JONES WAS TRYING TO WIND UP. IT WAS LATE IN THE afternoon and Elizabeth had been on the stand for four hours. But before he quit, he wanted to make it clear who from his perspective had been manipulating whom in the Jens-Elizabeth relationship.
For Elizabeth’s sake it would be helpful for Jones to help make Jens the villain. Proving this, however, required a great deal of skill. His client had backed herself into a corner by admitting numerous times that in the early days of their relationship she believed she had been manipulating Jens. Carrying this one step further, it was not difficult to infer that she had been manipulating him to murder her parents. But Jones wanted to go backwards and undo all the allusions to Elizabeth as the manipulator. He intended to try to persuade Judge Sweeney that even though Elizabeth thought she was manipulating Jens, he was actually manipulating
her
—that she was, in fact, the “manipulatee.” It was a most Machiavellian point, and to present it convincingly, he would have to convince the judge, through Elizabeth, that Jens was a very clever fellow indeed. Furthermore, Jones would have to produce some physical evidence to substantiate the claim. Since letters were as common in this case as sunshine is in Arizona, it was not surprising that he picked a letter as his vehicle to try to underscore Elizabeth’s naivete.
Gingerly, he began laying the groundwork. Did she believe that Jens was acting as a result of her will? he asked Elizabeth.
“Very definitely,” she said. “I felt that I was fully responsible for Jens’s actions. For Jens’s life. For what happened. For everything. I believed that I had manipulated him, that
I had controlled him, that I had somehow made him do this.”
Excellent, Jones thought. “But,” he said, “based on what’s happened since then, do you still believe it was your will?”
“No,” Elizabeth said. Since then, she added, she had read letters and documents written by Jens that convinced her that she was the one being maneuvered. “Now I believe I didn’t have any control over him whatsoever.”
What really turned her around, she said, was a letter from Jens to a friend he had made in his first few days in prison, a youth named Neil Woodall. The letter was dated May 18—19, 1986, less than three weeks after they were arrested and some two weeks before Jens and Elizabeth were aware that Beever and Wright were beginning to put together the pieces connecting them to Derek’s and Nancy’s murders. The date it was written was significant because it showed how, even though they had been separated for only a short time, Jens already was trying to cut himself loose from her psychologically.
The rambling hand-written document was eleven pages long and dealt mainly with discussions Jens and Woodall had while they shared a cell for a few days. In it, Jens, who is prone to philosophize extensively in his writings in every case, closely examined his relationship with Elizabeth and delved into an issue he called “separateness,” which was his euphemism for ego. The “self” was all important, he had written, and it was what he and Elizabeth had forgotten in their relationship.
When he and Elizabeth denied the “self” motive in their relationship they were fooling each other, denying their instincts in an attempt to get what they could from the other. At one point he wrote about the great joy he experienced in giving something to someone unconditionally. That, he felt, was fulfilling a perfect act of friendship. It was an example of a totally “selfless” act. At that phrase, in the margin of her copy of the letter, Elizabeth had scrawled that was precisely
what Jens used to say about the murder of her parents —it was a completely “selfless” act.
Talking about the letter made Elizabeth angry, or at least it prompted her to feign anger successfully. She had first seen the letter only a few days before when she was sifting through the mound of documents collected for her to use in her defense, and she was still smarting from the shock. Up i until then, she said, she believed she had been the manipulator and had assumed that role in talking to investigators. But once she read what her lover had written to Woodall, she realized she had been used. Once she read it, she said, she began putting together things Jens had told her and what he had said to others, including investigators. In retrospect, her first inkling of the true nature of their relationship should have been apparent to her almost a year previously, in November 1986, when she and Jens began to disagree on how to handle their defense. “Suddenly, he was no longer so subtle,” she said.
But the real clincher was the Woodall letter. What it showed her, she said, was that Jens had been manipulating her all along. “He was using me. But it was more than that. j He knew exactly, precisely what he was doing. It wasn’t—it’s not as if he even believes what he says to me. He states very plainly how to manipulate me. He knew what he was doing in his manipulations. It was deliberate.” She sighed. “Now, on top of everything else I am a first-class idiot.”
ALTHOUGH JENS’S LETTER TO WOODALL HAD BEEN
A
revelation, the real turning point in her feelings for Jens had come the previous November, when she saw for the first time the photographs taken at Loose Chippings by investigators, the ones that showed in unrelenting detail how viciously her parents had been murdered. She was giving a deposition, she said, and the photographs were attached to another document she was shown at the same time. It was a profound shock.
