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Hans Reiser Interview on ABC's 20/20
baegucb_18706 noted that ABCs 20/20 has a lengthy article on the saga of the Hans Reiser murder trial. I'm not sure if this article provided any information that you might not have known if you read the earlier wired interview, but it's still a really strange story.
Together with Jews!
Interviewing Hans Reiser about the Hans Resier murder, eh? Clever.
How about interviewing Harry Buttle about that known terrorist Harry Tuttle?
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
If he is guilty, and it sounds like he is, he just null and voided anything good he has ever done. Way to go dip-shit.
If Einstein murdered his wife, he would be a murderer, not a genius.
She hated him. She staged it and went back to Russia. Aren't their kids over there now? Go interrogate her parents...she can't be too far from them.
"Hans Reiser, left, and his attorney, William Dubois"
I think the pic caption is wrong - isn't that Hans on the right side?
boycott slashdot February 10th - 17th check out: altSlashdot.org
Obviously he should take the conviction, server two years, escape and live a long happy life in middle America after changing his name and ssn. That should give him a good 30 years or so to prove he is a productive citizen.
Homo homini lupus
This is the moral of Linux, murders, thieves, commies.... Thanks god for the MAC
Is Soviet Russia. Russian Bride kills you
It was on like 2 nights ago ... late nite abc...
I realize it has no real bearing on the man's guilt or innocence, but that man is seriously creepy. Did they have him on doped to the eyeballs? I had it mute the sound when he read the poem to his kid or I would have had nightmares.
Reiser, whose work kept him overseas in Russia for months at a time, wanted more children and did not want Nina returning to work as a doctor.
"I ran the business and I expected my wife to take care of the kids," he said.
Wow. Wotta guy. Let's see, I want to marry an intelligent, highly educated doctor and then turn her into a brood mare who stays in the kitchen making cookies. Yeah, that'll work.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
In a reasonable system there is no way somebody can be convicted of murder without a body.
Yeah, right, he had to live out of his car. He's supposed to be a genius? I guess just in math: not a criminal one.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Can't hide over there. In the land ruled by KGB. Its either Hans, Sturgeon, or a some crazy rapist. Happens all the time: this is a big county. A disadvantage of being a pretty girl walking the street in a land with no burka laws, high crime rate, and fat ugly girls.
So Reiser's best friend had sex with Reiser's wife, confessed to the cops that he is a serial killer, but conveniently says he didn't kill Nina...and yet the cops don't arrest him. Sounds like we got the smart ones on that force.
Read the comments on the article page, it's disgusting.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Have you seen the pre-interview? The guy seems to be on a permamnet mushroom trip.
As for marrying a Russian woman, I can say one thing about them, they know how to make money.
They aren't meak I'll tell you that.
If you are a weak man they are going to leave your ass.
Hans Rieser's explanation is at least plausible. Very attractive women often begin to believe that no rules apply to them.
Another question: What are the merits of the Rieser file system?
Who ever implied that the justice system in the United States is "reasonable"? Where do YOU live?
Error: It is Reiser, not Rieser.
Reiser File System.
Note that the Slashdot story misspells Reiser's name.
A dating service arranged a meeting at a café in St. Petersburg, but Reiser didn't fall for his date -- he liked the woman who came along to translate.
I don't get it. She has a medical degree and works as a translator for a dating service?? Are there so many medics in Russia and so few people that speak English that it actually pays better to work as a translator?? The all story smells fishy...
My worst enemy gave me a copy of Windows for Christmas.
way off topic here, but at least in canada, when you try and commit suicide that is considered attempted murder. of course trying to kill yourself is crazy so you also have an automatic insanity defence.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
I RTFA: This just doesn't add up. Why did the children get sent to Russia?!? I assume that Hans is capable of taking care of them, how did the kid's grand parents get custody of their natural father is still alive and kicking? The kids were growing up here and how they were transplanted to a culture remarkably different?
I don't believe that Hans showing up at the school to see the kids and give them a telephone number is 'suspect'..like come on. Did Nina orchestrate these events? Or was Hans so upset about her decision for divorce once she became a US citizen, and that she screwed his best friend, that he had to kill her?
Seems to me like Nina took off for the homeland, and has her kids there too. Hans is left holding the bag...
Now I probably won't get updates for my ReiserFS....damnit.
