A College Romance That Led to Murder

The door was locked but the light outside was burning bright, and when the three women arrived for bridge with Mr. Haysom they were puzzled to find no one answering the bell.

门锁着，但外面的灯很亮，当三个女人到达海索姆先生的桥牌时，她们很困惑地发现没有人应门铃。

The cars were in the driveway.

汽车停在车道上。

Though it was daytime, the porch lamp by the door had been left on.

虽然是白天，门口的廊灯却还亮着。

It was April 3, 1985, and the neighborhood was quiet.

那是1985年4月3日，附近很安静。

The women called Annie Massie, a friend who had a spare key, in case something had befallen their bridge partner or his wife.

她们给朋友安妮·马西打了电话，她有一把备用钥匙，以防她们的桥牌搭档或他的妻子出了什么事。

“I thought he was my soul mate, my life partner, my creative partner,” Elizabeth Haysom says of Jens Soering.

“我认为他是我的灵魂伴侣、我的生活伴侣、我的创意伙伴，”伊丽莎白·海瑟姆 (Elizabeth Haysom) 谈到延斯·索林 (Jens Soering) 时说道。

Illustration by Oliver Munday; photographs from AP Holcomb Rock Road, where Derek and Nancy Haysom lived, snaked through central Virginia and into the hilly deep woods around Lynchburg.

奥利弗·芒迪插图；照片取自德里克·海瑟姆 (Derek Haysom) 和南希·海瑟姆 (Nancy Haysom) 居住的 AP 霍尔科姆岩石路 (AP Holcomb Rock Road)，这条路蜿蜒穿过弗吉尼亚州中部，进入林奇堡 (Lynchburg) 周围丘陵深处的树林。

Derek, seventy-two, was a South African engineer.

德里克，七十二岁，是一位南非工程师。

He had met Nancy, an American, known as Cita, in Johannesburg when they were both divorced.

他在约翰内斯堡遇见了美国人南希（又名西塔），当时他们都离婚了。

They’d joined their families, and, in 1964, they had their only child together, Elizabeth, raised in Nova Scotia, where Derek ran a steel mill.

他们加入了各自的家庭，并于 1964 年生下了唯一的孩子伊丽莎白，她在新斯科舍省长大，德里克在那里经营一家钢铁厂。

The house on Holcomb Rock Road, which they’d bought a few years earlier for retirement, was modest, but it had a tennis court, a swimming pool, and a view of the Blue Ridge Mountains.

他们几年前为退休买了位于霍尔科姆罗克路的房子，房子很简陋，但有一个网球场、一个游泳池，还能看到蓝岭山脉的景色。

Nancy dubbed the place Loose Chippings, after a British phrase for scattered gravel on the road.

南希将这个地方称为“Loose Chippings”，这是一个英国短语，意思是路上散落的碎石。

When Massie entered the house, she found the Haysoms sprawled on the ground, caked in gore.

当马西走进房子时，她发现海索姆一家四肢摊开在地上，浑身是血。

Derek Haysom was on his side near a doorway, an arm stretched out before him.

德里克·海瑟姆站在门口附近，一只手臂伸到他面前。

Nancy Haysom was in the kitchen, traced in crimson whirls, as if someone had wiped the blood around her like Windex on glass.

南希·海瑟姆在厨房里，身上出现了深红色的漩涡，就好像有人擦掉了她周围的血迹，就像玻璃上的温德克斯一样。

Both bodies were ragged with stab wounds, and their necks had been cut nearly from ear to ear.

两人的尸体都被刺伤，脖子几乎从耳朵到耳朵都被割断。

Officers soon swarmed the scene.

警察很快就赶到了现场。

Loose Chippings had a Lynchburg mailing address but sat in Bedford County, outside town.

Loose Chippings 的邮寄地址位于林奇堡，但位于城外的贝德福德县。

Though the crimes were in the jurisdiction of the county sheriff’s office, a task force from central Virginia joined the case.

尽管这些罪行属于县治安官办公室的管辖范围，但来自弗吉尼亚州中部的一个特别工作组也加入了此案。

Chuck Reid and Ricky Gardner, investigators from Bedford, set out to discover what the neighbors knew.

来自贝德福德的调查员查克·里德和瑞奇·加德纳着手调查邻居们所知道的事情。

Gardner, then twenty-nine, had never worked a homicide before.

加德纳当时二十九岁，以前从未犯过杀人案。

The house revealed no indication of forced entry.

房子里没有发现强行闯入的迹象。

On the dining-room table were place settings and the remnants of a meal.

餐桌上摆着餐具和饭菜的残渣。

No weapon could be found, but there were footprints in the blood.

没有找到武器，但血迹中有脚印。

One looked to have been made by a tennis shoe, and two more by a sock.

其中一个看起来是由网球鞋制成的，另外两个看起来是由袜子制成的。

Forensic study showed that the Haysoms had blood-alcohol levels of .22—exceedingly high.

法医研究表明，Haysom 夫妇的血液酒精浓度为 0.22，极高。

A vodka bottle nearby carried fingerprints, as did a shot glass.

附近的一个伏特加酒瓶和一个小玻璃杯上都有指纹。

Four blood types were in evidence: the Haysoms’ A and AB, a bit of B blood on a damp rag, and, on the screen door and in the master suite, spots of O.

明显有四种血型：海索姆一家的 A 型和 AB 型，湿抹布上有一点 B 型血，纱门上和主人套房里有 O 型血。

DNA analysis was largely unavailable in 1985, but, from these samples, it was possible to reconstruct a sequence of events.

1985 年，DNA 分析基本上无法实现，但从这些样本中，可以重建一系列事件。

At some point between March 29th and 31st, the killer or killers had arrived at Loose Chippings, probably during a meal.

3 月 29 日至 31 日之间的某个时间点，凶手可能是在吃饭时到达 Loose Chippings 的。

Someone, it seemed, had sat down at the table with the Haysoms to eat.

似乎有人和海索姆一家一起坐在桌边吃饭。

A trail of blood suggested that Derek Haysom was attacked there, and stumbled across the dining room as he bled.

一道血迹表明德里克·海瑟姆在那里遭到袭击，他流着血跌跌撞撞地穿过餐厅。

A bloody palm print on a side chair showed where he’d put a hand down, as if struggling to stay upright; his killer had pursued him.

边椅上有一个血淋淋的掌纹，显示他把手放下的地方，好像在努力保持直立。凶手正在追捕他。

Derek Haysom’s jugular and carotid were cut, and he had been stabbed thirty-six times.

德里克·海瑟姆的颈静脉和颈动脉被割伤，他被刺了三十六刀。

Then the murderer, with great presence of mind, seemed to have got up, wiped down much of the scene, and washed up in the bathroom.

然后，凶手似乎很镇定地站了起来，擦拭了大部分现场，然后在浴室里洗了澡。

By the time Elizabeth Roxanne Haysom started as a freshman at the University of Virginia, in the late summer of 1984, she was twenty—two years older than most of her classmates.

1984 年夏末，伊丽莎白·罗克珊·海瑟姆 (Elizabeth Roxanne Haysom) 开始就读弗吉尼亚大学一年级时，她比大多数同学年长 22 岁。

In her final year at Wycombe Abbey, a boarding school outside London, she had botched her interview for Trinity College, Cambridge, blown off her A levels, then run away with a female lover to travel through Europe, sometimes high on drugs.

在伦敦郊外的威科姆修道院寄宿学校的最后一年，她在剑桥三一学院的面试中表现不佳，A 水平成绩被取消，然后与一名女性情人私奔，穿越欧洲，有时还吸毒。

Living with her parents on her return, feeling that her life had reached an early end, she’d got into U.Va.

回来后与父母住在一起，感觉自己的生命已经提前结束，于是她进入了弗吉尼亚大学。

as an élite Echols Scholar.

作为精英埃科尔斯学者。

It wasn’t the fairy tale of which she’d dreamed.

这不是她梦想的童话故事。

At an orientation event, she met Jens Soering.

在一次迎新活动中，她遇到了 Jens Soering。

He was a German student, born in Thailand and educated largely in the American South.

他是一名德国学生，出生于泰国，主要在美国南部接受教育。

He had horn-rimmed glasses, Mick Jagger lips, and a priggish haughtiness of manner.

他戴着角质框眼镜、米克·贾格尔式的嘴唇和一种自负的傲慢态度。

That evening, he struggled to make sense of Haysom.

那天晚上，他很难理解海瑟姆的意思。

She wore her dirty-blond hair short.

她把脏兮兮的金发剪得很短。

She had assessing gray eyes.

她有一双灰色的眼睛在评估。

Around campus, she smoked with the cool effortlessness of a nouvelle-vague film star.

在校园里，她抽烟的样子就像一个新浪潮电影明星那样冷静、轻松。

She talked, like Soering, with an unplaceable British-ish accent.

她说话就像索林一样，带着一种无可比拟的英国口音。

They were different, though.

但他们是不同的。

In high school, in Atlanta, Soering had edited the school newspaper, done photography, acted on the school stage, played guitar in garage bands, won an art award, and taken many A.P.

在亚特兰大读高中时，索林曾编辑校报、摄影、在学校舞台上表演、在车库乐队中弹吉他、获得过艺术奖，并取得了许多 A.P. 学位。

classes.

类。

His father, a bureaucrat with the German consular service, had recently transferred from Atlanta to Detroit.

他的父亲是德国领事部门的一名官僚，最近从亚特兰大调到底特律。

Soering’s achievements were part of a plan to meet the admissions requirements of German universities.

索林的成就是满足德国大学入学要求计划的一部分。

But he had been accepted at U.Va.

但他已经被弗吉尼亚大学录取了。

as a Jefferson Scholar, an élite within the élite, and given a full scholarship and spending money.

作为杰斐逊学者，精英中的精英，并获得全额奖学金和零用钱。

He rarely saw Haysom as the weeks progressed; they moved in separate worlds.

随着时间的推移，他很少见到海索姆。他们搬到了不同的世界。

Then, one night in October, they found themselves together at a movie screening.

然后，十月的一个晚上，他们一起观看了一场电影放映。

By November, they were meeting in the Tree House, a campus snack bar, and lingering like Beauvoir and Sartre at Les Deux Magots.

到了十一月，他们在校园小吃店树屋见面，并像波伏娃和萨特一样在双叟酒吧里徘徊。

Haysom felt herself falling for Soering.

海瑟姆感觉自己爱上了索林。

She liked his Mitteleuropean aloofness, his rock-band past— No language, just sound, that’s all we need know —and his ambition.

她喜欢他中欧人的冷漠，喜欢他摇滚乐队的过去——没有语言，只有声音，这就是我们需要知道的一切——还有他的野心。

She saw him as a tortured artist.

她把他视为一位饱受折磨的艺术家。

Once, in the Tree House, he joked that they had started prattling on together like an old married couple.

有一次，在树屋里，他开玩笑说，他们开始像老夫妻一样闲聊。

Haysom took what seemed to be her cue, and she confessed her love for him.

海索姆似乎接受了她的暗示，她向他表白了她的爱。

In December, she left a letter in his room:

12月，她在他的房间里留了一封信：

I hated my love for you for a long time.

我恨我对你的爱已经很长一段时间了。

I hated myself for discovering vulnerability, but as the weeks passed I began to understand.

我讨厌自己发现了自己的弱点，但几周过去了，我开始明白了。

I had always believed that I made men fall in love with me so that I could take out all the hatred I felt for them by humiliating them.

我一直相信，我让男人爱上我，是为了通过羞辱他们来消除我对他们的所有仇恨。

I despised their cheap lust and easy passions.

我鄙视他们廉价的欲望和轻松的激情。

And in the end I made them hate themselves for loving me and the torture I inflicted.

最后，我让他们恨自己爱我，恨我所施加的折磨。

I would make a man humiliate himself to obtain me, then I would give him the best fuck he’s ever likely to get and then walk out.

我会让一个男人为了得到我而羞辱自己，然后我会给他一次他可能得到的最好的操，然后走开。

I love you, and it may alter intensity and direction from time to time, but I will always love you with a part of me which no one else will be able to snatch.

我爱你，它的强度和方向可能会不时改变，但我会永远用我的一部分来爱你，这是别人无法夺走的。

“Hold on—I’ll call in an air strike.” Charlottesville in autumn was a restive and romantic place.

“坚持住——我会呼叫空袭。”秋天的夏洛茨维尔是一个躁动而又浪漫的地方。

Soering had a ground-floor dorm room facing the Slaughter Recreation Center.

索尔林的宿舍位于一楼，面向斯劳特娱乐中心。

Haysom had a room on a higher floor.

海瑟姆的房间位于较高楼层。

The two were together until winter break pulled them apart, sending Haysom to Loose Chippings with her parents and Soering to Detroit with his.

两人一直在一起，直到寒假将他们分开，海瑟姆和她的父母一起去了卢斯奇平斯，索林和他的父母一起去了底特律。

Home depressed him.

家里让他很沮丧。

He’d never really lived in Michigan.

他从未真正在密歇根生活过。

His father, Klaus, had a temper, and his mother was an alcoholic, prone to moods and sadness.

他的父亲克劳斯脾气暴躁，母亲是个酒鬼，容易情绪化和悲伤。

Haysom, too, was going crazy at home.

海瑟姆在家里也快疯了。

One of her half brothers described their father as a parent from a previous generation—publicly gregarious; privately reserved, authoritarian—and Haysom had a troubled relationship with her mother.

她的一个同父异母的兄弟形容他们的父亲是上一代人的父母——公开合群；私下里保守、专制——海瑟姆和她母亲的关系也很糟糕。

During the winter break, Haysom wrote Soering letters:

寒假期间，海索姆给索林写了一封信：

A day of raining loneliness.

孤独如雨的一天。

This morning I built my father a desk for his computer.

今天早上我给父亲做了一张电脑桌。

It took all morning.

花了整个上午的时间。

I didn’t smoke.

我不抽烟。

Then I went shopping.

然后我就去购物了。

I bought cigarettes.

我买了香烟。

I bought other things too—my father fell down (I prayed) he got up.

我还买了其他东西——我父亲摔倒了（我祈祷）他站起来了。

.

。

.

。

.

。

My parents began to drink.

我的父母开始喝酒。

My father says that the juniper extract used to flavor gin is a potent poison/drug.

我父亲说用于杜松子酒调味的杜松子提取物是一种烈性毒药/药物。

It causes similar aggression as “speed.” My mother begins her 6th gin (I pray she’ll use the poker on my cold, guiding father).

它会引起与“速度”类似的攻击性。我母亲开始喝第六杯杜松子酒（我祈祷她能用扑克对付我冷漠、引导的父亲）。

Soering, in his letters, tried to channel Haysom’s antic stream of consciousness, but he had a more starched-and-pressed mind:

索林在信中试图引导海瑟姆滑稽的意识流，但他的头脑更加僵化和压抑：

Were I to meet your parents, I have the ultimate “weapon.” Strange things are happening within me.

如果我能见到你的父母，我就拥有了终极“武器”。我内心正在发生奇怪的事情。

I’m turning more and more into a Christ-figure (a small imitation, anyway), I think.

我想，我越来越变成基督形象（无论如何，这是一个小小的模仿）。

I believe I could either make them completely lose their wits, get heart attacks, or they would become lovers (in an agape kind of way) of the rest of the world.

