The first two and a half months of the spring, 1985, semester were the happiest of my life. Liz and I were deeply, passionately in love, but our relationship was not yet as obsessive as it became after the murders. We were simply boyfriend and girlfriend -- young, innocent and joyously filled with life and lust.
At least that is how our love seemed to me then. I was happy, often deliriously so, but my happiness was based on a web of Elizabeth's lies which grew and grew until I was wrapped up like the spider's meal in a little cocoon, ready for consumption. But I remained blissfully unaware of the deception and the danger, and if anyone had tried to warn me I would not have listened. Those early days of our affair seemed so right, so pure, so beautiful!
And that is what hurts most now, even after all these years in prison: I just cannot remember a happier time in my life than the first three months of 1985, even though I now know everything was false. My first eighteen years, before Elizabeth, were comfortable but joyless; and all the years after our arrest have been hell. So that counterfeit love of Liz's, that poisonous fruit really was the best of times for me. And the worst of times, too.
Was there any aspect of our relationship that was genuine, or was it all manipulative lies on her part and blind infatuation on mine? I do not think I can answer that question for either myself or Elizabeth. In prison in London I asked the English forensic psychiatrists who examined us; one said that "some of it might have been real," but both also told me that borderline schizophrenics are unable to love others.
Some clue as to Liz's feelings for me may be found in a letter she wrote to Danny Finklestine, a mutual friend at U. Va. , during the Christmas holidays of 1984, around the same time she sent me the diary-letter with the voodoo fantasy. After we returned to college in January, 1985, Danny showed me the letter. I am not sure of his motives; like so many of the naive boys in our honors student dormitory Danny, too, had a crush on Elizabeth. Perhaps he hoped the letter's contents would cause me to leave her, giving him renewed hope. Perhaps she sincerely wanted to warn me.
Liz's written comments about me were not overtly sinister, but they revealed much about her underlying attitude. While claiming to see some potential for greatness in me, she emphasized that I seemed to lack the courage to create. So far her efforts to free me from my self-imposed shackles had been fruitless, and she was not certain she could ever overcome my cowardice.
Was I outraged by the condescension implicit in Elizabeth's description of me? Was I concerned that she saw her role in our relationship as a combination of school mistress, spiritual guide and agent provocateur? No. I asked Danny to let me photocopy the letter so I could study Liz's remarks and learn from them! Living up to her expectations of me seemed the highest possible goal in life. Elizabeth truly had me well in hand.
And I loved being in her hand, oh, it was a downright turn-on! I still have to smile when recalling the shock of her hand on my crotch as we sat drinking wine in O'Halloran's, the blood rushing to my face and loins. Pushing my glasses back up my nose I peered around the bar to see if we had been noticed. Simultaneously I reached under the table and tried to pull Liz away -- but she refused to let go! A public wrestling match over my penis was even worse than her surreptitious groping, so I gave up. Instead I asked her politely to relinquish her hold on my member; I demanded; I cajoled; I begged; I pleaded. But Elizabeth just smiled and smiled.
She stopped before the episode became messy, and we both laughed about it long afterwards. This incident was paradigmatic of our relationship and a perfect illustration of why I loved her so much. Liz had encouraged this first visit to O'Halloran's, a well- known bar and restaurant on "the corner" diagonally across from U. Va.'s hallmark rotunda. It was the mild whiff of danger surrounding the excursion which finally persuaded me to go. At that time Virginia's licensing laws still permitted a twenty-year- old like Elizabeth to purchase alcohol at the bar, but she was certainly not supposed to bring a glass to me in the restaurant section of the establishment! Having enticed me into becoming her accomplice in this minor misdeed, Liz had to push on and risk public embarrassment and possibly worse. Of course that risk was all mine, but I did not mind. I was growing addicted to the thrill of the unexpected, the danger Elizabeth brought into my life.
The sex, whether public or private, had me hooked, too. Our room-mates came to dread our late night appearances, hand-in- hand at the door. Inevitably we would ask one of them to leave for a couple of hours, earning us the nickname, "the rabbits."
Liz actively encouraged my newly discovered sensuality. In a letter she wrote me,
"first I want to pull you close to me, just standing, feeling your breath on my neck, feeling my juices, feeling your hardness pressing against my belly, feeling my nipples growing hard, so hard they hurt, pressing them into your chest. My hand is on the nape of your neck. Pulling your head down to me, down to my mouth. Just a light kiss, a light, wet kiss. My lips pressed into you, and my tongue licking your lips, your teeth, sucking on your tongue, holding it, biting it, sucking your breath away and filling you with lust.
And then on the bed, you on top of me, my hips raised, my legs splayed wide open, you're looking down at me, my lips full and red, so wet, aching for you, my nipples standing up to meet you, and you touch my naked body, on my thigh. I shudder and pull you down, your hardness sinking into my lips. I tremble, I shudder, my muscles are so tight, holding you, sucking on you, pulling on you. I can hear your breath, my back is arched to hold all of you. I grind myself into you.
