True Crime Vault: New DNA Analysis in a Murder

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Speaker 1 Welcome to the 2020 True Crime Vault, where heart-stopping headlines come to life.

Speaker 1 So you came here, saw where the attack began. Both Derek and Nancy's blood was on the floor here.
The first thing in your mind was...

Speaker 5 What kind of gang came in here and did this?

Speaker 6 Tonight, on 2020, the brutal double murder of a successful husband and wife.

Speaker 8 Rumors of witchcraft, Voodoo.

Speaker 1 But was it a gang or their very own daughter and her boyfriend on the run?

Speaker 5 They're both guilty of something. Otherwise, why would they leave?

Speaker 1 Here's something from Stuttgart.

Speaker 5 Bangkok.

Speaker 1 Luxembourg.

Speaker 9 Young lovers going on this crazy adventure.

Speaker 1 Life on the lamb in London.

Speaker 9 Under assumed names, passing bad checks. But then it all came crashing down to them.

Speaker 10 Two first-degree murder charges.

Speaker 11 Murder of their parents.

Speaker 7 Brought back to America in cuffs.

Speaker 12 Back it up.

Speaker 7 and convicted.

Speaker 8 She told me that she had killed her parents.

Speaker 14 I wanted my parents out of my life.

Speaker 1 But was he her pawn?

Speaker 14 He had a choice whether he killed my parents or not.

Speaker 1 Did he actually kill for love or just confess to it?

Speaker 16 The bottom line in this case is that one of them is lying.

Speaker 7 Now, a new film and new evidence tonight claiming he's innocent.

Speaker 1 You say that Jens confessed to a crime he didn't commit out of misguided love, loyalty, lust for Elizabeth Haysome.

Speaker 9 You have a guy who has only been with one woman in his life, and he turned out to be the devil.

Speaker 7 This evening, right here, he's speaking out.

Speaker 2 But if he didn't do it, who did?

Speaker 9 We know two guys did it. Somebody watching this show right now knows them.
They walk among us.

Speaker 8 Good evening. I'm David Buren.

Speaker 1 And I'm Elizabeth Vargas, and this is 2020.

Speaker 1 Los Angeles, California, the Lemley Royal Theater. It's opening night.
The movie, Right Up Hollywood's Alley, two obsessed lovers, a grisly murder, sex, and betrayal.

Speaker 18 My parents died

Speaker 18 because Jens

Speaker 19 and I were obsessed with each other.

Speaker 1 But it turns out in the genre of you can't make this up, Hollywood didn't. The movie, Killing for Love, is actually a documentary in theaters now.

Speaker 1 A deep dive into the real-life case of Yen Sering, behind bars for nearly 32 years for a brutal crime he says he didn't commit.

Speaker 8 It's a natural human emotion to want somebody to blame.

Speaker 1 Yens's multi-decade crusade for freedom has now attracted a dream team of A-list supporters. I think that screen legend Martin Sheen leading the QA at that LA screening.

Speaker 18 He could not possibly have been at the scene.

Speaker 1 There's also music mogul Jason Flom, the man responsible for launching Katy Perry's career.

Speaker 13 Are you ready for

Speaker 1 a perfect time?

Speaker 1 And a founding board member of the Innocence Project.

Speaker 9 He is somebody who could have and should have known better and he was blinded by love.

Speaker 1 Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has advocated for Jens's release, but his two strongest advocates, ironically, aren't high-profile celebrities or hotshot defense attorneys.

Speaker 1 They're police officers.

Speaker 5 As far as him physically killing these people,

Speaker 5 no, I don't think he did.

Speaker 1 One is an investigator who originally worked on the case. Show me.
The other, a current sheriff, now re-investigating it.

Speaker 22 If you break it down and look at what the evidence truly is, I don't feel like it would support a conviction if he was tried today.

Speaker 1 Jens's story begins in 1984 at the University of Virginia. He's 18 years old, the son of a German diplomat, a freshman, and a Jefferson scholar with a full scholarship to UVA.

Speaker 24 We were in the same Eccles Scholars program. The Eccles Scholars program pulls the top 6% of each entering class.

Speaker 1 Amy Lemley wrote an extensive investigative magazine article about the case. What was Hans like?

Speaker 24 He had the physique more of a boy than a man, kind of baby fat. He had big, thick glasses that covered about half of his face.

Speaker 24 They said that most people really couldn't stand to be in a conversation with him because he just loved to argue.

Speaker 1 He was intellectually arrogant?

Speaker 24 I would say so.

Speaker 1 He was also, by his own admission, sexually inexperienced.

Speaker 9 Sexually, not only inexperienced, but, you know,

Speaker 9 a virgin, right?

Speaker 9 And

Speaker 9 he meets a girl, Elizabeth Haysum. who is one of the hottest girls on campus.
She was apparently very bright as well, came from a very good family, and

Speaker 9 he falls head over heels in love with her.

