Month: December 2003

When UVA student Andrew Alston was charged with the murder of Walker Sisk on November 8, the tail ends of news stories in the Richmond Times-Dispatch and The Daily Progress cited another recent case of a UVA student to be charged with murder. “That’s me, the last paragraph,” says convicted murderer Jens Soering from a visiting room at the Brunswick Correctional Center in south central Virginia. Soering is a former Jefferson Scholar and honor student at UVA who, in 1990, was found guilty of the 1985 murder of Derek and Nancy Haysom at their Bedford County home. The Haysoms’ daughter, Elizabeth Haysom, was Soering’s girlfriend and fellow UVA student. Soering still vigorously proclaims his innocence in the gruesome slayings.

Though Soering talks of his recent news cameo with a wry tone that suggests embarrassment, he is working hard to ensure his story and his self-proclaimed “mission” are far more than just a throwaway paragraph in a newspaper story.

As of October, Soering is a published author with a book called The Way of the Prisoner: Breaking the Chains of Self Through Centering Prayer and Centering Practice. Soering’s book, available on Amazon.com, includes a jacket endorsement from Sister Helen Prejean, the author of Dead Man Walking. In the last year Soering has written dozens of essays that deal with prison reform and Christian prayer techniques, several of which have been published in venues such as America: The Catholic Weekly Magazine and Sojourners Magazine. He has also just finished the handwritten manuscript of a second book, a consideration of the penal system.

“There are things about us that never change,” Soering says of his dogged academic discipline, which earned him a full ride to UVA in 1984. “I can’t be the best student, but I can be the best damn convict.”

The budding prison author does not appear likely to rest on his laurels. Soering says that between his waking hours of 4:45am to 8:15pm, he crams in a daily ritual of writing, prayer, exercise and a job representing other inmates in a jailhouse tribunal. Soering has never received a prison demerit in the more than 17 years he’s been in jail.

“I’m in the saddle and I work. This is my job,” Soering says of his prison life. “Trust me, this is just the start, I’m just getting going.”

Soering was exposed to Buddhism as a child, but remained agnostic until his conversion to Christianity in 1994. Soering’s The Way of the Prisoner is mostly a tutorial in a Christian form of meditation called Centering Prayer, which Soering extrapolates to a broader lifestyle/teaching he calls Centering Practice. But the book is also a thorough rebuttal of Soering’s guilty verdict and a denunciation of the United States prison system. Though Soering insists the murder case comprises a small portion of the book and can be skipped without interrupting the flow of its spiritual side, the graphic and disturbing descriptions of his murder case and prison life interspersed among scriptural references and prayer techniques make for a bumpy reading experience.

“Could I have written just a little book on prayer? Sure. Who the hell would buy it?” Soering asks.

But Soering’s book raises another concern: Should people value a convicted double murderer’s opinions on prison reform or Christian prayer? Furthermore, should Soering profit from the sales of his book?

This is a dilemma Soering anticipated, and his book is rife with attempts to defend his role as message bearer. For instance, he argues: Who better to advise people with a terminal illness than a man who sat behind bars for more than three years awaiting almost certain death by the electric chair? And doesn’t a convict who has served 17 years in Virginia’s prisons have some expertise on the ills of the penal system?

Captain Ricky Gardner of the Bedford County Sheriff’s Department was a Bedford cop who investigated the Haysoms’ murder. He traveled to London, where Soering was eventually apprehended, to participate in Soering’s interrogation and helped take two separate confessions from Soering. It was Gardner’s first murder case. “I picked a good one,” he says.

Gardner expressed curiosity about Soering’s book, and though he says Soering’s publishing foray doesn’t bother him, but he adds: “I’m sure it does offend the victims’ families.”

“I don’t know that he’ll ever step up to the plate and tell the truth,” Gardner says of Soering’s continued insistence of his innocence.

