Daily Press from Newport News, Virginia • A4

4 Tuesday, April 23, 2019 DAILY PRESSLOCAL NEWS Celebrity chef Guy Fieri plans to bring some pizza and tacos to Hampton this spring. The city announced Monday that the Food Network celebrity chef will open two eponymous restaurants at PowerPlant in June be located between PBR and Bass Pro Shops. The pizza parlor is a first for Fieri and will produce artisanal pies using signature house-made dough and sauce. The taco restau- rant his second, following one that opened in Kansas City in February will feature signature tacos, margaritas and otherMexi- can fare, with nightly entertain- ment. The two new spots will join a smokehouse in Water- side as Fieri-licensed eateries in Hampton Roads.

He has visited the region from time to time for his popular cable show Drive-Ins hitting such local hot spots as in Norfolk, Captain in Isle of Wight County, and The VirginiaDiner inWakefield. always loved coming to Fieri said in a news release. So firedup to be opening two awesome con- cepts Hewenton todescribe theDive Joint are loving it in Kansas and the Pizza Parlor deal, old and concluded, gonna dig In the release, HamptonMayor Donnie Tuck praised Fieri as pioneer of finding food fabulous, fun andnot Mary Fugere, director of Convention and Visi- tors Bureau, said high- profile national brand will be a welcome addition to dining scene, for both local resi- dents and families passing through. name does bring a lot of Fugere said. he visits a town and a restaurant and recommends it, there is a surge in business as a result the fact that these are two of his restaurants should really get attention.

a great addition to Power Plant, and it fills a need there. I think we found a better Both restaurants are hiring and seeking applicants from entry level to management positions. Starting Monday, a hiring center will be open 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. weekdays inside PBR Hampton information is available online at tinyurl.com/GuyHamptonJobs.

MikeHoltzclaw, 757-928-6479, Fieri bringing pizza and tacos to Hampton Celebrity chef opening two restaurants at Power Plant in June ByMike Holtzclaw Staff writer COURTESY OF FREDDIE CABRERA Food Network host Guy Fieri will open Pizza Parlor and Dive Taco Joint locations in Power Plant. Both restaurants are hiring and seeking applicants from entry level to management positions. PORTSMOUTH State Del. Matthew James pleaded guilty Mondaymorning to drivingwhile intoxicated. Under the plea agreement, he will not serve any time behind bars if he stays out of trouble for the next year.

a blood alcohol content of 0.18 shortly after his arrest, received a 60-day sus- pended sentence and a $300 fine for the first offense. Hewillneedarestricted license if he wants to drive over the next year. His vehicle must have an ignition interlock for sixmonths. The Democrat, who represents parts of Chesapeake, Norfolk, Portsmouth and Suffolk, declined to comment on the plea agree- ment or say if he planned to run for re-election. name, however, will appear on the ballot in November.

Hewas the only candidate to seek theDemocraticnominationby the March 28 deadline, according to thePortsmouthGeneralRegistrar. Therewill be no primary. James was arrested Sept. 22 following a traffic stop near Interstate 264 and Greenwood Drive. According to court documents, an officer with the state Depart- ment of Game and Inland Fisher- ies saw Honda CRV exit the highway shortly before 8:30 p.m.

and run a stop sign. The vehicle almost hit another vehicle in the process. The officer pulled over the SUV. As he walked up, the officer smelled an alcoholic beverage coming from the vehicle, he said. The officer asked James for his license and registration, but James was only able to hand over an expired license.

He find his registration. Outside the vehicle, the officer conducted field sobriety tests on James. He said James place his heel to toe as demonstrated and stepped off the line at one point. He also struggled with an exercise that required him to stand on one leg, the officer said. In court, James generally stipu- lated there was enough evidence to support a conviction.

