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Reiser Murder Case Gets Stranger
Fahrvergnuugen writes "Wired is running a story about how an ex-lover of the missing wife of accused spouse killer Hans Reiser has confessed to killing eight people unrelated to the case. While Reiser will still stand trial for the murder, this development will undoubtedly complicate things."
I was like "Holy sh*t!" But then I read the whole thing. However, if this guy confesses to killing 8 (maybe 9 people, he's not sure), why wouldn't he confess to her death if he did it? What, they're going to kill him an extra time? Make him serve an extra life sentence?
The Wired piece is very light on details. It doesn't say who the Sturgeon person is supposed to have murdered, or where, or when, or whether or not any of them have any relationship to the Reiser case. Also it doesn't suggest whether or not investigators have correlated Sturgeon's confessions with any known facts about any missing people or unsolved murders. Or maybe this Sturgeon guy had already been charged in a bunch of murders and finally confessed. Who knows, the story is so light on details.
Does anyone know any more about this Sturgeon guy and his confessions?
Well they did find blood in his vehicle and house. From the article:
"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 in his Honda CRX"
Makes it a little fishy although I am sure I have small drops of blood around my house and in my cars too from small cuts and stuff happening while doing stuff outside. I would hope they need more than that to tie the "murder" to him. I think she just took off somewhere myself, I mean she was cheating on him so I don't think it is too far out of the ballpark.
Hey, there is only one Return and it's not of the King, it's of the Jedi.
Bear in mind that in forensics, the "drops" of blood can be microscopic. For example, when we hear that XYZ accused had 100 drops of blood on his clothing, it isn't necessarily the massively blood-splattered shirt it might sound like. Now, I don't know how likely it is that we might have drops of blood of such size around our houses/cars as a result of normal activity (which would normally go unnoticed). Still something to consider, though.
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That's enough for me! Hang him!
It's unclear when Sturgeon made the confession -- he would say only, "I have cooperated since day one." Asked why he had confessed at all, he responded with this question: "In a murder case, if somebody has killed, who is a witness, is it relevant? Yes or no?"
When this reporter responded that it was relevant, Sturgeon said, "Then you have the answer to your question."
Sturgeon added that confessing was one of the most difficult decisions of his life. He also regrets being a source of distraction in the case, joking that he is not so much a red herring as a "red Sturgeon."
Yep... a regular old Hannibal Lechter. Do you think he might have had some sort of grudge against Reiser? Spurned love, and then his friend gets the girl... yathink? Maybe he set it up so that not only does Reiser lose his wife... but then has to defend a murder case for killing her.
From what's been in the press, it seems that all the evidence is circumstantial. A criminal case can be proven by circumstantial evidence, but only when it's enough to exclude all other reasonable conclusions based on the evidence. Looks like this shoots the prosecution right out of the water.
On the other hand, if the prosecution had this confession a long time ago and they are still moving forward, it's possible they have some other evidence that we don't know about yet.
doesn't a murder case require a body (or parts of it)?
As I understand it, this is mostly a myth, but without a body it can be awfully hard to prove that the victim is dead in the first place. As an example, spouses in abusive relationships often disappear and hide themselves.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
Hans was friends with this guy Sturgeon...
Sturgeon was allegedly molested as a child which directly motivated the killing of the other eight people AND the development of extreme sado-masochistic sexual tendencies... Which is a purported reason that Hans's woman both began and ended her affair with him.
The missing link is how Hans became friends with this guy and a gossipy answer at this point is that BOTH of them were involved in some very dark sexual practices & became close friends because of this.
Please note: I hope Hans is innocent, but this development does not appear to help him at all. If anything it may cause Hans's character to be called further into question based upon investigations into this other side of his life that was previously undisclosed.
the sudden cratering of ResierFS demonstrates the huge Bus Factor of Open source software. Takeout one guy and major part of an operating system can suddenly become unsupported. This is a non-trivial thing. If you are a big bussiness do you want to commit your operations center to some Database or some communication protocol (say Samba) and filesystem (say ReiserFS) to open source solutions if suddenly overnight and with no warning it could become unsupported?
If linus got hit by a Bus tommorrow, Linux would no doubt survive but there would be a giant glitch in the force and depending on how things got restored Linux might very well start to lose it's focus.
It's a big opportunity for the Microsofts, IBMs, Oracles, SAPs and Novell's to point out that for bussiness operations continuity you should only buy software, open source or private, backed by a commercial vendor.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
If Hans Reiser is guilty, that means Nina Reiser went from dating one killer to another killer... What are the odds of someone just happening to date two murderers?
Seriously, an accusation of murder doesn't mean that someone can't write good code. Hell, a conviction for murder wouldn't mean that. Someone with the icy logic needed to remove a threat permanently might find a career in the military - and the military has lots of programmers, and are the biggest murderers around.
Common sense says if Sturgeon is going to spontaneously admit to 8 (possibly 9) murders, he'll probably admit to a 10th if it exists.
It also says that if I wanted to frame some guy who I hate because I failed to steal his wife from him, I'd confess to everything but killing the woman, so that the cops will think exactly what you thought. So far in this case it seems the cops have been easy suckers, so it just might work.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
By confessing to something really horrible you aquire a curious kind of trust in people: if he says that he didn't kill Nina then who would doubt him now that he so flippantly admitted to the killing of 8 others?
This of course can be a strategy in itself, it's a card he's earnt by confessing and can play against Reiser, someone he clearly wants to see lose everything (re 2004 case for attempted seizure of Reiser's business, Namesys Inc.).
