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To get this episode of Forensic Tales ad-free, please visit patreon.com/forensictales. Forensic Tales discusses topics that some listeners may find disturbing. The contents of this episode may not be suitable for everyone. Listener discretion is advised. Bedford County, Virginia was a quiet town where front doors were left unlocked, a place that Nancy and Derek Hasem called home. Then one day, the couple was gone. No one saw or heard from them in days.
When the neighbors finally went to go check on them, their worst fears were realized. Both Derek and Nancy Hasem had been brutally murdered inside their own home, each stabbed dozens of times. But what troubled investigators was, there weren't any signs of forced entry. So who could have been behind this? This is Forensic Tales, episode number 211, The Murders of Nancy and Derek Hasem. ♪♪
Welcome to Forensic Tales. I'm your host, Courtney Fretwell-Ariola.
Forensic Tales is a weekly true crime podcast covering real, spine-tingling stories with a forensic science twist. Some cases have been solved with forensic science, while others have turned cold. Every remarkable story sends us a chilling reminder that not all stories have happy endings. As a one-woman show, your support helps me find new compelling cases and
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Only a little over 80,000 people call Bedford County, Virginia home. It's home to the Harvest Festival, the world's famous National D-Day Memorial, and endless hiking trails. Back in the mid-1980s, it was a place where residents never locked their front doors. Everyone just simply looked out for one another. Everyone knew everyone. It was a big little town.
But what you may not know is that Bedford County is home to one of the state's most brutal double homicides that some people consider still unsolved today. What really happened to Derek and Nancy Hasem? In 1985, Nancy and Derek Hasem were among Bedford's most popular and social couples. 72-year-old Derek Hasem was a South African-born engineer who ran a steel mill in Virginia and was married to his wife, 53-year-old Nancy.
Despite their 19-year age difference, when Derek met Nancy, they were both divorced and had their own adult children. Nancy had two sons from her previous marriage, and Derek had four children from his previous relationship. But when they met, they instantly fell in love and married in 1960. Shortly after that, they added to their blended family and had a child together in 1964, a girl they named Elizabeth.
Because Nancy and Derek were such social and prominent people in their part of Bedford County, their friends and neighbors were just used to seeing them around almost on a daily basis. Neighbors often saw Nancy at the grocery store or somewhere else in town, or they would see Derek at his weekly bridge game with friends. So when no one heard or saw them in a couple days in late March 1985, their friends got worried.
On April 3rd, 1985, one of their friends decided to go to the Hasems' house just to go check on them, a property that Nancy had called Loose Chippings. It wasn't uncommon for people in this part of the state to give their property a name, and that's what they called it, Loose Chippings. But when the friends entered the house, they walked into a bloodbath. Derek was lying on the floor on his side near a doorway, drenched in blood.
He was stabbed 36 times, and his head almost decapitated. Nancy was lying on the kitchen floor with six stab wounds. Both of them had been dead for at least a couple of days. The police response to the Hasems' house was almost instant. For a double homicide to happen like this in this part of Bedford was practically unheard of, especially to people like Derek and Nancy Hasem.
So naturally, the first question on everyone's mind was, who could have committed something so horrible? Bedford County Sheriff's Office started collecting evidence, and by no means was the house short on physical or forensic evidence. Given the amount of times that both Derek and Nancy were stabbed, there was blood everywhere in the house. Blood had been smeared underneath and around their bodies, like someone had tried cleaning it up.
Blood was on the walls. Blood on the kitchen table, where there were two plates and wine glasses just sitting there, like maybe they were eating dinner when they had been stabbed. But as much as the police searched, they couldn't find the knife or the murder weapon.
Now, what really stood out to investigators was that there wasn't any signs of forced entry and nothing really seemed to be missing from the house. The doors and windows were locked like normal. The windows weren't smashed and locks weren't broken. And even Nancy's purse and her wallet were still sitting on the kitchen counter. None of her jewelry was missing. So clearly the motive here wasn't financial and it wasn't a robbery.
Several bloody footprints were found on the floor around the bodies. Some of the footprints had been made from what looked like a tennis shoe, but there were also two sets of bloody sock prints, like maybe someone had walked around in only their socks. Four different blood types were found at the scene. A, AB, a little bit of B blood on a damp rag and on the screen door, and type O were found in the master bedroom.
