. This wasn't. This was like, hey, you want to save money? This is the way you save money. Then another witness comes forward. In the summer of 1985, Tony Marin Buchanan, the proprietor of a transmission shop near the Lynchburg city limits, was asked to report repair a two door coupe whose undercarriage was covered in mud and grass. Uh oh. Looking inside, he found the floor in the front matted with dried blood and a bloody knife had been shoved between the driver's seat and console. People went deer hunting though, and he assumed the car had been used for spotlighting, which is when you get them in your headlights and shoot them. A young woman had paid with a credit card, but she said the car belonged to a young man who accompanied her. He forgot about the episode until he saw an article about loose clippings and said he recognized Haysom in the photo and said that was the girl who was here with her damn car. He said, though the photo of Soaring didn't make sense because he said that wasn't the man who he'd seen with her at all. Okay, so that's very interesting. He said that. No way. That little SOB with his glasses was not in the shop. He said he was not in the shop. No way. So that's how that goes. Anyway, 2009, new DNA evidence emerges.

[B]

Oh, 2009? Yeah.

[A]

Shit's showing unknown.

[B]

They didn't know any of this. Yeah.

[A]

No Showing unknown male blood at the scene that does not match Yen's Supporters claim that exonerates him, really, rather than, you know, the guy who was trimming their hedges had a small cut on his hand when he collected his paycheck or something. Now, after testifying, Liz, she quit smoking, enrolled in a computer aided design course in prison. She got certified via the American Drafting Design association and began to teach the course. When she transferred to a new prison, the CAD program moved with her. She learned how to rescue to train. Rescue dogs began approaching her human students as if they were fearful animals. She said her favorites were the ones who hated school because she enjoyed flipping them. In 2007, she was certified as a Braille transcriber and started brailling books, which is actually a really cool thing to do. She was finishing her bachelor's degree through an Ohio University distance learning program. A cousin who first encountered her as a teenager said, she's entirely different from the evening I met her. Heroin addict, she said, is what she was. She also paints with oils. She composed a poem called An Ordinary Prison, which won American Center's prison writing competition. She's got all sorts of shit. She also had a novel she wrote. Okay. In prison. Liz said, this whole thing with Jens feels like a public divorce. I've chosen to do my time and to deal with it my way. He's dealing with it in his. I want him to go back to Germany so bad. Please go back to Germany. Get out of here. She also said that her love for Jens had been so true at the start that it had taken her weeks to figure out how to deal with it. She said, quote, when your mother is your lover, you get confused by affection.

[B]

Oh, no.

[A]

Now she, by the way, doesn't have a British accent anymore. She now has a faintly southern accent.

[B]

Oh, yeah, Virginia.

[A]

Okay. Interesting. She said, yeah. When brought up the man she wrote to in letters, she appeared confused and said, I don't know what to say. We were lovers for a week. She said we had a fling on a ski trip. He sent me a letter, described him as her last breath of freedom. She said, I dated some really nice guys, but it was always out of the shell. I performed with Jens, things were different. I thought he was my soulmate, my life partner, my creative partner. He opened this door for me, which some people might say it would be good to keep closed. The murder door. The murder door.

[B]

Wow.

[A]

Yeah. The I'll kill for you door. She also said that they only had sex on the night of her parents funeral. That was the first time because he'd had hangups about intercourse. Until that moment and her own sexual issues ran in odd channels because of her mother. Okay. He says they've been fucking for months. They wrote the thing we fucked three times last night. It was the best. When asked about some of her erotic letters, she said long before that, like, quote, my lips pressed into you, my tongue licking your lips, your teeth, sucking on your tongue, holding it, biting it, sucking your breath away. She said she was only trying to entice him, that's all. Yeah, you know, she said, I. A lot of responsibility for the murders falls on me, but I didn't actually kill him. That didn't happen.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

