Beever wanted to be extra sure about the knife. “Did he tell you that he used the butterfly knife to kill your parents?” he asked.
“No, he never said that,” Elizabeth replied. “He just said he’d thrown it away.”
Beever considered what she had told him for a few moments. Then he asked about something that had been bothering him from the first. “I’d like to know why, after Jens had told you that he had murdered your parents, why you stayed with him? Why you traveled with him to Europe and stayed with him without telling any authority?”
Elizabeth seemed to consider those fair questions, ones she had asked herself numerous times. One reason, she said, was guilt, that she felt responsible for what happened. A second reason was that she felt loyal to Jens. “I loved him
very dearly, and I needed him so much, especially since I didn’t have my parents.” Additionally, she said, she didn’t want to see Jens executed for the murders. And, finally, she was afraid that if she reported the crime, police would blame her for it, at least in part.
Beever asked her if it was true, as she had written in one of her letters, that Jens had threatened to surrender to police or commit suicide if she ever tried to leave him.
She said it was, that Jens had become very upset when he saw how much she had actually loved her parents. Jens had told her, she added, that if he were ever arrested and accused of the crime that she would be equally responsible and would be as liable to be executed as he because she had been an accessory.
Beever asked her about the entries in the journal in which she said that she and Jens had both gone over their apartments with a dust cloth in an attempt to wipe away all their fingerprints.
She brushed that aside, saying that Jens indeed had done that, but that she had not. After all, she had already voluntarily submitted her fingerprints, footprints, and blood samples to the police. What would wiping her prints in her apartment accomplish?
Then why did she write that she had? And why did she tell Jens that she had? Beever asked.
She shrugged. It made him feel better, she said.
Beever had a crucial question for her: “You’re maintaining to me now that you weren’t at the scene of your parents’ deaths?”
“No,” she said, meaning that she wasn’t there.
Beever wanted to make sure. “That’s what you’re saying? That you weren’t there?”
“Yes,” she replied.
Still not sure of the extent of her involvement, Beever asked if the two of them had ever discussed a plan to kill her parents.
“No, we never discussed it in terms of, you know, why don’t we go knock them off, that sort of thing. We did a
couple of times talk about the difference in life without parents, and we talked about it concerning his parents and if his parents divorced, and we talked about it concerning my parents, but never in a sort of conspire-to-sit-down-and-murder-somebody type thing.”
Beever wasn’t satisfied with her answers regarding her role in her parents’ deaths. The more specific he wanted to get, the more evasive she became. Finally, he asked Wright to fetch the letters they had taken from Jens and Elizabeth’s apartment. While Wright was gone, Beever asked her why she had written such things if she wasn’t talking about killing her parents.
Elizabeth said she used many of the same phrases in notes to herself about wanting herself dead. But she had never attempted suicide, she pointed out, so why should she have been trying to convince Jens to kill her parents?
On the other hand, she confessed, she was very sorry she had ever written the letters. “I hate myself for having thought those things, and I will always feel the guilt of that.”
Beever wanted to know what her parents thought of Jens. Did they dislike him?
It wasn’t a question of disliking him, Elizabeth said. They thought he was too young for her. They thought he was too possessive. They thought he took up too much of her time. And they thought that she should have more than one boyfriend. At the same time, she added, they liked some of his qualities. They respected his intelligence, and they realized that he, as a German, was probably a better companion for her than an American would have been because they knew she had trouble adjusting to Americans.
By then Wright had returned with the letters. What, he wanted to know, had Jens told her about killing her parents? Be as specific as possible, he urged.
“I don’t know very much because I couldn’t stomach talking about it,” Elizabeth said. “I mean, it was hard enough to walk around, and sit in classes, and sleep in the
same bed, and say to myself, ‘That person over there that you’re spending your life with, he killed your parents.’”
Wright wasn’t satisfied. He asked if he had told to her in detail some of the things he had done to them.