The police knew that the Hasems had A and AB blood types, so the type B and the type O blood were a little bit confusing. Even though advanced DNA testing simply didn't exist in 1985, the police were still able to use the blood evidence to recreate what they thought might have happened. Sometime between March 29th and April 1st, the killer, or killers, arrived at Derek and Nancy's house, loose chippings.
Since there weren't any signs of forced entry, the Hasems likely let them inside for one reason or another. At the time, the Hasems were probably eating dinner, hence the empty plates and glasses that were sitting on the kitchen table. A trail of blood found near the kitchen table suggests that that's where Derek was first stabbed. He then stumbled across the living room as he was bleeding, leaving more blood trails.
A bloody palm print on a side chair showed that's where he put his hand down as if he were trying to grab someone to help him get back up. But the attacker didn't stop. The killer repeatedly stabbed Derek in both his chest and throat area. Both the jugular and carotid were sliced. His neck had been cut almost from ear to ear.
When everything was said and done, Derek Hasem had been stabbed over 30 times. Nancy was also stabbed, but notably, she was stabbed far less times. She'd been stabbed only six times compared to his 30 times. And her body was found in the kitchen as if maybe she was trying to get away and maybe trying to go get help. But either way, they caught up to her.
Before leaving the scene, the police found evidence that whoever was responsible had used one of the Hasems' bathrooms to clean up. They may have even taken a shower to try and get rid of some of the blood or maybe some other type of evidence. Plus, unknown hair was found in one of the bathroom sinks.
So that, and on top of there was no signs of forced entry, led them to suspect that the killer really felt comfortable inside the Hasem's house and quite possibly knew their way around. Over the next several days, the police pored over every piece of evidence and spoke with every one of the Hasem's neighbors to see if they knew anything.
No one did. They looked into Derek's business dealings as a steel mill owner. Maybe he had wronged someone in a past business deal and that could have set the murders off, but they couldn't find anyone. Sure, Derek did have some enemies over the years, but no one was filled with that much hate.
They also looked at all of their friends who lived with them in Bedford County, but they couldn't find anyone who could say really anything bad about the Hasems. Most people that the cops spoke to only said really good things about this couple. They went to go speak with the Hasems' adult children from both of their previous marriages, but none of them were even in town when they were murdered, and none of them really had any idea who could have done this.
So after all of that, all of these interviews with all of these different people, the police were nowhere. Five days after the bodies were found, so this is on April 8th, the police sat down and spoke with Derek and Nancy's daughter, 20-year-old Elizabeth Hasem. Remember, she was the only daughter that Derek and Nancy shared together. And at the time her parents were murdered, Elizabeth was a student at the University of Virginia.
Now, during their conversation, Elizabeth didn't seem to show very much emotion. In fact, she seemed completely normal. You would never know that by sitting across from her that her parents had just been murdered. She just seemed completely calm and normal. Elizabeth told the police that when her parents were murdered, she was in Washington, D.C. with her boyfriend, Jens Soering.
They had rented a car together and decided to spend the weekend in D.C. She said there just wasn't much going on at school, so they decided to take a weekend together. But besides that, Elizabeth didn't really say much to investigators. She didn't know anyone who would want her parents dead. She basically said she knew nothing about it and even agreed to provide her fingerprints, footprints, and DNA samples.
But as soon as Elizabeth walked out the door and left this interview, the police looked into her alibi. They didn't really suspect her at this point in time, but they still needed to rule her out just like everyone else. As soon as they began to check her alibi, one interesting thing stood out about their rental car. The car had a few hundred extra miles on it.
When the police returned to Elizabeth and asked her about the extra miles, she blamed it on her boyfriend, Jens, getting lost a couple times. But the cops were confused about how exactly Jens could have gotten so lost. The drive from the University of Virginia up to Washington, D.C. was basically a straight shot. So there shouldn't have been any reason to get lost.
Even someone with a terrible sense of direction could still make this drive without getting lost. But according to the rental car agreement papers, Jens and Elizabeth put a total of 669 miles on the rental car. But the drive from the university to Washington, D.C. was only 240 miles roundtrip.