I want to fuck you till I bleed, and then, when we can barely move with exhaustion, I want to do it again, sooo slowly. I will rub you with my juices and nuzzle your balls with my nose. I want to lick you, to suck you, to nibble on the edge of your head. And then I will sit on you, rocking on you. My eyes are closed and I can feel your finger on my pussy. I will rock on you till I almost feel those huge rumblings in my aching hole. Then you will flip me over and plunge into me, long and slow, your hands clasping my outstretched buttocks. My hard nipples rubbing against the sheet, I will scream my love and pleasure for you.
We sleep in each other's arms. Our red faces cooling in the sweet breath of the other, our bodies intertwined, moist with the heat of our sex. And we sleep, a dreamless, peaceful, so deep sleep.
And when we awake, I will raise my lips to your lips. Your lips will tease and tantalize my huge wet need. Your nose will rub deep into every crevice, your finger will slip in and out, around and about the edges of my oozing hole. Your finger will slip between my buttocks and I will whimper and moan with abandon, in a tense anxiety. I will plead for you, I will beg for you, arching my body out to reach you, to cling to you. I will feel my head disappearing, my legs will strain to part further. I will grab your head and force you to release me, my own fingers will reach down to spread my lips further so that your probing, enquiring tongue can push further and further. And release will come, huge, brilliant, painful colors will rack through me, torturing me with their exquisite pleasure.
My eyes will slowly open, and I will see you smiling up at me from between my thighs. Your wet sweet face encased in my flesh, and I will smile back at you and pull you towards me. My fingers will reach for your hardness and hold it. Hold it and clasp it, rubbing it, pulling it, coaxing it to want me, and I will slip it in.
And when you tell me you are hungry, I will come and sit on your face, and you will eat your fill, and I will wiggle with ecstasy. And when I am hungry I will kneel before you and slip my face into your groin. I will knead your buttocks and slip my finger past your hole, touch its wetness and feel its warmth. My lips will cover your head, and it will ease its growth into my sucking, slithering mouth. I will tug at you, wanting all of you, cuddling your balls. My nose and lips, my fingers will explore the hard ridge between your legs, your sacks of seed and your hair. My finger will slip again to your hole and my mouth will cover you. Then all of you will disappear into me.
O god, o god, o god -- I've gone on too long. But I want you so bad -- your head in my lap. I'm going to wank tonight. I will imagine you licking me. I will imagine you lying beside me naked, our bodies arched towards each other but not quite touching, your breath on my breast, you touching my skin so lightly with your fingers -- oh, oh, oh. STOP." 3:1 (rtn 3:1)
Of course I did not want to stop. And perhaps I could not have stopped even if I had wanted to! Certainly it never occurred to me then to wonder whether Liz's sexual enthusiasm was merely another "p.o.t. ," a "perversion of truth." Having had no experience with other girls I cannot judge whether Elizabeth enjoyed sex with me or only employed it as a carrot, a training tool for when I was a good boy. But I do know that she deliberately used a very effective stick to make me behave: my own feelings of guilt.
One evening during those first three months of 1985 I returned from the library to Watson dorm and, as was my habit, immediately went to Liz's room. She was squatting barefoot on her mattress, with her face hidden between her arms as she hugged her knees. The room was dark, and all I could glimpse in the pale light of the street lamps outside was the tousled spikes of her short blonde hair.
I entered the room, flipped the light switch and called Elizabeth's name. Not even using her middle name, Roxanne, elicited the usual reaction, a disdainful snort. Liz remained tightly curled in her egg. Stepping closer I put my hand on her shoulder to stroke her, and finally she responded.
Slowly and very dramatically her left arm straightened and turned, until I could see the inside of the elbow. There, on that beautiful porcelain white skin, was a red needle puncture mark topped with a tiny scab.
From the inside of her protective ball Liz spoke a few short sentences in a low, raspy voice. She knew she had promised. But I had not come to her room that afternoon before leaving for the library. She had thought I was getting bored with her. And then one of Jack Bauer's friends had come by. So she had gone along, and she had fallen off the wagon, and she had taken some heroin. She knew she had promised, she knew! She was sorry. She guessed I would not want her anymore now. She accepted that. Would I please leave her? She was not feeling too well.
I told her I loved her and kissed the top of her head, since no other surface was available for kissing. But when I tried to put my arms around her shoulders Elizabeth shook me off weakly. She was sorry, so sorry, but she had to be alone. The heroin. . . Would I please go?
So I left and spent a sleepless night alone in my dorm room. This was all my fault, mine alone! If only I had not been so thoughtless, if only I had been more worthy of Elizabeth's love, then she would not have been forced to resort to drugs. Why, oh why did I always think of myself first instead of her, the most wonderful woman in the world? From then on I made sure I informed Liz of my every move, lest worrying over me drove her to heroin again.