Quote from the 20/20 story:
"Sturgeon won't talk publicly until after the trial, but after Nina's disappearance he made a bold confession to police, so outrageous that the judge won't allow it to be mentioned in court. He claims to be a serial killer, but said he is not responsible for Nina's death."
I think it is a pretty clear cut case that Reiser is guilty. By his own admission, Reiser was a very controlling husband who dominated his wife. In all of his interviews, he doesn't even seem to grasp the sacrifices that he asked his wife to make. She's a non-person to him. He trashed her career so he could work on his, would disappear for months at a time in Russia, and then, by other witnesses, often screamed at her over the phone. No wonder she slept his with his best friend. Thus, you already have all the patterns of domestic abuse in place - and for that, there is overwhelming statistical evidence that predicts Reiser would in fact kill his wife.
I'm sure its easy to believe that Reiser's just "a little weird" and being persecuted, but what you have here is a control freak in his software, and ultimately, a control freak in his personal life, and when his wife slept with someone else, he flipped out and killed her.
His story doesn't add up at all. I've had to live in my car, but I've never been in a situation where I felt like I needed to remove the passenger seat. And, if I had $9000 in cash, I would think I would at least find myself a room. Usually, people with $9000 in cash can put together a place to stay. Even in the USA, Reiser could have rented a room for like $200-$300 a month, an apartment for $500-$600, if he was looking on the cheap. Finally, the most convenient way to put money in the hands of a Russian programmer is electronically.
Reiser killed Nina in the car, and cleaned it out thoroughly, which explains why it was wet, except for the seat she was sitting in, which had to be removed. The seat is probably with the body, most likely. The $9000 in cash and passport were to allow him to leave the country and go to Russia, and the reason he ran from the cops, to begin with, is that he knew that he did it.
REISER, wife abusing bastard who is guilty of first degree premeditated murder, and I'd say, that's a capital offense. Hell of a file system he made, but, he still ultimately must wind up on death row.
I'd have no problem signing the warrant myself.
This is my sig.
Do you have stats to back that up, or are you living your life based on what you've seen on television?
It's kind of hard to give the natural father custody of the kids if said father is in custody himself.
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This guy is guilty. He's a proven control freak with a track record of domestic abuse. He had to go to Russia to try and buy himself a subservient wife, because no American women in her right mind would put with up all of his bullshit, and when his Russian wife woke up, he killed her.
They've got Reiser with a cleaned up car and missing passenger seat, $9000 in cash to try and flee the country with. There's really no other rational way to look at this. Framed by the Russian Mafia - that's his story? If the Russian mafia, or any mafia, wanted to screw with him, they just would have killed him. No need for byzantine plots.
He's so guilty. And I hope the jury sends this guy to the death row he deserves.
This is my sig.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Geeks should not date non-geeks.
Don't give up too quickly. Last I heard NameSys still had programmers working on both ReiserFS 3 and 4. And even if NameSys goes under, it's at least possible that some other people will step in and pick up the ball on ReiserFS 4, which despite the competition for "mindshare" in file systems, sounds like it's got some technically neat features...
(And I hate to kick Hans when he's down, but all accounts agree he's not the easiest guy in the world to get along with. ReiserFS 4 might gain some wider acceptance if there's someone at the helm who can talk to the kernel developers without pissing them off.)
It's very fast at handling large numbers of very small files (at least, this is what they claim, I never tried it for myself). It also has some rather funky design changes from a normal filing system, like eliminating the file/directory duality (ie, you can read and write to a directory as you would a file). The basic design is described in a document on the namesys.com website - the end goal is about "namespace unification", in a Plan9-esque manner. You should read the white papers, they aren't all that heavy and the man - criminal or not - clearly has thought about the design of computer systems in a great deal of detail. His thinking around namespace design has certainly influenced my own.
Well, off the top of my head, the main distinguishing technical feature of Reiser FS is that it has optimizations for the case of many small files. Most of the other systems you might hear about (XCF and so on) sound to me like they're tanks intended for industrial use: they're great for something like big database servers where you'll often need to deal with huge files, but Reiser FS alone was intended to be able to scale down as well as up.
Note: the distinguishing feature of ext3 is that it is backwards compatible with ext2, and there isn't much reason to care about that now, if there ever was.
The thing that I really like about Reiser 3 as opposed to ext3, is that there's some relationship between the listed size of a directory and it's contents. In ext3 everything is rounded up to an even number of blocks, in Reiser 3, empty directories look empty.