Soering’s book is published by Lantern Books, a New York-based publisher that specializes in authors with a spiritual or liberal activism bent. The book sports a price tag of $17.95, but whether Soering can reap any of the profits from the book’s sale is unclear. Many states have so-called “Son-of-Sam” laws, named for infamous New York City serial killer David Berkowitz. Virginia has a Son of Sam law on the books, which mandates that a defendant must forfeit any proceeds gained as result of his crime, or even from “the notoriety which such crime or sentence has conferred on him.”

Soering did his homework on the Son of Sam rule—even citing the Virginia Code on his prison-produced website. He says Way of the Prisoner should be in the clear, as he states that less than 10 percent of the tome actually deals with his case. He further covers his bases by volunteering to cede all royalties from the book to charity, with the exception of a portion to cover his writing expenses—stamps, photocopying of manuscripts, etc.

Sarah Gallogly is Soering’s editor at Lantern. She says Soering’s book “was wonderful to work on because it was so well written.” Lantern usually prints a small first run of its author’s books, and then ups the ante on reprints.

“We have hopes for it certainly in the religious community,” Gallogly says of sales of Soering’s book.

Gallogly could not say what percentage of the book’s royalties would go to Soering. She says Lantern is aware of the Son of Sam snag, but received “legal advice to the effect that there probably aren’t grounds” for Virginia to grab the book’s revenue.

Larry Traylor, a spokesperson for the Virginia Department of Corrections, says the decision to pursue Soering’s proceeds is probably up to the Commonwealth Attorneys or local district that originally prosecuted him—in this case, Bedford County.

 

Most people involved in the Soering trial, or even just familiar with it, likely wish that Jens Soering would remain hidden in his cell, never to be heard from again. But he continues to find and cultivate influential allies and to garner attention from behind bars with persuasive words and considerable charm.

In his preface to The Way of the Prisoner, Rev. Richard A. Busch, Ph.D., a Professor Emeritus at the Virginia Theological Seminary, writes that after reading Soering’s manuscript, he began corresponding with Soering and visiting him on a regular basis. He describes Soering as “a very special human being” who is both bright and articulate.

“Jens has a rare gift: the ability to deal with deep issues of the human spirit,” Rev. Busch writes, adding that Soering has “awakened in me a growing involvement in prison issues and reform.”

Soering appears sincere in his quest to spread the word about the power of Christian meditation and the ills of Virginia’s prison system. But his personal story of suffering and eventual transcendence is prominent in the book, whether as a case study for how to apply Centering Practice, or to illustrate prison failures and the power of forgiveness.

“I’ve been kidnapped…for a very long time. Yeah, the only way I can deal with that is to make it about something larger than myself,” Soering says. “Man, you can find a guy like me in every cell house, and every penitentiary. I’m just a guy who can write it, and who can make the biblical and scriptural connections. Which is why I say that God sent me here for that purpose. Other guys are just not as eloquent as I am.”

Soering has always stood out from the crowd, for good or for ill. And though The Way of the Prisoner is loaded with research and well-elucidated arguments, it is decidedly about one particular prisoner.

Though Soering expects to die in prison, the notorious former Charlottesville denizen says the town remains prominent in his thoughts.

“I just have good memories of it,” Soering says of Charlottesville. “I’d like to see people, you know, lying on the Lawn at UVA, you know, between classes, and, you know, reading this,” he says pointing to the book. “Why not?”

When asked where his favorite pre-prison memories occurred, Soering cites his grandmother’s chateau on Lake Geneva, in Switzerland. But he reluctantly admits he’d rather trade another fantasy life for that of a luxurious existence in Europe.

“I would like to be exonerated. I would like the INS [Immigration and Naturalization Services] to give me a green card because I don’t want to leave, O.K.?” Soering says. “And I would like to be sort of the resident UVA law school weenie responsible for being the gadfly on the Department of Corrections’ behind.”

That fantasy will remain on hold while Soering continues to serve two life sentences for the murder of Derek and Nancy Haysom. He is incarcerated with approximately 760 other inmates at the Brunswick Correctional Center, which is about 15 miles from the North Carolina border. The Brunswick facility is only about a 140-mile drive from Charlottesville, but the journey seems to traverse a distinct regional boundary.