我相信我要么让他们完全失去理智，心脏病发作，要么他们会成为世界其他地方的恋人（以一种爱的方式）。

In January, he went back to Charlottesville with a buoyant sense of escape.

一月份，他带着一种逃离的轻松感回到夏洛茨维尔。

During the next few weeks, he and Haysom visited Loose Chippings when her parents weren’t home.

在接下来的几周里，当她的父母不在家时，他和海瑟姆拜访了 Loose Chippings。

One evening, at U.Va., Soering says, he returned from the library to find Haysom alone in bed, hugging her knees.

索林说，一天晚上，在弗吉尼亚大学，他从图书馆回来，发现海瑟姆独自躺在床上，抱着她的膝盖。

On the inside of her elbow was a small needle mark: heroin, he says she told him.

她的肘部内侧有一个小针痕：海洛因，他说她告诉他的。

A friend of her dealer had come by, and, well, she was so sorry for using.

她的经销商的一位朋友过来了，她很抱歉使用了它。

(Haysom denies this.)

（海瑟姆否认了这一点。）

That winter, the Haysoms came to Charlottesville to take the young couple to lunch.

那年冬天，海索姆一家来到夏洛茨维尔，带这对年轻夫妇共进午餐。

They grilled Soering about his family and his past.

他们盘问索林的家庭和过去。

When the Haysoms hosted a niece of Derek’s, a week or so later, they were still talking about the weirdness of the meal.

大约一周后，当海索姆一家招待德里克的侄女时，他们仍在谈论这顿饭的奇怪之处。

They worried that Soering had insufficient “standing” for their daughter.

他们担心索林对他们的女儿来说没有足够的“地位”。

Nancy Haysom found him oddly jumpy at the table, too.

南希·海瑟姆发现他在餐桌上也显得有些神经质。

During spring break, Haysom went skiing in Colorado.

春假期间，海瑟姆去科罗拉多州滑雪。

Soering stayed in Charlottesville to finish some school projects.

索林留在夏洛茨维尔完成一些学校项目。

One was a screenplay for his creative-writing class, and he acted the way he thought writers should.

其中一个是他的创意写作课的剧本，他按照他认为作家应该做的方式行事。

He perched at the typewriter in his underwear, eating pizza.

他穿着内衣坐在打字机前，吃着披萨。

He tried to smoke a cigarette.

他试着抽烟。

His screenplay was about a brilliant sleuth who used Zen philosophy to solve crimes, and, as he typed scenes about corpses, clues, and exotic poisons, he filled a wastepaper basket with discarded drafts.

他的剧本讲述了一位才华横溢的侦探利用禅宗哲学来破案的故事，当他输入有关尸体、线索和奇异毒药的场景时，他把废弃的草稿装满了一个废纸篓。

He was trying to plot the perfect murder.

他正试图策划一场完美的谋杀案。

Would it be possible to hypnotise my parents, do voo doo on them, will them to death?

是否有可能催眠我的父母，对他们进行巫术，将他们置于死地？

It seems my concentration on their death is causing them problems.

看来我对他们死亡的关注给他们带来了麻烦。

My father nearly drove over a cliff at lunch, he nearly got squashed by a tree when he got home (and he keeps falling over) and my mother (drunk) fell into the fire.

我的父亲在午餐时差点开车冲下悬崖，他回到家时差点被一棵树压扁（他一直摔倒），我的母亲（喝醉了）掉进了火里。

I think I shall seriously take up black magic.

我想我应该认真对待黑魔法。

.

。

.

。

.

。

We can either wait till we graduate and then leave them behind or we can get rid of them soon.

我们可以等到毕业然后把他们抛在身后，或者我们可以尽快摆脱他们。

My mother said today that if some accident befell them she knew I would become a worthless adventurer.

我母亲今天说，如果他们发生什么意外，她知道我会成为一个毫无价值的冒险家。

More maternal acumen.

更有母性智慧。

On the afternoon of Friday, March 29, 1985, Haysom and Soering rented a gray Chevette and drove to Washington, D.C., where he used his father’s Visa card to book a room at the Georgetown Marriott.

1985 年 3 月 29 日星期五下午，海瑟姆和索林租了一辆灰色雪佛兰开往华盛顿特区，在那里他用父亲的 Visa 卡预订了乔治敦万豪酒店的房间。

After checking in, they went to see the movie “Porky’s Revenge!” They spent Saturday midday wandering around the neighborhood, then went for a late lunch at a restaurant with a train theme.

办理好入住手续后，他们去看了电影《波基的复仇！》周六中午，他们在附近闲逛，然后去一家火车主题餐厅吃了一顿迟到的午餐。

Soering made a joke about the phallic iconography of the image, in the Freudian paradigm.

索林在弗洛伊德范式中对图像的阳具图像开了个玩笑。

On Sunday, they drove back to Charlottesville.

周日，他们开车返回夏洛茨维尔。

Haysom was notified of her parents’ murders on Wednesday, when the bodies were discovered.

周三，当尸体被发现时，海索姆得知了她父母被谋杀的消息。

What later interested investigators was the odometer on the Chevette.

后来调查人员感兴趣的是雪佛兰车上的里程表。

According to rental records, the car had been driven six hundred and sixty-nine miles between its rental and its return—some four hundred miles more than a trip to and from Washington, D.C. This was the distance from Charlottesville to Washington, Washington to Loose Chippings, and back along the same route.

根据租赁记录，这辆车从租赁到归还之间已行驶了 669 英里，比往返华盛顿特区的行程多了约 400 英里。这是从夏洛茨维尔到华盛顿、从华盛顿到 Loose Chippings 并沿同一条路线返回的距离。

A suspect profile from the F.B.I.

联邦调查局 (F.B.I.) 的嫌疑人简介

had identified the murderer as a female who knew the family.

经确认凶手是一名认识该家庭的女性。

For a time, suspicion fell on the daughter of a local judge, whose engagement to Haysom’s older half brother Julian had ended, Chuck Reid had heard, under pressure from his parents.

查克·里德听说，在父母的压力下，当地一名法官的女儿一度受到怀疑，她与海索姆同父异母的哥哥朱利安的订婚已经结束。

(Julian says that his parents were actually disappointed by the end of the engagement.) A few weeks before the murders, Reid was told, she had brought knives to a friend, and asked him to take them, because evil spirits were pursuing her.

（朱利安说，他的父母实际上对订婚的结束感到失望。）在谋杀案发生前几周，里德被告知，她给一位朋友带来了刀，并要求他拿走它们，因为邪灵正在追赶她。

Reid thought that the woman was skittish, with a different-drummer kind of imagination, but not a killer.

里德认为这个女人很容易受惊，有着与鼓手不同的想象力，但不是杀手。

And she had told him an unsettling story.

她给他讲了一个令人不安的故事。

At one point, she said, Elizabeth Haysom had approached her.

她说，伊丽莎白·海瑟姆曾一度接近她。

“I’m the devil,” Haysom had told her, according to Reid.

据里德说，“我是魔鬼”，海瑟姆告诉她。

“You’re the sacrificial lamb.” (Haysom denies this.)

“你就是待宰的羔羊。” （海瑟姆否认了这一点。）

On Monday, April 8th, Gardner and another investigator sat down with Haysom at an elementary school where they had set up a field station.

4 月 8 日星期一，加德纳和另一名调查员在一所小学与海索姆进行了交谈，他们在那里设立了一个实地考察站。

Gardner was struck by Haysom’s accent.

加德纳对海索姆的口音感到震惊。

She told him that she had been dating a German, and that they’d rented a car to spend the weekend in D.C. The investigators sent her home but called her back later to ask about the extra miles on the Chevette.

她告诉他，她一直在和一个德国人约会，他们租了一辆车去华盛顿过周末。调查人员把她送回家，但后来又给她回电话，询问雪维特的额外里程数。

She said that she and Soering had got lost on the drive.

她说她和索林在路上迷路了。

In June, Soering and Haysom flew to Europe for a vacation.

6月，索林和海索姆飞往欧洲度假。

They returned to U.Va.

他们回到了弗吉尼亚大学。

for summer school, where their romance bloomed.

暑期学校，他们的浪漫绽放。

They made love to Joni Mitchell’s “Don Juan’s Reckless Daughter”:

他们与乔尼·米切尔的《唐璜鲁莽的女儿》做爱：

When school started again in the fall, Soering effectively moved into the house where Haysom lived with roommates and a cat named Snark.

当秋天学校重新开学时，索林实际上搬进了海瑟姆与室友和一只名叫斯纳克的猫住在一起的房子。

On October 6th, he drove to the Bedford County Sheriff’s Office to talk with Reid and Gardner.

10月6日，他开车前往贝德福德县治安官办公室与里德和加德纳交谈。

The investigators asked for his fingerprints, footprints, and blood, to help eliminate him as a suspect.

调查人员要求提供他的指纹、脚印和血迹，以帮助排除他的嫌疑。

Haysom had given hers.

海索姆给了她。

Soering balked.

索林犹豫不决。

He told them that he’d have to clear the request with the German Embassy.

他告诉他们，他必须向德国大使馆批准这一请求。

Gardner was feeling pressured for results from the Haysom family—especially from Elizabeth’s half brother Howard Haysom, a doctor in Houston, who was due to visit Lynchburg on October 15th.

加德纳对海瑟姆家族的结果感到压力，尤其是伊丽莎白同父异母的弟弟霍华德·海瑟姆，他是休斯顿的一名医生，他原定于 10 月 15 日访问林奇堡。

Six days before the visit, Soering phoned Gardner to say that he was busy with schoolwork but that he could meet in a week to give his blood and prints.

访问前六天，索尔林打电话给加德纳，说他正忙于功课，但他可以在一周内见面提供他的血液和指纹。

On the night of Howard Haysom’s arrival, Gardner was working late in the field when the sheriff’s office patched through an urgent call.

霍华德·海瑟姆到达的那天晚上，加德纳正在现场工作到很晚，这时治安官办公室接到了一个紧急电话。

It was Howard, livid.

是霍华德，脸色铁青。

Elizabeth and Soering had vanished.

伊丽莎白和索林消失了。

When the investigators got to Charlottesville, Haysom’s roommate handed them a letter from Soering:

当调查人员到达夏洛茨维尔时，海索姆的室友递给他们一封索林的信：

.

。

.

。

.

。

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 .

我想尤其是你，加德纳先生，现在会非常兴奋，这就是为什么我不想让你失望（嗯，这不完全是真的。

.

。

.

。

) .

）。

.

。

.

。

.

。

I suggest that you continue your investigation as before; undoubtedly you will find whom you are looking for.

我建议你像以前一样继续调查；毫无疑问，您会找到您要找的人。

As for me, I am afraid you must remain, as Officer Reid put it, only “99% sure” of my innocence.

至于我，恐怕正如里德警官所说，你必须仍然“99％确信”我是清白的。

From what Liz has told me of what you discovered at Loose Chippings, I can only say that I am incapable of such a thing.

从莉兹告诉我的你在Loose Chippings发现的情况来看，我只能说我没有能力做这样的事情。

I do not have many friends, but I think they will substantiate this—and my long-standing dissatisfaction with my life here.

我没有很多朋友，但我想他们会证实这一点——以及我长期以来对这里的生活的不满。

By the time Gardner got back to his office, Soering had become his leading suspect.

当加德纳回到办公室时，索林已成为他的头号嫌疑人。

Haysom and Soering followed separate itineraries and rendezvoused that Tuesday, in Paris, under the Arc de Triomphe.

海索姆和索林分别安排了行程，并于周二在巴黎凯旋门下会合。

Haysom had dyed her hair bright red.

海索姆把头发染成了鲜红色。

From there, they travelled to the small city of Ettelbruck, in Luxembourg.

从那里，他们前往卢森堡的埃特尔布鲁克小城。

The plan was to go to Thailand, locate Soering’s birth certificate, marry, and apply jointly for Thai passports.

计划是去泰国，找到索林的出生证明，结婚，并共同申请泰国护照。

They rented a Fiat, planning to drive through France, Switzerland, Italy, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, Turkey, and onward.

他们租了一辆菲亚特，计划开车穿越法国、瑞士、意大利、南斯拉夫、保加利亚、土耳其等地。

It didn’t work.

它不起作用。

At the Bulgarian border, they were told that they would need to get a visa at the Bulgarian Embassy in Belgrade.

在保加利亚边境，他们被告知需要在贝尔格莱德的保加利亚大使馆获得签证。

As Haysom turned the car around, a driver travelling in the opposite direction pulled into their lane.

当海索姆调头时，一名朝相反方向行驶的司机驶入了他们的车道。

She swerved into the shoulder, where the Fiat blew a tire and careered back through the oncoming traffic; Soering briefly lost consciousness in the crash.

她突然转向路肩，那辆菲亚特轮胎爆胎，然后从迎面驶来的车流中冲了回来。索林在事故中短暂失去了知觉。

Following an appearance in the local traffic court, they decided to fly the rest of the way.

在当地交通法庭出庭后，他们决定继续飞行。

Bangkok was hot and bustling.

曼谷炎热而热闹。

Haysom loathed it, but Soering was enchanted; the city had an air of louche cosmopolitanism—everyone there seemed to work a shady sideline—and he glided toward the underworld.

海瑟姆厌恶它，但索林却着迷。这座城市有一种放荡的国际化氛围——那里的每个人似乎都在做着阴暗的副业——而他则滑向了黑社会。

He bought books about British banking.

他买了有关英国银行业的书籍。

He and Haysom visited Bangkok’s crooked printing shops to obtain false papers, modelled on hers: Canadian driver’s licenses, citizenship certificates, and certified passport copies.

他和海索姆参观了曼谷的不法印刷店，以获取仿照她的假文件：加拿大驾照、公民证书和经过认证的护照复印件。

They had three sets of photos made, rearranging their hair between each set, so that the head shots would seem to have been taken at different times.

他们拍摄了三组照片，在每组照片之间重新排列头发，这样头部照片看起来像是在不同时间拍摄的。

As the year drew to a close, they took a thousand-mile bus trip from Bangkok to Singapore, and then flew to Moscow, spending New Year’s Eve in a Sheremetyevo airport hotel, drinking vodka.

年末之际，他们乘坐一千英里的巴士从曼谷到达新加坡，然后飞往莫斯科，在谢列梅捷沃机场的酒店里喝着伏特加度过了除夕夜。

From there, they made their way to Canterbury, where they assumed false identities as Tim and Julia Holte, two married Canadian students at the University of Kent.

从那里，他们前往坎特伯雷，在那里他们冒充了蒂姆·霍尔特和朱莉娅·霍尔特的虚假身份，他们是肯特大学的两名已婚加拿大学生。

The Holtes went to the local branch of Lloyds to open bank accounts.

霍尔特夫妇前往劳埃德银行当地分行开设银行账户。

They wanted “check-guarantee cards”—special bank I.D.s, then widely used in England, whereby Lloyds would honor bounced checks of up to fifty pounds.

他们想要“支票担保卡”——一种特殊的银行 ID，当时在英格兰广泛使用，劳埃德银行可以通过这种卡承兑最多 50 英镑的退回支票。

Because the Holtes had made only a small deposit, they were given a four-to-six-week probationary period, during which they had to maintain a certain balance.

