A COLONEL IN ARMY INTELLIGENCE, STUART HERRINGTON had entered the search for Elizabeth Haysom in a roundabout way. When Derek and Nancy had little success in tracking down their missing daughter through conventional methods, they turned to unconventional ones.
It happened that the husband of Nancy’s old friend, Annie Massie, had a friend who was with Army intelligence in Munich. On September 8, a little more than two months after Elizabeth’s disappearance, Nancy wrote the Massies’ friend and asked for his help. She recited the clues as she knew them, including the details of the false trail through Harwich, which she still thought to be accurate. The man, in turn, got Herrington involved.
In her letter Nancy had enclosed a detailed description of Elizabeth, which included a height for her daughter that was one and a half to two inches shorter than it actually is. She described Elizabeth as “well built” and “quick-witted” and as behaving in a way that Nancy undoubtedly found odious. She wrote that occasionally Elizabeth purposely made herself look unkempt, hiding what an “educated” and “sophisticated” person she was.
However much Nancy disliked this tendency in her daughter, her statement undoubtedly was accurate. Elizabeth’s classmates later verified that she seemed to go out of her way to appear unattractive. But
unkempt
would hardly be the word to describe Elizabeth when Herrington found her. When he went initially to the British Consulate, Herrington was armed with color photos of Elizabeth supplied by Nancy. When the official called Herrington to tell him that Elizabeth had shown up, she alerted him to be prepared
for her present appearance. “You’re going to find what is left of her,” she warned.
In a November 2 letter to Nancy that ran six singlespaced pages, Herrington confessed that he was indeed “shocked” by his first glimpse of Elizabeth. When he interviewed her for the first time, she spent most of the time staring off into space, chain-smoking borrowed cigarettes. Her hands shook uncontrollably and the expression on her face seemed to indicate she was ready to burst into tears. It was not an auspicious beginning.
Worried that if he didn’t approach the two girls gently, he might spook them and send them fleeing back into the Berlin semi-underground, possibly never to reemerge, Herrington told them that Nancy was worried about them
both
and had nothing in mind except their safety.
His approached worked. Despite their initial reluctance they agreed to go home with him and his wife. The plan was for them to recuperate until arrangements could be made to get them back to their families. In retrospect Herrington admitted that the situation had been very touchy. He worried that if he had not been able to convince the pair that what he was doing was for the good of
both
of them, they would have been gone again.
When he wrote Nancy, he went out of his way to stress that not all of Elizabeth’s and Melinda’s experiences had been bad, that they had many pleasant episodes along with the unpleasant, and that Elizabeth had collected a thick book full of names and addresses of people she had met on her travels. The connections she made would become significant years later in a very controversial way.
Herrington also cautioned Nancy that Elizabeth had serious problems, both physical and psychological.
When Elizabeth first reported to the British Consulate, he recounted, she was hemorrhaging from the vagina. The woman at the consulate was so concerned that she took Elizabeth immediately to a physician, who diagnosed the condition as a heavy menstrual period. Up until then, Elizabeth
later admitted, she had been worried that she was pregnant.
The loyalty Elizabeth and Melinda exhibited toward each other troubled Herrington, however, especially as it related to the sexual bonds that had developed between them. Herrington originally hoped to be able to put Elizabeth on a plane straight to Virginia or Nova Scotia, since Derek and Nancy had homes in both places, and send Melinda to her parents’ home near London. But he realized this plan was impossible; it was too soon to expect the two girls to disattach themselves. They refused to be separated while they stayed with him, and this caused him considerable concern. Perhaps to soothe Nancy, he wrote that it was his conclusion that Melinda had been the “aggressor” in the relationship and that he felt she was destined to be a lesbian for the rest of her life, a deduction he made in part because she had a stack of lesbian pornography with her when he took them home.
Indeed, five years later that prediction seemed to be holding true: Classmates of the two girls at Wycombe Abbey breathlessly reported that Melinda was currently head of a gay and lesbian group in Edinburgh. Still, it was unclear who had seduced whom. Years later Elizabeth would deny that there had been any physical relationship, but some people were convinced there had been. Even Elizabeth admitted that Melinda was sexually aggressive.
EIGHT DAYS AFTER ELIZABETH AND MELINDA WENT home with Herrington and his wife, the colonel put them on a plane to London. They were met at the airport by Elizabeth’s half-brother, Julian, who was in England on business. A few days later, as soon as he could get away, Derek flew over and Julian returned to Canada. It was not until Derek got there that a meeting was set up between Melinda and her father, a meeting which took place over dinner with Derek and Elizabeth also present. The reunion between Melinda and her father was less than joyous; after the meal, her father returned home without her, and Melinda left with
Elizabeth and her father. A few days later Elizabeth talked Melinda into going home to face her parents with the understanding that if she could not work things out at home she could come to Virginia. Derek paid for her train ticket. Melinda was met at the station by another relative, who arranged for her to enroll in a local college until she could attend the University of Edinburgh.
The separation effectively ended the relationship between Elizabeth and Melinda. After she returned to Virginia, Elizabeth wrote to Melinda only once.
IF THERE HAD BEEN A MISCALCULATION OF THE EFFECTS of Melinda’s and Elizabeth’s trip through Europe, it probably was in the depth of Elizabeth’s resentment toward her parents, especially her mother. In retrospect, it was much greater than it seemed at the time. But that was not what Elizabeth told Gardner and Kirkland. What she told the detectives was that Derek and Nancy were delighted to hear from her when she surfaced at the Herringtons’ and were completely understanding about her adventure. “Most parents, I think, would have been either angry or they would have tried to lay a heavy guilt complex on you. You know,” she said, imitating a stern parent, “‘God, you worried us to death for the last five months,’ you know, ‘We spent like, I don’t know, thirty thousand dollars trying to find you and, you know, this is what you’re doing, you screwed up everything’ … blah, blah, blah. And instead it was just like, ‘Well, I’m glad you got that out of your system.’ You know, big chuckle.”