Speaker 1 Elizabeth is two years older than Jens.

Speaker 1 Her father, Derek Haysom, was a Canadian steel mogul, and her mother, Nancy, the goddaughter of Lady Astor, a wealthy aristocrat and the first woman to take a seat in the British Parliament.

Speaker 1 But this power family seemed to have no power over their wild child daughter. Elizabeth ran away from boarding school in England and spent five months in Europe using drugs.

Speaker 1 Nevertheless, she presented well to her classmates at UVA.

Speaker 24 She had this great shock of blonde hair hanging down, and she

Speaker 24 was the opposite of who you think might end up with Jan Sering.

Speaker 1 People must have been a bit taken aback by her selection of him.

Speaker 24 Yes, very few people understood

Speaker 24 what was going on between those two.

Speaker 1 One thing apparently going on between the virginal freshman and his unlikely alluring companion was revealed in a series series of X-rated letters they exchanged over several months.

Speaker 9 When you see and you read those love letters, you can sort of feel that there was a lot of, you know, sexual tension.

Speaker 1 These are just some of the ones we can actually read on television.

Speaker 21 I love you, Shatem.

Speaker 1 I love you selfishly, and I love you with you.

Speaker 13 How you feel about a couple drinks back at my place?

Speaker 1 I want to be with you, around you, through you.

Speaker 1 But only months into their relationship in in March 1985,

Speaker 1 tragedy strikes.

Speaker 26 Derek W.R. Hasom and his wife Nancy were stabbed to death in their home.

Speaker 1 Elizabeth's parents are found brutally murdered inside their rural retirement home in Boonesboro, Virginia.

Speaker 16 It sort of sits on the border right there, Lynchburg and Bedford County. Just a very nice, quiet, wealthy community.

Speaker 26 The bodies were only discovered this afternoon at their home on Holcomb Rock Road.

Speaker 16 It was a very shocking crime.

Speaker 23 I'd never seen anything, anything like that before.

Speaker 1 Then-rookie investigator Ricky Gardner is one of the first to arrive on the scene. This is your first real homicide, right?

Speaker 9 Yes, yes, ma'am.

Speaker 23 Early, we were able to determine that this was not a burglary.

Speaker 1 Nothing appears to be missing. There is even Nancy Haysom's purse with money still in it.

Speaker 23 The Haysoms must have let whomever

Speaker 23 did this to them into the house because there was no sign of forced entry.

Speaker 23 But I'd never seen any human being that had been injured by another human being in that fashion.

Speaker 1 Overkill?

Speaker 23 Overkill.

Speaker 5 It was up close and personal. To me, it was like a slaughterhouse.

Speaker 1 Chuck Reed was a Bedford County investigator in 1985 and worked the case with Gardner for a year before leaving the sheriff's office. He took me inside the crime scene.

Speaker 1 You opened the door when you first came here.

Speaker 5 The first thing I saw was Derek Haysom's body was lying here with his head up against, basically up against a corner of this fireplace.

Speaker 13 This corner here?

Speaker 1 Yes. Derek Haysom had been stabbed 36 times.
Nancy, six. Her body was found in the kitchen.
Both were stabbed in the heart. Both nearly decapitated.

Speaker 5 As you step over and come in,

Speaker 5 This area right here is where all the blood was. Now the table, just around in this area, we're smeared around in this area.

Speaker 1 And the first thing in your mind was...

Speaker 5 What kind of gang came in here and did this?

Speaker 16 There was concern because of the smearing blood initially that there was some sort of cult involved.

Speaker 10 Rumors of witchcraft and voodoo fueled curiosity and the demand for answers.

Speaker 1 Whodunit theories are rampant. Word that Derek Haysom upset workers in the steel business fuels rumors of a mafia-style hit.

Speaker 1 But a clue in a rental car agreement is about to change the direction of the case. You saw that and you thought.

Speaker 5 That's when we get to thinking. Well, wait a minute.

Speaker 1 Stay with us.

Speaker 1 Washington, D.C., it's the 1980s.

Speaker 1 Reagan

Speaker 1 and the Redskins are in their heyday.

Speaker 1 And speaking of time warps, it's the midnight showing of the Rocky Horror Picture Show. It's become a staple here in Georgetown, the center of the nightlife.

Speaker 1 And it's at one of those showings 200 miles away from the Haysums home in Bedford County, Virginia, near Lynchburg, where Elizabeth Haysom says she was when her parents were murdered.

Speaker 1 An alibi with her boyfriend in tow.

Speaker 23 She told us that her and her German boyfriend had rented a car on that Friday and drove to Washington to sightsee.

Speaker 1 And what do they do while they're in Washington, D.C.?

Speaker 5 According to her, they just laid around, went out to eat, went to movies.

Speaker 1 The films were stranger than paradise and ironically, witness.

Speaker 23 They had stayed to Washington Marriott and was able to verify later that they in fact had. And found the receipt, the hotel receipt.