As for Reiser 4, I haven't used it yet, but it sounds like there are a lot of interesting ideas there. As I understand it, there's a system for attaching metadata to files (like ID3 tags for mp3 files, except that you can use them on any file, and they're stored externally, not inside the file).
There's also some way of writing extensions to the filesystem that sounds cool...
The advocate is just as guilty as whomever the advocate may have defended without reservation.
When O.J. Simpson finally goes down, so will Shapiro and Cochran; we'll even dig one out of the grave just to tar and feather his dead ass, while the other two will just get dragged behind a truck while alive.
Nina's mother was taking care of them -- whether she had legal custody or not, I don't know, but obviously, both parents were unavailable -- and she walked, taking the kids with her to Russia. Whether the kids wanted to go to Russian, I have no idea, and I doubt they were asked -- but if I remember right their grandmother said they were scared of the USA and so on.
One of the contrary theories is that Nina is still alive and well and hiding out in Russia, having embezzled a pile of cash from NameSys, she's setup Hans for her murder. The fact that her mother and kids are over there now helps support that theory.
Meh. From what I've read I'm just slightly off of being in the middle on this issue. What I mean by 'slightly off of being in the middle' is that I lean towards Reiser being not guilty for two reasons. First, the case and 'evidence' are just all over the place. It's all too weird and really doesn't prove much to me. Last, I have this weird notion of sticking to fellow nerds and giving (most) of them the benefit of the doubt. :)
It's great until you have any kind of file system fault. Then the total lack of complete recovery tools turns your data into mush! EXT3... so far so good. LVM... Still needs more tools.
nagging wives of the world beware!
They're using their grammar skills there.
..for the book. "If I Did It" by H Reiser
Hans shot first, 'nuff said!
But HIS mother is alive and is in this country. Certainly, having them live with their grandmother in the US is preferable to the grandmother in Russia.
Hint: check the spellings ... carefully ... very carefully ...
Infuriate left and right
One defense is that Hans was taken by a woman looking to get out of Russia and move to America. Look! She divorced him as soon as she got her papers!
Another defense is that she moved back to Russia to get away from him.
Then there's the Russian gangster defense.
Don't forget the serial murder freind defense.
Infuriate left and right
This is entirely tongue in cheek but...
They let OJ go, and he was a worthless individual.
They should let Hans go on the fact that he actually had something revolutionary to contribute to the world.
Uh, if I had to guess I'd say they were sent to be with their grandparents because their father was the prime suspect in their mother's murder. From the perspective of the authorities, their theory is the correct one and they would not want to later be proven correct and then be blamed for allowing his kids to have been with him the whole time. They are taking precautions. From their point of view, it's better the kids change cultures than be dead or taken hostage by Reiser. Again, this is from their perspective, not Reiser's.
this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom. -- Lincoln, Gettysburg Address
Breakfast served all day!
Are they his kids (biologically)? Why not their grandmother in the US? This sounds bizarre to me.
The embezzlement, cheating, mail order bride affiliation, all look pretty damned shady to me. I was highly suspect of Hans when I first heard he bought those criminal investigation books (I think they were first published in the news as "murder manuals"), but this article is saying he bought "criminal investigation books" FIVE DAYS AFTER she disappeared? At that point, when you've just discovered you're a primary suspect in a murder case, EVERYONE should start reading up on the process.
when the subject whose heinous probable crime is being whitewashed is a member of the Linux community?
Interesting.
Reiser: "I didn't kill my wife."
Cops: "I don't care!"
Blood in the home and Reiser buying forensics technique books after the disappearance doesn't faze you guys in the least... any wacky theory that vindicates the guy, you'll latch on to?
In many ways, this reminds me of the OJ Simpson case and the black community's defend-at-all-costs reactions and "theories". Regardless of the actual evidence, any straw available is grasped at to keep their hero a hero.
because Reiser4 delivers what "winfs" could not
Even if Hans Reiser is innocent, ReiserFS got murdered as a result of the Police suspecting Hans Reiser murdered his wife.
:) j/k
How do we know this isn't some plot by Microsoft to murder open source one developer at a time?
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Let me assemble your "evidence" here:
That is the evidence. Now, here is where your speculation starts -- and by "speculation", I mean "making shit up":
I've never had to live in my car, so you must never have had to, either, right?
Just because you never had to remove the passenger seat doesn't mean it's impossible for anyone to, or that the only reason you could possibly ever have is to clean blood from it.
So what?