That meant there was an extra 420 miles on it. So we're not talking about 10, 20, or even 50 extra miles. This was hundreds of unaccounted miles. More than can simply be explained by saying that Jens got lost a couple extra times. 429 miles is a lot of miles to be lost.
An interesting coincidence was that a trip down to Elizabeth's parents' house in Bedford County could help explain the extra miles. The police calculated that if Jens and Elizabeth rented the car and drove from the University of Virginia to Washington, D.C., then back down to her parents' house before going back to D.C., this added up almost perfectly to 669 miles.
But according to Elizabeth, they never went to her parents' house that weekend. Of course, the police wanted to speak with Elizabeth's boyfriend, Yen Soaring. But when they asked her about him, she seemed to sort of brush them off and say, Oh, he's just busy with school and work, but I promise I'll have him call you as soon as he can. But the problem is, Yen Soaring never called the police. In fact, he never agreed to sit down with investigators.
The Bedford County Sheriff's Office worked the case up and down for the next several months, but nothing promising showed up. Yes, they probably suspected Elizabeth and her boyfriend, or at least they knew she was acting a little bit strange, but they didn't really have anything on her.
And meanwhile, Elizabeth and Jens continued dating. And at one point, Jens even moved in to Elizabeth's apartment while the police continued to hunt down her parents' killers. Nearly six months after the murders, this is now in October, Jens finally agreed to meet with detectives. And when he did, the police asked him for his fingerprints, footprints, and blood so that they could officially eliminate him as a suspect.
Elizabeth had already given the police hers, so the next person they needed to eliminate was him. But instead of turning them over to the cops, he said he needed to consult with the German embassy first. As the son of a German diplomat, he said he didn't feel comfortable turning over his fingerprints or blood samples to the police without consulting them first.
So, Jens walked out of that interview room without providing anything to officially clear his name in the murders. The amount of pressure on the police to solve the Hasems' murders was unlike anything they had experienced before.
Not only were they getting pressure from just the general public and the people living in Bedford County, but they were especially getting pressure from the Hasems' other adult children. Everyone wanted to know why it had already been six months and no arrests had been made. Then suddenly, Elizabeth Hasem and her boyfriend, Yen Soaring, simply vanished. Six months pass and nothing. No arrests, only questions.
What's the mystery behind the unexpected 400 extra miles on the rental car? And where did Elizabeth and Jens disappear to? We'll be right back. Do you know what I don't miss at all? That vicious week before my period each month. If you're anything like me, that week is a complete nightmare. I'm craving the worst kind of food, like fast food and candy, and I just feel off. I don't feel like myself.
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Just days before Jens was scheduled to provide his fingerprints, footprints, and DNA, he called up investigators and said that he was a little bit too busy with school and work to come down to the station. But he promised to do it in a week when his life sort of calmed down. But all of that was a lie. Elizabeth and Jens had already booked a one-way plane ticket to Paris, France.
When detectives showed up at Jens and Elizabeth's apartment, they found a strange note written by Jens. It almost seemed like a half-confession mixed with almost a half-suicide note. Or at least it was a running away note. Now, the letter read in part, quote,
Dear Officer Gardner and Reed, I assume that especially you, Mr. Gardner, will be very excited by now, which is why I hate to disappoint you. Well, that's not exactly true. I suggest that you continue your investigation as before. Undoubtedly, you will find whom you're looking for. As for me, I'm afraid you must remain, as Officer Reed put it,
99% sure of my innocence. From what Liz has told me about what you discovered at Loose Chippings, I can only say I am capable of such a thing. I do not have many friends, but I think they will substantiate this and my longstanding dissatisfaction with my life here. End quote. If the police weren't suspicious of Elizabeth and her boyfriend Jens,
They definitely were after finding out that they skipped town and both of them had written goodbye letters to their family and friends. For the next six months, Elizabeth and Jens stayed out of the U.S. while the police continued to work the case and wait for them just to hopefully come back on their own. They started out in France, but then they traveled to Luxembourg and eventually ended up in Bangkok, Thailand.