Speaker 23 where they had checked in on the 29th and gotten room service twice.

Speaker 1 One of those room service deliveries, Food for Two, was right right around the time police believe Elizabeth's parents were murdered. What did she say about her relationship with her parents?

Speaker 23 Well, she said that she loved her parents very deeply and that she was very fond of them.

Speaker 1 But Elizabeth's uncle, Lou Benedict, Nancy Hays' younger brother, says the relationship between mother and daughter wasn't as rosy as Elizabeth described it.

Speaker 6 Because of my sister's bullheadedness, I would say that they locked horns.

Speaker 1 And Elizabeth's parents didn't appear to be happy with their daughter's new boyfriend, Jens Zering.

Speaker 6 They did not like the young man and did everything they thought they could to try and separate them.

Speaker 1 As police continue their investigation into the Haysom's double murder, they find the agreement for the rental car Elizabeth says she and Jens used that weekend. This is the rental car agreement? Yes.

Speaker 1 Show me where the mileage is.

Speaker 5 Here's your mileage of 669 miles.

Speaker 1 You saw that and you thought.

Speaker 5 That's when we got to thinking, well, wait a minute.

Speaker 1 Even though this is long before the days of Waze.

Speaker 28 You're all set. Drive safely.

Speaker 1 Investigators know from UVA's Charlottesville campus to Washington, D.C., the round trip is only 240 miles. 240 miles, and you had 669 miles.
Exactly.

Speaker 23 So once we put pen to paper, we sat down and we looked, and if you went from Charlottesville to D.C., D.C. back to Lynchburg, Lynchburg back to Washington, and then back to Charlottesville.

Speaker 23 That's pretty close to being 669 miles.

Speaker 1 It's quite a coincidence. So police question Elizabeth again.

Speaker 23 We asked her about that miles

Speaker 23 and she said that they had gotten lost.

Speaker 22 That's pretty lost. Yeah, pretty lost.
Does that ring true to you?

Speaker 23 I mean, we're talking college kids. They put a lot of stock in that.

Speaker 1 Plus, Elizabeth is cooperating with police and agrees to give her fingerprints and blood. But it's a path of bloody footprints in the Hasoms front yard that has gotten investigators' attention.

Speaker 1 The prints were revealed by luminol, a chemical that tests for the presence of blood.

Speaker 5 We have a set of prints that walk up to the driveway and end here at the driveway as if someone got in a car.

Speaker 7 Just stop. Just stop.

Speaker 1 So clearly they got into something.

Speaker 1 But when investigator Reed examines Jens and Elizabeth's rental car, he comes up empty. When you sprayed the luminol inside the inside of Elizabeth and Jens' rental car, I got no reaction.

Speaker 1 Remember, it's 1985 and DNA testing is not yet in use in criminal courts. So without a hit on the car, investigators are looking for a match to the type O blood found at the crime scene.

Speaker 1 It wasn't the victims, so they assume it must be the killers.

Speaker 23 There was several droplets of O blood found on the screen door, and there was two small spots found in the master bedroom.

Speaker 1 Investigators are flummoxed again because Elizabeth has type B blood. Her fingerprints did show up on a vodka bottle at her parents' home, but that's not surprising.
She visited often.

Speaker 1 But then someone from Elizabeth's own family points a finger of suspicion at her.

Speaker 23 It was from Dr. Howard Haysom, who is Elizabeth's half-brother.
He thought his sister had something to do with his parents' death.

Speaker 1 That's a pretty unbelievable,

Speaker 1 pretty shocking thing to say. Exactly.
But it just happened to come at the time when you had nothing in this case, except for this strange rental car

Speaker 1 agreement.

Speaker 23 And of course, he didn't like Jens. He didn't think much of Jens either.

Speaker 1 Remember, Elizabeth said she and Jens spent the weekend of the murders together in Washington, D.C.

Speaker 1 So investigators interview him next.

Speaker 5 He stepped in. It was like, I think to myself,

Speaker 5 I can't see this little kid kid doing something like that, that kind of damage. I don't know if he's ever been in a fight in his life.

Speaker 1 Audio tapes from that first police interview with Jens reveal a confident college freshman fending off suspicion, telling investigators he's the son of a German diplomat.

Speaker 1 What I felt I could do in coming down the sleep and speaking to you people to give you

Speaker 1 an impression of who I am, what I know. What was your impression?

Speaker 23 He was very sure of himself. I wouldn't talk to you again if you want me to.

Speaker 23 So that you will feel confident and secure in the knowledge that you don't have to bug me anymore.

Speaker 1 You and Detective Reed sort of played good cop, bad cop with him. We did.
You were the bad cop.

Speaker 23 I was. When we asked him to give us his blood and his fingerprints, he was adamant.
He said, I can't do that.

Speaker 2 Why not?

Speaker 23 His explanation was that if it got back to our State Department

Speaker 23 that a German diplomat's son was a person of interest. Person of interest in a homicide or suspect in a homicide case, that his whole family would be deported.

