Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SATURDAY, June 23, 1990 TAG: 9006260387
SECTION: EDITORIAL PAGE: A-9 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE:
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Haysom, who testified that Soering committed the murders after she had manipulated him into hating her parents, was not the most credible of witnesses: She has offered conflicting versions of her story, and she is serving a 90-year sentence for helping plan the killings. But she had apparently little to gain by fingering Soering; besides, there was ample physical evidence for the jury to consider.
The trial would have been sensational in any event. The Haysoms were wealthy. Soering is the son of a West German diplomat. At the time of the murders, Haysom and Soering were honor students at the University of Virginia.
Adding to public interest was the fact that Bedford County is one of a handful of Virginia jurisdictions that, under a state experiment, allows cameras and microphones to cover court proceedings. A Roanoke station, WDBJ-TV, televised tape delays of most of the trial during the early morning hours.
There is potential for abuse in admitting cameras to courtrooms. But in Bedford, the experiment may have passed an acid test. Viewers - and there were many - may have been as fascinated by the workings of the law as by the sordid details of the crime. The public had one more point of access for understanding and evaluating the system of criminal justice.
In a way, the question of which conspirator actually committed the murders isn't crucial. As convicted plotter, Haysom must serve 12 years before becoming eligible for parole; as convicted first-degree murderer, Soering must serve 20. But both will be in prison for a long time, and are unlikely to win parole as soon as they are eligible.
Even so, it's important for society to sort out the truth as best it can. Murder victims can't be returned to life. But at least society can seek, through the law's sifting of evidence and punishing of the guilty, to reach a kind of resolution to the horror.
ALSO THURSDAY, an Augusta County jury found Tommy David Strickler guilty of the murder of Leann Whitlock, the James Madison University student from Roanoke who in January was abducted from a Harrisonburg shopping mall and then killed brutally in a field near Waynesboro. The jury sentenced Strickler to death.
The mystery of the Haysom-Soering case is why two young and intelligent people with bright futures would destroy their own lives. The mystery of the Strickler case is why others should wish to destroy the bright future of the young victim: Leann Whitlock, whose father is a Roanoke Times & World-News employee, was by all accounts a buoyant young lady who was preparing to make - was already making - her mark on the world.
If anything, the random nature of Whitlock's murder makes it more horrifying than the murders of the Haysoms.
Strickler, one of whose suspected accomplices remains at large, made a tearful apology before the death sentence was pronounced, and shed more tears on the way back to jail. We cry too, but not for Strickler. We cry for Leann Whitlock, and because of the evil that robbed the world of the rest of her life.
by CNB