由于霍尔特夫妇只存了少量存款，所以他们被给予了四到六周的试用期，在此期间他们必须保持一定的余额。

To wait it out, Haysom and Soering rented a room with a local family.

为了等待这一切过去，海瑟姆和索林与当地一个家庭租了一个房间。

Soering kept the pair vigilant.

索林让两人保持警惕。

They used each other’s aliases even when having sex—“Tim!” “Julia!”—in case the sounds happened to carry.

他们甚至在做爱时也使用彼此的化名——“蒂姆！” “朱莉娅！”——以防声音碰巧传来。

When their check-guarantee cards came, they went to London.

当他们收到支票担保卡后，他们去了伦敦。

Starting on Monday, February 24, 1986, they spent ten hours a day touring the city’s Marks & Spencer branches, executing a con around a leather jacket that cost £49.50.

从 1986 年 2 月 24 日星期一开始，他们每天花 10 个小时游览该市的 Marks & Spencer 分店，围绕一件价值 49.5 英镑的皮夹克实施骗局。

One of them would enter the store and buy the jacket with a Lloyds-guaranteed Holte check.

其中一个人会走进商店，用劳埃德银行担保的霍尔特支票购买夹克。

The other, entering later, would return a jacket previously purchased at another M.

另一个后来进入的人会退回之前在另一家 M 购买的夹克。

& S.

＆S。

in exchange for cash.

以换取现金。

The checks would bounce, but M.

支票会被退回，但是 M.

& S.

＆S。

would get its money, and Lloyds had a policy of not reporting frauds of less than ten thousand pounds.

劳埃德银行有一项政策，不举报金额低于一万英镑的欺诈行为。

Checks accepted on a Monday took until Friday to clear.

周一接受的支票要到周五才能清算。

When Haysom and Soering started, they had a hundred and twenty Holte checks.

当海瑟姆和索林开始时，他们有一百二十张霍尔特支票。

By the time the first check bounced, they had spent and cash-redeemed all of them: a profit of six thousand pounds, or nine thousand dollars.

当第一张支票被退回时，他们已经花掉并兑换了所有现金：利润六千英镑，即九千美元。

With a deposit of that size, they could get check-guarantee cards with no waiting period.

有了这笔金额的存款，他们无需等待就能获得支票担保卡。

They went to Bath and opened accounts at Midland Bank under the names Tara Lucy Noe and Christopher Platt Noe.

他们前往巴斯，在米德兰银行开设了账户，名字分别为塔拉·露西·诺伊和克里斯托弗·普拉特·诺伊。

Their new checkbooks came in days, and they rented a flat on Baker Street.

他们的新支票簿几天后就到了，他们在贝克街租了一套公寓。

As the Holtes, they’d avoided being in the same M.

作为霍尔特夫妇，他们避免处于同一个 M 中。

& S.

＆S。

concurrently.

同时。

This time, Haysom suggested that they go in at the same time but stay apart.

这次，海索姆建议他们同时进去，但分开。

At the last M.

在最后一个M。

& S.

＆S。

they visited, on April 30th, a store employee noticed them and grew suspicious.

4 月 30 日，他们到访时，一名商店员工注意到了他们，并对他们产生了怀疑。

She followed them onto the street and flagged them for a plainclothes officer.

她跟着他们到街上，并标记他们是便衣警察。

Chuck Reid quit the police force that spring, to support his family with a better-paying job at a freight company; Ricky Gardner was now alone on the case.

那年春天，查克·里德退出了警察队伍，在一家货运公司找到了一份薪水更高的工作来养家糊口。瑞奇·加德纳现在独自一人处理此案。

On Thursday, May 29, 1986, more than a year after the murders, Gardner got a call from London.

1986 年 5 月 29 日星期四，即谋杀案发生一年多后，加德纳接到来自伦敦的电话。

Detective Constable Terry Wright, of the Metropolitan Police, wanted to know whether he was acquainted with Elizabeth Haysom or Jens Soering.

大都会警察局的侦探特里·赖特想知道他是否认识伊丽莎白·海瑟姆或詹斯·索林。

Wright explained that they were in custody in Richmond, in southwest London.

赖特解释说，他们被拘留在伦敦西南部的里士满。

Perhaps Gardner would like to meet with them.

也许加德纳想见见他们。

Gardner flew to London four days later with James W.

四天后，加德纳与詹姆斯·W·加德纳 (James W.

Updike, Jr., Bedford County’s prosecutor.

小厄普代克，贝德福德县检察官。

They had no warrant, but a magistrate ruled that they could interview the suspects through the weekend.

他们没有逮捕令，但地方法官裁定他们可以在周末采访嫌疑人。

If they failed to find what they were looking for, they would have to return home, and the fraud charges against Haysom and Soering would proceed.

如果他们未能找到他们想要的东西，他们将不得不返回家园，并且对海瑟姆和索林的欺诈指控将继续进行。

Soering had no lawyer present for these interviews.

索林没有律师出席这些采访。

He was given solicitor-waiver forms, and he signed them.

他收到了律师豁免表格，并签署了表格。

He says that he did so because Wright’s colleague Ken Beever had threatened to harm Haysom unless he talked.

他说他这样做是因为赖特的同事肯·比弗威胁要伤害海索姆，除非他开口说话。

(No threat is documented, and Beever calls the claim “preposterous.”) Soering insists that he repeatedly asked for a lawyer.

（没有记录任何威胁，比弗称这种说法“荒谬”。）索林坚称他多次要求请律师。

At one point, Beever asked whether Soering would ever consider pleading guilty to something he didn’t do.

有一次，比弗问索林是否会考虑对他没有做过的事情认罪。

“I can’t say that for sure right now,” Soering replied, “but I can see—I can see it happening, yes.

“我现在不能肯定地说，”索林回答道，“但我可以看到——我可以看到它正在发生，是的。

I think it is a possibility.

我认为这是有可能的。

I think it happens in real life.”

我认为这会发生在现实生活中。”

Late on Sunday, Beever summoned Gardner.

周日晚些时候，比弗召见了加德纳。

Soering had asked to talk with him, without a tape recorder.

索林要求在没有录音机的情况下与他交谈。

This time, he told a very different story of what had happened in March of 1985.

这一次，他讲述了一个与 1985 年 3 月发生的事情截然不同的故事。

While driving to Washington, D.C., Soering said, he and Haysom had talked about the problem of her parents.

索林说，在开车前往华盛顿特区的途中，他和海瑟姆讨论了她父母的问题。

They objected to her dating him.

他们反对她和他约会。

The idea of killing them, mentioned in the winter letters, arose again.

冬天的信中提到的杀死他们的想法又出现了。

Yet Soering had thought that he could talk things through with them, and, on Saturday night, he’d driven to Loose Chippings alone.

然而索林以为他可以和他们谈谈事情，周六晚上，他独自开车去了松散的奇平斯。

Haysom stayed in Georgetown, where—to create an alibi, in case one proved necessary—she bought a pair of tickets to several evening movies.

海索姆留在了乔治敦，在那里——为了创造不在场证明，以防万一——她买了两张几场晚间电影的票。

“How’s the war going?” Derek Haysom had answered the door at Loose Chippings, and served Soering a drink or two.

“战争进行得怎么样了？”德里克·海瑟姆在 Loose Chippings 开门，给索林喝了一两杯。

He and the Haysoms sat at the table together, Soering with his back to the window, Derek Haysom to his left.

他和海索姆一家一起坐在桌旁，索林背对着窗户，德里克·海索姆坐在他的左边。

The Haysoms were drinking, and they began to argue.

海索姆一家正在喝酒，他们开始争吵。

They threatened to have Soering expelled from U.Va.

他们威胁要将索林从弗吉尼亚大学开除。

if he kept seeing their daughter.

如果他继续见到他们的女儿。

Soering got up to leave.

索林起身离开。

As he rose, Derek Haysom slammed him against the wall, where he hit his head.

当他站起来时，德里克·海瑟姆把他猛地撞到墙上，撞到了他的头。

Soering took up a knife, and struck at Haysom’s neck, opening a vein.

索林拿起一把刀，砍向海索姆的脖子，割开了一根静脉。

Haysom yelled, “God, you must be crazy, man!” Nancy Haysom came at him with a knife of her own.

海瑟姆大喊：“上帝啊，你一定是疯了，伙计！”南希·海瑟姆拿着自己的刀向他走来。

Soering wrestled it away from her, grabbed her, and began using her as a shield against Derek Haysom, who was flailing at him with a spoon.

索林把它从她手中夺走，抓住她，开始用她作为盾牌来抵挡德里克·海瑟姆，后者正用勺子向他猛击。

Soering slashed Nancy Haysom in the neck, too, then let go of her.

索林也砍伤了南希·海瑟姆的脖子，然后放开了她。

He’d lost his glasses in the struggle.

他在挣扎中失去了眼镜。

Derek Haysom struck him again in the head.

德里克·海瑟姆再次击中他的头部。

The next thing Soering recalled was tossing tableware, his clothes, and the two knives into a dumpster at the end of the road.

索林回忆的接下来的事情就是把餐具、衣服和两把刀扔进路尽头的垃圾箱里。

He hadn’t noticed until then that he had cut his hand.

直到那时他才注意到自己的手被割伤了。

He went back to the house in his socks to wipe away fingerprints and blood; he swirled the stains around Nancy Haysom to obscure his footprints.

他穿着袜子回到家，擦掉指纹和血迹。他把南希·海瑟姆周围的污渍打转，以掩盖他的脚印。

He washed his hand and bound a towel around it.

他洗了手，并用毛巾包住了手。

Then he wrapped himself in a sheet, turned out the lights, and went back to Georgetown to meet Elizabeth, after “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

然后他用床单裹住自己，关掉灯，在《洛基恐怖秀》结束后回到乔治城去见伊丽莎白。

At the end of Soering’s explanation, Gardner left the room, and returned with Wright and Beever.

索林解释完后，加德纳离开了房间，带着赖特和比弗回来了。

Soering repeated his account for them.

索林向他们重复了他的叙述。

He showed some scars on his fingers, which he said had come from the struggle.

他的手指上留下了一些伤疤，他说这是挣扎造成的。

On June 13th, a grand jury convened by the circuit court of Bedford County indicted Soering, who remained in custody in England, for the murders.

6 月 13 日，贝德福德县巡回法院召集的大陪审团以谋杀罪起诉仍在英格兰被拘留的索林。

Both Haysom and Soering underwent psychological evaluations.

海瑟姆和索林都接受了心理评估。

Haysom’s diagnosis was borderline personality disorder, a condition of unstable identity and impulse control.

海索姆的诊断是边缘性人格障碍，一种身份和冲动控制不稳定的状态。

Soering was given a diagnosis of shared delusional disorder, or folie à deux.

索林被诊断为共同妄想症（Folie à deux）。

In October, she wrote him what amounted to a Dear John letter: she was going to plead guilty.

十月份，她给他写了一封相当于亲爱的约翰的信：她将认罪。

The following May, she was extradited to Virginia, and her story, during a three-day hearing, seemed to match Soering’s confession broadly.

第二年五月，她被引渡到弗吉尼亚州，在为期三天的听证会上，她的故事似乎与索林的供词大致相符。

She was sentenced to ninety years in prison, as an accessory before the fact.

她作为事前从犯被判处九十年徒刑。

During one of Gardner’s talks with Haysom, she had described, in chilling precision, the exterior of Gardner’s house.

在加德纳与海瑟姆的一次谈话中，她以令人毛骨悚然的精确度描述了加德纳房子的外观。

She knew what it looked like, she said, because Soering had followed Gardner home after their interview, wanting to kill him.

她说，她知道那是什么样子，因为索林在采访结束后尾随加德纳回家，想要杀了他。

By the terms of the 1961 Vienna Convention, some privileges, including immunity from most criminal and civil prosecution, are extended to a diplomat’s household.

根据 1961 年《维也纳公约》的条款，外交官的家庭享有一些特权，包括免受大多数刑事和民事起诉。

When Soering confessed, he believed that he had such immunity.

当索林坦白时，他相信自己有这样的免疫力。

If he were extradited to Germany, he would probably be tried as a minor and sentenced to a maximum of ten years, with parole likely in five.

如果他被引渡到德国，他可能会作为未成年人接受审判，最高被判十年徒刑，五年后可能假释。

Yet, shortly after receiving Haysom’s letter, Soering learned that the United States granted such immunity only to employees at Washington, D.C., embassies.

然而，在收到海索姆的信后不久，索林得知美国只向华盛顿特区大使馆的雇员授予这种豁免权。

If Soering were extradited to Virginia, he would be tried for capital murder.

如果索林被引渡到弗吉尼亚州，他将因谋杀罪受到审判。

Soering recanted his confession.

索林收回了自己的供词。

He had not killed the Haysoms, he said.

他说，他没有杀死海索姆一家。

Haysom had, and he had taken the blame.

海索姆做到了，而且他承担了责任。

The reversal carried no weight.

这一逆转没有任何影响力。

On May 20th, the U.K. informed Germany that it was considering Soering’s extradition to Virginia, while asking that the death penalty not be a sentencing option.

5月20日，英国通知德国，正在考虑将索林引渡到弗吉尼亚州，同时要求德国不要将死刑作为量刑选择。

But that was a request, not a requirement, and Soering’s lawyers fought for more stringent language in a review process that rose to the European Court of Human Rights.

但这只是一个请求，而不是一个要求，索林的律师在提交给欧洲人权法院的审查程序中争取更严格的措辞。

The verdict, delivered on July 7, 1989, was a landmark, the first European ruling on extradition to a death-penalty country.

1989 年 7 月 7 日作出的判决具有里程碑意义，是欧洲第一个关于引渡至死刑国家的判决。

The court agreed that sending Soering into U.S. custody constituted a risk of being “subjected to torture or inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.” On August 1st, the U.K. agreed to extradition if the U.S. dropped capital charges—which, eventually, it did.

法院一致认为，将索尔林送往美国拘留构成“遭受酷刑或不人道或有辱人格的待遇或处罚”的风险。 8 月 1 日，如果美国放弃资本指控，英国同意引渡——最终，美国确实这么做了。

The trial of Jens Soering, which began on June 1, 1990, and lasted three weeks, was the first major trial in Virginia’s history to be broadcast on TV.

对 Jens Soering 的审判于 1990 年 6 月 1 日开始，持续了三周，是弗吉尼亚州历史上第一次在电视上播出的重大审判。

Soering’s father had hired a lawyer from Detroit, Richard A.

索林的父亲聘请了底特律的律师理查德·A·索林 (Richard A.

Neaton, to lead the local counsel.

尼顿，领导当地法律顾问。

In preliminary proceedings, they objected to the cameras, which they worried would result in an unfair trial; the judge, William W.

在初步诉讼中，他们反对使用摄像头，担心这会导致审判不公平；法官，威廉·W.

Sweeney, overruled the request.

斯威尼否决了这一请求。

They asked for a change of venue, arguing that Bedford had been saturated with coverage.

他们要求更换地点，认为贝德福德的报道已经饱和。

Sweeney agreed to bring in jurors from nearby Nelson County; he had gathered that people there were less aware of the trial.

