An Oakland, CA judge today ruled that Linux programmer Hans Reiser will stand trial on charges that he murdered his estranged wife, 31-year-old Nina Reiser, who’s been missing for six months. Hans Reiser, 43, is the founder of Namesys, and invented the ReiserFS Linux file system.
Nina and Hans Reiser had been separated for nearly two years when she disappeared on Sept. 3rd. She was last seen at the home Reiser shared with his mother in the Montclair area of Oakland. Her van turned up five days later, abandoned on a quiet residential street two miles from Reiser’s home. Though no body has been found, Reiser was arrested Oct. 10 after the Oakland Police Department found small drops of blood in his house and on his Honda CRX. DNA testing tied the blood to Nina Reiser.
(…)The judge also noted that Reiser bought a book titled Masterpieces of Murder soon after the disappearance. She found there was sufficient evidence to make him stand trial for murder.
“It’s sort of a downer,” [Reiser’s lawyer William DuBois] concluded as his client was shackled and led from the courtroom.
Link to Wired News story by Joshua Davis. See also this earlier story on Hans Reiser’s plans to sell his company.
Reader comment:
Scott Eric Kaufman says,
That’s not the only book he purchased after he killed his wife. He also bought David Simon’s Homicide. As a fan of the television show based on it, I’d hope that my purchasing the next season after my wife disappeared wouldn’t be reason enough to charge me with murder. I’m not saying he’s guilty or innocent, only that the use of a book as probable cause is extremely troubling, especially when it doesn’t take prior taste into account. (And I can actually see good reason to read police procedurals after your spouse — estranged or not — disappears. With so little faith in the justice system, I can see why someone would want to read about competent detectives with high closure rates.)
Brian N. Bercovitz says,
I just read your post discussing the Wired article about murder
charges against Hans Reiser. The article was skewed towards reporting
exculpatory evidence. This article at the San Francisco Chronicle site
gives a fuller picture of the court’s considerations in allowing
homicide charges: Link.In addition to what Wired reported:
Reiser’s son initially said he heard Reiser and the alleged victim
argue upstairs in the house and did not see her again. It was at a
later interview the son changed his story.Reiser’s car, which was missing its front passenger seat, contained
the socket set used to remove the seat, a roll of trash bags, masking
tape, a siphon pump, absorbent towls, traces of the alleged victim’s
blood, and the books “Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets,” and
“Masterpieces of Murder.”Police technicians removed carpeting from the front seat area and
noticed the floorboard had been saturated with water.Neighbors saw Reiser hosing down his driveway around the time of the
disappearance.While this is all circumstantial evidence, the law does not require
direct evidence of a crime in order for a jury to convict, so who
knows how this will all come out.