The plan was for Jens to get his birth certificate since he was originally born in Thailand. And the plan from there was for them to get married and apply for Thai passports. But that plan didn't exactly work out. When they got there, Jens couldn't provide any of the documentation that he needed. So both of them were denied passports.
But they were still able to obtain a handful of fake IDs, student cards, and even fake birth certificates. As it turned out, Thailand wasn't for them. So they decided to leave Thailand and head to England once they had what they needed. And once they got there, they assumed the fake names of Tim and Julia Hoyt, pretending to be a married Canadian couple and students at the University of Kent.
From then on, they did their very best to carry out quote-unquote normal lives, despite being prime suspects in a double homicide in the U.S. They tried to just assume these fake aliases and have everyone in England think that they were someone that they weren't. But living normal lives just wasn't possible. They were too afraid to go out and get regular jobs, thinking that people would uncover who they actually were.
So that's when they devised a scheme in order to make some money. With their fake IDs, they were able to open British bank accounts. That also meant they were able to get their hands on a checkbook. So to get money, they went to different department stores to buy clothes, paying with a check. After a few days, they went back to the department store, returned the clothes, saying that they didn't fit or they didn't like them.
And instead of giving them store credit or anything, the stores gave them cash back for their returns. Meanwhile, the checks they used to buy the clothes in the first place were always bad. But by the time the check bounced, they already had their cash. This worked all throughout London. Although it might have seemed like a good idea at first, it didn't really last long.
While shopping in a London department store on April 30th, 1986, one of the store security guards became suspicious of the duo and they decided to call the police. Their entire fraud scheme was discovered once Elizabeth and Jens were in police custody. In total, the London police estimated that they had stolen over £6,000 through bad checks.
Jens and Elizabeth were put in a London jail where the British police searched the place where they were living, looking for more evidence of fraud. But while searching their apartment, they uncovered much more than bad checks. Inside their place, the police found dozens, if not hundreds, of letters and diary entries between Jens and Elizabeth. Some were just letters expressing their love for one another.
But others seem to talk about something a lot more sinister. There was talk in these letters about both of them wanting to kill Elizabeth's parents. In one letter, Elizabeth wrote to Jens, quote, would it be possible to hypnotize my parents, do voodoo on them, will them to death? Another one read, quote, we can either wait until we graduate and then leave them behind or
Or we could get rid of them soon. End quote. After a little bit more digging, the British police quickly learned that the people they had in custody weren't actually Tim and Julia Hoyt. Instead, they were Elizabeth Hasem and Jens Soering from the U.S.
Inside all of these letters and diary entries, the police saw two particular names that seemed to come up over and over again. Officer Reed and Officer Gardner, the two detectives who were investigating the murders of Elizabeth's parents back in Bedford County, Virginia. Both Jens and Elizabeth had talked about the detectives in their diaries and letters to each other.
So more than a year after the murders, the police in London called detectives Reed and Gardner in the U.S. on May 29th, 1986, and asked them, do you know Yen Soaring and Elizabeth Hasem? And of course they knew them. They were now the prime suspects in her parents' murders. That's when the London police shared some good news. Their prime suspects were in police custody.
and the officers should book the first available flight from the U.S. to London to come speak with them. So four days later, officers Gardner and Reed were both on a plane headed to London, where they sat down and interviewed Elizabeth and Jens separately. They both waived their rights to a solicitor and agreed to finally talk with them. What they had to say was not what officers Reed and Gardner ever expected.
When the detective sat down and spoke with Yen's, he did a complete 180 from the original story that he said happened the weekend that Elizabeth's parents were murdered. He confessed to everything. According to Yen's, while driving to Washington, D.C., he and Elizabeth talked all about the problems she was having with her parents. And they specifically talked about the fact they weren't happy with her dating someone like Yen's.
So, the idea of killing them was talked about again, just like they had talked about with each other in all of those letters in the weeks and months leading up to the murders. Once they got to Washington, D.C., their intentions to kill her parents intensified, and they finally devised a plan. According to Jens, he decided to drive back down to her parents' house while Elizabeth stayed in D.C. to create an alibi for both of them.