Yeah. So she said also that she was. She couldn't have driven the Chevette all the way there and she didn't know the route. Number one, this is pre gps. And she also said that because they asked about the blood, they said, well, that blood, the tennis shoe print is too small for Jens. She said it was a mystery to her, but her mother had dainty feet. She said, I believe my mother walked in her own blood. But Nancy wasn't wearing tennis shoes. That's possible, yeah. So now, will Jens be released and deported? 2010, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine approved of his transfer to Germany as a cost cutting measure. If we can get rid of prisoners, why are we. Who can leave this country and never come back again? Why are we holding onto them? So he says, fuck it, let him get out of here. But then that year, a new governor was elected and he said no first action was to revoke the consent for Jens to be transferred to Germany. We want to pay for them right here, every year. Our taxpayers want to pay for them. So the Department of Justice decision, they did a whole deal here about all of this and they were happy anyway, some people. 2016, Netflix puts out a documentary, Killing for Love, and it argues for Jens innocence.

[B]

Is that right?

[A]

Absolutely. Based on the DNA and certain things. There's also a German documentary that year called the Promise, which is also highly pro yens as well. August 2016, Jens's attorney sends a new petition to the Governor of Virginia to request the unconditional recognition of his innocence. Based on DNA analysis of those drops that shows that traces found at the scene are of a man, but that man is not Jens. Furthermore, a report from the British interrogation expert Andy Griffiths concludes that after months of analysis on all documents, there's significant doubts about the credibility of his confession. 2016, Liz does an interview saying that by the time the murders happened, she'd been sexually abused by her mother for eight years and she doesn't know what happened. 2017 till murder do Us Part documentary, which is more balanced, but still thinks Yen is innocent.

[B]

Still. Yen's innocent, huh?

[A]

2020 does a story where experts, they have a DNA expert talking about the whole thing and saying, I think we can also say there's no affirmative indication of anybody other than the victims being present at the crime scene as well, saying, you know, you can't prove he was there. Jens also talks on that special saying, it's been a very, very long, hard road for me, but I think maybe the end is now finally in sight. Tons of famous people. Martin Sheen is fucking talking to him.

[B]

Why?

[A]

He said he first learned about soaring while reading one of the six books he had published while in prison and said he had a very special writing gift. So I began correspondence, which has gone on for, I guess, about 12 years now.

[B]

Imagine that, getting a message, a letter from fucking Martin Sheen while you're in prison.

[A]

That's crazy. Music mogul Jason Flom, who I guess started helped Katy Perry start her career and is a founding board member of the Innocence Project, also said, he's somebody who could have and should have known better, and he was blinded by love.

[B]

There you go.

[A]

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, president of Germany, essentially, also had a couple of things here, had advocated for him to be released. The cops who did it. Chuck Reed. Remember Chuck?

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

He's seen some shit, he said, as far as him physically killing these people. No, I don't think he did.

[B]

Why?

[A]

And Chip Harding, the Alberta Mall county sheriff, said, if you break it down and look at what the evidence truly is, I don't feel like it would support the conviction if he was tried today. So there's more. All the DNA stuff they're talking about, DNA experts are coming in to work on the case, but that just because there's other blood doesn't mean it's not him that's the problem. 2019 A question of Guilt documentary heavily pro Yens also, Elizabeth is up for parole in 2019. She has a great record in prison. She's done all sorts of shit. One of the people from the parole board said, at this point, I don't feel like at this point she's a threat to society. There's no one else to kill. Yeah. Her cousin said there comes a time when it serves no purpose whatsoever to keep her in the prison. I don't believe Elizabeth poses any threat to society. She also said, I don't wish her well. I'm not opposed to her getting her freedom, but maybe in another two or three years for what I consider really happened. She hasn't paid the price. Her family and talk about it. A lot of her family thinks she was there. Jens didn't act alone. But the general consensus is I don't really care if she goes. She's getting deported anyway. So she is granted parole in 2019.

[B]

What the fuck?

[A]

She is in early 2020 though. Deported to Canada where she's never allowed to return to the United States.

[B]

Okay.

[A]

She gives one interview where she says, I paid my debt. I want to move on with my life. Okay. 2019. Then Governor Ralph Northam orders a new investigation. The report, it's inconclusive. Inconclusive, but raises questions about the original investigation. DNA evidence suggested the presence of two unknown males at the scene, but the evidence was degraded and inconclusive. So basically the governor can said that he stated his investigation did not support Jens's innocence. It didn't support anything. It was inconclusive. 2019, he's up for parole.