“I lived with those photographs,” she said bitterly. “They were in my cell. They were on my person. They were with
me wherever I went, and they were in my mind’s eye the whole time as well. As far as I was concerned, absolutely nothing, nothing, could justify what he had done, what I had done. Everything else just became irrelevant—the details of who did what to whom. He had butchered my parents. It was there, sitting in front of me. It wasn’t just words, it was there. And I was in some way, shape, or form part of that. I was responsible for it.”
Taking a breath, she continued. The really sad part, she said, was that up until then she had continued to be loyal to him. But after she saw the photographs, everything changed. “There was just no way, absolutely no way, no matter what I felt specifically for Jens, there was no way I could continue to have a relationship with him or to pander to his whims or needs. And if I felt lonely, too bad, because it was time to take a stand.”
That, she said, was when she decided to plead guilty. Once she had made that decision, she also determined that she would try to see that Jens shouldered his share of the blame as well. That was why she emphasized premeditation in her interview with Gardner on May 8, why she had lied to the investigator. “I knew the line of Jens’s defense. I wanted to make sure that was quite clear to Investigator Gardner because I want Jens to come back here and I want him to stand trial. I wanted to make sure that Jens was convicted.”
Jones asked if she would be willing to cooperate with the prosecution in building a case against Jens.
“Absolutely,” she said emphatically.
“If called upon by the prosecution to testify, would you do it?”
“Yes.”
JONES AND ELIZABETH BOTH LOOKED EXHAUSTED. ALMOST simultaneously they glanced at Judge Sweeney.
“That’s all the questions, Judge.”
Sweeney leaned forward and warned the lawyers to make sure their witnesses who had not testified that day would be
in court for the next day’s session. Then he told everyone to go home and be back at 9:30 Wednesday morning.
He didn’t have to be specific with the spectators. The next day would be what everyone had come to hear: Commonwealth Attorney Jim Updike’s cross-examination of Elizabeth Haysom.
IN THE SPRING OF 1985 THERE HAD BEEN MUCH ANGER IN Bedford County about the murders. At the time it was almost universally felt that the electric chair was too good for whoever had carved up Derek and Nancy. But two and a half years down the road attitudes changed. When it turned out that the accused were the couple’s daughter, a young woman who may have been subject to sexual abuse by her own mother, and the extraordinarily intelligent son of a German diplomat, the line softened. The fact that the daughter had pleaded guilty—had actually thrown herself upon the mercy of the court—helped. At the proceedings the previous August Elizabeth had indeed appeared contrite, a soft-spoken young woman who had admitted her role in the affair and was willing to accept the punishment. By now there was more than a little sympathy for her. No matter how tragic Nancy’s and Derek’s deaths had been, the feeling went, there was no way to bring them back to life. Perhaps, it was said, there were circumstances that made the murders understandable. Not justifiable, but understandable. Maybe it was time to temper justice with mercy.
Jim Updike did not feel that way.
ALL AFTERNOON MONDAY HE SAT IN DISGUST AS ELIZABETH changed her story still another time to serve her own purposes. Throughout the investigation he had watched in wonder as she molded her narrative to her own advantage, skillfully weaving truth and untruth into a credible whole. He marveled at how she could say one thing at one time and five days or five minutes later say something completely different. And in her tiny, shy-little-girl voice and an exotic accent make
both
versions sound completely believable.
At first Updike tried to put himself in Elizabeth’s place, to understand why she was so unhappy with her parents. It was a position that was totally alien to him. His parents were working-class people who had to scrimp and save and make sacrifices. They had worked hard to make sure that he got an education, and he was grateful. He couldn’t understand how someone who had all the privileges Elizabeth had enjoyed could appreciate them so little. Already disgusted by the viciousness of the crime, he was further repelled by her motive, or, as he saw it, her appalling lack of motive.
When the defense finally finished and turned Elizabeth over to him, Updike rose and stood quietly staring at her, sizing her up as though he were seeing her for the first time. His face was impassive, but his back was rigid, every muscle tense. He was wearing a light gray three-piece suit, a white button-down shirt, and a blue tie with small white figures. A gold watch chain stretched across his waist. He stared at Elizabeth, taking in her powder-blue short-sleeved dress with flap pockets on the chest that minimized her breasts. She was wearing the pearl earrings again, and around her neck was a pearl tear-drop pendant on a gold chain. She stared back, realizing her toughest ordeal was coming, that there would be no friendly, leading questions from this man. She clamped her mouth tightly closed, compressing her lips into a thin, pink, unlipsticked line. Her eyes were cold and wary. She seemed to age in a heartbeat, like the villainess in the horror movie who, having been kept youthful by a magic serum, is suddenly deprived of the potion. Before everyone’s eyes Elizabeth’s appearance changed from that of a demure fifteen-year-old to a hardened veteran of the streets who looked every day of forty.