But she not only wanted to know my day to day schedule. As we resumed our night-long discussions in the Tree House Elizabeth also took the lead in designing long-term career goals and strategies for both of us. It seemed natural to plan far into our joint futures, even though we had been in love for only a few weeks; after all, we were soul-mates!
Liz's soul was that of an artist of course, and she told me much of how her talent would have to be nurtured and supported. The essence of creativity was risk-taking, Elizabeth explained. She needed to seek the new, the different, the dangerous, so she could transmute these experiences into art. This made her and all artists unsuitable for normal jobs requiring regular hours and stability, which explained why so many creative geniuses starved in garrets. In past centuries there had been a tradition of aristocratic patrons supporting artists to free them from financial worries, but nowadays the only option was to sell out, to prostitute one's talents in the service of Hollywood and Madison Avenue. Only very few artists were lucky enough to find a soul mate, someone who would provide for fiscal and physical needs while allowing the space and freedom required for creative risk-taking. Maybe she would get lucky, Liz joked, or else she would have to return to that commune in Berlin and crack open pay telephones again.
I shuddered at the thought of Elizabeth starving in a garret, just because she was a genius. Life was so unfair! And she was such a loving and considerate person. Not only did she share her most private thoughts on art and creativity with me, but she also asked me about my own plans for the future. What, for instance, did I plan to do with my scholarship?
This was a question I found almost impossible to answer. My Freshman Identity Crisis was only superficially in remission because of our love, and I still had no idea what new major might suit me. As far as my scholarship was concerned, I had not thought about it at all. So far my attitude toward it had been almost entirely emotional: I resented it deeply!
In my last two years of high school I had worked deliberately on a plan to return to Germany as quickly as possible. The many advanced placement (A.P.) tests I took would have permitted me to attend a German university after only one more year at any American college. But in my senior year of high school I had unexpectedly won one of only sixteen academic scholarships in U. Va.'s national Jefferson Scholars competition! My school made an enormous fuss, and my parents took the view that this scholarship had retroactively justified their decision to split up the family so I could finish my senior year in Atlanta while my brother went to Detroit. No one considered the possibility that I might prefer going to Germany in one year instead of spending the next four in Virginia.
The day I received the telephone call with the "good news" I was interning with a law firm in Atlanta. I remember my mother's excitement; and I also remember my own complete absence of joy. Of course I was proud to have beaten some incredibly talented competitors, but I also felt trapped. Later that afternoon the lawyer supervising my week-long internship took me to a courtroom for a brief procedural appearance. As we waited for his turn a wild-eyed young man with shaggy hair was brought in for a bail hearing. He stood accused of killing his father with an axe.
If that was another warning, I ignored it as well. I accepted the scholarship to U. Va. , but I resented the college for delaying my return to Germany for four years. Most of all I resented myself, for not having the courage to set my own dreams above my school's and my family's expectations. That was why I nearly shrivelled with envy when I heard of Elizabeth's audacious decision to refuse her scholarship to Cambridge University.
Liz burst into loud laughter when I finished my narrative in the Tree House. I had made my bed, she told me, so I might as well enjoy lying in it! Who had ever heard of anything as ridiculous as my feeling resentment at someone who had given me a plum like the Jefferson scholarship? If only I were to look at it sensibly, I would realize that I had been given a wonderful opportunity.
As I listened to Elizabeth explain her views on my scholarship I felt surprised and of course impressed that her mind had such a practical and even Machiavellian bent, especially for someone who considered herself an artist. The first thing she pointed out to me was that U. Va.'s Alumni Association had not awarded me a scholarship then worth $32,000 out of pure generosity. The sponsors wanted highly talented seed corn for U. Va.'s many- tentacled old boy network of alumni! Long after graduation the former scholarship recipients and the Alumni Association would continue to open doors for one another, to the benefit of both. And not just any doors -- the sponsors wanted us to rise as high as possible. Each semester the scholarship winners were required to attend several field trips organized by the Alumni Association. Most recently we had been bussed to a U. Va. Alumni Reunion on Capitol Hill in Washington D.C., where we were introduced to staffers, officials and congressmen including Senator Ted Kennedy. Building on these opportunities was an obligation which I owed not only the scholarship sponsors but also myself, Liz told me.
I was always yammering on about how I wanted to help people, how I wanted to save the world; but writing newspaper articles would not feed hungry Mexicans, and drilling holes into rats' skulls would not contribute to man's understanding of his own psyche. So why, she asked, did I not open my eyes to see the obvious solution in front of me -- or, more precisely, just across campus?