Following his arrest, James issued a statement apologizing for his actions. look forward to restoring all negative impacts on my family, friends, constituents as well as colleagues related to this one time James said. Scott Daugherty, 757-446-2343, scott.daugherty@pilotonline.com State delegate pleads guilty to driving while intoxicated Matthew name will still appear on the ballot in November By Scott Daugherty Staff writer STAFF FILE Matthew James, who had a blood alcohol content of 0.18 shortly after his arrest, received a 60-day suspended sentence and a $300 fine. CHARLOTTESVILLE The phone rings in John office, and thebest-sellingnovelist is eager to take the call from a prisoner, convicteddecades agoof abrutaldoublemurder. Jens Soering, a German di- son and former Uni- versity of Virginia honors student who says he was wrongly con- victed of killing his parents in 1985, has never lacked forhigh-profilesupporters.

For years, German Chancellor Angela Merkel, actor Martin Sheen and Catholic bishop pushed fruitlessly for his release. Grisham is a relative new- comertotheclub.SoisJasonFlom, a Manhattan music industry exe- cutive and founding board mem- ber of the Innocence Project, who joined the author in his Char- lottesville office for they recorded for a podcast on allegedlywrongfulconvictions. Giventhatstarpowerandpoliti- cal sway freed Soering, his besthopemay liewitha thirdman on hand for the podcast a local sheriff offering old-fashioned de- tectivework. Albemarle County Sheriff Chip Hardinganda formerdeputyhave teamed up to try to reinvestigate the case, following leads that they say officials in rural Bedford County never pursued or dropped once Soeringmade what he says was a false confession to cover for his girlfriend, Elizabeth Haysom. Harding and retired deputy RichardHudsonhave interviewed dozens of people, including for- mer roommates and friends of Soering and Haysom.

The sheriff traveled as far as talk toaman Haysomhadanaffairwithnotlong beforethemurders.Theinvestiga- tors have devoted thousands of hours totheeffort, allunpaid. convicted, at least in Virginia, in order to be exoner- ated you almost have to prove whodid turned his conference room into a Soering with plastic bins filledwith records, and crime scene photos and DNA results on thewalls. Harding, 68, said his eyes were opened to wrongful conviction cases by reading 2006 nonfiction book, Innocent about a case in Oklahoma. After that, he took an interest in Innocence Project cases, helping in 2012 to free Michael Hash, a Culpeper man wrongly convicted ofa1996killing.Hehastried—and failed to rally law enforcement leaders throughout the state to create a justice commission to preventwrongfulconvictions. In case, Harding and Hudson have gone down some to a pair of convicted of stabbing and mutilating a home- lessmanintheareaaboutthesame time.

Theyhave shared their findings with state parole board investiga- tors responsible for examiningSo- long-standing pardon re- quest andmaking a recommenda- tion to Gov. Ralph Northam, a Democrat, whose office did not respondtoarequest forcomment. They also have run into road- iff cannot reopen a case from an- other jurisdiction. Officials in central BedfordCountyhave said theyare confident that convic- tion was just. They have refused entreatiesbyHardingandHudson to revisit the case, retest evidence or grant them access to original investigative files.

Bedford Maj. Ricky Gardner, who helped inves- tigate the case as a rookie, has steadfastlystoodbytheoutcome. Soering is serving two life sen- tences for the slayings of Derek and Nancy Haysom, who were found stabbed and nearly decapi- tated at their home in central Virginia 34 years ago. Soering and Haysom, a fellow U.Va. honors student, were not initially consid- ered suspects but fled the country months later as investigators closedin.

The pair was eventually ar- rested in London, and Soering confessed. He later recanted, say- ing he was only trying to protect Haysom from the electric chair under the mistaken belief that his position gave him diplo- matic immunity.Hewasconvicted inasensational1990trialthatdrew international media and gavel-to- gavelcoverageonlocalcableTV. Haysompleaded guilty to being an accessory before the fact, con- tending that she helped plan the murders but did not physically take part. She is serving a 90-year sentence at the Fluvanna Correc- tional Center for Women near Charlottesville. Soering, confined at Bucking- ham Correctional Center in Dill- ers over the years for writing a string of well-received books on his case, his conversion to Catho- licismandprisonreform.