Updike cleared his throat. Then he began, politely at first, in a friendly down-home drawl. “Ms. Haysom,” he said, “the circumstances have been such that you and I haven’t had the opportunity to talk before. It’s not been appropriate before now. But in view of your lengthy testimony yesterday, as you can well imagine, I have a number of questions I would like to ask you.” It was the fisherman’s speech to the
trout he was trying to catch. Soon enough, the dialogue would become heated; then Updike and Elizabeth Haysom would reveal their true personas. They were equally strong-willed people working to opposite ends: he to get her to incriminate herself, she to maintain her last-stated position as that of a naive young woman gulled by an evil killer. In a manner dictated by the surroundings the two began an absurdly polite, hushed-voice fight, a deceptively low-key battle that both knew was going to turn hostile.
Updike’s drawl was exaggerated even for Virginia; his voice was quiet, but it dripped with sarcasm. Patiently, he repeated details from her personal history. Despite her advantages, Elizabeth viewed herself as underprivileged, a poor-little-rich-girl who had been given everything but in the end had nothing. In her testimony she tried to elicit sympathy for her plight.
Plight, indeed, thought Updike. A posh school in Switzerland. Even posher ones in England. Skiing vacations in Europe and the Rockies. Summers in Canada. Writing seminars in New England. Entrée into the best homes. Everyone should have it so terrible, he pointed out. In return what did she do? She lied, he said. She connived. She built up resentments and hatred for her parents who were trying to give her the best, certainly the best they could afford. She lied to her parents. She lied to her boyfriend. She lied to anyone and everyone, including investigators. She created her own world, which was based only in part on reality. She was living a play, but she called it life. In fact, one of her major interests was theater; one of her favorite pastimes was acting.
“While you were at Wycombe Abbey, you did quite a bit of acting, didn’t you?” Updike asked.
Warily, she agreed that she had.
“A lot of Shakespeare, I see,” he said, shuffling through his notes.
“Antony and Cleopatra
with you playing Cleopatra.” But that was strange, he added, looking up. “I don’t see
Macbeth
listed here.” Why was that? he wanted to
know, and he asked, “In one of your statements you referred to yourself as Lady Macbeth, didn’t you?”
He was trying to get a rise out of her, trying to put her on the defensive, trying to get her angry enough to say something she perhaps would not say otherwise. “Did you see yourself as Lady Macbeth?” he pressed.
Elizabeth glared at him but kept her tone even, controlling her anger. “Yes, sir, I did,” she said.
“Your Shakespeare is certainly much better than mine,” said Updike, whose undergraduate degree was in English literature, “but it seems to me, if I recall, that Lady Macbeth encouraged old Macbeth to commit murder, didn’t she?”
The replies came like gunshots.
“Yes, she did,” agreed Elizabeth.
“Persuaded him—”
“Yes.”
“Encouraged him—”
“Yes.”
“And that’s how you saw yourself,” Updike said, making his point, “with reference to Jens Soering.”
Elizabeth had to answer in the affirmative, otherwise she would contradict her own testimony. But she proved quicker on her feet than Updike expected. “I felt totally responsible for manipulating him at that time,” she admitted, adding that she later came to realize she had misjudged her position and discovered that it was he who was manipulating her.
Updike nodded. Round one was a draw.
THE COMMONWEALTH ATTORNEY IS AN OLD-SCHOOL southern gentleman, a man brought up in a culture that stresses politeness and respect. Especially respect. Even more especially, respect for one’s parents. One of the most grievous sins a southerner can commit is parental slander. To Updike it was incomprehensible that Elizabeth could say such bad things about her mother and father, particularly
her mother. Particularly if what she was saying was not true.
In addition to being a southern gentleman, Updike also was a prosecutor. He was not naive enough to believe that some parents were not cruel to their children—that some of them brought bad things upon themselves by the way they treated their offspring. Incest, he knew, could be a motive for murder. He did
not
know if that applied in this case. Elizabeth had made a lot of accusations against her parents, and she had been particularly critical of Nancy. Updike did not know if the things Elizabeth had said about her mother were true. But he desperately wanted to find out.
