Till Murder Do Us Part Soering vs Haysom (Der Fall Jens Söring – Tödliche Leidenschaft) is a Netflix documentary series released on Netflix on November 1, 2023. It is directed by Andre Hörmann and Lena Leonhardt. There are four episodes in the limited series with a runtime of about 45-52 minutes.
The documentary features journalists, acquaintances of the alleged culprits and investigating officials who worked on the case including Buzz McFaden, Tammy Martin, Jeff Taylor, Louis Benedict, Chuck Reid, Ricky Gardner, Christian Wulf, Terry Wright, Amy Lemley, Phyllis Workman, Hanns Feigen, Rachel Ryan, Courteney Stuart, Carlos Santos, Chip Harding, Andy Griffiths, Chris Fabricant, Andrew Hammel, Sarah Reel and even Jens Soering shares his own story.
-This Article Contains Spoilers-
Till Murder Do Us Part Soering vs Haysom Review
The series re-investigates the gruesome murder of Derek Haysom and his wife Nancy in 1985 in Lynchburg. On April 3, 1985, the police found the stabbed and mutilated bodies of the couple in their own home, after someone’s call. Their throats had been slit and Derek had at least 36 knife stab wounds on his body. They must have been murdered at least 2-3 days before they were discovered. There were no signs of forced entry nor anything was missing or stolen. This made the case quite complicated with no clear suspects in the view.
Everything took a drastic change when the couple’s daughter, Elizabeth Haysom was called in for general questioning. She was studying at the University of Virginia at that time and recalled going on a road trip to Washington DC from Charlottesville, with her boyfriend Jens Soering. Nothing peculiar was found during her testimony and she even cooperated politely with giving her samples etc. Until the officers looked at the road distance of their trip and it appeared that they might have to drive at least 670 miles in the roundtrip, which looked strange for a young couple’s casual trip.
With some suspicions in mind, the investigating officers questioned Jens. While the testimony was somewhat similar, he refused to give his samples. He was quite adamant about it & asked for some time to think and come back. What they didn’t expect was that Elizabeth and Jens would run away from the country, to evade the investigation. From that point on, the police were quite sure that the duo was behind the gruesome double murder.
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They were on a run for a year, visiting different countries and were caught in 1986 in London due to the case of fraudulent cheques. One thing led to another and that’s when Jens confessed to killing his girlfriend’s parents. Although the couple was incarcerated in the UK for fraud, Elizabeth was extradited to Virginia in 1987. There, she solely blamed Jens for the murder by stating that after their day trip to Washington, he had driven to her home alone & murdered them. While she was in Charlottesville, visiting the cinema and waiting for her boyfriend at the Mariott Hotel.
However, the letters exchanged between the two lovers painted another picture. Elizabeth evidently despised her parents and would often wish that they were dead. While 19-year-old Jens would actively try to comfort his first-ever girlfriend, by claiming to the extent of killing them for her sake and freedom. In her defence, she agreed that she would often manipulate Jens by painting a painful picture of her life (making false claims of sexual abuse against her mother) and would get immense love & care, as a result of it.
Yet she repeated that she didn’t murder her parents. She threw Jens completely under the bus by saying that no matter what she told him about her life and her parents, at the end of the day, he had the choice to kill them or not. She often calls her relationship addictive and intense which made her stay with him after all that. But once her stance changed, Jens didn’t hold back and took 180 turn on his confession – blaming Elizabeth solely for the murders.
Over the years, the case turned into a competition of who’s the better storyteller. Whoever seemed more convincing to the public, they turned to that side. Elizabeth was given 90 years in prison for abetting Jens to commit the murder, while Jens when extradited to Virginia, was given two life sentences on the charge of murders. She took up the persona of a person repenting her sins & he created the image of an innocent person who got manipulated into the mess because of love.
Throughout the four episodes, the creators keep going back and forth to present the views from both sides of the parties. Elizabeth’s side calls Jens, controlling, aggressive and jealous, who wanted her all to herself. While he calls her a twisted person, who lied and roped him into her created mess. Only in the last 10 minutes, the featured guests suppose that maybe both of the sides are telling the truth, except for omitting themselves out of it. This means they both did it together but when things turned ugly, they tracked back on their words & made each other the villain.
Which sounds like the most plausible argument, compared to the other two. Their letters to each other and how they behaved after the murder suggest that they both were in it together and were dealing pretty fine with it. If only the suspicions hadn’t been raised against them, they would still be living as innocents, with the case going cold. In almost all of the cases with unclear culprits and unanswered questions, the initial lousy investigation is to blame. Either they don’t question everything in front of them and try to find a culprit based on their biased assumptions.
In this case, they did find the offenders (because they confessed) but didn’t gather enough evidence to give solid proof of them being at the crime scene. At present, the couple is out of jail and living in their respective countries. Elizabeth Haysom was sent to Canada and Jens Soering went back to Germany, where he didn’t leave one chance to claim his innocence. Who is telling the truth? – nobody can tell, except the duo who were so potently in love, once upon a time, that it turned into a poison, killing them slowly.
Till Murder Do Us Part Soering vs Haysom is available for streaming on Netflix.
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