U. Va.'s history department had a special program affiliated with the United States State Department, to provide special training for applicants to the American diplomatic service. This was perfectly suited to my needs! If I were really smart I would follow upon my B.A. here by transferring to Georgetown University's graduate- level program in international relations, which was also closely allied to the U.S. State Department. Throughout my studies I should spend as much time as possible taking advantage of U. Va.'s strong connections in Washington D.C., building a network of contacts in government and politics. That was what the Alumni Association wanted me and the other scholarship winners to do, and they would help me in any way they could. By the time I returned home I would be virtually indispensable to the German Foreign Service, since America would always be my country's most important ally. My rise to the top of Germany's diplomatic service would be astonishingly fast, and if I joined the right political party I might even make a successful transition into politics.
I was born to join the foreign service, Elizabeth argued. I had grown up as a diplomat's child, I already spoke three modern languages, and I could always study a few more. If I wanted to help people and save the world, this was the way to do it!
I remember sitting in our booth in the Tree House and feeling stunned at the breadth and depth of Liz's vision for my life and career. She must have spent a great deal of time thinking about me! Until now I had never systematically planned my own future, and I certainly had never thought in terms of networking and politics. Of course others had told me that excellent test scores alone would not guarantee my success, but in practice my thinking had not progressed beyond that naive level. Clearly I had much to learn from Elizabeth in this regard, as in so many others.
While I was not sure I wanted to dedicate my life to diplomacy, I did have one comment on Liz's lecture which I shared with her straight away, to show I had been paying attention and also thinking of her. She, I suggested, would make an ideal companion in such a career -- that is, if she really wanted me. Having grown up in many different countries Elizabeth was accustomed to the migratory diplomatic lifestyle; she clearly had a talent for politicking and partying, the two main requirements for diplomats' spouses; and her career as an artist would be easily compatible with mine. In fact, since she required the new, the different, the dangerous to stimulate her creativity, frequent transfers to strange countries might be ideal for her! That is, if she wanted me. . .
Liz nodded sagely. Of course she had already thought of that, but she had wanted the suggestion to come from me so I would not feel she was pressuring me. The fact that I had arrived at the same conclusion so quickly just proved that we really were soul- mates!
From the vantage point of my dingy prison cell I cannot help but smile at that tinsel dream of success, Elizabeth-style. She was right of course; theoretically her career plan for me was quite achievable. And no doubt I would have been pleased to lick politicians' boots forever so long as it supported the extravagant international lifestyle a creative genius like Liz required. Instead I now have to lick a prison guard's boots just to get a roll of toilet paper.
Apart from supplying Elizabeth with raw material for her fantasies of networking me into the post of German Foreign Minister, the Jefferson scholarship also provided us with some tangible benefits in the form of a generous amount of "spending money." Instead of using this for textbooks, which I let my parents buy, I paid for virtually all our frequent restaurant meals, cinema tickets and so forth. Of course Liz always offered to pay her own way, and of course I always refused -- except for once a week, when I allowed her to treat me. What she did with all the money she saved through my scholarship never puzzled me, though I now have my suspicions.
At that time, however, Elizabeth had grandiose purchasing plans: she wanted to buy a genuine black London cab which we had spotted in a used car lot on the way to a movie theatre! Of course she would not be able to afford it by herself, but maybe. . . ? I had to let her down; even the Jefferson scholarship's spending money would not stretch to a London cab. Liz took the disappointment well, and we laughed at the idea. Her riding to classes in a lugubrious London cab with the steering wheel on the wrong side, that would have been a sight worth seeing! Quintessential Elizabeth: flamboyant, outrageous, and above all different, as distinct and separate as possible from the common herd.
Having become her lover and appendage I, too, found myself increasingly separated from the other students in our dormitory. In part this was simply the consequence of spending almost all my spare time with Liz instead of the other friends I had made during the first semester. But outright hostility by Elizabeth's former lovers, as well as some intentional manoeuvres of her own, also contributed to my growing isolation.
Most of my male friends and acquaintances in Watson dorm found Liz as fascinating as I did, and when she chose me as her boyfriend at the end of the autumn semester they were all disappointed to a greater or lesser degree. Some, like Danny Finklestine, remained on relatively good terms with both of us, though he had a habit of dropping by Elizabeth's room when I was elsewhere to read her samples of his melancholy poetry. Joe Cardinal, who was asleep on Liz's bed while she wrote the letter quoted in Chapter 1, coped less well with losing the competition for her favor; he went into a depression marked by crying fits which required Elizabeth's attendance at his bedside. How could she prefer a bookish type like me to him, a body-building athlete whose dorm walls were decorated with posters of bare-breasted girls wielding Uzi submachine guns? He discussed this mystery with me, too, and to his credit he tried very hard to hide his disdain for me. Perhaps he assumed that there must have been some substance to me somewhere, since Liz would not have chosen a complete loser over him.