She would purchase two tickets to the movies and order room service at the Marriott where they were staying to make it look like they both stayed in Washington, D.C. the whole time. Then, once he got to loose chippings, Yen said he was the one who murdered both Derek and Nancy Hasem. He even provided the detectives with a play-by-play explaining exactly how it all went down.
Then once they were dead, he made the drive back up to Washington, D.C. to reunite with Elizabeth, putting 669 miles on the rental car. But Jens wasn't the only one who confessed. Right after he provided detectives with his full account about what he said happened, Elizabeth also confessed.
Not only did she admit her part in killing her parents, but she also told the police that she was just as guilty as her boyfriend. Finally, after nearly a year on the run, they both provided full and independent confessions to the murders. But after both of their confessions, both Elizabeth and Jens did something completely unexpected. They recanted their confessions.
turned on each other, and pointed the finger at the other person. The fraudulent checks finally caught up to them. But just when you think you figured it out, the unexpected happens. Not one, but two confessions emerge. First to themselves, and then against each other. We'll be right back. Instead of being immediately sent back to the U.S., both Elizabeth and Jens were sent to separate jails in London.
Not only did they have to face murder charges back in the States, but they also had to serve their sentences for writing bad checks in England. While in custody, Elizabeth wrote Jens a letter ending their relationship. She broke up with him and was ready to go back to the U.S. to turn herself in for her parents' murder. And that's exactly what happened. In May of 1987, this is now two years after the murders,
Elizabeth was extradited back to Virginia, where she agreed to plead guilty to two counts of being an accessory before the fact to first-degree murder. Essentially, she was admitting that she knew about the murders before they happened but didn't do anything about it. But she maintained her position that she never went with Yens to lose chippings to commit the murders.
She maintained that she stayed behind in Washington, D.C., and that's why she was agreeing to plead guilty to being an accessory. She wasn't pleading guilty to being the murderer. But before Elizabeth was officially sentenced, she had some things to say to the judge in her case. Although she was agreeing to plead guilty, the entire murder was Yen's idea.
According to Elizabeth, this was all his idea and she never went with him. She said she didn't even want him to kill her parents, but there was simply nothing she could do about it. After she knew he killed them, she was too afraid to go to the police and turn him in, so she decided to stay quiet. Basically, she blamed everything on Jens and said the murders were completely his idea.
And the only thing she was guilty of was simply not coming forward to the police with this information. In the end, Elizabeth was sentenced to two 45-year sentences to be served consecutively for a total of 90 years for agreeing to plead guilty to two counts of accessory to murder. Even though she claimed she was never technically present when her parents were killed, she
she agreed to take at least some of the responsibility. Her now ex-boyfriend, Jens Soering, had a much different idea in mind. Instead of pleading guilty like Elizabeth, he did the exact opposite. First, he completely recanted his confession. While Jens was still in jail over in England, he heard all about Elizabeth basically blaming the murders on him.
So he completely changed his story and denied having any involvement in the murders. But not only did Jens deny anything to do with the murders, but he pinned everything on Elizabeth. According to Jens, she was the one who drove to loose chippings that weekend to kill them. And he was the one who stayed back in Washington, D.C. He only found out about the murders when she got back to D.C. And then he came up with a plan.
He would take the fall to save his girlfriend, Elizabeth. Jens would be her knight in shining armor, essentially. But before Jens would agree to come back to the U.S. to take his case to trial, he wanted the death penalty completely taken off the table. If his defense didn't work and he was ultimately convicted of two counts of first-degree murder, the state of Virginia could execute him.
So before he would agree to get on a plane and be extradited back to Virginia, he wanted to make sure that that wasn't going to be possible, that the death penalty would be taken off the table. He took his argument all the way to the European Court of Human Rights.
who on July 7th, 1989, issued a landmark ruling saying that they wouldn't send Jens back to the U.S. until Virginia prosecutors agreed not to pursue the death penalty. According to them, the European Court of Human Rights, facing the death penalty violated his rights, and they wouldn't agree to give him back unless the U.S. agreed to not pursue it.
This left Virginia prosecutors with very little choice. The only way that they were going to try Jens for the murders was if they agreed with the UK's terms. So after serving nearly four years in jail in England, Jens was finally extradited back to Virginia and put on trial for the Hasems murder in June of 1990.