斯威尼同意从附近的尼尔森县引进陪审员；他推测那里的人们不太了解这次审判。

Soering’s team filed a pretrial motion for Sweeney to recuse himself: he and Nancy Haysom’s brother had gone to the Virginia Military Institute together, and, a few years before the murder, Sweeney had attended a party in honor of Nancy Haysom.

索林的团队向斯威尼提出了回避申请：他和南希·海瑟姆的兄弟一起去了弗吉尼亚军事学院，而且在谋杀案发生前几年，斯威尼参加了一场纪念南希·海瑟姆的聚会。

He had also given an interview to a local magazine, in which he said, “As far as the acts themselves, I don’t think [Elizabeth Haysom] planned all that out.

他还接受了当地一家杂志的采访，其中他说：“就这些行为本身而言，我认为（伊丽莎白·海瑟姆）并不是计划好的。

It was like double-dare-you.

这就像双重挑战。

I think she was shocked he took the dare.” Sweeney decided that no conflict of interest existed.

我想她对他的大胆举动感到震惊。”斯威尼认为不存在利益冲突。

To many onlookers, Soering did not carry himself well.

在许多旁观者看来，索林的表现并不好。

He was smirky and officious on camera.

他在镜头前傻笑着、爱管闲事。

The air-conditioner broke during his testimony, making him look clammy.

在他作证期间，空调坏了，让他看上去浑身湿冷。

Updike sought to underscore his arrogance.

厄普代克试图强调他的傲慢。

“Is it an intellectual challenge for you?” he asked Soering about the cross-examination.

“这对你来说是智力上的挑战吗？”他向索林询问盘问的情况。

“It certainly wouldn’t be a challenge for you, with your intellect, to outwit me, would it?”

“以你的智慧，智胜我当然不会是一个挑战，不是吗？”

Soering caught himself.

索林抓住了自己。

“Well, I think so far you’ve been outwitting me.”

“好吧，我认为到目前为止你一直比我更聪明。”

Updike, a man in early middle age, with obedient, golden-retriever eyes and a chestnut mustache, placed his hands on his hips to spread the jacket of his light-blue summer suit.

厄普代克是个中年人，长着一双听话的金毛眼睛，留着栗色小胡子，双手叉腰，掀开浅蓝色夏装外套。

He cocked his head incredulously.

他不可置信地歪着头。

“I just can’t understand, sir, why you at times are sitting up there, under these circumstances, on trial for murder, laughing .”

“我只是不明白，先生，为什么在这种情况下，你有时会坐在那里，在谋杀罪受审时大笑……”

The prosecution’s case rested in large part on Soering’s recanted confession, and it noted that Soering’s blood type, O, was found at Loose Chippings.

检方的案子在很大程度上取决于索林翻供的情况，并指出索林的 O 型血是在 Loose Chippings 发现的。

But Updike’s crucial evidence was the more distinct of the two bloody sock prints.

但厄普代克的关键证据是两个血腥袜子印记中更明显的一个。

The police’s first analyst could make no identification.

警方的第一位分析员无法确认身份。

The prosecution summoned a second analyst, Robert Hallett, a forensic-impressions examiner, who had resized the crime-scene photograph to the scale of Soering’s police footprint and printed the latter on a transparency sheet.

检方传唤了第二位分析员罗伯特·哈利特（Robert Hallett），他是一名法医印象检查员，他将犯罪现场照片调整为索林警察足迹的大小，并将后者打印在透明纸上。

In court, Updike made a show of laying it over the photo of the bloody stain.

在法庭上，厄普代克把它放在血迹的照片上。

The two prints appeared to match exactly.

两幅印刷品看起来完全匹配。

Read classic New Yorker stories, curated by our archivists and editors.

阅读由我们的档案管理员和编辑策划的经典《纽约客》故事。

When Haysom gave testimony, she was an inmate at the Goochland Correctional Center for Women, thirty miles west of Richmond.

当海瑟姆作证时，她是古奇兰女子惩教中心的一名囚犯，该中心位于里士满以西三十英里。

At her own hearing, in 1987, she said that she had not desired the deaths: “I wasn’t thinking murder, and it seems that he was.” Now she said, “I was much more concerned that he would not kill them.” Initially, she said that she had seen the alibi movies; now she said that she had bought the tickets but didn’t go into the theatre.

1987 年，在她自己的听证会上，她说她并不希望有人死亡：“我没想过谋杀，但他似乎就是这样。”现在她说：“我更担心他不会杀掉他们。”最初，她说她看过不在场证明的电影；现在她说她已经买了票但没有进剧院。

When Updike questioned Haysom, he brought up her high-school interest in theatre.

当厄普代克询问海瑟姆时，他提到了她高中时对戏剧的兴趣。

“Did you see yourself as Lady Macbeth?” he asked.

“你认为自己是麦克白夫人吗？”他问道。

On June 21st, Soering was found guilty of the murders of Derek and Nancy Haysom.

6 月 21 日，索林被判谋杀德里克·海瑟姆和南希·海瑟姆有罪。

The jury issued the maximum punishment available—life in prison—for each death.

陪审团对每一起死亡案件判处最高刑罚——终身监禁。

Yet some aspects of the murders were still unexplained.

然而，谋杀案的某些方面仍然无法解释。

If Soering had killed the Haysoms alone, who had made the tennis-shoe print in blood, a mark smaller than Soering’s foot?

如果索林独自杀死了海索姆一家，是谁在网球鞋上留下了比索林脚还小的血印呢？

Who had left type-B—Elizabeth’s type—blood?

谁留下了B型——伊丽莎白型——的血统？

Who was responsible for the unidentified fingerprints, including the one on Derek Haysom’s shot glass?

谁对不明指纹负责，包括德里克·海瑟姆酒杯上的指纹？

Soering had misremembered the position of Derek Haysom’s body and the clothes that Nancy Haysom had worn, among other things.

索林记错了德里克·海瑟姆身体的位置以及南希·海瑟姆穿的衣服等。

Inconsistencies are not disproof; memory is notoriously unreliable.

不一致并不能反驳；众所周知，记忆是不可靠的。

It is also possible that Soering’s errors were deliberate, an attempt to avoid conviction.

索林的错误也有可能是故意的，试图避免被定罪。

Still, the evidence could have supported different conclusions.

尽管如此，证据可能支持不同的结论。

“Technically, we had no physical evidence that could have tried it,” Chuck Reid told me recently.

“从技术上讲，我们没有可以尝试的物理证据，”查克·里德最近告诉我。

“If Jens Soering hadn’t admitted to it, I don’t know that we could have convicted him.”

“如果 Jens Soering 没有承认，我不知道我们能判他有罪。”

The Buckingham Correctional Center, where Jens Soering has lived since 2009, is in central Virginia, an hour south of Charlottesville.

白金汉惩教中心 (Buckingham Correctional Center) 位于弗吉尼亚州中部，距夏洛茨维尔 (Charlottesville) 以南一小时车程，延斯·索林 (Jens Soering) 自 2009 年以来一直居住于此。

Trees hide the prison from the road; on the approach, the building crops up quickly, wide and beige, a desert palace in the middle of a grassland.

树木遮住了监狱的道路；走近时，这座建筑很快就出现了，宽阔，呈米色，就像草原中央的一座沙漠宫殿。

When I visited for the first time, last fall, I was led to the Administration Conference Room, which had a long table with fake wood grain and padded office chairs.

去年秋天，当我第一次参观时，我被带到了行政会议室，里面有一张假木纹的长桌和软垫办公椅。

On the walls were posters saying “ THE ESSENCE OF DESTINY ” (a river and a sunset on mountains) and “ THE SKY’S THE LIMIT ” (an eagle over clouds).

墙上贴着海报，上面写着“命运的本质”（一条河流和山上的日落）和“天空的极限”（云上的一只鹰）。

The room reminded me of high school.

这个房间让我想起了高中。

“My first line was going to be ‘You’re late—ten years too late,’ ” Soering said, appearing in the doorway with a guard.

“我的第一句话是‘你迟到了——晚了十年’，”索林在一名警卫的陪同下出现在门口。

He moved quickly to a chair and shook my hand with boardroom vigor.

他迅速走到椅子上，用董事会般的活力与我握手。

At forty-nine, he is no longer a plump-cheeked nebbish.

四十九岁的他，不再是一个脸颊肥嘟嘟的小混混了。

He is wiry and well-defined, with chiselled features and the sort of wide, rectangular glasses that are freshly fashionable.

他身材瘦长，轮廓分明，五官轮廓分明，戴着宽大的矩形眼镜，非常时尚。

His hair, cropped short, has turned a leaden hue.

他的头发剪得很短，变成了铅灰色。

With a blue short-sleeved oxford over a gray sweatshirt, he looked less like a convict than like an uncared-for professor of math.

他穿着蓝色短袖牛津布外套，外面套着灰色运动衫，看起来不像一个罪犯，而更像一个无人照顾的数学教授。

Like a professor, he had come prepared.

就像一位教授一样，他是有备而来的。

He flipped open a pocket folder and spread across the conference table notes, outlines, and documents.

他打开一个袖珍文件夹，将笔记、提纲和文件铺满会议桌上。

“Any reasonable human being will come to the conclusion that I shouldn’t have been convicted,” he said.

“任何有理智的人都会得出这样的结论：我不应该被定罪，”他说。

“That’s not the same as proving I’m innocent.” For years, Soering has followed the daily regimen of an athlete or a monk, rising at six and going to breakfast.

“这并不等同于证明我是无辜的。”多年来，索林一直遵循运动员或僧侣的日常养生习惯，六点起床，吃早餐。

By nine, he’s in the weight room or jogging.

九点钟的时候，他就去举重室或者慢跑了。

He spends much of the afternoon on projects of his own.

他下午的大部分时间都花在自己的项目上。

Soering details his schedule in “One Day in the Life of 179212,” the most recent of five books that he has published in English.

索林在《179212 生命中的一天》中详细介绍了他的日程安排，这是他出版的五本书中最新的一本英文书。

It takes its title from Solzhenitsyn, and is mostly about prison life, although his work has explored other topics, too.

它的标题取自索尔仁尼琴，主要讲述监狱生活，尽管他的作品也探讨了其他主题。

“He’s done an astonishing amount of research given the limitation of his resources,” Martin Rowe, a co-founder of Lantern Books, which has published many of Soering’s titles, says.

“鉴于他的资源有限，他所做的研究数量惊人，”Lantern Books 的联合创始人马丁·罗 (Martin Rowe) 说，该公司出版了索林的许多著作。

Soering composes mainly on wide-ruled binder paper, with Bic Cristal pens.

Soering 主要使用宽幅活页纸和 Bic Cristal 钢笔进行创作。

Because he makes carbon copies of each letter he sends, for his files, he is used to pressing hard enough to score two pages, and his conversation mimics this penmanship style.

因为他会为自己发送的每封信复印一份文件，所以他习惯于用力压写两页，而他的谈话也模仿了这种书法风格。

“Especially lately, I’ve been looking back, wondering what it’s all about,” he told me.

“尤其是最近，我一直在回顾过去，想知道这一切是怎么回事，”他告诉我。

Soering thinks that his trial was a travesty: a weak and circumstantial case that went unchallenged owing to ineptitude and bias.

索林认为，他的审判是一场嘲讽：一个软弱且客观的案件，由于无能和偏见而没有受到质疑。

In the nineties, his counsel, Richard Neaton, had his law license suspended twice, once at Soering’s behest, for infractions ranging from forgery to incompetence; in 2001, the license was revoked.

20世纪90年代，他的律师理查德·尼顿（Richard Neaton）两次被吊销了他的律师执照，其中一次是在索林的要求下，其罪名包括伪造文件和无能等违法行为。 2001年，许可证被吊销。

“If I had committed the murders, I would have committed them the way I committed the check fraud,” Soering said—with care and planning.

“如果我犯了谋杀罪，我就会像支票欺诈一样犯下这些罪行，”索林说，而且是小心翼翼、有计划的。

The slaughter of the Haysoms appeared risky, messy, personal.

对海索姆一家的屠杀显得危险、混乱、针对个人。

At her hearing, Haysom was asked about allegations that she had been sexually abused by her mother.

在听证会上，海索姆被问及有关她遭受母亲性虐待的指控。

She denied them.

她否认了他们。

But Nancy Haysom had taken photographs of her daughter nude, ostensibly as a model for painting, and Elizabeth had showed the photographs to Soering during a visit to Loose Chippings.

但南希·海索姆拍摄了她女儿的裸体照片，表面上是作为绘画模特，而伊丽莎白在访问卢斯奇平斯期间向索林展示了这些照片。

He thought that the abuse, which Haysom now acknowledges, could be a motive.

他认为海索姆现在承认的虐待行为可能是一个动机。

Soering’s version of events is detailed in “Nicht Schuldig!”—“Not Guilty!”—a memoir that he wrote in English but that was translated and published, in Germany, in 2012.

索林对事件的描述在他用英文写的回忆录《Nicht Schuldig！》（《无罪！》）中进行了详细描述，并于 2012 年在德国翻译出版。

During the Saturday lunch at the train-themed restaurant, Soering says, Haysom confessed that she was using heroin again.

索林说，周六在火车主题餐厅吃午餐时，海索姆承认她再次吸食海洛因。

As a result, she owed money to her dealer.

结果，她欠了经销商钱。

To pay the debt, she had arranged to pick up a drug shipment in D.C. and bring it back to U.Va.

为了偿还债务，她安排在华盛顿提取一批毒品并将其带回弗吉尼亚州。

If she didn’t go through with the plan, her dealer would tell her parents about her drug use.

如果她不执行该计划，她的毒贩就会告诉她的父母她吸毒的情况。

Soering says that she asked him to buy a pair of tickets to two movies, “Witness” and “Stranger Than Paradise”—titles that wink slyly at him—to establish an alibi for her drug run.

索林说，她让他买两张电影《证人》和《天堂陌生人》的门票——这两个电影对他狡猾地眨眼——为她的贩毒找到不在场证据。

He also says that he bought a single ticket for the midnight showing of “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.” He says that he’d got annoyed when she didn’t return on time and decided to see the movie on his own.

他还说，他买了一张午夜放映的《洛基恐怖秀》的单张票。他说，当她没有按时回来时，他很生气，并决定自己去看这部电影。

When Haysom finally returned to the hotel, he says, he’d ordered room service and was watching TV.

海索姆说，当他最终回到酒店时，他已经叫了客房服务，正在看电视。

Her forearms bore red-brown smears.

她的前臂上有红棕色的污迹。

She said that she’d killed her parents—drugs had made her do it.

她说她杀了她的父母——毒品让她这么做了。

Soering says that she pleaded with him to use the movie-ticket alibi to cover her.

索林说，她恳求他用电影票不在场的证据来掩护她。

(Haysom denies this entire account.) Soering explains that, as his mind raced across what he knew from books and movies, it alighted on Sydney Carton, of “A Tale of Two Cities.” He decided that he would take the blame to save her from the gallows.

（海瑟姆否认了整个说法。）索林解释说，当他的思绪飞速掠过他从书本和电影中了解到的内容时，它落在了悉尼·卡顿的《两个城市的故事》中。他决定承担起责任，将她从绞刑架上救出来。

On the night of his sentencing, Soering says, he put a plastic bag over his head and tied it in place with a shoelace.

