Criminal Law, Murder, Police and Prosecutors, Soering, True Crime

Jens Söring Disappears on Social Media, ZDF Quadruples its Bet on “Killing for Love”

June 29, 2020June 29, 2020 Andrew Hammel

Söring Flees Social Media

Two interesting items to report in Jens Söring’s campaign to get a “media pardon” from the press which he couldn’t get from the Virginia Parole Board.

First of all, Söring deleted all of his social media accounts a little over a week ago. Just pulled them all down, without any explanation or reasoning. According to people familiar with the situation, Söring did this because some of the response to his posts on Twitter and Facebook had mentioned the name of the person with whom he is currently living, who I’ll call Sandra.

I’m of two minds about this. First and foremost, I disapprove of doxxing, so I can understand the decision. Sandra has never sought out publicity, and deserves to have her privacy respected so long as this is the case. I’ve deleted comments from this blog which I felt were too personal for this reason. On the other hand, though, Sandra is living with a man who is actively seeking publicity right now to sell books and TV series. It’s hard to imagine how she could have thought her name wouldn’t come up. Further, a social media presence is absolutely necessary for writers in these times. Random House will certainly be horrified to hear that Söring has shut down his social media.

I suppose Söring could blog, but blogging is so 2008. His website has no blog and is generally pretty outdated, the last major change was posting a link to the Markus Lanz interview, which Söring obviously — and correctly — perceives as a major propaganda victory.

Söring was also getting some rather nasty comments and criticisms on Facebook and Twitter, which may also have played a role. Needless to say, I also disapprove of that sort of thing. I should note, in all fairness, that Söring continued to permit me to post on his wall and feed until the very end. I admit, I miss him already!

ZDF Continues the “Clear Jens’ Name At All Costs” Propaganda Campaign

But if the Söring media juggernaut took two steps backward in abandoning social media, it’s getting pushed forward five steps by the ever-obliging German mainstream media. ZDF — the channel which broadcast the Lanz interview — just announced (g) big changes to its programming schedule. It cancelled everything it was going to show on Tuesday, 4 August, 2020, and replaced all those shows with a three-hour bloc of Söring programming:

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This will apparently be a showing of the multi-part documentary on the Söring case created by Karin Steinberger and Markus Vetter. This documentary was later condensed into the 90-minute feature documentary “Killing for Love”. Perhaps ZDF just plans to show the original documentary, which I believe was about 3 hours long. Or maybe the ZDF will show additional clips from the Lanz interview, or from other sources, to fill out the three hours.

Naturally, I consider it grossly irresponsible for the ZDF to devote three hours of prime-time nationwide television to the thoroughly discredited and misleading work of Steinberger and Vetter. Almost every factual claim in the documentary has been conclusively refuted by independent sources such as Terry Wright, and by my articles for the FAZ. If the ZDF broadcasts the documentary without any skeptical counter-voices or criticism, that will be (yet another) a journalistic travesty of the first order.

Needless to say, I am going to write the ZDF quite soon to make my concerns known. And if the documentary evening goes on as planned, I will, once again, take upon myself the Herculean task of cleaning out the Augean Stables of pro-Söring poppycock.

In the meantime, I’m working on a nice long post about Elizabeth Haysom’s so-called “confession”. And if you have tips or information about Söring’s plans or the ZDF’s sudden programming change, please don’t hesitate to get in touch. I am, and will always and forever remain, on social media!