RICKY GARDNER AND KEN BEEVER WANTED VERY badly to talk to Elizabeth Haysom.
Just as badly, Elizabeth Haysom did
not
want to talk to them.
But, instead of immediately summoning her for an interview, the investigators went first to Jens. It was not until late the next afternoon that they brought Elizabeth in. She was not at all happy to see them.
The day before officers had searched her cell and confiscated letters Jens had written her since they had been arrested. She was angry about that. She also was still off balance from the unexpected appearance of Gardner and what brought him: the fact that police had found the journal of their travels through Europe and Asia
and
the letters they had written each other while they were at UVA.
In Virginia she had been cooperative and voluble, willing to expound to Gardner at any time on practically any subject. When he met with her on Friday afternoon she was surly and tight-lipped, determined to say as little as possible. When she came in the room, Gardner stood and offered her a chair. She refused. He read her rights and asked her to sign a paper confirming that he had complied with U.S. law. She refused that too. He shrugged and nodded at Beever, who explained her rights under British law. “You’re not obliged to say anything unless you wish to do so,” he said kindly enough. “Anything you do say will be taken down in writing and later given in evidence. Do you understand that?”
“Yes, I do,” Elizabeth answered churlishly.
Beever asked her if she would tell him about her parents, where they were and where she was in early 1985. She
snapped that she had already been through that with the Virginia investigators. Beever ignored her rudeness, reminding her firmly that she was not in Virginia but in England.
Elizabeth said she wanted to talk to her solicitor. Beever ignored her, pointing out that she had just met with him for thirty minutes. “You had an idea before we came in what we wanted to talk to you about. I think it’s fair to say that we should be getting on with it.”
Reluctantly, like a chastened child, Elizabeth confirmed facts about her family as Beever read them out from a transcript of the interview she had with Gardner and Debbie Kirkland on the day after the memorial service for her parents.
“Would you just care to discuss with me briefly how well you got on with members of your family?” Beever asked.
“No,” she shot back.
He managed to look looked surprised. “Do you think it’s anything sinister in me asking that?” he asked innocently, mindful that he was trying to lull her into a confession.
“No,” she replied in a tone that let him know she knew what he was trying to do. The cat and mouse game was underway.
“Do you remember discussing how you got along with your brothers and sister in the previous interview?” he continued.
She looked at him blankly and said she couldn’t recall.
THROUGH A SERIES OF QUESTIONS, WHICH ELIZABETH ANSWERED tersely, Beever and Gardner established for the record that she had lived at home with her parents for approximately nine months before leaving for UVA.
“During that period of time was your relationship okay?” Beever wanted to know.
“I—” she started, then clamped her mouth shut.
“Did you have any arguments with them?”
“No reply,” she said emphatically. The investigators would soon come to hate those two words.
“Do you remember telling me,” Gardner interjected, “about your very, very loving relationship with your parents, how much in love you were with the two of them?”
“I’m trying, but that’s been a long, long time ago,” she said caustically.
Beever tried a softer approach. “Perhaps that’s what I was trying to get at as opposed to arguments with your parents,” he said. “You loved your parents, didn’t you?”
“I loved my parents,” she said emphatically.
“We’ve all got parents,” he said soothingly. “We’ve all had tiffs with them, and we’ve fallen out with them for a couple of days and everything is fine again. That’s what I was trying to get at.”
She was not to be mollified. “I have always loved my parents,” she repeated.
“Always?” Beever pressed.
“Always!”
SEEING THEY WERE RUNNING UP A DEAD-END STREET, the investigators went at the issue from a different angle.
“Did you intend to get married to Jens?” Beever asked abruptly.
Elizabeth was not surprised. “When?”
“At any time. If you would like to give me a date, I’d accept it.”
“We discussed the possibility, yes.”
“Just you and Jens?”
“How many are getting married?” she asked sarcastically.
“I’m sorry,” Beever apologized. “When you said ‘we,’ perhaps I was reading more into it. Did you discuss it with Mom and Dad?”
“No, we hadn’t discussed marriage at all at that stage.”
“Were your parents aware of your association with Jens?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what they thought of your association with Jens?”
“I know what they said. I don’t know what they felt.”
“What did they say to you then?”
“I don’t think it’s relevant.”
“Well, it might not seem relevant to you,” Beever said in exasperation, “but it could be fairly relevant to me. Would you like to answer the question?”
“No.”
In fact, Derek and Nancy had been increasingly anxious about the relationship. Elizabeth’s half-brother Howard told investigators that Derek had particularly disliked Jens and that he and Nancy were trying to find a way to separate the two young lovers, even if it meant sending Elizabeth away again. Almost certainly, Derek and Nancy would not have told Howard anything they would not have told Elizabeth, so she undoubtedly was aware of their attitude.
Since she and Jens had fled to Europe, Elizabeth had had no contact with her siblings. They, in turn, had informally designated Howard to be the family contact with the Virginia authorities, and the Houston physician took a deep interest in the case, frequently calling District Attorney Updike two or three times a week to discuss the progress of the investigation.
Beever and Gardner continued prodding Elizabeth, not always gently. She remained brusque and evasive. When they began asking her about the weekend her parents were killed, Elizabeth became particularly uncooperative. Beever got more abrupt as well.