There are any number of reasons you might be living in your car. Money is only one, perhaps the only you can think of. Or perhaps he needed the money for something else.
The most convenient way to put money in anyone's hands is electronically, yet US people write checks all the time. Why should Russian programmers be any different?
And now we move to the exercise in creative writing...
And you just made all of that up.
Go look up the definition for "reasonable doubt". We send people away when there is no other reasonable explanation for the evidence.
Well, fuck you. I've had a wet car, I've removed the seat from a car, I've had friends run from the cops (stupid thing to do, but still, doesn't make them guilty), and I have carried more cash than I should. And I've never killed anyone.
Maybe he did kill her, but nobody knows. Because nobody knows, and because we're in America, he should walk.
Unfortunately, because we're in America, you also have committed no crime by being an ignorant hate-spewing fucktard.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
What the hell happened to "innocent until proven guilty"? Yes he is an insane motherfucker, yes he bought books about murder trails, but that still doesn't prove anything.
Also, knowing that he is a programmer, he doesn't think like must people do. That makes him look crazy. But it still doesn't prove anything.
The US legal system seems more and more broken, and if he is sentenced to jail without further evidence, it just proves to me what I thought all along.
I am not saying that he is innocent, but I am saying he should be treated like he is until he is proven guilty!
Your server will develop communication errors when dealing with child processes
When the server crashes, no logs or other evidence will be left behind
Financial transactions will get inexplicably rounded down
No matter how messy of a person you are, you won't leave bloodstains around the server.
Your i18n code will be able to handle cyrillic easily. But the day you finish it, it will disappear.
Your server might spontaneously relocate itself to a van down by the river.
I can never be too sure whether they're hiding something.
I mean, what if they knew where a terrorist had hidden a nuclear weapon that was about to destroy a major American city? Oh, they may say they don't know anything, just going on and on with their "Daddy, Daddy, please stop! Why are you hurting us? *gurgle*", but are you willing to risk the lives of millions of innocent people?
Being President is hard work, but somebody has to do it.
- there was blood
- there was motive
- Reiser bought books on how to stymie forensic homicide techniques
- the cops think he did it and have evidence they haven't made public yet.
Make up all the fantasy stories you want about her being in Russia, but may I ask where your evidence is for that outlandish claim? Given the post-9/11 crackdown on international travel from the USA, surely there must be some record of her departure? Or do you have another conspiracy theory to address that?
As a Russian doctor, she can't just work in the US; when she made the decision to marry an American and move to the US, she basically decided to be a stay-at-home-mother.
But you're right: why would an "intelligent, highly educated doctor" make this choice in the first place, unless there were other motives?
The moderation on this article's comments is dismaying... it just shows that moderators aren't concerned with accuracy and are fueled by personal sentiment and general bias.
Several posts which contain far more insight and interesting commentary than the ones currently at +5 are languishing at 1 to -1 for no reason besides the fact that they express the opinion that Reiser is guilty.
How many times were you molested?
Listen p*ssy. I'm sure your the same homo that posted earlier about alf's boner and you just want to remain anonymous fo
When asked if there were other factors that contributed to the division in their marriage, Reiser replied, "Well, she slept with my best friend." Hans believes that his childhood friend Sturgeon introduced his wife to drugs and exotic sex in a twisted act of revenge. "He offered to have a relationship with me and I said no, cause I'm just not gay," said Reiser. "He was jealous, and then later he saw me and Nina having this family, and I think he saw it as something that he couldn't have. ... When people feel rejected they do crazy things."
Doren sees the relationship between Sturgeon and Nina differently.
"When Hans went to Russia, he presented Sean to Nina saying, 'This is my best friend. He's here to take care of you. Whatever you need, go ask Sean,'" said Doren, adding that she never worried that Sturgeon was involved in Nina's disappearance. "He loved her dearly," she said.
Sturgeon won't talk publicly until after the trial, but after Nina's disappearance he made a bold confession to police, so outrageous that the judge won't allow it to be mentioned in court. He claims to be a serial killer, but said he is not responsible for Nina's death.
I know him as the faggot that did as much to save the free world and Russia from the Nazi tyrany as any single human on the planet
I don't see why this is flamebait? I thought it was funny, and true.
This is my sig.
When you see insipid AC comments getting +1s just for opposing something the general public here doesn't want to accept, you know the moderation system is totally fucked.
I can't believe some of the comments under this article that are at -1 for no reason, and likewise, comments positively moderated for no other reason than they support Reiser.
