RICHMOND, Va. — When he was a teenager, Jens Soering confessed to committing one of Virginia’s most shocking crimes. He later recanted, but says he understands why some people still question why he would ever admit to killing two people if he did not really do it.
“There’s research that shows that among teenagers, the leading cause for false confession isn’t police brutality, it isn’t threats by the police, it isn’t anything like that,” said Soering. “With teenagers the leading cause for false confession is, in fact, the wish to protect somebody else, which is exactly what I did when I was 19, and when I lied to the police by giving a false confession, I was trying to protect somebody else … my girlfriend.”
In spring 1985, Soering, the son of a German diplomat, was a first-year student at the University of Virginia when he and his then-girlfriend Elizabeth Haysom were accused of killing her parents at the Haysom family home in Bedford County, Virginia…