Gardner, unaware of the background of the story that Elizabeth had been weaving for them, wanted to get back to drugs, to explore that avenue a little further. He decided to back into it, to pick up
after
the incident at Wycombe Abbey to see if she would admit to more drug use than she had so far mentioned.
“You said earlier that you flipped out after being accused of possession of some drugs. When did you start doing drugs?”
“I had been doing some,” Elizabeth said grudgingly. “But never in school,” she added quickly. “I was far too interested in what I was doing in school. I get a great deal of pleasure out of academic work. So I never did any drugs in school.” She paused. “I was smoking,” she added. “I guess hash, a little grass. But that was out of school, you know. At parties and stuff like that. The usual thing.”
“Cocaine?”
“No,” she said emphatically.
“No coke?” Gardner pressed.
She was adamant. “No coke at all.”
“Have you ever done much heroin?”
“I did heroin for a little bit,” she admitted, “when I was in Italy.”
“How did you do that?”
“I was injecting it.”
Gardner, sensing a growing hostility, decided to leave the drug issue alone for the time being. “Okay,” he said pleasantly. “You said when you took off you went with a friend?”
“Yes,” Elizabeth answered guardedly.
“Did you ever leave her at any time or did y’all stay together the whole time?”
“We stayed together the whole time,” Elizabeth sighed, not happy with the turn in the questions. “I went through tremendous depression. It was quite a shock. I mean I was completely spoiled. I
am
completely spoiled. I was in some ways like an only child. I was my parents’ love child and my brothers are much older than I and all that attention was focused on me when I was at home and I guess the school’s attention was focused on me too …”
“Uh huh,” Kirkland prompted.
“Having to sleep, you know, in communes … I guess that got to me after a while, and I just did the nice cliché things, turning to something that would alleviate that.”
“What did you turn to?” Kirkland asked quietly.
“Well,” Elizabeth volunteered, “I started doing a lot of acid.” She paused, then answered slowly, “I guess I was doing a lot of drugs. I was doing quite a lot of acid, and by
the time I got to Italy—I’d never touched heroin before—and it just seemed the thing to do.”
Gardner was still curious about what had happened to Elizabeth at Wycombe Abbey, whether she wasn’t holding a grudge against her parents for not removing her from what she described as an extremely unpleasant situation.
“They tried to get me out,” she insisted. “They couldn’t have done any more. They came over to England, and they tried to get me out of it, but the situation was such that they couldn’t. That was the only time I felt resentful,” she said. “After that I realized that people make mistakes. They’re human, and the school had everything to recommend it, and nobody knew this could happen. There was just something about me that the school couldn’t handle. Or I couldn’t deal with them. It wasn’t my parents’ fault. Whenever I came home, they were all ears and supportive.”
Wasn’t there anything, Gardner wanted to know, about her relationship with her parents that maybe made Elizabeth feel a little uncomfortable or that she didn’t like?
Maybe there was one thing, she conceded. But it wasn’t a terribly big deal.
What was that? Gardner pressed.
“My parents really did spoil me,” she said. “My father certainly did. I was like his baby daughter, and what I said went. My mother tried to keep that under control, but it always ended up as hugs and kisses and a bunch of giggles.”
Get to the point, Gardner thought.
“They really wanted to see me get a good education,” Elizabeth continued. “My father was very much of the belief that a British education was the only one that was worth anything. Also, they were scared to death when my face was smashed up. And I think after that they felt that since I’d been away, I might as well stay in the system. But when I came home, it was tight. It was very close. There were a couple of times, you know, like when guys would come around to take me out, Dad would say, ‘I’m sorry,’ you know, he would say, ‘I’ve changed my mind. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go out.’”
“What did you think about that?”
“Actually, to tell you the truth, with most of the guys concerned, it didn’t bother me one way or the other. Going out was just something to do rather than me being attracted to them.”
Is that all? Gardner asked himself.
“I had a fantastic relationship with my parents,” Elizabeth continued. “I never went through that phase of screaming at them, saying, ‘I want to take the car out,’ and them saying, ‘I won’t give you the car’ kind of stuff. It was never ‘I want to go out tonight and I want to go to this party.’ We had tremendous trust between us. When I went out, yeah, Daddy got a little jealous, you know. He was concerned that way. But he’d joke about it, you know. He’d say, ‘You’re passing your old father over for some young guy.’ You know. We’d joke about it.”
“Have you had many boyfriends?”
“I wouldn’t say I had many
boyfriends,
but I had a lot of male friends. In fact, most of my friends are male. They used to come see me on weekends or I’d go see them on weekends. Then when I was in Lynchburg, I went out with a couple of people. But at UVA my social life is completely hectic. I don’t really enjoy that. I’m fairly quiet. I mean, I like to sit home and just, you know, be quiet.”
“Do you have any ambitions of marriage or anything like that?” Kirkland asked.
Elizabeth stiffened. “That’s the only thing I had a row with my parents about,” she said, inexplicably popping up from her chair. “My father really believed in the institution of marriage. He wasn’t so concerned about premarital sex or any of that business. He was fairly liberal that way. He believed if you loved somebody, what you did was your business and nobody else’s. But he really believed that if you had a gift or ability that you should have children and that you should pass the family on.”
Kirkland and Gardner watched, puzzled, as Elizabeth began to pace, walking nervously around the front of the classroom.