One of the northerly approaches to the prison is a twisting and unlined road with trees crowding each side. The Brunswick County Chamber of Commerce claims as many major correctional facilities as hotels, and the nearest town of Lawrenceville is a sleepy place of 1,275 people. The prison itself is a tidy, brick complex with two rows of razor-wire-enforced fences. The maximum security level for a Virginia prison is six. Brunswick is level three.

Soering lets himself into a small, cold visiting room with bars on one row of windows, and smiles as he removes an orange wool cap, which he stuffs into his jacket pocket. He is not wearing any form of restraint or any overt markings of his prisoner status. The only visible sign of security in the vicinity is a revolver, which lies between a Subway beverage cup and a tape dispenser in the adjacent guard station, its chamber open and displaying six bullets.

Though prison life at Brunswick differs radically from Soering’s earlier turns as a promising UVA honors student, or even as a young adult on the run with his girlfriend in Europe, a static existence has never been Soering’s fate. He was born in Bangkok, Thailand, to a German diplomat and his wife and spent the rest of his pre-adulthood on the island of Cyprus, in Germany and finally at a prep school in Atlanta. German is Soering’s native tongue, and he retains a subtle, highbrow accent tinged by German and the British school English he learned as a small child on Cyprus.

The global-elite upbringing led to a feeling of detachment for young Jens, a feeling that has persisted during his long incarceration. But that wasn’t the case during his brief time at UVA.

“UVA was like, it was like heaven,” Soering says. “For the first time in my life I was surrounded by people like me.”

One of those people was Elizabeth Haysom, an attractive freshman honors student at UVA who was almost two years older than Soering. Haysom was the daughter of a Nova Scotia steel company executive, and had a penchant for heroin, LSD and extravagant tales, many of them untrue. Like Soering, Haysom had lived a sophisticated life replete with international experiences. She was born in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and lived in Luxembourg, Canada and England prior to her family’s move to a Bedford County suburb of Lynchburg. As a teenager, Haysom ran away from her English boarding school and took an illicit sojourn with a female friend around Europe.

Both Soering and Haysom have admitted that their relationship resulted in the deaths of Elizabeth’s parents, Derek and Nancy, reported to be 72 and 54, respectively, at the time of their deaths. The Haysoms were murdered in a brutal attack, their bodies discovered a few days later, on April 3, 1985. They had both been stabbed many times, and had massive slashes to their throats. The scene at their home was gruesome, with blood coating the floors. There was no sign of forced entry [see sidebar].

Several months after the murders, following being questioned about their activities during the presumed weekend of the murder, Soering and Haysom fled the country. They traveled together to Bangkok, France, Switzerland, England and perhaps elsewhere.

Police arrested the jet-setting couple for an attempted shoplifting scam at an upscale department store in a London suburb in April 1986. Haysom was extradited and pleaded guilty as an accessory to the murder of her parents, and was convicted in October 1987. Soering initially confessed, repeatedly, to the murders. He now claims he did so to save his girlfriend and in the mistaken belief that, as a German citizen, he would be deported to Germany and tried as a minor. He was eventually extradited to Virginia and tried in Bedford County in June 1990—more than five years after the homicides. Though he recanted his confessions, his letters to Haysom and a bloody sock print from the scene of the murders that seemed to match Soering’s foot proved more compelling to the six men and six women on the jury. Soering’s supercilious aura didn’t help his defense, either. The jury convicted him of both murders on June 21, 1990, and he was sentenced to two life sentences.

 

On the night of his conviction, Soering says he made a half-hearted attempt to kill himself with a plastic bag and shoestrings. He survived, and has now become a disciplined veteran prisoner, a self-described “old head.” The baby fat-addled awkwardness he displayed during the trial, enhanced by thick glasses and a bowl haircut, has been replaced by a trim and confident looking 37-year-old man who lifts weights and jogs four to five miles every other day. Though fit, he certainly doesn’t look like a prison goon. He is slight, and his wire-rim glasses and neat haircut give him an intellectual air.