索林说，在宣判当晚，他将一个塑料袋套在头上，并用鞋带将其系紧。

He panicked and broke the bag before he could harm himself, and the horror of his prison life went on.

他惊慌失措，在伤害自己之前打破了袋子，他的监狱生活的恐怖仍在继续。

Following his time in the Bedford County jail, he was incarcerated at the Southampton Reception and Classification Center, and then, in 1991, at Mecklenburg, near the southern border of the state.

在贝德福德县监狱服刑后，他被关押在南安普敦接待和分类中心，然后于 1991 年被关押在该州南部边境附近的梅克伦堡。

In 1994, Soering’s unit was transferred to Keen Mountain, in the Appalachian hills.

1994年，索林的部队被转移到阿巴拉契亚山脉的基恩山。

He hated the place—the cells were doubles, rather than singles—but he’d ended up with a like-minded cellmate, whom he believed to be innocent as well.

他讨厌这个地方——牢房是双人间，而不是单人间——但他最终遇到了一个志同道合的狱友，他相信他也是无辜的。

By then, too, Soering’s appeals for reassessment of his case had started to bear fruit.

到那时，索林要求重新评估其案件的呼吁也开始取得成果。

“If you were really trying to confess, why would you have these blatant errors?” Gail Starling Marshall asked me one morning in the sunroom of her law office, in a house in the rolling countryside outside Charlottesville.

“如果你真的想坦白，为什么会出现这些明显的错误？”一天早上，盖尔·斯塔林·马歇尔在她律师事务所的日光浴室里问我，那是在夏洛茨维尔郊外连绵起伏的乡村的一所房子里。

From 1986 to 1994, Marshall was a deputy attorney general of Virginia.

1986年至1994年，马歇尔担任弗吉尼亚州副总检察长。

She is a brisk, unflappable woman with a shock of white hair clipped close on one side and swept edgily over the ear on the other.

她是一位活泼、镇定的女人，一头白发一侧剪得很紧，另一侧则急躁地掠过耳朵。

In 1994, she began examining Soering’s case.

1994年，她开始调查索林的案件。

“Help!

“救命啊！

I can’t swim!

我不会游泳！

No immediate danger, but it does worry me.” “When I looked at the transcript and did some research, I realized that there had been multiple—multiple—very prejudicial errors in the trial,” she said.

没有立即的危险，但它确实让我担心。” “当我查看笔录并做了一些研究时，我意识到审判中存在多个非常有偏见的错误，”她说。

These errors, she believed, provided grounds for a habeas-corpus petition, which reëxamines significant errors made in the process of trying a case.

她认为，这些错误为人身保护令请愿提供了依据，该请愿重新审查了案件审理过程中所犯的重大错误。

In 1996, Marshall filed with the Virginia Supreme Court, arguing, among other things, that Soering’s Fifth Amendment rights had been violated by the admission into domestic evidence of his lawyerless confession abroad.

1996年，马歇尔向弗吉尼亚州最高法院提起诉讼，称索林在国外未经律师的认罪的国内证据被采纳，侵犯了他的第五修正案权利。

Soon afterward, a former deputy sheriff in Bedford County approached her.

不久之后，贝德福德县的一位前副警长找到了她。

Within days of the murders, he said, he had picked up two vagrants in Bedford: not long after the crime, there had been a multiple-stab-wound murder in nearby Roanoke, and he was suspicious.

他说，谋杀案发生几天后，他在贝德福德遇见了两名流浪汉：案发后不久，附近的罗阿诺克发生了一起多刀刺伤谋杀案，他对此表示怀疑。

He had let the men go, but later discovered a knife in the back seat of his car.

他让这些人走了，但后来在他的车后座上发现了一把刀。

In Marshall’s view, disclosing nothing about this before the trial amounted to a Brady violation, a prosecutorial failure to share potentially exculpatory evidence with the defense.

马歇尔认为，在审判前对此一无所知就构成了布雷迪违规行为，即检方未能与辩方分享可能无罪的证据。

She also concluded that Hallett’s footprint analysis was bunk.

她还得出结论，哈利特的足迹分析是无稽之谈。

“Smeared socks are not unique,” she told me dryly.

“袜子被弄脏的现象并不罕见，”她冷冷地告诉我。

Like gloved handprints, they lack dermal ridges—marks of skin-to-surface contact that show what part of the foot struck where, and whether it moved, distorting the outline.

就像戴着手套的手印一样，它们缺乏真皮脊——皮肤与表面接触的痕迹，可以显示脚的哪个部分接触到了哪里，以及它是否移动，从而扭曲了轮廓。

Competent counsel, Marshall said, could easily have rebutted Hallett’s testimony by summoning a footprint specialist.

马歇尔说，称职的律师可以通过召集足迹专家来轻松反驳哈利特的证词。

Marshall’s own experts found that the prints could not be sized with precision, but they were inclined to agree with the police’s initial analyst, who pronounced them the footprints of a woman or a boy.

马歇尔自己的专家发现这些脚印的尺寸无法精确确定，但他们倾向于同意警方最初分析员的观点，后者宣布这些脚印是女人或男孩的脚印。

In 1998, the Virginia Supreme Court denied Marshall’s habeas petition.

1998年，弗吉尼亚最高法院驳回了马歇尔的人身保护令申请。

She filed a federal habeas petition with the U.S. District Court, which acknowledged procedural errors but disagreed that they were significant.

她向美国地方法院提交了一份联邦人身保护令请愿书，该法院承认存在程序错误，但不认为这些错误很严重。

When the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit denied the petition, too, she went to the U.S. Supreme Court.

当美国第四巡回上诉法院也驳回了请愿书时，她向美国最高法院提起诉讼。

The case was never taken up.

此案从未被受理。

Still, she retained what she describes as a “moral certainty” not only that Soering didn’t get a fair trial but that he did not commit the murders.

尽管如此，她仍然保留了她所说的“道德确定性”，不仅索林没有得到公平的审判，而且他没有犯下谋杀罪。

“It’s an innate sense when you delve into the circumstances of the crime” and its aftermath, she said.

她说，“当你深入研究犯罪的情况”及其后果时，这是一种与生俱来的感觉。

Virginia prisons weigh misconduct in infraction points, which can accrue from behavior as innocuous as sleeping through an early-morning head count.

弗吉尼亚监狱会根据违规分数来衡量不当行为，这些违规行为可能是因为像在清晨清点人数时睡觉这样无害的行为而产生的。

Even placid prisoners often end up with a few, but Soering, after more than twenty-five years, has none.

即使是性格温和的囚犯也常常得到一些，但索林在二十五年多之后却什么也没有。

It defied belief, she thought, that a bookish, well-behaved kid would commit a rage-fuelled knife attack on two people he’d met once and then, for nearly thirty years, be pristinely behaved in one of the most violent and crazy-making environments on the planet.

她想，一个书呆子气、行为端正的孩子会在愤怒的驱使下用刀袭击两个他曾经见过一次的人，然后在近三十年的时间里，在地球上最暴力、最疯狂的环境之一中保持原始的行为，这简直令人难以置信。

In 1999, Soering’s unit was transferred a second time, from Keen Mountain to Wallens Ridge, a supermax facility.

1999 年，索林的部队第二次从基恩山转移到瓦伦斯岭，这是一个超级巨无霸设施。

He was there for less than a year; he negotiated a transfer to another prison after being hit with a ricocheting rubber pellet from a guard’s shotgun.

他在那里待了不到一年；在被一名警卫的霰弹枪弹射的橡胶弹击中后，他通过谈判被转移到另一所监狱。

In that time, his spirits crashed.

那一刻，他的精神崩溃了。

His mother had died, from alcoholism, and he blamed himself.

他的母亲死于酗酒，他责怪自己。

Listening to music began to make him too sad, so he started reading intensively.

听音乐开始让他太悲伤，所以他开始集中阅读。

He read “The Last Temptation of Christ,” which the Catholic Church had condemned, and its depiction of Jesus fascinated him.

他读了天主教会谴责的《基督的最后诱惑》，其中对耶稣的描述令他着迷。

He read the Bible and began studying “centering prayer”—a meditation regimen, based on breathing and word repetition.

他阅读圣经并开始研究“集中祈祷”——一种基于呼吸和单词重复的冥想疗法。

The technique was intended as a purification of the spirit, but for Soering, who had been obsessing over Haysom and the crime, it also served as a cleansing of the mind.

该术的本意是净化精神，但对于一直沉迷于海索姆和犯罪事件的索林来说，它也起到了心灵的净化作用。

On Easter, 2002, he was confirmed as a Catholic.

2002年复活节，他被确认为天主教徒。

The previous year, he’d started working on a book about how centering prayer could help people who were spiritually “imprisoned.” The manuscript was organized by the principles of lectio divina , an early Benedictine approach to scriptural study, and his prose style was unfancy but erudite.

去年，他开始写一本关于集中祈祷如何帮助精神上“被囚禁”的人的书。这份手稿是按照神言诵读（lectio divina）的原则组织的，这是本笃会早期的圣经研究方法，他的散文风格朴素但博学。

The first long text examined was from Luke 4: the temptation of Christ.

第一个长篇文本来自路加福音第 4 章：基督的诱惑。

“The devil led him to Jerusalem and had him stand on the highest point of the temple.

“魔鬼把他带到耶路撒冷，并让他站在圣殿的最高处。

‘If you are the son of God,’ he said, ‘throw yourself down from here.’ ” The middle of the work contains, as an interpolation, Soering’s account of the murders and his case.

“如果你是上帝的儿子，”他说，“那就从这里跳下去吧。”作品的中间部分包含了索林对谋杀案和案件的描述，作为插页。

A visitor to the prison offered to distribute the manuscript to publishers.

监狱的一名探访者主动提出将手稿分发给出版商。

Rejections flooded back, but Father Thomas Keating, a Trappist monk and centering-prayer advocate, saw the book as a triumph, and he passed it to an editor at Lantern Books.

拒绝的声音如潮水般涌来，但托马斯·基廷神父（Thomas Keating），一位特拉普派修道士和集中祈祷的倡导者，认为这本书是一次胜利，他把它交给了灯笼书店的一位编辑。

“There’s hardly a worse environment than prison for centering prayer to flourish, but when it does it makes those people better than those on the outside,” Keating told me.

基廷告诉我：“没有比监狱更糟糕的环境了，监狱里的祷告能够蓬勃发展，但当监狱里的人真正做到这一点时，就会比外面的人更好。”

When “The Way of the Prisoner” was published, in 2003, it sold modestly, but it gained supporters.

2003年，《囚徒之路》出版时，销量不大，但赢得了支持者。

Soering, who had run a centering-prayer group and a Tai Chi class behind bars, was reborn as something other than a teen-age killer.

索林曾在监狱里经营过一个中心祈祷小组和一个太极拳班，现在他不再是一个青少年杀手了。

In 2004, he returned from breakfast one morning to find that his cellmate had hanged himself.

2004年的一天早上，他吃完早餐回来，发现他的狱友已经上吊自杀了。

Soering’s second book, “An Expensive Way to Make Bad People Worse,” was an extensively researched case against the American prison system.

索林的第二本书《让坏人变得更糟的昂贵方法》是对美国监狱系统的一个广泛研究的案例。

In the style of a sociology monograph, Soering wove a counterintuitive argument that prison reform ought to be a cause for the fiscally minded political right.

索林以社会学专着的风格提出了一个违反直觉的论点，即监狱改革应该成为有财政头脑的政治右派的一项事业。

He drew on statistics to describe costly growth in the prison population.

他利用统计数据来描述监狱人口代价高昂的增长。

He traced how the United States’ use of prison for nonviolent offenses drained budgets with no benefit.

他追溯了美国利用监狱来关押非暴力犯罪是如何耗尽预算却没有任何好处的。

In his next two works, Soering split the difference between his cause and his faith, even as the latter was tested.

在他接下来的两部作品中，索林区分了他的事业和他的信仰之间的差异，即使后者受到了考验。

When Soering’s wealthy grandmother died, in 1999, she willed him an inheritance that included a German town house.

1999 年，索林富有的祖母去世后，她在遗嘱中遗嘱给他一份遗产，其中包括一栋德国联排别墅。

During a family squabble about the home, Klaus Soering cut off contact.

在一场关于房屋的家庭争吵期间，克劳斯·索林切断了联系。

Meanwhile, Soering’s growing ranks of supporters had turned to a new project: repatriating him to a German prison, through an obscure agreement of the Council of Europe.

与此同时，索林不断壮大的支持者转向了一个新项目：通过欧洲委员会达成的一项不起眼的协议，将他遣返回德国监狱。

Repatriation would not require Soering to be declared innocent or fit for release.

遣返并不要求索林被宣告无罪或适合释放。

But a letter of family support would help his case when applying for approval.

但家庭支持信会对他申请批准时有所帮助。

In 2008, Soering wrote to his father, requesting a note.

2008年，索林写信给他的父亲，请求给他一张便条。

He was told that Klaus was too infirm to submit one.

他被告知克劳斯太虚弱了，无法提交一份。

His uncle supplied one instead, but the repatriation request was denied.

他的叔叔提供了一份，但遣返请求遭到拒绝。

The next morning, he woke up feeling empty.

第二天早上，他醒来时感觉空虚。

His belief in God, he knew, had gone.

他知道，他对上帝的信仰已经消失了。

“It felt like half of me was missing,” he told me.

“感觉就像我的一半消失了，”他告诉我。

And, in spite of going through the motions of centering prayer every day for nine months, he was unable to get it back.

而且，尽管九个月来他每天都进行集中祈祷，但他还是无法恢复。

The decision about whether to repatriate Soering starts with the Virginia governor.

是否遣返索林的决定首先由弗吉尼亚州州长决定。

In the late two-thousands, that was Tim Kaine, who is now the state’s junior senator.

两千多世纪末，这个人就是蒂姆·凯恩（Tim Kaine），他现在是该州的初级参议员。

In October, 2009, Tom Elliott, a deacon who became invested in Soering’s case after the prisoner wrote to him, helped Richmond’s bishop, Walter Sullivan, and a deacon named Chris Malone to arrange a meeting with Kaine to discuss sending Soering home.

2009年10月，执事汤姆·埃利奥特(Tom Elliott)在索林写信给他后开始参与该案，帮助里士满的主教沃尔特·沙利文(Walter Sullivan)和一位名叫克里斯·马龙(Chris Malone)的执事安排与凯恩会面，讨论将索林送回家。

Although Catholic ministry was Elliott’s spiritual vocation, he’d had a decades-long intelligence career, at one point running an N.S.A.

尽管天主教事工是埃利奥特的精神使命，但他有长达数十年的情报生涯，曾一度管理过国家安全局。

station in West Germany during the late Cold War.

冷战后期的西德车站。

Since retiring, he’d amassed and indexed thousands of pages of documentation pertaining to Soering’s case.

退休以来，他收集并索引了数千页与索林案件有关的文件。

“Quit saying ‘President Trump.’ You’re spookin’ the horses.” The Governor told Sullivan and Malone that he did not think that Soering was innocent.