Speaker 5 I said, look, Jens, I said, I'm 99% sure you're innocent of this thing. But I said, I just need that 1%

Speaker 5 to convince me that you are totally innocent. And that's when he decided, he said, okay, well, I'll call you all next week.

Speaker 1 As investigators wait to meet with Jens, the phone rings. But it's not who they expect.

Speaker 23 Dr. Howard Hayson called us, and I never will forget that phone call.
He was upset. And he said, you've, you know, you've let them get away.

Speaker 1 Next.

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Speaker 1 It has been six months since the heinous double murder of Derek and Nancy Hasom rocked the rural community of Bedford County, Virginia.

Speaker 1 There have been no arrests, but the Hasom's youngest daughter, Elizabeth Hasom, and her German boyfriend, Jens Zering, are under suspicion.

Speaker 1 With limited evidence, police are left to wait for Jens to voluntarily give his fingerprints and blood. Jens says he'll go think about it, calls a few days later and says he will, in fact, submit.

Speaker 23 He said, I've been busy with a paper. I'll do it next Wednesday.
I can't do it this week.

Speaker 1 But before the said appointment with Jens, a shocking setback.

Speaker 23 Dr. Howard Hayson called us and I never will forget that phone call.
He was upset and he said,

Speaker 23 you've let them get away. And so they vanished.

Speaker 1 Into thin air.

Speaker 23 Into thin air.

Speaker 5 I said, well, apparently they're both guilty of something. Otherwise, why would they leave?

Speaker 1 Unbeknownst to Virginia investigators, the couple is 4,000 miles away in Europe, on their way on a jet-setting, globe-trotting journey, vagabonding across the world, keeping a journal of their exploits along with maps and receipts for their international ports of call.

Speaker 5 This is when they were traveling.

Speaker 1 Here's something from Stuttgart,

Speaker 1 something from Luxembourg.

Speaker 5 Schilling.

Speaker 1 Oh, this is Bangkok. This is a map of Bangkok.
Boy, they had quite the journey on the run, didn't they?

Speaker 5 I sure did.

Speaker 9 And let's picture these two young lovers going on this romantic, tense, tense,

Speaker 9 crazy adventure to England.

Speaker 1 Life on the Lamb in London.

Speaker 9 Under assumed names, passing bad checks, but then it all came crashing down to them.

Speaker 1 Jens and Elizabeth's six-month Life on the Lamb ended in this London Marks and Spencer department store.

Speaker 21 On the 30th of April 1986, a young couple was seen by the store detective in Marks and Spencer's just across the road there, acting suspiciously.

Speaker 1 Terry Wright and Kenneth Beaver were detectives with the London Police Department.

Speaker 18 They were separated inside the store and they both were seen to go to the counter and get refunds off previous purchases.

Speaker 1 A store detective alerts an off-duty officer who stops the young couple.

Speaker 21 They said their names were Christopher Platineau and Tara Lucy No.

Speaker 1 The off-duty officer arrests Jens and Elizabeth on suspicion they committed fraud. Their mug shots reveal their efforts to disguise themselves.

Speaker 21 This hair was tinted very slightly reddish, wasn't it?

Speaker 20 Yes, yes.

Speaker 21 She had dark hair, fairly short. I wanted to know where they were staying in London and I wanted to know where their passports were.

Speaker 1 Jens then makes a decision, a fatal mistake, according to detectives, that will alter the course of his and Elizabeth's lives forever.

Speaker 21 He decided to tell us that he was staying at a place called At Home, which is like a small basement rental apartment in Gloucester Place, which is in the centre of London.

Speaker 1 As fate would have it, the London flat was just off Baker Street, the fictional home of Sherlock Holmes.

Speaker 18 This is exactly the same as the place that Jens brought us to, down some basement steps, a doorway on the right-hand side. Jens had a key on him.

Speaker 18 He opened the door and took us into what was a very, very small room.

Speaker 21 I noticed that on the bed there were some wigs, false moustaches, and I suddenly realised that Jens during all the time he'd been talking to us, he was wearing a false moustache.

Speaker 18 I can remember Terry saying to Jens,

Speaker 18 okay, take it off. So Jens peeled off the moustache for us.

Speaker 1 But among the weary travelers' masks and veneers, detectives are about to uncover a bona fide bombshell.

Speaker 21 There was one suitcase in particular that was very large and it was full of correspondence.

Speaker 18 Once he started going through the letters in the diaries, it opened up a can of worms.

Speaker 1 Those steamy letters they had written to each other and a shared travel diary. Pages of entries would reveal clues to a macabre secret.

Speaker 1 That correspondent's all now locked up in a Bedford County evidence room. These are all the letters and things that were found in their room in London, right?

Speaker 5 Right, and I believe this is going to be Elizabeth's diary.