There were several other boys in our dorm whose relationships with me grew strained after Elizabeth and I became lovers. Only Jim Mustafah, an American of Egyptian extraction, maintained the same carefree, if not close friendship we had shared during the first semester. In February or March he even invited me to spend a weekend at his family's house in Washington D.C. It was not long afterwards, however, that his true feelings burned through the facade of friendliness. Since arriving at U. Va. Jim had developed the habit of drinking himself into a stupor twice a week. This time he stopped before actually passing out, and when I entered his dorm room he staggered towards me with a half-full bottle of alcohol and his cigarette lighter blazing. If I did not stop seeing his Liz, he yelled, he would pour the Scotch all over me and set me on fire. And now I should get out!
Jim's threat was not very credible, but the intensity of his feelings certainly was genuine. And there were others who literally hated me because Elizabeth had chosen me over them. Another Jefferson Scholar in his third year at U. Va. made a point of glowering at me and demonstratively storming out of rooms whenever we happened to meet. Like the other older students who had frequently visited Liz's dorm room in the fall, he was convinced that she would soon leave me. Her rightful place was with their trendy clique of artists, homosexuals and drug users. How dare a boring little nobody like me come in and steal Elizabeth away from them!
That question was hurled at me one night by a fourth-year girl whom Liz and I met on our way home from the cinema. I would have laughed at her if I had not first seen the abject worship in her eyes as she looked at Elizabeth, and the despairing misery when she turned to me. How well did I know that feeling of adoration, and how well could I imagine that pain if Liz ever left me! Later Elizabeth told me that this girl had cut her hair short and dyed it blonde in imitation of the object of her obsession. That might have been another one of her "p.o.t's," or "perversions of truth," but I doubt it. So many young men and women at U. Va. burned with fanatical devotion for Liz! But she loved only me; no wonder I was ostracized.
If the antipathy of Elizabeth's disciples were not enough to isolate me, Liz herself slowly separated me from the normal social life of other students. The spring semester was supposed to see the birth of a new rock band led by me and the drummer of my second band in high school, who now attended U. Va.'s architecture school. We had purchased a new p.a., and part of the line-up was already set: Jonah Warn on drums, Jens Soering on electric guitar, and Elizabeth Roxanne Haysom on saxophone. But as week upon week of the spring semester passed by Liz could still not find a saxophone, either bought or rented. Jonah and I suggested she look for a synthesiser, since she had also been an accomplished pianist in high school. No, this too was impossible, since that spiritless electronic sound would not permit the full expression of her artistic emotions. Perhaps, Elizabeth suggested, Jonah and I should form a band without her, though that would mean that she and I would be spending less time together. . .
This was out of the question of course! By the middle of the spring semester Jonah had bought out my half of our new p.a. and was looking for other partners for his rock band. I did not miss him or my beautiful Les Paul, which was gathering dust under the bed in my dorm room. Who needed music, when I had Liz?
For a little while there even seemed a chance that the band project would be reborn, this time as an acoustic ensemble. Karen Wong, Elizabeth's roommate, would play cello, Liz would play a real piano, and I could have my acoustic Yamaha guitar sent down from Detroit. Elizabeth and Karen could even switch up once in a while, I proposed, since Karen had studied piano and Liz was also a cellist.
But that idea did not receive Elizabeth's endorsement. A few weeks ago Karen had heard someone play the cello beautifully as she walked past outside Watson dorm, yet she had not been able to discover the musician's identity when she asked around later. Liz now revealed to me that she had been the mystery cellist; she had used Karen's instrument without her permission. In fact Karen did not even know that her roommate could play the cello! If we three now formed an acoustic ensemble Karen would have to be told all this sooner or later, and that might rupture their friendship. Perhaps it would be best if we did not form an acoustic band either. Also, would I please promise not to mention the cello episode to Karen?
Of course I promised; it seemed like such a small request. This was, however, the first secret of Elizabeth's which she made me keep, and lies -- even lies of omission or silence -- have an insidious effect. From then on I could not trust myself fully around Karen, lest I accidentally reveal Liz's secret, and Karen undoubtedly noticed my distance even if she could not guess its reason. The lie always stood between us, separating us. As I became Elizabeth's accomplice in other, much greater lies I would find myself isolated completely from the world, but by then it was too late.
The same air of conspiracy also infected my one and only meeting with Mr. and Mrs. Haysom. So far as I knew Liz and I had no particular secret to keep from her parents, but as our lunch date approached her extreme nervousness spread to me as well. Derek and Nancy Haysom were child abusers, as she had told me in shocking detail in the Tree House, and I would have to watch my every word lest it be turned against Elizabeth somehow!
Once the four of us had completed our introductions and found our table at O'Halloran's I turned on my very best bright-young- scholarship-winner-and-diplomat's-son behavior. The Haysoms were a little surprised, I think, that their troublesome daughter was dating such a clean-cut boy; pseudo-artistic lesbian drug users were more her style. But as I continued to call them "sir" and "ma'am" and used the right fork for the salad course, Liz's parents relaxed a little and even stopped grilling me quite so intensely on my family background. Their interest in my social standing and history was the only mildly unusual aspect of our conversation, as if they too were thinking of me as a future son-in-law. Only the fact that I was two years younger than their daughter seemed to worry them a little.
