Paroled: Double Murderer Jens Soering

If only we’d executed this sorry SOB back in 1990. 

Jens Soering, that is.

If he’d gotten the death penalty he deserved, this double murderer wouldn’t be getting out of prison. Yep, thanks to the blockheads on Virginia’s Parole Board, this monster is about to become a free man.

OK, OK,  we couldn’t execute Jens Soering. After butchering two people in Virginia he hopscotched around the world until he was finally captured on charges of check fraud in Britain. He fought extradition to America for years on grounds that he’d face the death penalty. Ultimately, American authorities promised not to kill him and he was shipped back to Virginia.

Finally, when Soering got two life sentences for slaughtering Derek and Nancy Haysom - his girlfriend’s parents - some of us naively believed this hairball would die where he belonged. In prison.

After all, we’re a no-parole state. Life in prison is supposed to mean just that.

But Soering committed his crimes a decade before Virginia wisely abolished parole in 1995, so he and a handful of freaks still come up before the parole board year after year.

They almost always leave disappointed. 

Until now.

With this boneheaded decision Virginia’s soft-on-crime-tough-on-legal-gun-owners era begins. Don’t doubt me.

Soering’s been boo-hooing for decades about how soul-crushing life is in prison. He’s found Jesus, he was wrongly convicted, and naturally, he has an army of soft-headed people championing his cause.

Shoot, Sen. Tim Kaine fell for the Soering sob story. His last act as governor in 2011 was to sign an order sending Soering to a prison in his native Germany where he would have been freed in about five years. 

Gov. Bob McDonnell and former U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder quickly worked together to reverse that order.

Now Virginia’s parole board is freeing this killer and his accomplice, Elizabeth Haysom, who’s serving a 90-year sentence for helping Soering kill her parents. They are NOT doing this because they believe him to be innocent. They know he’s a ruthless, demented killer.

According to The Richmond Times-Dispatch, “Adrianne L. Bennett, chair of the Virginia Parole Board, which investigates pardon requests, said in a statement that the board recommended against a pardon. The governor's office on Monday said it had turned down the pardon request.

“The years-long, exhaustive investigation ... a genuine search for the truth revealed that Jens Soering’s claims of innocence are without merit,” she said.

But, she added, “the parole board has determined that releasing Jens Soering and Elizabeth Haysom to their ICE deportation detainers is appropriate because of their youth at the time of the offenses, their institutional adjustment and the length of their incarceration.”

He’s a German native. She’s a Canadian. They’re being turned over to ICE for deportation and banned from returning to the U.S. because they were young at the time of the murders.

If you were in Virginia back in 1985 you remember the grisly Haysom murders. The couple was stabbed to death in their Bedford County home and nearly beheaded. There was no sign of forced entry or robbery.

Turned out they were killed by their daughter’s UVA student boyfriend. The Haysoms hadn’t approved of the relationship.

Clearly they had good instincts.

Elizabeth helped Soering with his alibi. But as soon as the police found them for questioning these homicidal rich kids fled the country.

I’ve written about the case before. There’s this from 2007, when Soering was bellyaching about how bad prison was while insisting his 1990 confession was a lie:

Soering's case is fascinating because the usual excuses for violent behavior don't apply. The low-IQ justification won't work because the kid was practically a genius. Underprivileged childhood doesn't get it done because his was a life of privilege.

Oh yeah, let's not forget that Soering confessed to the murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom. Soering said he mistakenly thought he enjoyed his dad's diplomatic immunity. He confessed, he says, to protect his girlfriend.

Soering's serious.

He expects us to believe that at the time of the murders, he figured the legal loophole that lets foreign emissaries amass mountains of unpaid parking tickets would give him a free pass for double murder.

Unbelievable. This guy was a University of Virginia Jefferson Scholar, for Christmas sake.

Looks like Jens Soering’s charmed life continues.

He killed two people, got two life sentences and the suckers on Virginia’s parole board are merrily springing him.

Hey, he’ll be home for the holidays! Cue the Christmas music.

Didn’t we abolish parole precisely to put an end to this sort of misguided “compassion”?

Nothing to do now but sound the alarm: Hide your knives and lock your doors, Germany. Jens Soering is coming home.