Speaker 6 Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1 In it, Elizabeth writes passages incriminating herself and Jens. Jens wipes fingerprints from room, passport photos done,

Speaker 1 parks at National Airport, satellite parking, wipes from the car.

Speaker 2 Wipes car.

Speaker 21 I'm thinking, why are they worried about fingerprints? It seemed to me like they were trying to hide something.

Speaker 1 She goes on to write, we were told the case is about to be solved. Perhaps fingerprints on coffee mug used by Jens in Bedford to interview.

Speaker 5 Now, clearly, again,

Speaker 21 they were worried about fingerprints for some reason, and I wanted to know what that interview was.

Speaker 5 I went and got him a cup of coffee the day we interviewed him. I believe a style foam cup is all they had, so no fingerprints were gotten off of it.

Speaker 1 As detectives read on, they learn Elizabeth has been harboring a deep hatred for her parents.

Speaker 21 There was also letters that were talking about things like doing voodoo on the parents and I wish they would lie down and die.

Speaker 23 The Christmas letters were so biting and so full of hatred that Elizabeth wrote yens. About her parents? About her parents and how much she despised them.

Speaker 23 And she talked about, should we get rid of them now or should we wait until we graduate and then do that?

Speaker 1 And the young couple's clumsy trail of breadcrumbs is about to lead right back to Bedford County, Virginia.

Speaker 1 Because in yet another of the letters written by Jens, he mentions the name of two homicide detectives in the U.S.

Speaker 21 One of them referred to,

Speaker 21 was actually addressed to dear officers Reed and Gardner. I found that particularly interesting because it actually referred to the death of her parents.

Speaker 1 Elementary, as Sherlock Holmes would say.

Speaker 21 I kept telling everybody that I thought they'd, I'd already decided I thought they'd done a murder.

Speaker 23 And I got the phone call. He said, this is Detective Constable Terry Wright calling from Richmond, England.
He said,

Speaker 23 do you know Elizabeth Hazelma-Yin-Soring?

Speaker 1 Okay, now you have to be.

Speaker 23 And I'm going,

Speaker 23 yeah.

Speaker 23 Yeah, I do.

Speaker 21 And I said, can you tell me,

Speaker 2 are...

Speaker 21 her parents dead?

Speaker 20 And he said, yeah, they're dead.

Speaker 23 He said, were they murdered?

Speaker 23 And I said, yes.

Speaker 21 And I said, I think you need to come over.

Speaker 23 We have the murderers incarcerated.

Speaker 1 Next, some court testimony that becomes must-see TV.

Speaker 14 I wanted my parents out of my life.

Speaker 16 When she appeared in court, everybody was riveted by what she had to say.

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Speaker 1 There's Big Ben and Buckingham Palace. But in the summer of 1986, there's something else in Britain getting attention.
Jens Zering and Elizabeth Hasom peering out from their mug shots.

Speaker 1 American sweethearts and UVA scholars on the run from cold-hearted murders back in Virginia.

Speaker 1 Former Scotland Yard detectives Ken Beaver and Terry Wright remember the pair, eager for their weekly court dates.

Speaker 21 That was their only opportunity to see each other, and I used to let them have a kiss and cuddle in the passageway. Yes, they were definitely still in love.

Speaker 1 In love and in trouble. Virginia investigator Ricky Gardner finally has the captive couple right where he wants them.
You flew to London?

Speaker 2 I did.

Speaker 1 He and the Scotland Yard detectives questioned Jens and Elizabeth about the so-called voodoo murder of her parents a little more than a year before.

Speaker 11 From a statement has been taken from Jens Foley on June the 5th, 1986.

Speaker 1 A strangely compliant Jens waives his right to an attorney and starts talking. And he has no lawyer present.

Speaker 9 That's right. He was questioned for three or four days without an attorney.
Presumably, that person would have told him to shut up.

Speaker 1 In an extraordinary series of interviews, only some of which were recorded, Jens proceeds to take full responsibility for the killings, claiming that Elizabeth stayed behind in Washington creating an alibi with double movie tickets and room service for two, while he drove down to the Haysoms home and killed them.

Speaker 23 He told me that he came at him like this and he fought like a bear, that he refused to die.

Speaker 1 There is one curious moment during his confession, one that will only become significant later, when detectives ask Jens about false confessions. Would you consider believing killed something else?

Speaker 1 I can see it happening here.

Speaker 27 I think if it is a possibility, I think it happens in real life.

Speaker 1 The detectives do not pursue the point.

Speaker 1 In her interview, Elizabeth does Jens one better, adding incriminating details, telling the detectives Jens bought a knife before he left to go see her parents, and saying he returned covered in blood.

Speaker 1 Those stunning confessions were enough to get Jens and Elizabeth indicted for murder back in Virginia, even while they were still in London.

Speaker 33 Today, we presented indictments for murder.

Speaker 1 Nearly a full year passes before Elizabeth Haysum makes her dramatic return to the U.S., landing in the twilight of a May evening in Roanoke, her hair pulled back in a braid, her hands cuffed in front.

