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Hans Reiser Arrested On Suspicion of Murder

Many readers wrote about the arrest today of Hans Reiser, author of ReiserFS, by Oakland, CA police on suspicion of murdering his estranged wife. From the San Francisco Chronicle: "Hans Reiser, 42, was taken into custody at 11 a.m., hours after Oakland police and FBI technicians searched his home in the Oakland hills. His estranged wife, Nina Reiser, 31, has been missing since Sept. 3, when she dropped off the couple's son and daughter at his home on the 6900 block of Exeter Drive... Police made the arrest based on circumstantial evidence and have not found Nina Reiser's body, [Hans Reiser's attorney] Du Bois said. 'I have no idea what the circumstantial evidence is,' he said. 'When I hear what the evidence is against him, I'll make a decision as to whether he'll talk to them.'" kimvette writes, "While the disappearance (and possible murder) of his wife is tragic, Linux users will wonder where this will leave Reiser 4. If Reiser is found guilty, will Novell or IBM pick up the pieces and finish up Reiser 4 for inclusion in the kernel or is this the end of the Reiser filesystem project? Will there be any future for the Reiser filesystem, and if Hans is found guilty and the project is continued, will the project be renamed to avoid notoriety?"

16 of 1,651 comments (clear)

  1. Unbelievable by nubnub · · Score: 5, Informative

    He's arrested for killing his wife and this post asks what's the deal with Reiser 4? Classy kdawson, very classy.

    1. Re:Unbelievable by Eccles · · Score: 4, Informative

      Laci Peterson's body was found in San Francisco Bay, with DNA confirmation that it was her. A witness saw Peterson removing a large, heavy bundle from his house and placing it in his truck, which he then drove to a marina. The remainder of the evidence was indeed circumstantial.

      --
      Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
  2. Re:This brings up an interesting line of questioni by jonabbey · · Score: 4, Informative

    In the case of ReiserFS, the code doesn't get into the mainline kernel without it being reviewed by enough people that there is some hope of maintainability in the absence of one key person.

    The problem comes in when no one else wants to maintain a piece of code, but then that's why people pay Red Hat or SuSE cash for their otherwise freely distributable distributions.

  3. Re:This brings up an interesting line of questioni by Aim+Here · · Score: 4, Informative

    The answer is no. When an OSS maintainer gives up, you can still maintain the software precisely because you have the source so that there are ways of maintaining the software. There is no danger that reiserfs will break in Linux in the forseeable future, because the kernel maintainers will keep looking after it. If Hans Reiser and Namesys had kept the source code to themselves, then his users should be worried.

  4. Special website by Kangburra · · Score: 5, Informative

    A website aimed at helping to find her, Help Find Nina Reiser

    --
    Common sense is not so common
  5. For More Info by smclean · · Score: 3, Informative
    This article, ran almost a month ago when Hans' ex originally went missing, contains quite a bit more background on the case than I've seen elsewhere:

    http://cbs5.com/localwire/localfsnews/bcn/2006/09/ 13/n/HeadlineNews/HOME-SEARCHED/resources_bcn_html

    --

    "'Yrch!' said Legolas, falling into his own tongue."

  6. SUSE dev proposes ext3 as default fs over reiserfs by szap · · Score: 4, Informative

    Just a SUSE developer's (Jeff Mahoney from SUSE Labs) opinion and suggestion. http://linux.wordpress.com/2006/09/27/suse-102-dit ching-reiserfs-as-it-default-fs/

    Note that it's not "dropping support for reiserfs", it's "not using reiserfs as default". You're still free to use ext3/reiserfs/xfs if you know they perform well for your workload.

  7. Possibly relevant Hans Reiser mail list post by quinnharris · · Score: 4, Informative

    http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=reiserfs&m=1095355 06122706&w=2

    Hans Reiser:

    Well, I am going to try being honest and see what happens.

    I am more than 170k in debt, and Namesys is doing badly fiscally. A
    technical great success being stabilized now, but then there is my
    ongoing fiscal disaster. Once again, we are missing payroll. My wife
    is divorcing me in part because I keep going deeper into debt, and I
    thank her for divorcing me now rather than later. Unfortunately she is
    making the divorce messy enough to keep me from pulling Namesys out of
    the fiscal tailspin by consuming all my time with things like proving I
    am not making the fantastic amounts of money she claims I am. I hope
    next month is better."

    Others
    http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=reiserfs&m=1083531 78128079&w=2
    http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=reiserfs&m=9842467 5720520&w=2

  8. Re:I don't know much about him by e40 · · Score: 5, Informative

    I live fairly close to where she disappeared. You probably don't know this, but there was an incredible effort to find her. Notices were posted everywhere, with her picture and information about her disappearance. From what I gather, it would be completely out of character for her to have left her children. As a parent, it is easy to tell how connected someone is to their kids. I'm sure her friends know this. For me, there is nothing in the universe that would make me leave my kid. Nothing. I believe she's dead.

  9. Oh, and also... by rufusdufus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Another disturbing thing is you'll see in many of these articles that the police claim Reiser was the last one to see his wife. However, the facts of the state that she went shopping after she left his house; her car was found with the groceries she bought. Clearly then, he was not the last person his wife, as the checker at the supermarket obviously interacted with her.
    I dont see how the story works: she drops the kids at his house, she goes shopping, and then..how does he end up killing her? He has the kids with him..at home..she's on the road. When does he have the opportunity to kill her?

  10. Re:Uh, hows that now? by crankyspice · · Score: 3, Informative

    Did the whole "everybody is an Enemy Combatant if we say so" thing start already and no one told me? What exactly is this "isolation" where you can't contact your laywer?