[B]

Oh, Jesus.

[A]

And they say the the parole board grants him parole in 2019.

[B]

Is that right?

[A]

Not because they think he's innocent, but because he served 33 years. He was only 18 or 19 when it happened and they don't think he's.

[B]

A threat now just because of the service time. Okay.

[A]

He said, I'm innocent. I've always been innocent. Elizabeth Haysom killed her parents and I've spent 33 years in prison for her crimes.

[B]

That is crazy.

[A]

Then they go, the airport's that way and he's deported back to fucking Germany where he's never allowed back again.

[B]

Get out. Luxembourg?

[A]

I don't know. Yeah, yeah. No, Luxembourg's own country.

[B]

Johannesburg, I don't know.

[A]

You can go with Munich.

[B]

Munich.

[A]

There you go. Okay. Now there's a book special report by Terry Wright, which is a breakdown of a massive 455 page investigative report by former detective Terry Wright titled A true report on the facts of the investigation of the murders of Derek and Nancy Haysam. Holy shit. He says the report argues Jens may have been the victim of a massive injustice. Oh, they said that Lies from everybody. Forensic evidence that didn't. Didn't really support anything and everything like that. He deep dives about blood matches and it's a long thing. We literally could have done five hours on this show. Yeah, it's crazy. So this guy has his whole book. Yen still maintains his innocence. He publishes books, appears in the media. He appeared in 2023, the new Netflix documentary about this case. It's a four part series that came out then. He's written for German newspapers about criminal justice reform.

[B]

Really?

[A]

He's never married, lives alone and is obsessed by the case. Liz lives in Canada under supervision. She's changed her appearance significantly and reportedly works in a garden center.

[B]

Really?

[A]

Yep. Conspiracy theories are CIA connection from steel industry days. No evidence drug deal gone wrong that the Hasams were involved in drug trafficking. That's ridiculous obviously, but in the Internet. On the Internet, it's true. And of course the third person theory, someone who helped with the murders but was never caught. Some point to Elizabeth's ex boyfriend, others to a mysterious German friend of Jens who was never identified. There is two unknown male DNA profiles that we still haven't found. A lot of good information also came from a New Yorker article from 2015 by Nathan Heller. Just to give credit there. There you go, everybody. That's Lynchburg.

[B]

I can't imagine.

[A]

Holy shit. A lot of people think Jens is 100% innocent. I mean, that seems to be like the prevailing thought, which I'm like, I don't think I would admit to that a bunch of times and have that detailed of an account of it. But I think I've never killed anybody. I don't know. So there you go. There's Lynchburg. We have to bust through this quick. If you like the show, give us five stars on whatever app you're listening to. It helps drive us up the charts. Shut up and give me murder.com is where you get all your merchandise. Usually all of your tickets too, but there's no tickets available right now. Everything's sold out this year. New slate of shows for next year. So keep your eyes out for that. Follow us on social media. MallTownMurder on Instagram, SmallTown Pot on Facebook for sure. Get yourself Patreon. P A T R e o n patreon.com crimeinsports just like the name of our other show. Anybody $5 a month or above, you get hundreds of bonus episodes you've never heard before. As soon as you subscribe, new ones every other week. One Crime in Sports, One Small Town Murder. You get them all. It's a lot. And you get all the shows ad free as well. That we put out everything and you get a shout out at the end of the show. This week the shows are Team Relocations Part two for Crime and sports, American Prison System Origins and Where We Are Now. Also. That said, Jimmy, hit me with the names of the best people on the face of this earth that keep this show rolling and rolling smoothly. Hit me with Them.

[B]

Right now, this week's executive producer, Julia Hayes. Elena Zamla, my favorite Canadian, Amanda Duncan, celebrating personal victories. Thank you all so much for what you're doing. And also thank you other producers this week. Liz Vasquez, Peyton Meadows, Corporal Carl Kirschner, back again. Missed you so much, pal. Happy hour checking in in horrible. Eloy, Arizona. What a terrible place.

[A]

Wow.