Speaker 26 The former University of Virginia student was extradited by British authorities.

Speaker 1 Pam Windsor was a local TV reporter at the time.

Speaker 28 Pam Windsor, New Center 13, Bedford.

Speaker 16 It's the stuff that TV movies are made of. I mean, mean, the shock that she was involved, wanting to see what she says, it was a very big deal.

Speaker 1 Elizabeth pleads guilty as an accessory before the fact.

Speaker 1 Admitting she helped plan the murders, but insisting Jens is the one who carried them out.

Speaker 14 He had a choice. He had a four-hour drive.
No matter what I said to him before that, no matter what I had written to him in months before that, he had a choice whether he killed my parents or not.

Speaker 1 She is sentenced to 90 90 years in prison.

Speaker 1 Meanwhile, back in Britain, Jens is fighting extradition, hoping to be tried in Germany, where he faces a much lighter sentence.

Speaker 32 During this extradition proceeding.

Speaker 1 But it is a losing battle. In 1990, he is also returned to Virginia.
The defendant, Mr.

Speaker 12 Soren, he comes behind him and he cuts left to right.

Speaker 16 Up until then, we'd only heard Elizabeth's version, and so now everybody wants to see what he looks like and hear his version.

Speaker 1 People pack the courtroom expecting drama. And Jens doesn't disappoint.
In a stunning turnabout, he takes the stand to now swear he is innocent.

Speaker 1 Basically, Jens was in the position of saying, believe me now, don't believe that confession I gave a few years ago.

Speaker 9 We know, Elizabeth, that the most powerful form of evidence in a courtroom is a confession. Because an average person, a juror, can't understand.

Speaker 9 Why would you implicate yourself?

Speaker 1 Jens now says Elizabeth is the one who drove down to her parents' house and murdered them while he stayed behind in Washington.

Speaker 1 He says Elizabeth, who was using heroin and other hard drugs at the time, came back and told him what she'd done.

Speaker 32 I've killed my parents, I've killed my parents. It wasn't her that did it, it was the drugs that made her do it.
and that her parents deserved it anyway. You've got to help me.

Speaker 32 If you don't help me, they'll kill me.

Speaker 1 He says his false confession in London was an attempt to take the blame for Elizabeth, to save her from a death sentence.

Speaker 32 I loved Elizabeth, and I believed that the only way I could save her life from the electric chair was for me to take the blame, and that I personally

Speaker 32 really faced no more than a few years in German prison.

Speaker 9 His idea, his twisted fantasy was that he would serve his time in Germany, which could be as little as a few years,

Speaker 9 come out as her hero,

Speaker 9 and they would ride off into the sunset together.

Speaker 1 Jens's decision to testify, however, opened him up to a ripsaw cross-examination by prosecutor Jim Updike. Mrs.

Speaker 12 Soaring, you have the capability of lying to accomplish a certain goal, don't you?

Speaker 32 To protect Elizabeth Prime.

Speaker 12 To protect Elizabeth?

Speaker 32 Yes.

Speaker 12 Then it would follow if you had the capability of lying to protect Elizabeth, you most certainly have the capability of lying to protect yourself, correct?

Speaker 32 That would be logical.

Speaker 1 Things might move. The prosecutor, trying to turn the jury against Jens, produces a letter he wrote to Elizabeth, in which he refers to local authorities as yokels.

Speaker 26 Those yokels don't know what's coming down.

Speaker 32 I wrote that, yes. I still don't know.

Speaker 12 You still think we don't know what's coming down, don't you?

Speaker 32 Absolutely not. I don't think you do.
That's correct, yes.

Speaker 1 The trial features a bitter reunion. Elizabeth arrives from prison, her long blonde hair now shorn, and commits the ultimate act of betrayal, according to Jens, blaming him for her crime.

Speaker 14 It suddenly became real we were going to conspire and commit murder.

Speaker 28 So much of the case depends on whether jurors believe Jensering's story or Elizabeth Hasom.

Speaker 1 This was a time before DNA when blood typing is the best science can do. So the prosecutor makes much of type O blood found at the scene.

Speaker 1 Jens Zering has type O, along with with nearly 40% of the population. The prosecutor also shows the jury a bloody sock print that he said matches Jens's foot.

Speaker 32 And you pull that out, and it matches, and it fits like a glove.

Speaker 1 At the end of his three-week trial, the jury doesn't even need to sleep on it. We, the jury, find the defendant guilty of first-degree murder.

Speaker 1 Jens is convicted and sentenced to life in prison.

Speaker 2 Get back on starboard.

Speaker 1 He has spent nearly every day since fighting to free himself. And now he may be closer than ever.

Speaker 2 What's up, Sheriff?

Speaker 1 Still ahead, in pursuit of truth and justice. What 21st century DNA might reveal?

Speaker 1 Stay with us.

Speaker 17 An all-new season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives is now streaming on Hulu.