During our interview in the Brunswick prison, Soering thoughtfully responds to questions and displays a healthy amount of humility. He is quick-witted, likeable and laughs often. He claims to be “content” with his current life, which is dominated by Christian devotion and his mission of prison reform, but is in no way at peace with his imprisonment.

“Seventeen years, six months and 14 days have been taken out of my life,” Soering pauses, looks at his watch, and continues, “21 hours and 53 minutes, O.K. I know by the hour. I’m owed something. And I’m not just owed my puny little freedom.”

Soering says his ultimate goal is “to shine a light into what’s happening here, in America’s vastly overbuilt prison system, and to get justice.”

The foundation for Soering’s quest for justice is The Way of the Prisoner, a book Soering began on the day in January 2001 when the U.S. Supreme Court squashed all hopes of having his name cleared by the legal system. By denying his habeas corpus petition and refusing to hear his case, the Supreme Court effectively closed the file on the Haysoms’ murder forever.

Though Soering is eligible for parole, he says his release is unlikely. He was denied parole at his first parole board hearing in September.

So Soering, who claims to be an innocent man who was railroaded for life because of his foolishness and law enforcement’s need for a scapegoat, says he’s funneled his energy into helping the 2.1 million other incarcerated Americans, whom he calls “my brothers and my sisters.”

Soering’s book describes an instance when a fellow inmate grabbed him and threatened to drag him into a cell and rape him. Soering escaped this attack. Though disturbing, it seems surprising that this is Soering’s chief example of violence against him in his 17 years in Virginia prisons. In the book, Soering says Mecklenburg Correctional Center, the “supermax” at which this attack occurred, was “a comparatively successful and well-run prison” with vocational training, high school and college classes, libraries and five separate recreational yards. In fact, the British prison where inmates twice broke Soering’s thumb and wrist sounds rougher than Virginia’s pens.

But Soering’s success at surviving need not mean that Virginia’s lock-ups are soft, or even humane. The fact that a pencil-necked former UVA honors student can thwart a prison rape and become adept at navigating the myriad hazards of a penitentiary is evidence that a keen intellect can triumph over brawn even in the primordial, dog-eat-dog world of prison.

Soering’s major beef with the American justice system, as described in his book, is that it is rife with gross “mockeries of justice” in which the accused are not given fair trials. His point is not to say that convicts are necessarily innocent, but that the system itself is flawed because of the pressure to find and convict criminals. Soering writes that all Americans have a responsibility to correct the alleged flaws in the criminal justice system.

The Way of the Prisoner issues a strong suggestion for pursuing both contemplative peace and prison activism. “It is really so very simple: to learn how to carry your cross willingly, truthfully, dispassionately and altruistically—that is, to transform your metaphorical prison into your means of salvation—you must go to a real penitentiary over and over and over again, as a tutor, visitor or even minister.”

Soering also argues that reformed criminals should be released. As an example of this conviction and of the power of forgiveness, his book includes a letter he recently sent to Virginia Gov. Mark Warner asking for the release of Elizabeth Haysom. He concludes the book with a plea for the reader to send similar letters asking for Haysom’s freedom.

This act may be nothing more than the sincere example of Christian charity it purports to be. But Soering and his former lawyer admit that his chances of parole are extremely slim while Haysom, who was convicted of a lesser crime than Soering, remains in bars.

So in a way, the book Soering began on the day his appeals died continues his quest for freedom.

 

“Parole is not imminent,” Soering jokes after being asked if he has time to extend a prison interview.

Though his appeals are over, Soering can say he pulled all the stops in pursuing them. In addition to reaching the highest court in the land, he found an influential advocate to represent him during his appeals: Gail Starling Marshall, an adjunct professor at the UVA Law School and former Deputy Attorney General of Virginia.