It lasted a little over three weeks. And throughout the entire trial, Jens stuck to his revised story. He didn't commit the murders. It was all Elizabeth's idea, and he didn't even go with her that weekend. He stayed back in Washington, D.C. Now, the only reason he falsely confessed, and this is all according to Jens Soaring, he confessed to the murders because he wanted to try and save his girlfriend.
He thought that as the son of a German diplomat, he would simply be kicked out of the United States and sent back to Germany. He didn't want Elizabeth to go down for killing her parents, so he would basically come in and save the day. According to Jens, when Elizabeth returned to Washington, D.C. and told him what she had done, they devised a plan.
Elizabeth told him everything about the crime scene so that he would be able to provide a believable confession. And everything would eventually work out in their favor. So now the jury has to decide. Did Elizabeth kill her own parents? Or was Jens now the one lying about it? Well, we know they both lied. Let's not forget that they both confessed to the murders while in jail in England.
Elizabeth said she was just as guilty as Jens was, and they committed the murders. But when Elizabeth returned to the States, she blamed everything on Jens. And now that Jens was on trial, he blamed everything on her. So they both lied. But the jury, the jury needed to decide who they believed more or who was lying less than the other.
The prosecution had two big pieces of evidence against Jens at trial. The first was Elizabeth Hasem herself. Although she was already in prison serving her 90-year sentence for her agreeing to plead guilty, she also agreed to testify against Jens on behalf of the prosecution.
When she took the stand and she sat in front of that jury, she continued to blame everything on Yens and said this was all his idea. She wasn't at her parents' house when they were killed. Now, the second most important piece of evidence was the forensic evidence. According to Virginia prosecutors, forensic evidence placed Yens inside the Hasems' house that weekend.
The first was blood, and the second was a bloody sock print. According to their experts, four blood types were found inside the house. A, B, AB, and O. A and AB belonged to the Hasems, which meant that the B and O blood belonged to someone else. Well, as it turned out, Yen Soaring has type O blood. So if he were the murderer, that explains why they found his blood type.
But because this happened back in the mid-1980s, long before advanced DNA testing even existed, they couldn't say whether it was Yen's blood or not. Basically, all they could tell the jury at this point was that it was his blood type found inside the house, not specifically his. Then there was the bloody sock print. This was the biggest piece of evidence for the state.
According to their forensic experts, at least two bloody sock prints were found inside the Hasem's house around the victims' bodies. And when they compared Yen's footprint to the sock prints found at the crime scene, they were a perfect match.
So essentially, this almost guaranteed or at least it placed Jens at the crime scene. There was no other explanation as to why his footprint would have been found in blood inside the house if he wasn't actually there and participated in the murders. And that was all the jury needed to hear. On June 21st, Jens Soering was found guilty of both murders and sentenced to the maximum sentence possible.
Life in prison. They didn't believe his story about falsely confessing to the crime so that his girlfriend Elizabeth wouldn't get into trouble. They thought he played a part in the murders just like Elizabeth did. But the story doesn't end here. Although both Jens and Elizabeth had been found guilty and have each received criminal sentences for their roles in the murders, there are still so many unanswered questions about the Hasems' murders. The most pressing one...
Who did what inside that home in 1985? Was it Jens? Was it Elizabeth? In this high stakes game of truth and deception, who is actually lying? And can anyone be trusted? We'll be right back. The prosecution might have argued that the bloody sock print found inside the home belonged to Jens, but that wasn't the only foot impression they found.
The police also found a shoe print in blood resembling a tennis shoe that seemed to belong to someone with a shoe size much smaller than Yen's, probably a female-sized foot because it was closer to size 7. But when the police tried to figure out whose shoe print it belonged to, they couldn't do it. But they also never compared the shoe print to any of Elizabeth's shoes, so it's impossible to say whether or not it was hers.
Then there was the unexplained type B blood found inside the house. Not only was the O blood foreign to the Hasems, but so was the type B blood. So that seems to suggest that someone else besides Nancy and Derek and Jens was inside the house when they were killed. But like the shoe print, the police were never able to figure out who left behind the type B blood.