“别再说‘特朗普总统’了。你吓坏了马。”州长告诉沙利文和马龙，他不认为索林是无辜的。

He hadn’t got a straight answer from the Germans about what would happen on Soering’s return.

他没有从德国人那里得到关于索林回归后会发生什么的直接答案。

There would have to be a prison-to-prison transfer, and the Germans had to promise that Soering would stay locked up for a period of time.

必须进行监狱间的转移，德国人必须承诺索尔林将被关押一段时间。

Lawyers in both countries raced to design a legal bridge to meet these requirements.

两国律师竞相设计一座法律桥梁来满足这些要求。

Soering, then serving out his twenty-ninth year, had already exceeded the equivalent German punishment for his crime, and the German courts worked up a mechanism to award him a special, extra-long sentence.

索林当时已服刑二十九年，其罪行已超过德国同等刑罚，德国法院制定了一项机制，判处他特殊的超长刑期。

A path was ready by late December, and, on January 12, 2010, Kaine informed Attorney General Eric Holder that he consented to the repatriation.

12 月底，一条道路已准备就绪，2010 年 1 月 12 日，凯恩通知司法部长埃里克·霍尔德，他同意遣返。

On January 16th, Robert McDonnell was sworn in as Virginia’s new governor.

1月16日，罗伯特·麦克唐纳宣誓就任弗吉尼亚州新州长。

Three days later, he retracted Kaine’s approval.

三天后，他撤回了凯恩的批准。

It was especially wrenching to Soering because, in 2009, evidence from Loose Chippings had been DNA-tested.

这对索林来说尤其痛苦，因为 2009 年，来自 Loose Chippings 的证据已经过 DNA 测试。

Of forty-two examined samples, thirty-one were so degraded that DNA typing was not possible.

在 42 个检查样本中，有 31 个样本降解严重，无法进行 DNA 分型。

Eleven offered some information, but not enough for a match; the blood could have come from the victims.

十一人提供了一些信息，但不足以进行匹配；血液可能来自受害者。

Much of it was male.

其中大部分是男性。

In the summer of 1985, Tony Marin Buchanan, the proprietor of a transmission auto shop near the Lynchburg city limits, was asked to repair a two-door coupe whose undercarriage was covered in mud and grass.

1985 年夏天，林奇堡市区附近一家变速箱汽车店的老板托尼·马林·布坎南 (Tony Marin Buchanan) 被要求修理一辆底盘沾满泥土和草的两门轿跑车。

Looking inside, he found the floor in front matted with dried blood, and a bloody knife had been shoved between the driver’s seat and the console.

他向里面看去，发现前面的地板上沾满了干涸的血迹，驾驶座和控制台之间插着一把带血的刀。

People went deer hunting in the area, and Buchanan assumed that the car had been used for “spotlighting”: a technique of stunning game in headlights.

人们在该地区猎鹿，布坎南认为这辆车是用来“聚光灯”的：一种在车头灯下进行令人惊叹的游戏的技术。

A young woman had paid with a credit card, but she said that the car belonged to a young man who accompanied her.

一名年轻女子用信用卡付款，但她说这辆车属于陪同她的一名年轻男子。

Buchanan forgot about the episode until he saw an article about Loose Chippings and, he says, recognized Haysom in the photo: “The girl who was in here with her damn car!” He was puzzled, though, by the photo of Soering.

布坎南忘记了这一事件，直到他看到一篇关于 Loose Chippings 的文章，他说，他认出了照片中的海索姆：“那个开着她该死的车在这里的女孩！”然而，他对索林的照片感到困惑。

It wasn’t the man whom he had seen.

这不是他见过的那个人。

Buchanan, a Bronze Star Vietnam veteran with a graying mustache, is retired now, living in the hills outside Lynchburg, and I visited him there one day in winter.

布坎南是一位留着灰色胡子的铜星越战老兵，现在已经退休，住在林奇堡郊外的山上，冬天的一天我去那里拜访了他。

He showed me to a sofa, and I sat.

他带我到一张沙发前，我坐下来。

Buchanan continued to stand.

布坎南继续站着。

“Now, first things first,” he said crisply.

“现在，首先要做的事情，”他干脆地说。

“Let’s see some identification.” I fished around in pockets and came up with a business card.

“让我们看看一些身份证明。”我在口袋里摸索，找出一张名片。

Buchanan scrutinized it for a long time.

布坎南仔细观察了很长时间。

Then he reached into the back of his pants and drew a semiautomatic gun.

然后他把手伸进裤子后面，拔出了一把半自动枪。

“You understand,” he said.

“你明白，”他说。

“This is because I don’t know who you really are.”

“这是因为我不知道你到底是谁。”

Buchanan sat and laid the gun down on the coffee table in front of him.

布坎南坐下来，把枪放在他面前的咖啡桌上。

Sometimes, as we spoke, he’d reach forward and touch it, as if about to take it up.

有时，当我们说话时，他会向前伸出手去触摸它，好像要把它拿起来。

“No way—that little S.O.B.

“不可能——那个小混蛋。

with his glasses was not in the shop,” he said, of Soering.

戴眼镜的人不在店里，”他谈到索林时说道。

The guy with the bloody car had hair that was parted on the side but long in front.

开着该死的汽车的那个人的头发从侧面分开，但前面很长。

“When Soering’s picture come in the paper, he didn’t have no hair over like that,” Buchanan said.

“当索尔林的照片出现在报纸上时，他的头发还没有像那样，”布坎南说。

Then he leaned toward me with a grin I could not read.

然后他朝我倾身一笑，我看不懂。

“The guy in the shop with her looked like you .”

“和她一起在店里的那个人看起来很像你。”

Buchanan picked up his weapon and, without explanation, left the room.

布坎南拿起武器，没有解释就离开了房间。

He came back with a binder.

他带着活页夹回来了。

Inside were photographs that Soering’s supporters had sent him for identification.

里面有索林的支持者发给他以供辨认的照片。

Buchanan had cartooned crazy droopy hair on most of them.

布坎南的大部分人都画着疯狂下垂的头发。

After Buchanan realized that the man with the car was not Soering, he said, he’d tried getting in touch with Soering’s legal team.

布坎南说，在意识到开车的人不是索林后，他尝试与索林的法律团队取得联系。

He alerted Judge Sweeney, whom he knew from a veterans’ organization.

他通知了斯威尼法官，他是在退伍军人组织中认识的。

He’d called Ricky Gardner, too.

他也给瑞奇·加德纳打了电话。

Neither had seemed to care.

两人似乎都不在乎。

“He kind of brushed me off,” Buchanan said, of Gardner.

“他有点不理睬我，”布坎南谈到加德纳时说道。

More strangely, both Gardner and Sweeney later denied ever hearing from him.

更奇怪的是，加德纳和斯威尼后来都否认曾收到过他的消息。

(Haysom, for her part, denies being at Buchanan’s shop, and says that she didn’t have a credit card.) Later, he was put in touch with Soering’s parole lawyer, Gail A.

（海索姆则否认曾去过布坎南的商店，并说她没有信用卡。）后来，他与索林的假释律师盖尔·A. 取得了联系。

Ball, who took an affidavit.

鲍尔签署了一份宣誓书。

Nothing came of that, either.

结果也没有任何结果。

Before I left, Buchanan presented me with a slender paperback book.

在我离开之前，布坎南送给我一本薄薄的平装书。

It was his military memoir, published with Warwick House, a local press.

这是他的军事回忆录，由当地一家出版社 Warwick House 出版。

Vietnam was another thing people tended not to believe you about, he said, so he’d wanted to get it down.

他说，越南是另一个人们往往不相信你的事情，所以他想把它记下来。

Before he bid me farewell, he amiably inscribed the title page.

在向我告别之前，他亲切地在扉页上题写了字。

The memoir was called “Women Made Me Do It.”

这本回忆录的名字是《女人让我这么做》。

Last year, Soering had a visit from a stranger who had flown to Virginia to see him after acquiring the diary and some letters of a man who’d known Haysom at U.Va.

去年，一位陌生人拜访了索林，他在获得了一名在弗吉尼亚大学认识海索姆的人的日记和一些信件后，飞到弗吉尼亚州来看他。

The letters began in May, 1985, after the murders; the man wrote cryptically of Haysom’s “situation.” In a spring diary entry, he complained about his car being dead.

这些信件始于 1985 年 5 月谋杀案发生后；该男子神秘地描述了海索姆的“情况”。在春天的日记中，他抱怨他的车坏了。

Nothing in the journal entries and letters that I read specifically incriminates the writer; the entry about the car predates the murders by a few weeks.

我读过的日记和信件中没有任何内容明确表明作者有罪；关于汽车的条目比谋杀案早了几周。

But they do suggest an intimate relationship.

但它们确实暗示了一种亲密的关系。

In a letter to Haysom a few months later, the man wrote critically of Soering, whom he’d met.

几个月后，该男子在写给海索姆的信中批评了他所见过的索林。

He found him “an uneven child/man, heavier on the former, unsure and overbearing in an attempt to compensate.”

他发现他“是一个不平衡的孩子/男人，前者更重，不确定且专横，试图弥补这一点。”

Soering was disconsolate after he read the letters.

索林读完这些信后感到沮丧。

When I asked about them at the Buckingham conference table, he teared up.

当我在白金汉会议桌上询问他们的情况时，他哭了。

All this time, he said, he’d thought that, maybe, maybe , if things had worked out differently, he and Haysom could have ended up together.

他说，一直以来，他都在想，也许，也许，如果事情以不同的方式发展，他和海瑟姆最终可能会在一起。

The letters had challenged his faith in the real romance that stood for all the magic that might still redeem his life.

这些信挑战了他对真正浪漫的信念，这种浪漫代表着仍然可能挽救他生命的所有魔力。

“Maybe all I was was a sugar daddy, because she was screwing other people on the side,” he said bitterly, pounding his pen into the tabletop.

“也许我只是一个糖爹，因为她在旁边和其他人发生关系，”他痛苦地说，用钢笔敲击桌面。

It struck me then that, for all of Soering’s dark experiences, certain of his innocences were puzzlingly intact.

当时我突然意识到，尽管索林经历了所有黑暗的经历，但令人费解的是，他的某些纯真却完好无损。

The political stakes of Soering’s case seem to rise a little every year.

索林案的政治风险似乎每年都在一点点上升。

During a May, 2010, congressional hearing, Eric Holder said that he was waiting to see how Virginia would settle the repatriation issue.

在 2010 年 5 月的国会听证会上，埃里克·霍尔德 (Eric Holder) 表示，他正在等待弗吉尼亚州如何解决遣返问题。

McDonnell wrote Holder a prickly reply: “I want to formally reiterate that Virginia has clearly revoked authorization for a transfer.” The sentiment was shared by the Haysoms.

麦克唐纳给霍尔德写了一封尖锐的回复：“我想正式重申，弗吉尼亚州已经明确撤销了转让授权。”海索姆夫妇也有同样的看法。

Nancy Haysom’s brother Risque Benedict had sent his state senator a letter objecting to Soering’s deportation.

南希·海索姆的兄弟里斯克·本尼迪克特向州参议员写了一封信，反对将索林驱逐出境。

Howard Haysom had written to Governor Kaine, calling the repatriation “a shameful, shameful decision.”

霍华德·海瑟姆写信给凯恩州长，称遣返是“一个可耻、可耻的决定”。

Soering’s counsel fired back.

索林的律师进行了反击。

Steven D.

史蒂文·D.

Rosenfield, a civil-rights lawyer, filed suit contesting McDonnell’s revocation of consent, on the ground that it had become a federal concern as soon as Kaine authorized repatriation.

民权律师罗森菲尔德对麦克唐纳撤销同意提起诉讼，理由是凯恩授权遣返后，这已成为联邦关注的问题。

A new governor could no more “repeal” a signed, sealed, and delivered order moving the process to the Department of Justice than a quarterback could recall a completed pass.

新州长无法“废除”已签署、密封并交付的命令，将程序移交给司法部，就像四分卫无法回忆起已完成的传球一样。

But the circuit court ruled against Soering, and the Virginia Supreme Court didn’t take up the case.

但巡回法院做出了对索林不利的裁决，弗吉尼亚州最高法院也没有受理此案。

(Soering’s father recently wrote a letter endorsing his return.)

（索林的父亲最近写了一封信支持他回归。）

“How sophisticated is Jeremy’s palate?” Meanwhile, Soering took steps to clarify what was opaque.

“杰里米的味觉有多复杂？”与此同时，索林采取措施澄清不透明的内容。

At the suggestion of a parole investigator, Soering’s parole lawyer hired a private eye named Dave Watson, a gruff retired homicide detective.

在一名假释调查员的建议下，索林的假释律师聘请了一位名叫戴夫·沃森（Dave Watson）的私家侦探，他是一位脾气暴躁的退休凶杀案侦探。

Watson took the case on the condition of his independence: he would not hold back any of his findings, even if they pointed to Soering’s guilt.

沃森以独立性为条件接手此案：他不会隐瞒自己的任何调查结果，即使这些调查结果表明索林有罪。

In a September, 2012, affidavit for Soering’s parole board, Watson took issue with Hallett’s sock-print overlay, presented to the jury.

在 2012 年 9 月向索林假释委员会提交的宣誓书中，沃森对哈雷特提交给陪审团的袜子印花覆盖层提出了质疑。

When he reviewed analyses of the full range of prints that the police had collected from Soering and Haysom, it was unclear whose foot matched better.

当他审查了警方从索林和海索姆那里收集到的全部指纹的分析结果时，并不清楚谁的脚更匹配。

He said that he was also “troubled” by the inconsistencies in Haysom’s testimony.

他说，他还对海索姆证词中的不一致之处感到“困扰”。

On the other hand, he told me, he’d found nothing to prove Soering’s innocence.

另一方面，他告诉我，他没有找到任何东西可以证明索林的清白。

“If he’s just an accessory after the fact, he got pretty well screwed,” Watson said.

“如果事后他只是一个从犯，那他就完蛋了，”沃森说。

“If he is the one who killed these people, he’s pretty lucky.”

“如果他是杀了这些人的人，那他就很幸运了。”

After testifying at Soering’s trial, Haysom underwent a kind of molting.

在索林的审判中作证后，海瑟姆经历了一次蜕变。

She quit smoking, and enrolled in a computer-aided design course at the prison.

她戒了烟，并在监狱参加了计算机辅助设计课程。

She got certified by the American Drafting Design Association, and began to teach the course; some of her students went on to do drafting work for Boeing.

获得美国制图设计协会认证，并开始教授该课程；她的一些学生继续为波音公司做绘图工作。

When she was transferred to a new prison, Fluvanna, in 1998, the CAD program moved with her.

1998 年，当她被转移到 Fluvanna 新监狱时，CAD 程序也随之转移。

At Fluvanna, Haysom learned to train rescue dogs.

在弗鲁瓦纳，海索姆学会了训练救援犬。

She began approaching her human students as if they were fearful animals; her favorites were the ones who hated school, because she enjoyed flipping them.

她开始接近她的人类学生，就好像他们是可怕的动物一样。她最喜欢的是那些讨厌学校的人，因为她喜欢翻转它们。

In 2007, she was certified as a Braille transcriber and started Brailling books.