Otherwise we spent a relatively pleasant hour together. Mrs. Haysom had brought her Nikon, and since I had also been a hobby photographer we discussed technique. My modesty about my achievements seemed to impress Mr. Haysom, though that did not excuse my ignorance about his hobby of short-wave radio. Elizabeth, meanwhile, remained almost entirely silent throughout lunch. Her face was pinched, and whenever I looked across to her I felt she disapproved of how well I got along with her parents.
Toward the end of our luncheon, however, a certain coolness returned to the Haysoms' manner. They dropped me off at Watson dorm so they could have a private discussion with their daughter about "family business." Perhaps that was the reason for Liz's nervousness during the meal, but I do not recall her explaining the "family business" to me afterwards. And even if she had told me, I would now be unwilling to place much faith in Elizabeth's tales about her parents.
Since I met Mr. and Mrs. Haysom only on this one occasion I knew virtually nothing of who they really were. What I have learned later has come from obituaries and newspaper articles, and given the media's outrageous inventions about me, I do not trust those sources of information either. But some details about their lives must be included here.
Derek William Reginald Haysom was born in 1913 in South Africa, where he was raised in his grandfather's house. Liz told me that his father was a baronet, the younger son of an English baron, but Derek Haysom's grandfather was in fact a self-made man. Having emigrated to the English colony of South Africa in the 1800's he started with nothing and built his own sugarcane plantation, Ilove Estates, through shrewd investments.
His grandson, Derek Haysom, earned engineering degrees in Durban, South Africa, and Manchester, England. During World War II he won medals fighting with the British Army against Rommel in the Middle East, where his speciality was intelligence work. Press reports on his first wife conflicted, but she bore him three children after the war: Veryan, an attorney in later life, Julian, an engineer, and Fiona, a veterinarian who, according to Elizabeth, introduced her to "speed-balls," a mixture of heroin and amphetamines.
Derek Haysom's second wife, nee Nancy Astor Benedict, was born in 1932 in Arizona, where her father worked as a geologist. Her mother, Nancy Langhorne Gibbes, was the offspring of one of Virginia's oldest families and a distant relative of the famous Lady Nancy Astor, the first woman elected to England's House of Commons. Liz told me that Lady Astor was her godmother, but in fact this honor was her mother's.
Nancy Benedict and her brothers grew up in Lynchburg while their father worked in Alaska and elsewhere. Some media reports of her high school activities indicate that she displayed the sort of talents which Elizabeth later claimed for herself, including state- wide honors for playing three musical instruments. In 1949 the family relocated to South Africa to join Nancy Benedict's geologist father. There she soon entered a marriage to an Englishman which, however, did not last. Her first son, Howard, later studied medicine while the second, Richard, grew up to be an architect.
Derek Haysom married Nancy in 1960 and settled his new family in Salisbury, Rhodesia, where he was manager of a steel mill. Although they were separated by a nineteen-year age difference and already had five children between them, they decided to have one more love-child together, Elizabeth Roxanne. Not long after her birth in 1964 the family was forced to flee Rhodesia because of the unstable political situation there. Between 1965 and 1968 Derek Haysom worked in Switzerland, Luxembourg and New York before settling in Nova Scotia, Canada, where he again managed a steel mill. The media reported that his retirement was clouded by a dispute with a union over an investment in a cruise ship. By 1982 the Haysoms had bought a small cottage in Boonsboro, just outside Lynchburg, Virginia, to spend their remaining years where Nancy Haysom had grown up.
On two occasions I myself visited Loose Chippings, as Mr. and Mrs. Haysom called their new home. Liz and I used my scholarship spending money to rent cars on two weekends in February and March when her parents were out of town, so we could make love all day without worrying about college roommates.
Hidden behind high hedges and trees the cottage was set well back from the quiet semi-suburban road. Another small house shared the same gravel driveway and a large back yard which sloped away to a valley with a beautiful view of the Blue Ridge Mountains in the distance. From the outside Loose Chippings struck me as unprepossessing but comfortable, with stone walls for the first floor and a high roof with dormers for the second.
Inside I was surprised by the Haysoms' unusually simple lifestyle. The front door opened onto a large living room with wood panelling, but there were no antiques like those that filled my parents' home. Derek and Nancy Haysom did not even own a color TV or modern stereo! Only the liquor cabinet was well and expensively stocked.
To the left of the living room was a small dining room with a stone floor and a plain slab of a table which, Elizabeth joked, her father had nailed together himself. In the kitchen beyond we found little more than half a tube of imported English mustard, so there was no need to coax the ageing stove into life.
