A pair of former University of Virginia first-year honors students and lovers, convicted after the gruesome 1985 double-slaying of her parents, have won parole, according to their supporters. Hawes Spencer has this report 34 years after the deaths of Derek and Nancy Haysom.
Transcript:
Hawes Spencer: Elizabeth Haysom, daughter of the victims, pleaded guilty as a plotter-- and blamed her boyfriend, Jens Soering, a German national convicted of first-degree murder. Recent DNA evidence convinced Albemarle Sheriff Chip Harding that Soering is innocent.
Sherriff Chip Harding: "I'm ecstatic for Jens Soering."
Spencer: Harding says Soering falsely confessed to spare his girlfriend.
Harding: "He's given up all his 20s, his 30s, and 40s; and he's now into his 50s for a stupid mistake he made basically as a teenager."
Spencer: The parole board didn't go that far. It recommended against the absolute pardon that Soering had sought. The two will be deported to ancestral homes: she to Canada and he to Germany.
In Charlottesville, Hawes Spencer for VPM News.