    Until and unless he's formally charged (indicted), the right to an attorney doesn't actually attach, except as has been judicially constructed/interpreted. For light reading on the topic: http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/am endment06/11.html#1 If he hasn't been arraigned yet (and it sounds like he hasn't), he doesn't technically have a right to counsel yet. (The 'custodial interrogation' right to counsel, Miranda et seq., says that an interogatee, upon clear demand for the assistance of counsel, either be provided with assistance of counsel or that interrogation stop until and unless the party under custodial arrest voluntarily reinitiates contact with his interrogators. It doesn't mean the attorney automatically gets access to the guy.)

    --
    geek. lawyer.
  11. Re:That really sucks by oddfox · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's a lot of reading material. Some more. A little more. And to top things off here's another article.

    Are there plenty of people who feel remorse for killing people if it was a crime of passion or one that they didn't truly want to do but felt compelled to anyways? Sure. But it goes both ways, and there are plenty of people who quite honestly are so deranged that they don't feel any remorse for what they've done. A peer-reviewed scientific study showing that most killers aren't wracked with guilt? I doubt anyone has the time or inclination to play Search-Engine-Monkey for you. Go ahead and get evidence your evidence before you start demanding it from other people. There are plenty of cases where the fact of the matter is that these killers are remorseless, you only have to know an inkling about psychology to understand that. In fact, plenty of these murderers feel justified fully in their actions.

    Listen to elucido, he's trying to help you understand the situation. Most people who kill do it because they have serious problems.

    --
    "We invented personal computing." - Bill Gates
  12. Re:That really sucks by Marcion · · Score: 4, Informative

    Holy reiserfsck, how bizzare, how fscking bizarre.

    Read this for another side of the story:
      http://cbs5.com/localwire/localfsnews/bcn/2006/09/ 13/n/HeadlineNews/HOME-SEARCHED/resources_bcn_html

    There are some other strange aspects to all this, the wife may have been having an affair, but (at least in UK) often divorce lawyers encourage clients to do a 'kitchen-sink' approach to try and wrest custody of the children, so her affair and his domestic violence are both suspect until we get more info.

    It will all come out if there is a body, or the wife turns up in Russia.

  13. Re:Prove that by RsG · · Score: 3, Informative
    I never said all psychopaths are criminals. I never said all psychopaths are violent. Read precisely what I said, psychopaths do not feel guilt, remorse, or empathy, and there are a lot of people who don't feel guilt, remorse or empathy, enuogh that I'd say it's normal. I'd guess around 20% of the population, this is a guess and it could be wrong, but it's enough people that there are people in your family, friends, people at work (like your boss), and ex-girlfriends/ex-boyfriends who were/are psycho. It's as common as any other trait, like fat people, everyone knows a few, or like short people, or tall people, etc.
    The figure I got off a google search in all of about 5 minutes was 3% of men and 1% of women. Note that those were the high estimates, not the low ones. 20%? You're dreaming, or else you have a seriously negative view of humanity.

    Moreover, you're asking me to prove things while you are, by your own admission, presenting your wild aproximate guesses as fact. You prove it.

    The average people almost always commit suicide immediately after they commit violent acts.
    Would this be another one of your wild guesses?

    There is a high suicide rate in prison, and for people awaiting trial. And there are plenty of murder-suicides. But that's a hell of a long way from "average people almost always kill themselves after commiting violent acts". And moreover, most of the murder suicides aren't exactly average either.

    Regardless of whether someone has commited a crime, most suicides are born of depression. This means that murderers who off themselve either planned suicide and decided in advance to take someone else with them (as in murder suicide, like the Columbine massacre), or else commited the crime, were driven to depression by guilt, and later killed themselves, which is not "immediately commiting suicide" as you phrased it. The impetus for self-preservation is stronger than guilt.

    A killer who does not also take their own life is not a de facto psychopath, which is what you seem to be claiming.
    --
    Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
  14. Re:That really sucks by NATIK · · Score: 3, Informative

    I don't know how it works in your country, but here in Denmark we DO NOT put people in prison to punish them, we put them in prison to rehabilitate them and to keep them away from society while they are being rehabilitated. Our sentences are very low aswell and when people get out depend on whether the prisons feel they have been rehabilitated (up to the max of what the judge sentenced).

  15. Just as a side note about their upcoming divorce.. by CSG_SurferDude · · Score: 4, Informative

    The Reisers were married in 1999 and frequently traveled to Russia, where she was born. They separated in May 2004.

    Just long enough to get her green card

    Nina Reiser filed for divorce three months later, citing irreconcilable differences and saying their children "hardly know their father" because he was out of the country on business for most of the year, according to court records.

    "Verbal statements made in court" BECOMES "Court Transcript" BECOMES "Court Records". There is not anything here saying whether or not it was proven or not.

    Nina Reiser was granted a temporary restraining order against her husband in December 2004 after she reported that he had pushed her and was abusive to her. A year later, she agreed not to seek a permanent order.

    Temporary Restraining Orders are easy to get, and hard to keep. In a divorce, one of the favorite tactics (of both sides) is to file for a TRO. Usually these get thrown out of court some months later. Judges typically grant TROs because nobody wants to be the judge who denied a TRO against an abusive spouse. But most of the time, TROs are just stupid games that people play.

    Hans Reiser was accused earlier this year of failing to pay medical and child-care expenses as ordered by a judge, records show. He pleaded not guilty Aug. 25 to a civil contempt charge and was scheduled for trial in October.

    Again, it is very easy to "accuse" somebody. One of the games spouses play is to not send bills to the other spouse, and then file a civil suit against them for "failure to pay". This is usually yet another game in custody and visitation battles.

    Not that I am defending this guy, but the "evidence" in the article that he was a "bad man", just isn't any evidence at all.