On the other side of the house was the master bedroom and bathroom, while Liz's small bedroom and bathroom were upstairs under the steeply gabled roof. Her mattress lay on the floor without a bed frame, but Elizabeth claimed this was by choice, an interior design statement. Otherwise the second floor consisted only of a half-finished room which Mrs. Haysom used as a painting studio and an unfinished space under bare rafters where Mr. Haysom had set up his home-made short-wave radio equipment.
As Liz showed me around she took pains to explain her parents' genteel poverty to me. After the 1982 revolution that had transformed Rhodesia into Zimbabwe, all of the Haysom properties there had been nationalised by the new socialist government. Her mother's old and distinguished family had also fallen on hard times. True, the Astor branch still owned extensive real estate holdings in England, but those were tied up in trusts administered by obstreperous boards.
I smiled compassionately and did my best to pay attention as Elizabeth rambled on, but it was no use. My hormonally inflamed mind kept returning to the mattress in her bedroom and the sexual athletics it would soon see! Who cared whether the Haysoms were rich or poor? Only our love, only its consummation on that mattress upstairs mattered; it made everything whole and solved all problems.
Oh, how I believed that, with all the stupid innocence and blind naivete of first love! When I look back now to the first three months of that spring semester, I remember Liz and me returning to college from one of our stays at Loose Chippings. We had chosen to drive along the Skyline Drive, the scenic route which runs along the very summits of the Blue Ridge Mountains. It was warm for February, and the sun was beginning to set. We pulled over at one of the picnic spots, sat on the hood of the car and shared half a bottle of warm, flat Coke. Below us in the far distance lay a highway with miniature people rushing back and forth in toy cars. Elizabeth's pullover was scratchy against my skin, and hex hair smelled sweet and clean when I kissed it. There was no sound but for the wind playing in the grass.
We did not tear off our clothes and have wild, noisy sex al fresco on the hood of the rental Toyota. We simply sat quietly, experiencing the grace of love. I remember feeling blessed: blessed to be loved by a girl as wonderful as Elizabeth, and blessed to be allowed to love her.
Through our love my teenage awkwardness and angst had been banished. The abject depression and feverish self hatred of my Christmas diary-letters seemed not two months but two lifetimes away! Even some of my remaining friends in the dormitory told me that I had become a much happier, more secure person since I had started dating Liz. Sitting on the hood of that car with her I finally felt at home in this world. For so many years before Elizabeth I had been a stranger.
The last time I felt comfortably a part of the main stream of my peers was in Germany from 1973 to 1977. There I did not have the social stigma of excelling academically, since I achieved no more than a B average. When the neighborhood boys met for the daily soccer game I was neither the first nor the last to be picked when teams were chosen. If anything distinguished me at all, it was that I was the first boy in my class to take a girl to an ice cream parlor -- a daring venture for a ten-year old!
But as soon as I arrived in Atlanta on my eleventh birthday, I became an outsider. My first day at that exclusive prep school began with my classmates shouting, "Nazi, Nazi!" "Hogan's Heroes" had convinced these children that all Germans were Nazis -- including the new arrival, me. I tried to ignore the unending taunts until eighth grade, when I had the one and only schoolyard fight of my life. The other boy and I managed to land one punch each before being hauled off to the principal's office!
Once my class entered high school the Nazi teasing stopped, but that particular chip never left my shoulder. I became known for my sarcastic sense of humor, especially on subjects like southern hospitality, and I remained extraordinarily defensive about my German heritage. At the slightest provocation I would launch into long, boring speeches arguing that post-1945 Germany was a paragon of liberal virtue compared with the militaristic, reactionary America of the Reagan era. Of course my left-wing politics did not help me gain acceptance with my preppy schoolmates either.
lost younger Germans have found their country's past similarly burdensome. Since World War II German politicians, the media and the educational system have conducted a massive campaign to keep alive the warning memory of the Holocaust. All schoolchildren must attend class trips to concentration camps, and public TV stations broadcast a steady stream of documentaries. No one is allowed to forget that the worst form of murder is the killing of a citizen by his government.
But Germans in Germany at least are not alone. Everyone there shares the same awful heritage; everyone nurses a guilty conscience, even if some youngsters rebel against it by shaving their heads and yelling fascist slogans. I, on the other hand, was the only German in my school class in America. So it became my personal responsibility to prove that Germans had learned from their Nazi past, that they were new practically perfect in every way! My defensiveness about my nationality even influenced me in decisions like refusing to join the high school ritual of getting drunk after every Friday football game. As a good German I could not allow myself to participate in anything so crassly American!
Even at college my heritage continued to stigmatise me. While visiting Germany in early 1985 President Reagan joined Chancellor Kohl at a wreath laying ceremony at Bitburg Cemetery, where a few young Waffen-SS soldiers were buried in one corner. Paroxysms of outrage immediately swept through the American media, and all day long acquaintances and even strangers insisted that I explain the German point-of-view on this scandal.