Speaker 1 Mom Talk started as a sisterhood, and that's gone to flames. New secrets and and lies are coming out.
This is going to be catastrophic.

Speaker 1 We're fighting for our marriages and the girls are just putting us through hell.

Speaker 2 They make everything about themselves.

Speaker 13 I can't.

Speaker 1 Hopefully this doesn't end in a bloodbath.

Speaker 17 Watch the Hulu original, The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives, now streaming on Hulu and Hulu on Disney Plus for bonus subscribers. Terms apply.

Speaker 35 It started with a phone call. In the early hours of the morning.

Speaker 27 Hi, one one. What is the address to your emergency?

Speaker 35 A terrified woman tells the operator she's been kidnapped, assaulted, and that she's trapped in a room with her attacker.

Speaker 35 He's fallen asleep, so she quietly and ever so carefully finds his phone and calls for help.

Speaker 27 Is there any way you can get out of the building?

Speaker 15 I don't know without waking him out for care.

Speaker 35 This 911 call began an investigation that would turn the town of Ashland into a crime scene.

Speaker 17 We've got something big going on here. The first thing that hit my mind is a monster.

Speaker 35 A new series from ABC Audio and 2020, The Hand in the Window. Out now, wherever you listen to podcasts.

Speaker 23 Welcome to Richmond, ladies and gentlemen.

Speaker 1 July 2017, not long after the 27th anniversary of Jen Zering's conviction.

Speaker 2 Well, well, well.

Speaker 9 What's up, Sheriff?

Speaker 25 Good, good.

Speaker 22 It's Richard Hudson.

Speaker 33 Hey, how are you? Very nice.

Speaker 22 Pleasure.

Speaker 1 An unlikely team of volunteer Zering supporters meets in Richmond to review what they believe is important new information.

Speaker 22 When you look at his confession,

Speaker 22 it's not consistent at all with the crime scene.

Speaker 1 Chip Harding is a sheriff in Albemarle County, Virginia, moonlighting on the case along with private investigator Richard Hudson.

Speaker 1 And then there's Jason Flom, the multi-millionaire music executive, who, when he's not discovering multi-platinum artists, is giving a voice to the wrongfully convicted through the Innocence Project.

Speaker 10 It's very interesting and it's very sad that he's still in jail 30 years later.

Speaker 9 Oh, it's beyond sad. It's tragic when you have a guy who has only been with one woman in his life and she turned out to be the devil.

Speaker 1 But the battle lines are drawn because in Bedford County, the original investigator, Ricky Gardner, continues to believe Zering is guilty.

Speaker 23 And he says, ah, kill them.

Speaker 1 What is the physical evidence connecting Jens to this murder scene?

Speaker 23 The physical evidence? Well, we've got the sock impression that we found at the scene.

Speaker 9 Oh my god, let's talk about the sock print. How the hell can you convict somebody based on a sock print?

Speaker 28 The prosecution tried to link Jens Soering to the Haysum murders by comparing bloody sock prints found at the house.

Speaker 9 Well, what you do is you bring in an expert, a sock print expert, right? Which sounds ridiculous because it is.

Speaker 1 Police originally said that sock print roughly corresponded to a woman's size seven foot, too small for Jensering's size eight and a half. They also point to mistakes Jens made when he confessed.

Speaker 1 He told police Nancy Hasom was wearing blue jeans. She was not.
She was dressed in a house coat.

Speaker 9 What kind of sense does it make for him to give the wrong details? That doesn't add up.

Speaker 1 In a petition for a pardon, Yen says long after the trial, he learned a significant piece of evidence had not been shared with his defense attorneys. An analysis of the crime by an FBI profiler.

Speaker 1 The FBI profiler was convinced of two things. That whoever killed Mr.
and Mrs. Haysom was intimate with the family and was a woman.

Speaker 27 That's right.

Speaker 9 That's what he said.

Speaker 31 He definitely told them that it was a woman that was close to the family involved in that crime scene.

Speaker 1 The profiler says he was also struck by Nancy Haym's outfit, that house coat. She would never receive strangers wearing a nightgown in her bathrobe.

Speaker 2 Exactly.

Speaker 1 Another thing, remember, Elizabeth and Jens's rental car had no trace of blood, even though there was a trail of bloody footprints leading towards the driveway.

Speaker 1 Which begs the question, there must have been another car.

Speaker 24 There has to have been another car.

Speaker 1 And

Speaker 24 we have a mechanic in that area stepping forward and saying, I know I didn't mention it 20 years ago, but actually.

Speaker 36 Tony Buchanan swears to me he serviced a car for Elizabeth Haysom in this lot just weeks after her parents were killed.

Speaker 1 More than 20 years after the trial in 2011, Tony Buchanan suddenly comes forward with an incredible claim. He says just weeks after the murders, Elizabeth Haysom and a man brought a car in for repair.