>It was more than "small drops of blood". The front passenger seat in his car had been removed and
>hasn't been recovered yet.
I understand all about rules of evidence and presumption of innocence, but this was a very strange detail.
I've been a vintage car enthusiast for a long, long time, and I could probably name the time, place, and parties to almost every single car part that was ever traded, installed, or removed from one of my cars. I'd definitely be able to tell you what happened to something as significant as a passenger seat. Of course, in my case, that would probably be the whole front seat from a 1959 Chevrolet which would be a $3000 part, but still. It's weird that we know about the seat, the tools, the blood, but we don't know Hans' explanation. Without his explanation, the jury is only going to hear the prosecutor's theory, which is going to sound quite plausible to a jury.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
Wrong. If the drops of blood are in a splatter formation, then that is really great circumstantial evidence that something untoward occurred. Splattering only occurs when physical force is used, not from something like a nosebleed. It's not just the fact that you have several dozen drops of blood.
Quote from wikipedia:
:)
It was also revealed that Nina Reiser obtained Russian citizenship for her daughter 2 years before and surreptitiously obtained Russian citizenship for her son two months before she disappeared.
Now how likely would it be that she is somewhere is big Russia
Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
Well, first there is a differecne between murder and killing. This difference is justification, circumstances and legalities. But more to the point.
Last I heard, they still haven't found a body. What Kind of evidence do they have against him outside his wife is still missing. I mean books are nothing more then circumstantial, But then is a ex-lover who turns out to be a serial killer (I believe 5 or more still qualifies). Some blood in the car, was it a lot or an amount that someone could have cut themselves at some point of time and have it there?
It would be interesting if this Ex-lover is the one who did it and he is innocent. I'm wondering how he would be accepted back into the community if this happens.
IIRC, any amount of Nina's DNA in Reiser's car was suspect, because she never would have willingly entered his vehicle (not sure if he owned the same vehicle before the divorce or not). Not to mention that the passenger seat hasn't been found.
Jesus is coming -- look busy!
So does this mean you're going to rip out all the ICs on your motherboard because the guy who co-invented the Semiconductor (Shockley) was a racist dick?
Abandoning products of a nation that continues to uphold unethical laws like apartheid, or boycotting companies doing unethical things are tools to be used to make those things right. Abandoning ReiserFS simply because he murdered someone (assuming he did it) isn't going to speed up the judicial process. Continuing to use it isn't going to slow or stop it either.
Abandoning it because no one else can maintain ReiserFS is a legitimate reason, but I'm certain that someone will be able to figure it out and maintain it. However, I would think that a name change would be in the works.
// file: mice.h
#include "frickin_lasers.h"
This isn't to say I agree with such tactics, but double jeopardy means that they have to get their cases right the first time. They can't produce a version 2. This is true of both Sturgeon and Reiser. The margin for error is zero, the risks are extreme. That limits the authorities to having to play it as cool as they can.
This all assumes they're smart, of course. They could just be be stupid, too. The easy way to find out is to see if Sturgeon is arrested a month or two after Reiser is convicted or freed, and/or if he is able to kill again. If the authorities are smart, Sturgeon will be under 24-hour watch by people in a position to prevent him killing someone. If Sturgeon succeeds, or even gets close to succeeding, then the authorities are out of their tiny little minds. Alternatively, if Sturgeon is really delusional, those same authorities should have him in a secure ward the first moment they have enough evidence to prove it.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Sure that's a nice alternate theory.
So's the theory that just because a person confessed to a lot of crimes at once, that it somehow must have been the whole of his sins. It's hard to test whether this theory pans out in reality, since whenever a serial rapist or murderer goes on the block, the prosecutors generally try to stick every open case in the book on them in order to clear out their backlog, whether the person actually committed the crime or not. Of those, I wonder how many were murderers who confessed to the murders of the 5 bodies in their basement in hopes of keeping the investigators from finding the other 20 corpses in the lime pit out back?
an obsession or anger on Sturgeon's part
So this Sturgeon guy tries to steal Hans Reiser's wife, tries to seize his company, tries to take his money, and just keeps coming back for more? Yeah, he can't possibly be obsessed or angry, obviously Reiser must have had a "harass me repeatedly" sign taped to his back.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
There's at the very least a chance she stage her own disappearance to get Hans in trouble and went back to Russia and got her kids brought there.
who turns out to be a serial killer (I believe 5 or more still qualifies).
If you want to get technical it's not serial killing unless all the killings follow the same motif and/or are part of an overarching "statement" (think of how a serial novel is released as a series of installments). If they were individual pre-planned murders all with their own justification that did not follow any theme then he is a mass murderer. If he just snapped one day and went out and killed 6 or 8 or however many people for no real reason, then he's a spree killer.
If you'd read a few of the books in Hans Reiser's collection you'd know this!
--Obyron
What if she went by land to Mexico or Canada and took a flight from there, bought in cash?
It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
"On Monday, Superior Court Judge Don Clay issued a gag order barring attorneys on both sides from discussing Sturgeon."
How can they gag that? That seems highly relevant to the case, considering that Sturgeon clearly had a grudge against Reiser.
Most of the other posters seem to assume that the case will be dropped because of this, but if the jury is *never allowed to hear about it* how can the come to the pretty reasonable conclusion that the highly circumstantial evidence against Reiser doesn't amount to much when the victim had dated (and dumped) a known serial killer with a grudge against the defendant?
If the prosecution knew about this, why'd they even bring it to trial?