RICHMOND, Va. — As one of Virginia’s most notorious crimes is receiving renewed attention, a retired lawman who did his own investigation of the case is speaking out.
Chip Harding sat down with Catie Beck on the most recent episode of ‘Untold – A WTVR Podcast’ to discuss his thoughts on the Jens Soering case. Soering, a former UVA student, served decades in prison for the 1985 murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom, the parents of his then girlfriend, Elizabeth. The couple was brutally stabbed to death inside their home in Bedford County.
Harding, then the sheriff of Albemarle County, made headlines in 2017, when he reviewed the case files at the request of one of Soering’s attorneys and came to the conclusion that the former UVA student was wrongly convicted.
“I went home, laid them out on the kitchen table, and started reading all weekend, making notes, going, this is incredible,” said Harding. “And my wife's going, ‘What are you doing? You know, are you crazy? What are you doing?’ And I said, ‘You're not gonna believe what I'm seeing here.’”
Over the course of the podcast, Harding details the evidence he feels paints a different picture about what happened, and points to inconsistencies with the initial confession, which Soering later recanted.
“If you look at Soering's confession, to me it lends the fact he wasn't even there because he's a brilliant guy and he gets wrong what Mrs. Haysom was wearing,” said Harding. “She wasn't wearing blue jeans and a shirt, she was wearing a pajama petticoat….The whole crime scene isn't even close to what he was describing.”
Soering, released on parole in 2019, is now asking the Court of Appeals of Virginia to officially clear his name by issuing a writ of actual innocence, something which is extremely rare.
If granted a hearing, Soering and his attorney won’t technically have to prove that Soering is innocent, they just need to convince the judges that no reasonable jury could convict him if the case were tried in 2026. Harding, whose nephew Elliott is now representing Soering, thinks they have a solid argument.
“I'm inclined to feel he's innocent,” said Harding. “I can't prove he's innocent, that standard is not the standard we should be going by, it’s is he guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, and absolutely it's not even close to a reasonable doubt if you really take the time to look at what was presented in court.”
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