Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, June 18, 1990 TAG: 9006180280
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/1 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: DAVID M. POOLE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
"Did you go to the home of Derek and Nancy Haysom and kill Mr. and Mrs. Haysom?" Soering was asked when he took the stand today by one of his attorneys, Rick Neaton of Detroit.
"No," Soering replied.
The West German national also denied being inside the home when the Haysoms were killed. Soering spoke in a soft voice with a British accent.
Soering told the jury that he and Elizabeth were in Georgetown that Saturday and she left to take care of some drug business.
When she returned later that night, she told him that she had killed her parents.
"I was terrified," he said. "I had to protect her. I could not turn her in."
He said he was in love with Haysom at the time. "I don't think anyone could do that - turn someone in to be executed. She came to me for help. If I didn't help her, she would die," he said.
Soering said he had no idea she planned to kill her parents. "I was not part of any conspiracy," he said.
Soering's testimony contradicts at least three confessions he gave police in 1986.
In those statements, Soering said he drove to Boonsboro in Bedford County the night of March 30, 1985, to confront the Haysoms about their opposition to his relationship with their youngest child, Elizabeth.
Soering - at the time an 18-year-old freshman at the University of Virginia - said he stabbed the couple to death and then returned to Washington, D.C., where Elizabeth Haysom was staging an alibi.
Soering's lawyers have argued that Elizabeth Haysom killed her parents and then persuaded Soering to take the blame.
Today, Soering testified that he had not been under oath during any of his previous statements to police. He began to recount what he now claims to be the true sequence of events on the weekend the Haysoms were killed.
Soering, now 23, is being tried on two counts of first-degree murder in a Bedford County Circuit Court trial that today entered its third week.
If convicted, he could be sentenced to up to two life terms in prison.
Elizabeth Haysom, now 26, testified last week that she and Soering plotted her parents' murders during their first year as UVa honor students. Haysom is serving a 90-year prison term for her admitted role in the slayings.
by CNB