Elizabeth lit a fresh cigarette, stalling for time. “One of the first things he said was, ‘My God, your father put up a hell of a struggle.’ And then he said that Dad had said, ‘My God, what do you think you’re doing?’ He said that he killed my mother first. They had been talking for about forty minutes, and then he stood up and slit her throat.”
Beever asked if he had said what room they were in when the events occurred.
They were in the dining room, she said. Jens told her that after he slashed her mother’s throat, she staggered into the kitchen and he continued fighting with her father. “He said to me that my father was very strong and that—that he just —he said over and over again, ‘He just wouldn’t lie down and die.’”
She sighed. “He said that my father was struggling right to the very end and calling out and had enormous strength.” Her shoulders slumped, and she looked exhausted. “I don’t know any other details than that,” she added.
Beever looked incredulous. “And you stayed with him after hearing all that?” he asked.
Elizabeth paused a long time before answering. Then, in a meek voice, she said, “I was very scared.”
BEEVER STUDIED HER. SHE’S A GOOD ACTRESS, HE thought—not for the first time. He felt some relief because she had finally opened up. But he had deep misgivings as well. What she had told him, he was certain, was only part of the truth. She had been honest about some things, he suspected, and dishonest about others. While she had been very candid about Jens’s participation, she had been much less so about her own. Now, while she was in a talkative mood, it was no time to stop. He decided to put additional pressure on her. As he expected, she gave ground, but listening
was like sinking one’s hand into a barrel of water: one keeps going deeper and deeper but with no way of knowing when one is almost at the bottom. Without skipping a beat, she flowed into Version 2 of the story about her parents’ murders.
“WERE YOU SCARED,” BEEVER ASKED, “OR DID YOU know it was going to happen anyway?”
Elizabeth was surprised. “I beg your pardon?”
“Did you know it was going to happen anyway?” Beever repeated.
“What? The murder of my parents?”
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Not when he goes and buys a butterfly knife that morning?”
“No,” Elizabeth said indignantly. “I mean it never crossed my mind that he was going to go off and murder my parents.”
Elizabeth spun her story, knowing that she was liberally and deliberately mixing fact and fiction, telling the two detectives things that she wanted them to believe. Things that she wanted to believe. Maybe she thought they were going to swallow every word she said. Or maybe she was just testing the waters to see how gullible the detectives actually were. In any case, Beever didn’t want to play. It was murder they were talking about—cold-blooded murder—and Beever was through with being Mr. Good Cop.
“Let’s make a start with point number one,” he said coldly. “When is Jens’s brother’s birthday?”
Elizabeth admitted she had no idea. He nodded, letting her know that demolished her claim that they had been shopping for a gift for Jens’s brother, Kai. Next he turned to the issue of the cinema tickets. Whatever possessed her to buy two tickets to each movie?
Elizabeth had no answer.
Beever kept hammering at her, pointing out that the
things she said were not logical. “You know what I’m getting at, don’t you? You knew what was going to happen. You knew what you were doing all day, didn’t you?”
She remained silent, so he asked again: “Didn’t you?”
“No,” she said slowly, “I did not.”
“You were creating an alibi.”
“That is not true.”
“Why isn’t it true?” he pressed.
“Because that’s not an alibi that sticks,” she said, letting him know that she could use logic, too. “That’s not an alibi at all. You know that. I know that. It’s nothing. So you said you went to the movie. Yeah! You bought two tickets. Wow! Yeah! Nobody believes that.”
“So why did you buy the two tickets then?”
“I don’t know,” she said more calmly. “Because he asked me to.”
Beever was not impressed. “Why did you buy two meals when he wasn’t there?”
“I was expecting him to walk in the door.”
“You weren’t expecting him to walk in and see
Witness
with you. You weren’t expecting that. I caught you out on that one. Now you’re wrong. Now what’s going on? You knew when he bought the knife that morning. You knew in buying those tickets. You knew that he was going for a confrontation with your parents.”
“I did not know that,” she insisted.
He was insistent, too. “And your parents were probably going to die as a result of that confrontation,” he said accusingly. “You knew that, Elizabeth.”
“I did not,” she said stubbornly.
“After writing all those letters to him?”