Speaker 1 Buchanan says he saw blood on the floor mats and took a closer look.

Speaker 34 When I looked over between the console and the seat, I seen the knife and it was full of blood. This kind of knife.

Speaker 1 He says at the time he assumed the blood and knife were connected to deer hunting.

Speaker 1 He says years later, he saw a photo of Yen Sering and says he realized that was not the man he had seen with Elizabeth and the bloody car.

Speaker 34 And I said, well, damn, that ain't the guy was in the shop. I said, somebody else is involved in this case, because somebody else than this guy, this guy was not in my shop.

Speaker 23 Tony Buchanan has no credibility.

Speaker 1 Ricky Gardner questions why Buchanan waited so long to come forward.

Speaker 23 Elizabeth, in 1985, this case, this case was on front page news every day.

Speaker 23 Every day.

Speaker 2 Come on.

Speaker 23 He's not credible.

Speaker 1 In his pardon petition, Yen says the strongest proof of his innocence is revealed by modern DNA testing of the old evidence from the Haysom house.

Speaker 1 An expert working for Yen says the results are astonishing. There is no trace of Jens at the crime scene.

Speaker 20 There was no way that Yen Sering could contribute to those samples.

Speaker 1 Experts on Zering's team say some of the crime scene samples contained DNA not from Jens, but from two strangers.

Speaker 20 It looks like there's at least one to two unidentified males at that crime scene.

Speaker 1 That has Jason Flom and some others more convinced than ever that Elizabeth Hasom is the real killer and that she had accomplices.

Speaker 9 What actually must have happened is that she went to the house with two males and that things, you know, took a very, very bad turn from there. And now the DNA backs that up.

Speaker 1 But a DNA expert 2020 consulted questions whether the results about two strangers are really that conclusive.

Speaker 1 Professor Dan Crane says it's possible the DNA is actually from one of the victims, Derek Hasom.

Speaker 33 There's no indication that Jens Soreng was present at the crime scene.

Speaker 33 But I think we can also say that there's no affirmative indication of anybody other than the victims being present at the crime scene as well.

Speaker 1 Jens's supporters stand by their experts' interpretation.

Speaker 9 We know two guys did it, and unless they've died since then, they're out there.

Speaker 1 Still ahead, we'll talk to Jen Sering from behind bars and discuss the woman he says ruined his life. And how do you feel about Elizabeth Haysom today?

Speaker 1 Stay with us.

Speaker 1 Yen Sering was 18 years old when the crimes that sent him to prison were committed. He is now 51.

Speaker 1 His former sweetheart, Elizabeth Hasom, 20 at the time her parents were murdered, is now 53.

Speaker 1 In recent years, the Virginia prison authorities have put an end to all on-camera interviews, so we spoke to Jens by phone in August, a week after his birthday.

Speaker 27 I've spent 31 years in here,

Speaker 27 32 birthdays, but I think maybe

Speaker 27 the end is now finally in sight.

Speaker 1 And just for the record, did you kill Derek and Nancy Haysom?

Speaker 27 Absolutely not.

Speaker 1 And how do you feel about Elizabeth Haysom today?

Speaker 27 Honestly, I really try not to think about her.

Speaker 27 I'm trying to look towards the future. I'm trying to stay positive.
And getting mad at people doesn't give me anything.

Speaker 1 Some will never be convinced that Yen Zering isn't right where he belongs. Do you have any doubt in your minds that Yen Soaring committed those murders?

Speaker 23 No doubt in my mind at all. He learnt the game of manipulation from a very good instructor, Elizabeth Haysum.

Speaker 23 And now he's manipulated individuals into thinking that he is innocent when in fact I know that he is a guilty man.

Speaker 1 With his appeals long since exhausted, Jens's last hope is for a pardon or parole.

Speaker 18 The Soering case.

Speaker 1 In September, supporters held a news conference in Charlottesville urging then-Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe and parole officials to set Zering free.

Speaker 31 I will tell you right now that I do not believe based on all the work that I did on this case, that Yen Zering participated in the homicide of Derek and Nancy Hayson.

Speaker 6 I do not believe he did that.

Speaker 1 It didn't happen. McAuliffe took no action.
Now there is a new governor, and Zering's team says it will try yet again.

Speaker 9 He's been stuck in a tiny cage for 31 years for a crime he didn't commit. It's enough.

Speaker 1 If Yen Zering's current appeal for parole is denied, he will next be eligible for parole for the 14th time this summer.

Speaker 7 So, our question for you right here tonight: do you believe his story, that he's innocent?

Speaker 8 Let us know on Twitter and on Facebook. And in the meantime, that is 2020 for tonight.
I'm David Muir.

Speaker 1 And I'm Elizabeth Vargas for all of us at 2020 and ABC News. Have a great weekend and a great night.

Speaker 1 You've been listening to the 2020 True Crime Vault.

Speaker 1 You can find all new broadcast episodes of 2020 Friday nights at 9 on ABC.