Jens Soering: An Unprecedented Precedent in Murder Fame

New Videos and a Look at Personal Letters

A strange phenomenon is occurring in Germany and the U.S. Jens Soering, aka Jens Soring, a man convicted of the 1985 murders of his girlfriend’s parents, released in 2019 after a long celebrity-filled innocence campaign, and has taken the German media landscape by storm. In the US, he’s back in the news again, with a new Netflix series about his and his ex-girlfriend’s case. But the German media is now getting skeptical.

While Soering initially confessed to the crime, in his 1990 trial he said he had done so falsely to protect his girlfriend from the death penalty… and he now points to her (and possibly one or more as-yet-undiscovered accomplices, though the narrative has changed there over time).

After lobbying and appealing for years, in 2019 he was finally released on parole and deported to Germany. He was received at the airport as a celebrity, with cameras flashing and a gaggle of reporters. He then went on to do a spate of media appearances in Deutschland — here an appearance on “Markus Lanz” — the “Oprah” of Germany; there in the magazine “Der Spiegel”; on NDR, Germany’s public radio; many German newspapers, and more. (He’s also previously done the gamut here in the U.S. — Geraldo, Dr. Phil, 20/20, Larry King, etc., etc., usw).

But although the tone of the earlier pieces was that Soering was actually innocent of the murders, as he has claimed since his Virginia trial in 1990, that has started to change since some critical pieces have come out, notably the first one being Andrew Hammel’s piece in the Frankfurter Zeitung (aka FZ), who writes early in the piece that Soring is guilty beyond a doubt.

It seems the tide is turning in Soering’s narrative. Some people in Germany, having read Hammel’s piece, and a critical podcast called The Soering System, now out in English, now don’t believe Soering’s story.

More recently, there has been an influx of interest in the case in the wake of the Netflix docuseries, “Till Murder do Us Part.” I thought the series was very well done, and they managed to dig up all kinds of key figures in the case — Soering himself, cop at the crime scene Ricky Gardner, Soering supporters John Grisham, Chuck Reid, Chip Harding, German former President Christian Wulff, Soering’s German attorney Frieser, etc.

The Netflix folks didn’t seem to buy Soering’s story (nor Elizabeth’s, for that matter), and Herr S. was not a happy camper. He released a new video, boldly titled “F*cked by Netflix.”

(The verbiage from many folk in the ongoing saga is getting more and more emphatic).

What seems interesting to me, in the whole gestalt, as it were, is the unprecedentedness of this media phalanx. When in historical memory has a convicted double-murderer in prison proclaimed his innocence, gained powerful allies like John Grisham, Jason Flom, and German diplomats including former President Angela Merkel…and then actually gotten out? And then…made a tour of media in the country to which he was deported? And then…followed by media skepticism?

Even in the lurid true crime world, this is an anomaly.

But Soering is a man of many words. This I also know personally, as I corresponded with him for about two years, 2011-2012. (You can read the background of how that came to be here).

I say he’s an unprecedented precedent because not only has he set a legal precedent — the European Court of Human Rights (Soering v United Kingdom 161 Eur. Ct. H.R. (ser. A) (1989), where the threat of execution if Soering was extradited to Virginia for a potential death penalty was held to be inhumane…but his ongoing story is unprecedented.

This is fascinating to me because my interest in the case has long been psychological. If he was innocent, as he claimed since 1990, how on earth did he last behind bars so long? (Heck, even if he were guilty, how could a self-proclaimed nerd and scholar survive that long in prison?). And, as he continues to protest his innocence today, even after earning money for media appearances and selling various story rights, does he really believe he is innocent? Or is he so used to charming people with his curated version of the story, that he doesn’t want to backtrack?

Soering has cut ties with many people who stopped believing him. He wrote to me in one letter that a friend had said to him, he didn’t care if Jens was guilty or innocent, he would still support him. That made him very hurt and angry.

But he also was pushing the narrative that the two “drifters” in the Lynchburg area had conspired with Elizabeth to commit the crime…something he later admitted he only did because it was something to go on at the time, according to Andrew Hammel’s new book on the case, Martyr or Murderer: Jens Soering, the Media, and the Truth.

Apparently he is still estranged from his family, as well. “My overall feeling about my family today,” he wrote me in a letter 10/3/2012, “I wish I had never met any of you! I wish I’d been aborted. I wish the Trojan hadn’t had a hole in it. Earthlings, I do not like your planet, and I wish I’d never come here!” He also said he’d run away from home when he was a kid living in Cyprus. (I assume it was a brief jaunt).

I sometimes think Soering has contributed more to the literature of suffering than any other person who took pen to paper. Certainly he is in the top 10%, in my book. While he found religion in prison, and that sustained him for a while, he lost it — he wrote me that “I did not ‘choose’ to lose my faith — it happened against my will, as a result of extreme suffering.”

There is more to parse in his letters, but I don’t know that I’ll find any answers.

In the Netflix docuseries, Ricky Gardner is quoted as saying that Jens Soering’s mind works differently from anyone he ever knew. I can see why he said that.

But there is still cognitive dissonance here. Why is he doing videos entitled “Elizab*tch cheated on me”? How is the man who wooed and charmed so many important people a person who could have committed these crimes? Of course, he wouldn’t be the first convicted criminal to charm people to try to help himself.

People including me wonder why he does not want to move on. He has said he will not because he is innocent.

He now has a podcast with a man named Simmen. He released a new ebook about his love affair with said Elizab*tch. He will not go quietly. And so it goes.