2007年，她获得了盲文转录员认证，并开始制作盲文书籍。

At the moment, she is finishing her bachelor’s degree through an Ohio University distance-learning program.

目前，她正在通过俄亥俄大学远程学习项目完成学士学位。

“She’s entirely different from the evening I met her,” Phyllis Workman, a cousin who first encountered Elizabeth as a teen-age “heroin addict,” told me.

“她和我见到她的那天晚上完全不同了，”菲利斯·沃克曼（Phyllis Workman）告诉我，她是她的表弟，第一次见到伊丽莎白时还是一个十几岁的“海洛因瘾君子”。

Not long ago, Haysom received some watercolors and oil pastels; she says she wants to paint prison scenes in the Norman Rockwell style.

不久前，海索姆收到了一些水彩画和油画棒；她说她想以诺曼·洛克威尔的风格画监狱场景。

For a while, she wrote a column about prison life for the Fluvanna Review.

有一段时间，她为《弗卢瓦纳评论》撰写了一篇有关监狱生活的专栏。

Last year, a poem she composed, “An Ordinary Prison,” won the PEN American Center’s prison-writing competition.

去年，她创作的一首诗《普通的监狱》赢得了美国笔会中心的监狱写作比赛。

In it, she described:

她在其中描述道：

It was not her first literary success.

这并不是她第一次在文学上取得成功。

In 1997, Haysom mailed a novel she had written to Writers House, an agency in New York.

1997年，海瑟姆将她写的一本小说寄给纽约的作家之家机构。

Simon Lipskar, a young agent, picked it from the slush pile.

年轻特工西蒙·利普斯卡(Simon Lipskar)从烂堆里捡起了它。

“It showed real literary merit and an originality of voice and structure,” Lipskar, now the president of Writers House, says.

“它展现了真正的文学价值以及声音和结构的独创性，”现任作家之家主席的利普斯卡说。

In 1998, he wrote a letter to the parole board about her creative talent.

1998年，他给假释委员会写了一封信，谈论她的创造力。

An editor at Henry Holt liked the manuscript, too, but wanted revisions.

亨利·霍尔特出版社的一位编辑也喜欢这份手稿，但希望进行修改。

In the midst of her correspondence with Lipskar, Haysom was transferred to Fluvanna, and Lipskar lost contact.

在与利普斯卡通信期间，海瑟姆被转移到弗卢瓦纳，利普斯卡失去了联系。

She gave up the novel for dead.

她放弃了这本小说。

Recently, Lipskar dug out the manuscript and sent it to me.

最近，利普斯卡把手稿翻出来发给我。

“Memoirs of a Phantom Leg,” nearly five hundred pages in typescript, is about an avant-garde artist who loses her leg in a skiing accident.

《幻腿回忆录》有近五百页的打字稿，讲述的是一位前卫艺术家在一次滑雪事故中失去了一条腿的故事。

The governing metaphor in Haysom’s mind was starting at the top and racing down.

海瑟姆脑海中的主导隐喻是从顶部开始，然后向下加速。

A skier knows the risks—they’re part of the sport’s thrill—but maybe one time her ski hits a small rock and she goes flying.

滑雪者知道其中的风险——它们是这项运动刺激的一部分——但也许有一次她的滑雪板撞到了一块小石头，她就飞了起来。

Then everything is different.

然后一切就不同了。

How did the change happen?

变化是如何发生的？

The narrator says, “I must find the root.

叙述者说：“我必须找到根源。

The first moment.”

第一个时刻。”

The book has several epigraphs.

书中有多处铭文。

One is an inscription at a German naval officers’ school: “Say not ‘This is the truth’ / but ‘So it seems to me to be as I now see / the things I think I see.’ ” Another is from Niels Bohr: “A great truth is a truth whose opposite is also a great truth.”

其中之一是德国海军军官学校的铭文：“不要说‘这是事实’/而是‘在我看来，这就是我现在所看到的/我认为我所看到的事情。’”另一则来自尼尔斯·玻尔：“一个伟大的真理是一个真理，它的反面也是一个伟大的真理。”

One day, I went to talk with Haysom, who is now fifty-one, at Fluvanna.

有一天，我去弗鲁瓦纳与海瑟姆交谈，他现在五十一岁了。

She entered the white cinder-block visitors’ room with amused self-consciousness.

她带着一种被逗乐的不自在感走进了白色煤渣砖砌成的会客室。

She wore baggy jeans, a pale denim shirt, and a pair of small, oval tortoiseshell glasses.

她穿着宽松的牛仔裤、浅色牛仔衬衫，戴着一副椭圆形的小玳瑁眼镜。

Her hair, still dirty blond, was bobbed above the ears and neatly parted on one side.

她的头发仍然是脏兮兮的金发，在耳朵上方剪成短发，整齐地向一侧分开。

“This whole thing with Jens feels like a public divorce,” she told me when we sat.

“与詹斯的这一切感觉就像一场公开离婚，”我们坐下时她告诉我。

“I’ve chosen to do my time and to deal with it my way, and he’s dealing with it in his.” She hoped that Soering would be repatriated: “I want him to go back to Germany so bad.

“我选择按照自己的方式处理事情，而他则用自己的方式处理事情。”她希望索林能够被遣返：“我非常希望他回到德国。

Please , go back to Germany.”

请回德国吧。”

Haysom told me that her love for Soering had been so true at the start that it had taken her weeks to figure out how to deal with it.

海瑟姆告诉我，她对索林的爱一开始就非常真挚，以至于她花了几周的时间才弄清楚如何应对。

“When your mother is your lover,” she said wryly, “you get confused by affection.” Her boarding-school accent is gone now, replaced with a faintly Southern one; only certain word choices, such as “disorientated,” hinted at her far-flung past.

“当你的母亲是你的情人时，”她挖苦地说，“你会因为感情而感到困惑。”她的寄宿学校口音现在已经消失了，取而代之的是淡淡的南方口音。只有某些词的选择，例如“迷失方向”，暗示了她遥远的过去。

When I brought up the man who wrote the letters, she appeared confused.

当我提起写信的人时，她显得很困惑。

“I don’t know what to say,” she told me.

“我不知道该说什么，”她告诉我。

“We were lovers for a week?” They’d had a fling on a ski trip.

“我们恋爱一周了？”他们在一次滑雪旅行中度过了一段愉快的时光。

In a letter she sent me later, she described him as her “last breath of freedom.”

在她后来写给我的一封信中，她形容他是她“最后一口气的自由”。

“I dated some really nice guys, but it was always out of the shell—I performed ,” she said.

“我和一些非常好的男人约会过，但总是脱壳——我表现得很好，”她说。

With Soering, things had been different.

有了索林，情况就不同了。

“I thought he was my soul mate, my life partner, my creative partner,” she said.

“我认为他是我的灵魂伴侣、我的生活伴侣、我的创意伙伴，”她说。

“He opened this door for me which some people might say it would be good to keep closed.” Haysom told me that she and Soering began having sex only on the night of her parents’ funeral: he’d had hangups about intercourse until that moment, and her own sexual avidity ran in odd channels because of her mother.

“他为我打开了这扇门，有些人可能会说关上这扇门就好。”海瑟姆告诉我，她和索林只是在她父母葬礼的那天晚上才开始发生性行为：在那一刻之前，他一直对性交心存疑虑，而她自己的性欲却因为她的母亲而以奇怪的方式流动。

(Soering says their sexual encounters began months earlier.) When I asked her about some erotic letters she had sent Soering long before then—“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”—she told me that she was simply trying to entice him.

（索林说他们的性接触是在几个月前开始的。）当我问她很久以前她给索林寄过的一些情色信件时——“我的嘴唇压向你，我的舌头舔你的嘴唇、你的牙齿，吮吸你的舌头，握住它，咬它，吸走你的呼吸”——她告诉我，她只是想引诱他。

She took a good deal of responsibility for the murders, calling them “my crime,” but denied being at her parents’ house that night.

她对这些谋杀案承担了很大的责任，称其为“我的罪行”，但否认那天晚上在她父母家。

One of the prison staffers came in to bring Haysom lunch.

一名监狱工作人员进来给海瑟姆送午餐。

She didn’t want the food but took a couple of the beverages: “fake apple juice,” as she called it, and milk, both sealed in plastic sacks.

她不想吃食物，但喝了一些饮料：“假苹果汁”，她称之为“假苹果汁”，还有牛奶，都密封在塑料袋中。

She tried to tear them open with her teeth, apologizing all the while—prison, she says, wreaks havoc on manners—and, when that failed, stuck her head out the door and asked the guard, “Do you have a pen or something I could stab this with?”

她试图用牙齿把它们撕开，一直在道歉——她说，监狱对礼仪造成了严重破坏——当她失败时，她把头伸出门外，问警卫，“你有一支笔或者我可以用它刺一下的东西吗？”

Haysom told me that she’d had a great shrink a few years ago who helped her come to terms with her mother’s abuse.

海索姆告诉我，几年前她遇到了一位出色的心理医生，帮助她接受了母亲的虐待。

Soering’s account of her entanglement with heroin was a fabrication, she said; the only drug she’d ever used in the United States was marijuana.

她说，索林关于她与海洛因纠缠的描述是捏造的。她在美国使用过的唯一毒品是大麻。

Her court testimonies about drug use had been efforts to explain away her emotional disequilibrium and thus avoid coming clean about the incest.

她在法庭上关于吸毒的证词是为了解释她的情绪失衡，从而避免坦白乱伦的事实。

Her half brother Veryan says that he now finds her genuinely remorseful: “I have forgiven her.” Julian resumed contact some years ago.

她同父异母的弟弟维扬说，他现在发现她真的很悔恨：“我已经原谅了她。”朱利安几年前恢复了联系。

Haysom wrote to Howard, but never heard back.

海索姆写信给霍华德，但从未收到回复。

She said, “I think the happiest part of my life was when I was living on the streets of Europe—and I was lost.”

她说：“我认为我一生中最快乐的部分是当我住在欧洲的街道上时，我迷失了方向。”

“When I was making money, I made the most money, and now that I’m spiritual I’m the most spiritual.” Haysom’s style contrasted with that of Soering, who lays out arguments in his defense at every turn.

“当我赚钱的时候，我赚的钱最多，现在我有灵性了，我是最有灵性的。”海索姆的风格与索林形成鲜明对比，索林在每一个回合都为自己的辩护提出论据。

She was defending herself, too, but her approach was oblique.

她也在为自己辩护，但她的方式是拐弯抹角的。

I was puzzled that she kept talking about her awful driving—she was a menace, she said, always dinging up rental cars—until I realized she was trying to tell me that she couldn’t have driven the Chevette to Loose Chippings.

我很困惑她一直在谈论她糟糕的驾驶方式——她说她是一个威胁，总是把租来的车弄坏——直到我意识到她是想告诉我她不可能把雪维特开到松散的碎屑。

(Soering says her driving was fine; he told me that he couldn’t have driven there, because he’d been there only twice and couldn’t have managed the route in the dark.)

（索林说她的驾驶技术很好；他告诉我他不可能开车去那里，因为他只去过那里两次，而且无法在黑暗中控制路线。）

I asked Haysom about the tennis-shoe print in blood, too small for Soering’s foot.

我向海索姆询问网球鞋上的血印，对于索林的脚来说太小了。

She said that it was a mystery to her, but that her mother—unlike her—had dainty feet: “I believe my mother walked in her own blood.” (Nancy Haysom was not wearing tennis shoes.)

她说这对她来说是个谜，但她的母亲与她不同，她的脚很漂亮：“我相信我的母亲是用自己的血液行走的。” （南希·海瑟姆没有穿网球鞋。）

In talking, Haysom consistently looked past the murders with a kind of long view, as if they had been a mysterious event, like a horrific bout of food poisoning.

在谈话中，海索姆始终以一种长远的眼光来看待谋杀案，就好像它们是一个神秘的事件，就像一场可怕的食物中毒。

She seemed to see Loose Chippings as the history of a man and a woman who came together by buying into each other’s stories and then came apart, distrustfully, holding tight to accounts that had become inviolably their own—in other words, a love affair that ended.

她似乎把《Loose Chippings》看作是一个男人和一个女人的历史，他们通过相信彼此的故事而走到一起，然后又带着怀疑地分开，紧紧抓住已经成为他们自己不可侵犯的账户——换句话说，一段结束的恋情。

“I have just one thing to say about Lady Macbeth, because apparently there’s no one who’s read the play,” she said suddenly.

“关于麦克白夫人，我只想说一件事，因为显然没有人读过这部剧，”她突然说道。

“It was Lady Macbeth who died of remorse and grief and killed herself.

“麦克白夫人因悔恨和悲伤而自杀。

It was Macbeth who discovered his true nature.”

是麦克白发现了他的真实本性。”

The crimes of which Haysom and Soering were convicted, it has become increasingly probable, weren’t the murders that occurred.

海瑟姆和索林被定罪的罪行越来越有可能不是发生的谋杀案。

While Soering could have killed Derek and Nancy Haysom alone, as he confessed, it would have been impossible for him to leave prints smaller than his foot in the blood.

正如索林承认的那样，虽然索林可以独自杀死德里克和南希·海瑟姆，但他不可能在血中留下比脚还小的脚印。

It is likewise hard to imagine Haysom single-handedly knife-murdering two adults, one of them a large man.

同样很难想象海索姆单枪匹马地用刀谋杀了两名成年人，其中一人是个大块头。

Were the verdicts, even if arrived at through selective evidence and legal error, actually unjust?

即使是通过选择性证据和法律错误得出的判决，实际上是不公正的吗？

Dave Watson, the private detective, told me he thought that the police had focussed on “the right people.” The question wasn’t whether Haysom and Soering were involved, he said, but to what extent.

私家侦探戴夫·沃森 (Dave Watson) 告诉我，他认为警方重点关注的是“正确的人”。他说，问题不在于海瑟姆和索林是否参与其中，而在于参与程度如何。

Could Soering and Haysom have operated as a team?

索林和海瑟姆可以作为一个团队运作吗？

Nobody is known to have seen either of them in Georgetown on that Saturday night.

据了解，周六晚上没有人在乔治城见过他们。

The murders, for that matter, may not have taken place on Saturday evening at all.

就此而言，谋杀案可能根本就不是发生在周六晚上的。

Forensic analysts speak of a “window of death”: the period from the last time the victim was known to be alive to the latest moment when biological indicators would allow death to have occurred.

法医分析人士谈到“死亡之窗”：从最后一次得知受害者还活着到生物指标允许死亡发生的最后时刻的这段时间。

The window for the Haysoms comprised the entire weekend, and Haysom and Soering’s movements during that period were in large part unconfirmed.

海索姆夫妇的交易窗口涵盖了整个周末，而海索姆和索林在此期间的动向很大程度上未经证实。

Soering could have planned to confess to the crime, to protect Haysom.

索林本可以计划认罪，以保护海索姆。

If he was convicted, he would get a few years’ imprisonment in Germany, after which he and Haysom could reunite.

如果他被定罪，他将在德国被监禁几年，之后他和海索姆可以团聚。

The plan would have collapsed when Soering learned that he didn’t have diplomatic immunity and Haysom broke off their relationship.

当索林得知自己没有外交豁免权并且海索姆断绝了他们的关系时，该计划可能会失败。

They’d accuse each other, because the truth would implicate them both more deeply.

