Elizabeth Haysom

Elizabeth Roxanne Haysom (born April 15, 1964 ) is a Canadian-American citizen who, along with her then boyfriend Jens Söring, was convicted of orchestrating the 1985 double murder of her parents Derek and Nancy Haysom in Bedford County, Virginia.

Haysom served 32 years of a 90-year prison sentence at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia after pleading guilty to two counts of accessory to murder before the fact in 1987.

Early life Haysom was born in April 1964 in Salisbury, Southern Rhodesia (now Harare, Zimbabwe) to parents Nancy Astor Benedict Haysom, an American, who worked as an artist, and Derek William Reginald Haysom, originally from South Africa and a naturalized Canadian, who was a steel executive who served as president of two Nova Scotia crown corporations (Sydney Steel and Metropolitan Area Growth Investments). Derek and Nancy had a combined total of five children from previous marriages.

Flight to England Haysom and Söring were not initially suspects in the Haysoms' murders, and Haysom organized all the details for her parents' funerals. Within a few weeks, authorities had checked the records for the rental car the pair used and found that the total mileage during the rental far exceeded the single round trip to Washington, D.C., that they claimed to have taken.

Haysom, incarcerated in the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women in Troy, Virginia, first became eligible for parole in 1995, and submitted a parole request every three years thereafter. Haysom's sentence was subject to mandatory parole; she would have been released automatically in 2032, 45 years after her conviction. During an interview in 2016, Haysom said Söring had killed her parents in a rage after learning that her mother had sexually abused her. Söring had contended that Haysom killed her parents on her own over the abuse, albeit she originally denied that any such abuse had occurred. In the same interview, Haysom said she was "profoundly ashamed" of her role in the murders of her parents and criticized Söring for maintaining his innocence.

Parole

On November 25, 2019, Virginia Governor Ralph Northam announced that both Haysom and Söring would be released, but not pardoned, and sent back to their respective home countries. After more than 30 years in prison, Haysom was released from prison to the custody of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement and then deported to her home country of Canada in January 2020. Söring was deported to his home country of Germany after his release.

U.S. Representative Ben Cline issued a statement condemning her release as a cost-cutting attempt by the state of Virginia and not based on merit. Adrianne L. Bennett, then chair of the Virginia Parole Board, asserted that the decision to grant Haysom and Söring parole was also justified by their young age at the time the crime was committed.

In the media

The Haysoms' murders have been profiled by 20/20, The Investigators, Geraldo Rivera, The New Detectives, City Confidential, Wicked Attraction, Deadly Women, On the Case with Paula Zahn, Snapped: Killer Couples, and Southern Fried Homicide.

Killing for Love ( The Promise), a feature documentary film, premiered at the Munich International Film Festival and was released theatrically in October 2016.

Till Murder Do Us Part: Soering vs. Haysom, a four-episode true crime documentary limited series, was released on Netflix on November 1, 2023.