His supporters have raised questions that his trial lawyer who was later disbarred and ac- knowledgedsufferingfromamen- tal impairment during the trial did not. About how Soering got detailsof thecrimescenewrongin his confession. About how prose- cutors reliedon the of a bloody sock print said to fit Soering, butmadenomentionof a bloody shoe print in size. Support for Soering picked up steam in 2016, when new blood analysis indicatedthatamanother thanSoeringwas the sourceof the type-O blood found at the scene. The blood was the only physical link to Soering aside from the disputedsockprint.

HardingandHudsonfirsttooka lookat thecasearoundthat timeat the request of lawyer, Steve Rosenfield, himself a volun- teer. But the sheriff and deputy made it clear that they would not shyawayfromevidencethatmight implicateSoering. something that hurts you, go- ing to hurt Harding said he toldRosenfield. Some of what dug up seems to rule out a fewsuspects in the minds of Soering supporters. That includes a man Haysom had an affair with while she was also dating Soering.

Now a doctor, the man voluntarily gave Harding a DNAsample and fingerprints, and Harding found no match to any publicly available evidence found at thescene. thing more interesting to me are the people who talk to Hudson said, referring to GardnerandaHaysomroommate. They had better luck with an- other college roommate who has contradicted one bit of evidence used to convict Soering. At the trial, aHaysom family friend testi- fied that he noticed on the day of the funerals that Soering had a defensive wounds, the prose- cution alleged, from the night of the murders. He was the only one claiming to have seen those in- juries.

Harding tried to trackdownthe man, but he was dead. But the roommate clearly remembered a dinner with Soering and Haysom soon after and said Soeringhadnoinjuries. One of their leads concerns two menconvictedofanotherstabbing from that time. Bedford County Deputy Sheriff George Anderson stopped William Shifflett and Robert Albright within a week of the Haysommurders, which took place March 30, 1985, and were discoveredApril3. Anderson questioned them putting them by turns in the back seat of his car so he could talk to them individually.

The men told AndersontheyhadbeentoLynch- burg see a and were headed to Roanoke. He released them. OnApril 6 inRoanoke that year, police say Shifflett and Albright robbed a homeless man of his 26timesandamputatinghispenis. They were later convicted of his murder. A week or two after he had stopped themen, Anderson found aBuck110 foldingknife in theback seat of his patrol car.

The medical examiner who performed the Haysom autopsies said the knife was consistent with the type of weaponusedintheirmurders. None of this information was ing his 1990 trial, althoughAnder- son said he reported it at the time to an officer working on the Haysom case and to Roanoke au- thorities. team learned of it years laterandusedit toarguethat his conviction should be reversed. BedfordCircuitCourt grantedSo- ering a hearing in 1996. But the judge was not persuaded that the disclosure would have changed the outcome of his trial, and the stateSupremeCourtagreed.

Today, Harding and Hudson ing.PerhapsElizabethHaysom,an admitted heroin user, could have knownthementhroughdrugcon- nections, theytheorize. me, just persons of Harding said. two guys like to rule in or To that end, they wrote to the men in prison. One wrote back sayinghedidnotwant to talk.The otherdidnotreply. Harding andHudson also went toRoanoke to look throughpublic case files onShifflett andAlbright.

They would like to see investiga- tivenotes thatwouldnotbepartof the court record but could not get access. Harding also wrote to the state Department of Forensics, asking that it compare the DNA profiles with those found at the Haysom crime scene. The re- sponse was that only Bedford Countycouldmakesucharequest. guys knifed a man not far from the Haysom Harding said in sleek office. two folks one of them at least involved in heavy DNA should be in the databank.

We simply asked, you take those profiles and compare them Harding was lamenting that roadblock in a conversation he recordedwithGrisham andFlom, host of the podcast Conviction with Jason So- ering phoned in from prison to recount details of the case and offer thanks to his high-profile supporters trying to draw atten- tion to his case as well as those quietly tryingtocrack it. not going to stop, slow down or be Grisham said. just going to getmore and more vocal, and push harder and harderuntilweget Basic detective work could be key for convicted murderer Local sheriff, retired deputy reinvestigating high-profile case By Laura Vozzella TheWashington Post.