他们会互相指责，因为真相会让他们俩受到更深刻的牵连。

His coverup would have a troublesomely literary quality, its contours taken from Dickens, the Bible, and Hollywood cliché—the drug run (one last job, and I’m out), the femme fatale (I’ve got myself in a real bad fix)—because he is a researcher; he draws on texts.

他的掩盖会具有一种麻烦的文学品质，它的轮廓取自狄更斯、《圣经》和好莱坞的陈词滥调——贩毒（最后一份工作，我出局了）、蛇蝎美人（我已经陷入了真正的困境）——因为他是一名研究员；他是一名研究人员。他根据文字进行绘画。

Haysom’s version would have a fantastical air, because that was how her own mind worked.

海索姆的版本会有一种梦幻般的气氛，因为这就是她自己的思维方式。

Loose Chippings would be a tale about two storytellers who aroused each other’s imaginations and composed a vast creative project not on paper but in life.

《Loose Chippings》将讲述两个故事讲述者的故事，他们激发了彼此的想象力，并在生活中而非纸上创作了一个巨大的创意项目。

Of course, nothing specifically supports this story.

当然，没有什么具体支持这个故事。

Unlike the convicting narrative, it could explain the tennis-shoe print, but the question of motive remains elusive.

与令人信服的叙述不同，它可以解释网球鞋的印记，但动机问题仍然难以捉摸。

Haysom and a jury said that Soering brutally murdered two people to please a dormitory girlfriend he had barely started seeing in earnest.

海瑟姆和陪审团表示，索林为了取悦他刚刚开始认真交往的宿舍女友，残忍地谋杀了两人。

Soering says that, on learning that his new girlfriend had butchered her parents in a fit of pique, he kept on dating her and, in fact, took her on a lovely holiday to his homeland.

索林说，在得知他的新女友一怒之下杀害了她的父母后，他继续与她约会，事实上，他还带她去他的祖国度过了一个愉快的假期。

Or it may be that they killed together.

又或许，他们是一起杀人的。

None of these scenarios seem plausible.

这些情景似乎都不可信。

One seems to have occurred.

似乎有一件事情发生了。

The thin vein running through them all is belief: a young man embracing a wildly romantic story and striving to live within it.

贯穿他们所有人的细脉是信仰：一个年轻人拥抱一个疯狂浪漫的故事，并努力生活在其中。

That much we can understand.

我们能理解的就这么多。

For most people, life means believing narratives as wishful as the fairy tales that Soering was in thrall to.

对于大多数人来说，生活意味着相信故事，就像索林所迷恋的童话一样一厢情愿。

We hold that heartfelt deeds will make a difference; stories starting with a meet-cute will, by the logic of plot, end well.

我们坚信，心有灵犀，行必果；以邂逅可爱的意志开始的故事，按照情节逻辑，结局是好的。

We find ourselves in hard-strummed songs; we cherish characters in books and shows for seeming like real people, though our sense of what is genuine is shaped largely by what we watch and read.

我们发现自己置身于硬朗的歌曲中；我们珍视书籍和电视剧中的人物，因为他们看起来像真人，尽管我们对真实事物的感觉很大程度上是由我们所观看和阅读的内容决定的。

I think it happens in real life , Soering had told his questioners, of false confessions.

索林告诉提问者，我认为这种情况在现实生活中发生过，即虚假供述。

Was he speaking as an heir to these mythologies, or as a dark manipulator?

他是以这些神话的继承人的身份说话，还是以黑暗的操纵者的身份说话？

What unified the people I spoke with was that they all believed in a heroic storyline: the narrative of justice served, of injustice assuaged through process, of redemption sought in faith and good work.

与我交谈的人们的共同点是，他们都相信一个英雄的故事情节：正义得到伸张，不公正现象通过过程得到缓解，通过信仰和良好的工作寻求救赎。

Somebody was lying.

有人在撒谎。

The killer was the person, or people, who had seen the other side of these beliefs, and knew how expectations and a sense of rightness could be conjured by playing into common arcs of plot.

凶手是那些看到了这些信念的另一面的人，他们知道如何通过玩弄常见的情节弧线来唤起期望和正确感。

A wrongful-conviction storyline, for instance.

例如，错误定罪的故事情节。

Or the story of a scattered, vulnerable college woman overcome.

或者是一个分散、脆弱的女大学生克服困难的故事。

At least one of the people implicated has been hiding the truth with a writer’s mind.

至少有一个受牵连的人一直在用作家的头脑隐瞒真相。

Soering mails Angela Merkel a Christmas card every December, and this year she returned the cheer.

每年 12 月，索林都会给安吉拉·默克尔寄一张圣诞贺卡，今年她也回赠了这份祝福。

In February, during her conversations with President Obama, Merkel raised the subject of Soering’s repatriation.

今年二月，默克尔在与奥巴马总统交谈时提出了索林遣返的问题。

The gesture followed mounting public interest in the case.

这一举动是在公众对该案的兴趣日益浓厚之后做出的。

In July, 2013, Germany’s minister of justice had written to Eric Holder, reaffirming that Germany wanted Soering back.

2013年7月，德国司法部长致信埃里克·霍尔德，重申德国希望索尔林回国。

Half a year later, Christoph Strässer, the German commissioner for human-rights policy and humanitarian aid, submitted a petition signed by a hundred and twenty members of the Bundestag, urging Virginia’s governor, Terry McAuliffe, to reauthorize Kaine’s repatriation plan.

半年后，德国人权政策和人道主义援助专员克里斯托夫·施特拉瑟提交了一份由一百二十名联邦议院议员签署的请愿书，敦促弗吉尼亚州州长特里·麦考利夫重新批准凯恩的遣返计划。

Christian Wulff, Germany’s former President, had similarly written to McDonnell.

德国前总统克里斯蒂安·武尔夫也曾给麦克唐纳写过类似的信。

Repatriation has become, for them, both a human-rights cause and a policy argument, a way of championing the rehabilitative German model over the costly, punitive American one.

对他们来说，遣返既是一项人权事业，也是一项政策主张，是一种支持恢复性的德国模式而不是昂贵的、惩罚性的美国模式的一种方式。

“It is an essential part of our justice system that criminals deserve a second chance and need to have the perspective of a life in freedom,” Wulff told me.

“罪犯应该得到第二次机会，并且需要拥有自由生活的视角，这是我们司法系统的重要组成部分，”武尔夫告诉我。

“Mr. Soering has been in jail for thirty years, more than half of his lifetime, for a crime that many in Germany believe he didn’t commit.”

“索林先生已经在监狱里呆了三十年，超过了他一生的一半时间，因为许多德国人认为他没有犯下这样的罪行。”

“Hey!

“嘿！

I was looking all over for you.

我到处寻找你。

You have the wrong piece of paper.” McAuliffe, in whose hands the decision to repatriate to a German prison now rests, has been quiet.

你拿错了一张纸。”麦考利夫一直保持沉默，目前他已决定是否被遣返回德国监狱。

A member of Soering’s legal team says that it brokered a deal with McAuliffe’s administration: Soering would temper his noisy activism on the issue of repatriation if the Governor would grant a fifteen-minute audience on the subject.

索林法律团队的一名成员表示，他们与麦考利夫政府达成了一项协议：如果州长允许就该主题进行十五分钟的会见，索林将缓和他在遣返问题上的喧闹激进主义。

(McAuliffe’s office denies that conditions were placed on a meeting.) A legal document was sent to McAuliffe’s staff in early summer, as a reference for the meeting, and—when there was no reply—a follow-up letter.

（麦考利夫的办公室否认对会议提出了条件。）初夏，一份法律文件被发送给麦考利夫的工作人员，作为会议的参考，并且在没有回复时，还发送了一封后续信函。

So far, no meeting with the Governor has been granted.

到目前为止，尚未获准与州长会面。

Soering has never used the Web, and yet today his Facebook page and eponymous Web site attract a large international following.

索林从未使用过网络，但如今他的 Facebook 页面和同名网站吸引了大量国际追随者。

Bernadette Faber, a secondary-school teacher who leads German publicity, says, “My main job is to help an innocent man to be free.” She learned about Soering from a TV program in 2007, the same year that Karin Steinberger, a reporter and editor at the Süddeutsche Zeitung , wrote a widely circulated article on his case.

负责德国宣传工作的中学教师伯纳黛特·法贝尔 (Bernadette Faber) 说：“我的主要工作是帮助无辜者获得自由。” 2007年，她从一个电视节目中了解到索林，同年，《南德意志报》记者兼编辑卡琳·斯坦伯格就他的案件撰写了一篇广为流传的文章。

A fresh wave of publicity will reach Europe this winter, with a documentary called “The Promise,” a collaboration between Steinberger and the filmmaker Marcus Vetter; it is slated for a number of festivals, and will go into European and American release in March.

今年冬天，斯坦伯格和电影制片人马库斯·维特 (Marcus Vetter) 合作拍摄的一部名为《承诺》(The Promise) 的纪录片将在欧洲掀起一股新的宣传热潮。该片预计将在多个音乐节上映，并将于三月份在欧洲和美国上映。

The film is told from Soering’s point of view, though Vetter withholds judgment on the matter of guilt.

这部电影是从索林的角度讲述的，尽管维特对有罪问题没有做出判断。

“Whether he or she committed the crime, they were young,” Vetter says.

“无论他或她犯了罪，他们都很年轻，”维特说。

“When should the punishment end?

“惩罚什么时候结束？

How much punishment can society accept?”

社会能接受多少惩罚？”

The last time I visited Soering, he’d begun growing a beard.

上次我拜访索林时，他已经开始留胡子了。

Friends of his told me that they had never seen his spirits so low.

他的朋友告诉我，他们从未见过他情绪如此低落。

A Virginia prison had been shut down, and its inmates had been merged into the already overflowing Buckingham facility; fights were breaking out, and Soering despaired of the system’s claims of justice.

弗吉尼亚州的一所监狱被关闭，里面的囚犯被并入已经人满为患的白金汉监狱。打斗不断爆发，索林对这个制度所声称的正义感到绝望。

Last September, Bob McDonnell and his wife were found guilty of multiple federal corruption charges.

去年九月，鲍勃·麦克唐纳和他的妻子被判犯有多项联邦腐败指控。

In a letter to the judge, Tim Kaine asked that he consider McDonnell’s record of public service during sentencing; as of now, McDonnell is still free.

蒂姆·凯恩在给法官的一封信中要求他在量刑时考虑麦克唐纳的公共服务记录；截至目前，麦克唐纳仍处于自由状态。

Yet Soering’s sense of desperation seemed to have given him a new wind.

然而，索林的绝望感似乎给了他一种新的感觉。

He recently wrote an essay proposing a counterterrorism strategy against the Islamic State, drawn from his studies of the Koran.

他最近写了一篇文章，根据他对《古兰经》的研究，提出了针对伊斯兰国的反恐战略。

He’d also begun listening to music once again—Etta James, Pink Floyd, and others, even tracks he’d once found painful.

他也开始重新听音乐——埃塔·詹姆斯、平克·弗洛伊德和其他人的音乐，甚至是他曾经觉得痛苦的曲目。

There was only one song he avoided: “Kiss Me,” by the Christian pop band Sixpence None the Richer.

他只回避一首歌曲：基督教流行乐队 Sixpence None the Richer 的《Kiss Me》。

It had come out after he was in prison, and yet, through the alchemy of sentiment, it had begun carrying him back to his first year of college.

它是在他入狱后出版的，然而，通过情感的炼金术，它开始把他带回到大学一年级。

The young love it described—“Kiss me, down by the broken tree house, / Swing me upon its hanging tire”—gouged him.

它所描述的年轻的爱情——“在破碎的树屋旁吻我，/在悬挂的轮胎上摇晃我”——刺伤了他。

“There’s a kind of goofy innocence to it which reminds me of myself,” he told me.

“它有一种愚蠢的天真，让我想起了我自己，”他告诉我。

Tears ran down his cheeks and dripped onto his fingers on the table.

泪水顺着脸颊流下来，滴到放在桌子上的手指上。

Soon after that, I got a letter from Haysom.

不久之后，我收到了海瑟姆的一封信。

I’d been dazzled by Soering’s description, in “Nicht Schuldig!,” of the vacation that the two of them took to Europe, three months after the murders.

索林在《Nicht Schuldig！》中对谋杀案发生三个月后他们两人去欧洲度假的描述令我着迷。

He’d written a dreamy passage about days in his grandmother’s Swiss chalet, on Lake Geneva.

他写了一篇梦幻般的文章，讲述了在他祖母位于日内瓦湖畔的瑞士小屋里度过的日子。

The house was perched so high in the Alps that it sat above the cloud line.

这座房子坐落在阿尔卑斯山的高处，位于云线之上。

He and Haysom used to make love on the balcony as it rained on the lake below.

当下面的湖下着雨时，他和海瑟姆常常在阳台上做爱。

I’d mentioned it to Haysom.

我向海瑟姆提到过这件事。

In her letter, she said that her memory was different.

她在信中说，她的记忆有所不同。

“Not only do I not remember Jens’ grandmother’s chalet having a balcony (surely I would have stood on it, smoked Camels, and looked at the stars—I’m a stargazer), I don’t think it had a view of Lake Geneva,” she recalled.

“我不仅不记得延斯祖母的小屋有阳台（我肯定会站在上面，抽骆驼烟，看星星——我是个观星者），我也不认为它能看到日内瓦湖的景色，”她回忆道。

In her version, the chalet looked over a valley, and was backed by a mountain.

在她的版本中，小屋俯瞰山谷，背靠山。

Yet she remembered a lovely time in Europe.

但她仍然记得在欧洲度过的美好时光。

“Not important at all,” she wrote, her handwriting dancing across the page, “but it’s a bit strange when one’s reality is entirely reshaped by someone else’s imagination.” ♦

“一点也不重要，”她写道，她的笔迹在纸上舞动，“但当一个人的现实完全被别人的想象力重塑时，这就有点奇怪了。” ❖

Nathan Heller began contributing to The New Yorker in 2011 and joined the magazine as a staff writer in 2013.

内森·海勒 (Nathan Heller) 于 2011 年开始为《纽约客》撰稿，并于 2013 年加入该杂志担任特约撰稿人。

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本周的问题 再也不会错过《纽约客》的重大报道了。

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订阅本周的期刊，每周都会收到一封电子邮件，其中包含您必须阅读的故事。

Read More Annals of Crime My Dentist’s Murder Trial Adultery, false identities, and a lethal sedation: a baroque courtroom drama unfolds in upstate New York.

阅读更多《犯罪年鉴》《我的牙医谋杀案审判》通奸、虚假身份和致命镇静剂：一场巴洛克式的法庭戏剧在纽约州北部上演。

A Reporter at Large Iphigenia in Forest Hills Anatomy of a murder trial.

森林山的一名自由记者伊菲革尼亚 (Iphigenia) 解剖一起谋杀案的审判。

Annals of Crime The Perils of Pearl and Olga They were complete strangers—until they were drawn into an enraged ex-husband’s terrifying plot.

犯罪年鉴 珀尔和奥尔加的危险 他们是完全陌生的人——直到他们被卷入愤怒的前夫的恐怖阴谋中。