The Bitburg Cemetery episode was, of course, only one of the countless, constant reminders throughout my childhood and youth, that I was not truly at home anywhere in the world. In America I would always be a stranger from the perpetually dishonored nation of Germany. Yet if I were now to transfer to the University of Bonn I would still not fit in because I had spent almost my entire life outside my country. Even my parents' house was not a home but, instead, the altar on which they sacrificed their happiness to the ideal of family life.
Certainly I could win my parents' or my American and German peers' approval -- as long as I kept delivering all those awards and scholarships. But no one seemed to like me very much, nowhere was I truly wanted. Until Elizabeth rescued me!
I remember feeling joyous amazement as I sat on the hood of that Toyota in the Blue Ridge Mountains in February of 1985: she loved me! She really loved me! Me, Jens Soering, the German outsider, the cause of my parents' endless, unhappy sacrificing! She really loved me!
She loved me -- not just accepted me, not just liked me, but loved me! No, not just loved, she desired me. She wanted to "tug at [me], wanting all of [me], cuddling [my] balls," as she wrote in the letter quoted earlier in this chapter. How could a lonely young German resist that siren call?
Separating from Liz, even if only for the nine days of spring break in March, seemed too painful to contemplate. But we had no choice: I had to catch up on all the schoolwork I had neglected, and she had commitments with her family. As soon as Elizabeth left I threw myself into work, convinced that this was the only cure for the agony of being without my love.
My main project was to complete two thirds of a film script for my creative writing course. To get into a suitably artistic mood I took the method-acting approach to writing: I sat at my typewriter late at night in my underwear, ate cold pizzas for breakfast and even tried to smoke a cigarette to complete the image! Now I just needed to supply a corpse for my script's hero, a detective who used the philosophy of Zen to solve crimes. Dozens of devilishly ingenious plans for the perfect murder landed in my trash can before I finally settled on a slow poison made from the skin of a tropical fish or frog found in the far east. Of course my Zen detective missed none of the tiny important clues which cleared him and pointed to the real murderer. This was a movie, after all, not reality!
Liz meanwhile was skiing in Colorado with her half-brothers from her mother's previous marriage, Howard and Richard. On Ramada Inn stationery she wrote me a long letter complaining bitterly about her parents. They had prevented her from inheriting a mansion in London left to her by Lady Astor, they were not giving her the additional spending money they had promised for kicking her heroin habit, they would never give her the money she felt she deserved because they wanted to control every aspect of her life! The only solution, Elizabeth wrote, was to run away again, to cut her ties with her family completely. If necessary she would resort to stealing her mother's jewellery. At great length she then begged my forgiveness for lying to me and not telling me these things earlier 3:2 (rtn 3:2).
When Liz returned from Colorado we hardly discussed this letter. I saw no need, since it was obviously just an exasperated outburst without anything like firm plans for running away. There was certainly no hint of murder! Love would solve all our problems; it was the weapon which would overcome any obstacles raised by her parents, as I had written her in my Christmas diary-letters. An insufficient allowance was hardly a genuine problem, anyway, compared with the one facing me. I had rented a hotel room so we could celebrate Elizabeth's return to college with a night of wild sex, but since there had been a delay in her travel plans I had lost the room. No sex, after nine days of abstinence during spring break, now that really was a disaster!
The passage in Liz's letter, in which she asked forgiveness for lying to me, seemed no more important to me than her worries about spending money. By now I alas well-used to her "p.o.t.'s," or "perversions of truth," and since she had promised not to lie again that issue seemed to have been resolved.
On the weekend of March 23-24 Elizabeth went to Lynchburg by herself to celebrate her father's birthday at home. She returned ecstatic: contrary to her expectations her parents were going to reward her for straightening herself out! They had even begun to set up an account at the Bank of Bermuda with a small sum as a gift for her upcoming birthday on April 15. Everything was going to be all right 3:3 (rtn 3:3)!
The next weekend Liz and I drove to Washington D.C. for a mini- vacation together. We had been in love for three and a half months. And on Saturday, March 30, "we did it"; "we" killed her parents 3:4 (rtn 3:4).
3:1 -- This letter by Elizabeth Haysom is available in the public records at Bedford County Courthouse. (rtn 3:1)
3:2 -- This letter is available in the public records at Bedford County Courthouse and is quoted at length in Chapter 4. (rtn 3:2)
3:3 -- Testimony concerning this bank account is contained in the transcript of Elizabeth Haysom's sentencing hearing, available in the public records at Bedford County Courthouse. (rtn 3:3)
3:4 -- The letter quoted here, written by Elizabeth Haysom, is available in the public records at Bedford County Courthouse and is discussed in detail in Chapter 5. (rtn 3:4)