“At one stage I was going to interview you purely about your background,” Beever said. “Well, I’ve finished asking you questions about your background, and I’m now going to mainly ask you questions about why you’re here. You’re here on suspicion of being concerned in the death of your parents. I’m merely asking you your whereabouts for that weekend. If you choose to make no replies, that’s entirely up to you. Can I ask you if you stayed in Washington all weekend?”
“No reply,” she snapped.
“Were you with Jens all weekend?”
“No reply.”
Beever paused. “I can stop this interview,” he said patiently,
“and read the one you made in April 1985. Have you already answered these questions to officers from Virginia?”
“Yes.”
“And you told the officers the truth?”
“Yes.”
“About that weekend?”
“Yes.”
“So without reiterating too much, you’ve accounted for your movements from Friday the 29th until your return to UVA?”
“No reply.”
“Would you care to tell me how you traveled to Washington?”
“No reply.”
“Are you finding it distressing to answer these questions?”
“No reply.”
“Can I take it that you are going to choose to make ‘no reply’ to any questions about that weekend?”
“No reply.”
“Have you anything to say at this stage?”
“No, sir.”
Beever and Gardner looked at each other. “May as well terminate it,” Beever suggested. Gardner agreed. He saw it was 5:37 P.M. The first phase of the interview had lasted a mere forty-two minutes.
AFTER MEETING WITH HER SOLICITOR FOR ALMOST A half-hour, Elizabeth agreed to resume the session. But she was no more cooperative than before. She had sensed from the beginning that Beever was going to be tougher than Gardner had been, but she had not known how much tougher.
Gardner was a relatively inexperienced interrogator. Beever was not. Gardner had always worked in a rural, relatively unsophisticated setting, but Beever had come up the ranks in a different world. It was the difference between
urban and rural; Beever was a city cop with wide exposure to a plethora of crimes and criminals. In the process he had become more cynical, but he also had learned to judge suspects shrewdly and to estimate correctly how far he could push them. Elizabeth was playing tough, but Beever knew it was only an act; given time and the right nudges, she would tell them what they wanted to know. There was one other factor to consider, too: Beever had the tremendous advantage of having read Jens’s and Elizabeth’s letters—both those written in Virginia as well as those written after they were jailed in London—before he interviewed either of them, a privilege Gardner and Reid had not had when Elizabeth was within their grasp in Virginia. Beever intended to take full advantage of that.
At that point the only crime Elizabeth and Jens could be charged with in Britain was fraud, which was picayune compared to murder. They could not be tried for Derek’s and Nancy’s murders in the United Kingdom, but British investigators felt that if the two knew that more serious charges were forthcoming, they might be more willing to talk about their activities in London. British police were not convinced that Elizabeth and Jens were not involved in some type of drug smuggling operation or were not connected with IRA terrorism.
With such issues at stake, Beever was in no mood to play games. When he and Gardner began the interview, they hoped that when they asked Elizabeth about her background, she might be open with them about the things she had written to Jens in Virginia, things that would tie her to the deaths of her parents. But by then it was apparent she was not yet ready to cooperate, so they were going to have to do things the hard way.
Taking the issues step by step, they showed her copies of the documents and got her to admit that the handwriting was hers. Then Beever read her the excerpts where she talked about doing voodoo on her parents, willing them to death, taking up black magic, wishing they would lie down and die, and getting rid of them.
“See what I’m getting at?” Beever asked. “You told me earlier on today that you’ve always loved your parents. But here we have you writing about how much you despise them, how much you want them dead. Which one are you lying about now?”
“No reply.”
Beever pushed on. “Let’s go to other extracts. All the letters that you’ve admitted to writing. There’s one here about your parents’ deaths. Dated April 18, 1985, about two and a half weeks after the death of your parents—and you write Jens criticizing him for threatening to surrender, for threatening suicide. What does that mean?”
“No reply.”
“You then go on to say that the deaths of your parents made it easier for you to select your own lover.” He looked at her, waiting for a response. When there was none, he added, “That sounds to me as though they didn’t really want you to associate with Jens. Is that true?”
“No reply.”
Beever kept at it. What did she mean when she wrote Jens angrily accusing him of being unfairly jealous of her? Why did she say that their deaths made her free? “What did he do then?” Beever asked. “Would you like to offer me an explanation now?”
“No reply.”
“He killed your parents, didn’t he?” Beever said loudly.
Elizabeth looked up, surprised by the detectives’s tone. “No reply,” she said firmly.
“And you knew that, didn’t you?”
“No reply.”
“And then you almost made a threat to Jens, I believe. Did you mean that?”
“No reply.”
“And lastly, what did you mean when you said you didn’t want his ‘sacrifice’ to be a burden? Do you mean that also?”
“No reply.”
There was a long silence, then Beever began asking her again in detail about the entries in the journal. She responded
with “no reply” to each question. He slammed down the papers, feigning disgust, and told her he was through talking to her. “If you don’t want to answer me now, I would ask you to go downstairs and consider your position,” he said. Rising, he, Gardner, and Wright walked out. It was 6:20 P.M., only eighteen minutes after the interview had resumed. Total time elapsed with Elizabeth that afternoon was one hour and twenty-five minutes.