“Look,” Elizabeth said angrily, “I have enough guilt about egging him on, so to speak, with those wretched letters.”
“You egged him on, all right,” Beever shot back. “And not only with the letters. You egged him on in private, didn’t you, Elizabeth? You knew it was going to happen, and you
were creating the alibi while he was committing the crime. That’s true, isn’t it? Tell me the truth, Elizabeth.”
She remained silent.
“Are you going to answer me?”
Silence.
“Well, are you going to answer me? You’ve written letters to him willing your parents to death. You’ve led him to it most probably. Or are you both guilty?”
“All right,” Elizabeth spat. “I led him into it. I did everything.”
“You knew he was going to do it, didn’t you?”
“I did it myself.”
“Don’t be silly.”
“I got off on it.”
The Americanism threw him. “You did what? What does that mean?”
“I was being facetious.”
Beever looked disappointed in her. “Okay,” he said. “Now tell me the truth, please, without being facetious. You did hate your parents.”
Elizabeth was insulted by that. She insisted she did
not
hate her parents.
Beever went on. If she did not hate her parents, why did she allow Jens to kill them? And why did she create the alibi, knowing that it was going to happen? “Come on, answer me,” he urged her. “Just give me an answer.”
Elizabeth stared at him.
How stupid did she believe he was? he asked. Did she really expect him to believe that she bought two tickets to each movie just because Jens had yelled that to her as he was driving away? Did she think he was going to believe that she did not have something else in mind when she ordered two meals from room service, then charged the meals so there would be a record of their having been ordered? “What do you want me to believe?” he demanded.
She was silent.
“And an alleged birthday present of a butterfly knife that
morning? Come on, now. Are you going to tell me the truth or not?”
No answer.
“Well, are you? I can’t sit here all night, not getting an answer.”
“Yes,” she said softly.
“Yes what?”
“Yes, I’ll tell you the truth.”
Beever relaxed a little. “Okay, then,” he said. “Tell me now. In your own words.”
Elizabeth said nothing.
Beever feigned exasperation. “Come on, Elizabeth,” he coaxed. “Come on. You told me you were going to tell me the truth. Tell my why you created the alibi in the first place.”
“Because he was going to confront my parents.”
“Yes,” he said encouragingly. “About what?”
Again she was silent.
“What was he going to confront your parents about?”
“Their attitude towards me.”
“Yes?” he said brightly.
“And Jens.”
He took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said slowly. “It’s got a ring of truth to it now. I’ve already spoken to Jens. Carry on.”
“He went down there with the knife with the possibility of killing them.”
“And you knew that, didn’t you?”
Silence.
“Didn’t you?”
“Yes, I did.”
How long had they been plotting it? A long time? A short time? Many months? A few days?
She shook her head. “It wasn’t too long, really,” she said. “About a month.”
Beever looked puzzled. He wanted to know
why
it had occurred. Why had she felt it necessary to take such drastic steps?
Elizabeth paused a long time, formulating her answer. “My father was violently jealous of anybody, really, who I associated with,” she began. “He disliked anybody I knew. He was hugely possessive of me. If they were invited to a function which wasn’t even appropriate for me to go to, they would insist that I come along. They very rarely gave me any space or privacy. If I went upstairs to my room, they were always inquiring what I was doing, telling me not to do it and to come down. My father wouldn’t even let me work. He wanted me to be with them all the time.”
Beever was skeptical. “You built up so much resentment for all these things that you thought murder was the answer?”
“There were things that had been building up for a very long time,” Elizabeth said, citing the decision to send her away to boarding school and how they had tried to manipulate her college plans by signing her up for advanced science and math courses without consulting with her, causing her to have to spend an extra year at Wycombe Abbey.
“So you’re saying it was a multitude of events throughout your life that caused you and Jens Soering to put your heads together between about Christmas 1984 up until the end of March 1985 to devise a plan kill your parents. Is that right?”
No, Elizabeth said quickly. It wasn’t that long a time. “We discussed it in a sort of grotesque way earlier, but we didn’t start seriously discussing it until March.”