Riffling through his notes, he produced a thin sheaf of papers. He told Elizabeth the papers composed a presentence report that had been drawn up at Judge Sweeney’s direction. It was based on statements Elizabeth had made to a probation officer, who then reported her remarks and made recommendations on what he thought her sentence should be. In some states presentence reports are part of the public record, available for perusal by anyone who takes the time to go to the clerk’s office to look them up. In Virginia they are not; they are treated as confidential documents. Nevertheless, they can be used by prosecution and defense alike to make points during sentencing proceedings. Updike was anxious to go through the report on Elizabeth because it gave additional detail about the relationship between Elizabeth and her mother. That is, it gave detail from Elizabeth’s point of view.
Nude pictures of Elizabeth had been found in her mother’s bureau. Elizabeth had told Gardner that her mother often came into her bed naked and indulged in “some very affectionate” kissing and hugging. But Elizabeth had not told Gardner what she told the court officer who drew up the presentence report. Updike flipped through the document until he found what he was looking for. He read it to himself quickly one more time and then leaned forward, looking Elizabeth in the eye. “You stated to this man sitting here,” he said, waving his right arm vaguely in the direction
of where the probation officer was seated, “that from age eighteen to age nineteen you had a full-blown sexual relationship with your mother. Is that right?”
Elizabeth looked more angry than uncomfortable. “That isn’t the way I put it,” she said, explaining that she had gone into considerable detail with Ricky Gardner about the relationship.
Updike shook his head. That wasn’t his question. He wasn’t talking about Ricky Gardner, he said, but about the probation officer. “Did you make that statement to him?”
Elizabeth stood her ground, denying she ever called it a “full-blown sexual relationship.” What she had told him, she said, was essentially what she had told Gardner—namely, that her mother had been “aggressively affectionate” and that she had craved attention.
Updike was getting angry. He wanted to put the issue to rest. He was offended by the way Elizabeth had been quick to blame her mother, and he wanted to determine for the record if there was a concrete basis for her statements. But he was having trouble doing that because Elizabeth was refusing to answer his questions in a straightforward manner. He put down the presentence report and shuffled among his papers until he came up with the transcript of Gardner’s interrogation. “‘Question,’” he read, marking his place with his finger. “‘Was there some sexual activity there? Response: No, I don’t think you’d call it sexual activity.’ That’s what you said to Investigator Gardner, wasn’t it?”
“That’s correct,” Elizabeth said. “And it’s true.”
Then why, Updike asked, his voice rising, did you say something different to the probation officer? “After having made this statement that there was no sexual activity from your mother, what is this doing in this presentence report?”
Elizabeth looked down in her lap. She had said, she answered, only that she and her mother slept together.
Updike nodded. He could buy that. There were, he knew, times when Elizabeth came home from the university that there were no beds available and she and her mother would have to double up. But that was a long way from a full-blown
sexual relationship. Updike wanted to show that Elizabeth had been lying to the probation officer, not so much to prove Elizabeth a liar—there were a lot of other ways to do that—but to protect the reputation of a woman who had been brutally murdered. A woman who was not there to defend herself. “It was perfectly innocent, wasn’t it?” he asked, willing her to say yes.
Instead, she snapped at him. “That isn’t an issue I want to bring up,” she said curtly.
Updike looked surprised. “I don’t want to bring it up either, ma’am.”
“It’s not something I want to discuss,” Elizabeth said heatedly. “I don’t think it’s relevant. My mother isn’t here—”
Updike had enough. “Exactly!” he yelled.
“And it’s not something I want to discuss in public. This is a very private thing, and if the newspapers and people have wanted to interpret what I said about my mother in a sordid way, that is their filthy minds.”
Updike wanted to let it drop, but he still did not have a direct answer. He had only one question for her, he said. Did Nancy sexually abuse her? “If she didn’t,” he implored, “for God’s sake clear her name now.”
Elizabeth paused, then answered in a soft but firm voice, pronouncing the words distinctly: “She … did … not … sexually … abuse … me.”
Updike looked relieved. Grabbing for his notes, he was ready to move on to something else. But inadvertently he plunged right back into the swamp. He meant it as a footnote to the issue they had been discussing, but his question had a nuance he had not intended. “If there was any lesbian relationship, it was with Melinda Duncan in the summer of 1983, wasn’t it?” he asked, meaning to clear Nancy’s name. Instead, it set Elizabeth off.
“That’s your terminology,” she sniffed.
Updike was puzzled. He had not expected argument on that point. “Excuse me?” he said.