In an interview at a coffee shop inside UVA law school, Marshall says she is no longer Soering’s attorney, but considers him to be a friend. Marshall says that in her 35 years of practice, only twice has she felt with “moral certainty” that a person had been convicted and was serving time for a crime he did not commit. She says one of those two cases is Soering’s.

“I cannot imagine that he is guilty, just because of the whole Gestalt of the circumstances,” Marshall says of Soering. “If he is [guilty], he doesn’t believe it.”

In addition to handling Soering’s appeals, Marshall recently wrote a lengthy letter to his parole board. In the letter, she contends that Soering is likely innocent, that he has shown no propensity toward violence while in prison, and that the parole board must make a good faith effort to grant parole where it is applicable. (Virginia eliminated parole after Soering was incarcerated, but he remains eligible.)

Marshall was joined at the recent parole hearing by one of Soering’s prep school buddies. Marshall says seeing Soering’s friend, now a banker in London, made her almost break down in tears.

“He [was] just such a nice, intelligent, caring, clean-cut young man,” Marshall says. “It was almost like seeing what might have been, for Jens.”

From Soering’s point of view, his incarceration has actually made him a better person. He says the overbearing intellectualism of his youth, now tempered by humility, did not serve him well during the period of the murders, or during his trial.

“I’m pretty sure that I thought [my intellectualism] made me better than a lot of people. I was a little shining, a little rising star,” Soering says.

Though Soering rebuts questions about his ego with aplomb, and displays humility in his book, he admits to being proud of his accomplishments in prison.

“Anybody who knows anything throughout the publishing industry, O.K., should be absolutely flabbergasted a convict managed to do this, because it’s so hard for you guys out there,” Soering says. He is even confident that the recent removal of his access to a word processor will not stall his publishing efforts: “I’m a resourceful young man who always finds an alternative.”

Soering has hit his academic stride 18 years after his last class at UVA. But the brief sense of belonging he felt as a Jefferson Scholar remains elusive. His father has ceased funding his efforts, and Soering writes at length about his brother Kai’s long abandonment of him. Though Soering says he has a few “associates” in his current prison (the word “friend” has an entirely different connotation behind bars), his true thrill in life is in trying to communicate with the outside world.

Soering is a prompt and helpful correspondent, and has submitted three essays to C-VILLE Weekly. Gallogly says Soering’s meticulousness and expedient response time helped her in the editing process with an author who communicated mostly through handwritten notes.

Fortunately for Soering, he has been able to enlist the help of fellow inmates and other prison visitors to help him in his writing ventures. One prisoner’s mother took the manuscript of his first book, photocopied it and helped him with distribution. Soering says his cellmate, who he says goes by the name “Lap Dog,” created and maintains his website, and also took the picture that graces the back cover of his book.

Though he may find believers in the Brunswick lock-up, and beyond its confines, Soering probably won’t find much sympathy in the Lynchburg area. Remembering the profound loathing people had of Soering, Marshall says she still “gets chills” while driving through Bedford County.

Soering traveled through the region on his last trip outside of the razor wire fences, when he was moved from the Wallens Ridge State Prison in July 2000. After a circuitous route that took him to two other prisons, Soering’s prison van headed toward the Brunswick prison, passing through Lynchburg and Bedford County. He says any memories of his murder trial were overwhelmed by another observation.

“The area around Lynchburg is just breathtakingly beautiful,” Soering says. “It was so gorgeous. It was fog and light. Man, it was beautiful.”

After wrapping up a long interview in a visiting room at Brunswick, Soering waits patiently in the sunlight of a chilly day for the gated door to let him back into the yard. He smiles at a prison guard.

After Soering is gone, I wait to cross through two different barriers, eventually to pass into the visitor’s parking lot. One of the prison guards sees me holding Soering’s book and asks if the recently departed prisoner is the author. The guard follows me beyond one of the gates, and asks for the title of the book. She says she has worked at Brunswick for five years, and though she doesn’t know who Soering is, or, presumably, that he was convicted of a double homicide, she wants to read the book “to just know how things went” for Soering behind bars.