[B]

Poor bastard. Janice Hill, Chris Frison. Happy birthday, Chris. Jesus. Stay away from the personal items, Chris. Jessica Chamberlain, Tanya with no last name. Mary lynch and Ballard. Casey Booth, Adria Devereaux, Kyle with no last name. Mother Goose. Sarah Kosser, Lawrence Yarrow, Sarah Chalafo, Judy Goldman. John Uncart, Shelby Holder. Money. Willie Monroe, Jennifer Jarrett. Jen Jarrett, Hanson Williams, Alexis Stewart, Adam Harris. Eisenhower Troy Mapp. Melissa Needfeldt. Liz with no last name. Araya Papaya Morgan with no last name. Leanne Fields. Zirkel Zirkel. Ryan Carragher, Whitney Martinez, Lauren with no last name. Tommy Laub. Amanda with no last name. Jonathan Phillips, Ethan Snow, Katie with no last name. Kim Kelly, Jim's wife. Sean Wengrin, Gina Bina, John Shattuck, Dane Morton, Marty Bond Demuth. Paul Cameron, Athena Jacobson, Matthew Blanco, Sophia Harnety, Karen Mays, Macy Mace, Danica Hershey, Heidi Flores. Haiti. Maybe it's Heidi, right? With a Y. That's bizarre.

[A]

It's different. But hey, you know what? What are you going to do?

[B]

To each their own. Victoria Salmon, Marissa Elizabeth, Hannah Gelson, Gilson Mackenzie Harmonka, Jacob. Not Bush.

[A]

I don't.

[B]

I think that's a last name. Not Bush. Miranda Daniels, Jennifer Brown, Chubetz Chubits Chabettes. Kyle Keast, Thomas Paelli. Yvette Jackson. Jennifer Roger. What?

[A]

Is it the name of my background singers. The Chubettes. Yeah, I like them.

[B]

Yvette Jackson. Jennifer Rogers, Mark d', Andrea. Danny B. Behemoth with no last name. Kathy Rothberg, Bbl Anor. All right, I got it. Yeah, she's got a big ass. James. Or he does. Oh, I don't care. Good for you. Brenda Burkett. Christopher Campbell. Chris Rada, Kimberly Roberts, Ali Miller, Brian Knotts, Victoria Chaquin. Chaquin, maybe. Leslie Brown Campbell. Brandon Miller, Michael Simons, Sean with no last name. Dan Walters, Caleb Board. Chris Flynn. Tracy with no last name. Mel Johansen, Cody Ellis, Tom Digiano. Susan Gator. Joshua o', Halick. Neil Tyson, John with no last name. Adam Farrer. Jamie Ohio is amazing. Metcalf. So now I can't take anything you say seriously. Courtney Fulton.

[A]

It's all suspect now.

[B]

Sabrina Coleman. Oh, Bofa D's nuts. Okay, well, not just the left nor the right. Hannah Norton. Both of them. Teresa White, Lisa Porter, Young, Jesse True, Liam with no last name. Kristen. Haran Horan. Maybe Andrea Baker. Hey, I think I know her. Taylor Damron Dameron. Laura Darling, Ron Bradley with no last name. Kmm. And all of our patrons. You guys are the greatest, the best people. Thank you.

[A]

Thank you so much, everybody. You fantastic, spectacular bastards. We appreciate all that you do for us, Patreon. You're amazing people, honestly. Thank you for supporting the show in that way because that's all money that goes right into our pockets. So thank you. No sharing it with people. It's lovely. Thanks for doing that. Keep coming back week after week. We got more shit for you. Next week we're gonna do more crazy shit. We got more shit for you for express. So keep doing that. And until next week, everybody, it's been our pleasure. Bye. Marketing is hard, but I'll tell you a little secret. It doesn't have to be. Let me point something out. You're listening to a podcast right now and it's great. You love the host. You seek it out and download it. You listen to it while driving, working out, cooking, even going to the bathroom. Podcasts are a pretty close companion. And this is a podcast ad. Did I get your attention? You can reach great listeners like yourself with podcast advertising from Libsyn Ads. Choose from hundreds of top podcasts offering host endorsements or run a pre produced ad like this one across thousands of shows. To reach your target audience in their favorite podcasts with Libsyn Ads, go to libsynads. Com, that's L, I B S Y N ads dot com. Today.