Now, it's possible it belonged to someone else who might have been in the house and helped with the murders. But you also can't rule out the possibility that the type B blood actually belongs to one of the victims and may have just been contaminated. Next were the unknown fingerprints. The police who searched the house right after the bodies were found discovered unknown fingerprints on a bottle of vodka and a shot glass.
They didn't belong to the Hasems or Yens. One fingerprint was found on the couple's bar, and that print belonged to Elizabeth. But it's impossible to say when exactly she left it there. Let's not forget the obvious. She was Derek and Nancy's daughter, so naturally her fingerprints were probably everywhere throughout her parents' house. That wouldn't be so surprising.
So she could have left the print sometime before the murders or during the actual murders if she was in fact there at all that night. The bloody sock print found right next to the bodies was probably the prosecution's biggest piece of forensic evidence against Jens. According to their experts, the bloody sock print was almost identical to Jens, basically guaranteeing that he was in the house that night.
But those who disagree with this type of evidence question whether sock prints are really the same as footprints or even the same as fingerprints. Can you really tell if a sock print exactly matches someone or just looks like every other sock impression? Well, if you ask the prosecution, they say it is an exact match to Yen's and should be treated just like a fingerprint would.
But if you believe in Jens' defense or his innocence, you might call sock impressions, well, junk science. Finally, there was one part of Jens' story that just didn't make sense with what investigators knew about the crime scene. When Jens told his confession, he said Derek Hasem was at a particular part of the house when he killed him.
But when the police arrived, his body was found in a completely different part of the house. So this seems to suggest that Jens didn't really know the crime scene as he probably should have if he was the one who actually did it. And if he was telling the truth about the false confession, well, that adds up. Because if he wasn't actually there, then he wouldn't know all the ins and outs of the crime scene.
Remember, he told the jury that Elizabeth was the one who had basically had to tell him everything about the crime scene because in his revised story, she was the murderer. So she had to come back to him and basically give him a play by play so that he could come up with his false confession and make it well believable. According to his story, he was never there.
So how could he have known exactly where Nancy or Derek's body was if Elizabeth didn't tell him? Despite not knowing who exactly did what to the Hasems back in 1985, both Elizabeth and Jens were sent away to prison. Elizabeth kept saying Jens did everything and Jens kept saying the exact opposite. Never once did they admit or confess to doing the murders together.
They just kept pointing the fingers at each other, with forensic evidence supporting both sides. Some of the physical evidence seemed to point to Elizabeth as the murderer. Some evidence pointed solely at Jens. And still, some forensic evidence seemed to implicate both of them in the murders. Over the next three decades, Elizabeth and Jens remained in prison.
Elizabeth, on one hand, mostly kept quiet and did her time in peace, while Jens, on the opposite end of the spectrum, spent most of his time in prison talking to the media and just talking to anyone who would listen to him. Either way they decided to spend it, time passed by. And by 2019, after serving over 30 years behind bars, both of them were granted parole.
Because of a lot of public pressure and many questions surrounding both of their guilts, the Virginia governor at the time decided to grant both of them parole. If one of them was going to be released, the other one had to be. After that, Elizabeth was immediately deported back to her home country of Canada, and Jens was deported back to Germany.
And as far as their relationship goes, Elizabeth and Jens have never spoken to each other or seen each other since she testified against him at his criminal trial. And both of them continue to point the finger at each other when it comes to who actually is responsible for the murders. Did Elizabeth actually murder her own parents? And her boyfriend Jens tried to be her knight in shining armor and take the fall for everything. But if that's true...
What was Elizabeth's motive? Did she feel like her parents were getting in the way of her relationship with Jens? The German boyfriend they strongly disapproved of? Or was Jens behind everything? Did he see the Hasems as a threat? People who would eventually persuade their youngest daughter to break up with him like they wanted? And who stayed back in Washington, D.C., as both of their alibis suggested?
Or did they both drive to lose chippings that weekend to commit the murders? Forensic evidence seems to both implicate and eliminate both of them at the same time. So the only two people who will ever know the truth about that night are Elizabeth Hasem and Yen Soaring. To share your thoughts on the story, be sure to follow the show on Instagram and Facebook.
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