Beever wanted to explore the motive some more. Did she think she was going to inherit a lot of money? he asked.
She shook her head. That was never an issue, she said. She knew that she would not inherit anything except enough money to pay for her college education.
Beever accepted that. But there was still the question of the knife. Unaware of Washington-area geography, he wanted to know why they had driven all the way to Maryland to buy it.
Elizabeth smiled tightly, explaining that it was not very far.
“But why did you choose a weapon like that?” Beever asked. “I can understand why you didn’t choose a gun because it would make a noise and attract attention. But why this particular butterfly knife?”
“I have no idea,” Elizabeth said. “It was Jens’s choice.”
“Did you see others?”
“I’d never seen one before.”
“I see,” Beever said. “What does it look like?”
Elizabeth began to describe it, but Beever interrupted her. “Take that slip of paper from the top of that pile there and draw it for us.” Elizabeth drew.
IT WAS 12:36 A.M. ON MONDAY, JUNE 9. THEY HAD BEEN going for an hour and a quarter, but it seemed much longer. Still, there was some ground Beever wanted to cover, some points he wanted to clarify. In answer to his questions Elizabeth admitted that she conceived the idea of going to Washington and that they originally planned to go twice, the first time to set a precedent so it wouldn’t seem strange when they went again. But they didn’t have enough money to make two trips, so they had to make the first trip do.
Why, he asked, was she surprised when Jens returned covered with blood?
“I didn’t think he was going to do it,” she said. “I knew that he
might
do it, okay, but a large part of me didn’t honestly believe he was going to do it. I thought he was going to come back and say that he had spoken to them, and then just come back, and that would be it. I just simply didn’t think that he would do it.”
“But the reason you stayed with him and continued to love him, the real reason is because he has carried out your wishes, because you both wanted your parents dead,” said Beever.
“That’s not why I love him.”
That may be true, Beever conceded. But it was why she didn’t hate him. How could she hate him when all he did was carry out her wishes?
Elizabeth took offense at that. “I don’t think that’s completely fair,” she snapped.
“Okay,” Beever said agreeably. “It’s a suggestion by me. It wasn’t really a question. The truth of the matter is that your parents are now dead and you are part and parcel of their death, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she admitted.
Beever, looking sad and weary, reached over and pushed the stop button on the recorder. “I don’t think I want to say any more at this stage,” he said, rising and walking out of the room.
IT MAY HAVE BEEN THE END OF THE INTERVIEW AS FAR as Beever was concerned, but it was not for Elizabeth. She went back to her cell, thought about it for an hour, then pressed the bell-push again. “Would you call Detectives Beever and Wright again, please?” she asked the duty officer. “And,” she added, “Investigator Gardner, too.”
At 2:06 A.M. on Monday, only a few hours before she was scheduled to reappear in magistrate’s court, Elizabeth met with Gardner, Beever, and Wright so she could make one more point. Far from being defiant, she looked lost and lonely, almost on the verge of tears.
“I requested further statement to be given,” she said meekly when they invited her to sit, “because I felt that I had betrayed my love for Jens—my loyalty to him—and that I had done him a disservice. I don’t know if the charge against me—what it will be—but as I said in one of my letters, we did it together and in some ways I’m more guilty than he is. He loved me beyond reason,” she said haltingly. “I love him beyond reason, too.”
Taking a deep breath, she added softly, “I suppose I used that love. Because of my own weakness of character, many times I have tried to wriggle out of that responsibility and the guilt of putting him in this position. I can’t do that any longer. I can’t bear leaving my last statement as it stands. I believe Mr. Beever referred to Jens as ‘that poor boy.’ I suppose that’s accurate, for it was my will that made him
kill my parents. He wouldn’t have done it, I am sure, if he hadn’t loved me so much and I, him.”
For a long moment there was silence in the room. Then Gardner spoke up. “You don’t have anything else to say?” he asked.
“I don’t think so,” she replied.
Wright, however, had one more question. He asked her to expand on her assertion that they “did it together.”