If anyone wanted to karma whore, this is for damn sure the topic to do it under. Just post a pedestrian conspiracy theory, or better yet, a Rube Goldberg-esque justification for every aspect indicative of his guilt, and voila.
If those comments express the opinion that Hans Reiser is guilty, then they are displaying obvious bias, and that in itself is a good reason for them not to be modded up. I don't know if he is innocent or guilty, but all the evidence which has been made public is circumstantial and there is no evidence of Nina even being dead, therefore no-one on Slashdot can state that he is guilty (or innocent) without knowing evidence which hasn't been made public.
But that's nonsensical. Show me where in the Slashdot FAQ it states that comments should be neutral and bias-free. This is article-commenting, not journalism. The purpose of comments is for users to express their personal opinions.
Clearly every single +5 modded comment arguing that Reiser should be given a break, is innocent, etc. is motivated by the personal bias of the author.
Where bias isn't needed is in moderation. If a comment qualifies as interesting or insightful, whether or not the person with mod points personally agrees, it needs to be modded up. Likewise, if a moderator happens to disagree with the sentiment being expressed, that is no excuse for modding down. That isn't happening here. It's kinda disgusting.
and sometimes the only way to get that is to get a divorce. Which is what he did. Why do you need to demonize him for that?
to believe that he killed her.
He seems like the least suspicious person involved in this case. I can't imagine why the police let this go to trial with so little evidence. If they win, it's by pure luck or incompetence in Reiser's defence.
Legendary pro-wrestler, known as a master of various styles from Lucha Libre to Japanese Strong Style; after he murdered his family and suicided, his legend was immediately tarnished. A once-idolized wrestler, after this tragedy, became a pariah -- instantly.
Today juries as a whole tend not to be intelligent enough to know what facts are, and are swayed purely by their emotions that are played upon by the attorneys. Who ever puts on the best show wins for the most part.
Dont believe me? Who has time to sit for weeks on a jury? Most often its people that dont have regular jobs or a family to support, so the odds of getting an idiot is pretty high. ( not always of course, but the % is higher )
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Even if he is innocent, and proven as such during the trial, his life is ruined. Rather effective if you believe this was orchestrated by the wife to get back at him in revenge.
Revenge is common in bad divorces, and this smells like revenge to me.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
For all intents and purposes, you are a fucking moron, FWIW.
Turns out, a human body is something that can be disposed of in a permanent manner. For example you could incinerate a body. You'll notice that cremation is a popular method for dealing with earthly remains these days, and all it leaves is a bit of ash. Well it would work just as well for a murder victim as someone who'd died of natural causes. Or there's the ocean. It's really large, really deep, and has a very active ecosystem that will go to work on eating remains. Weigh a body down so it doesn't float, let it go down where it'll never be found.
There's plenty of ways that someone who was skilled and thought it through could get rid of a body permanently. There's even more ways that aren't nearly so permanent, but still might elude investigators. As such if you require a body to get a murder conviction, you'll essentially give a free pass to anyone who is good at it. So long as they dispose of the body, that's all the defense they need "You never found a body, can't try me for murder."
But I do pwn them . . . regularly.
Oh that's right. I just went there.
I do so wish the whiners would learn some law before spouting off.
Innocent until proven guilty applies only to a court room. What it means is that the burden of proof is on the prosecution, the state. The defendant doesn't need to prove anything, only to try and disprove their case. In fact, if they made a weak case, the defense could say nothing and prevail. It is a legal matter for where the burden falls and how to consider evidence, that's all.
It does not apply to the media or to individuals. You are perfectly welcome to think whatever you like of whoever you like. For example OJ Simpson is officially innocent of the murder of his wife. A jury of his peers found him innocent, the matter is closed. He may never again be tried for that crime. As far as the legal system is concerned, he's innocent. Me? I think he's guilty and got off. I'm allowed to do that, and I'm allowed to say that.
Now as for jail yes, you can be arrested and taken to jail before trial. In fact, you are quite likely to be taken to jail any time you are arrested. At that point there's a bail hearing. See the thing is, people are known to skip out on going to court once they know they are charged with a crime. So to prevent that you are taken to jail. Then, a judge hears on the subject of bail. In the case of some minor crimes, you may be released on your own recognizance, meaning they want nothing form you, they expect that based on who you are and the crime in question you'll show up for trial. Usually, they want some bail. This is a cash, or cash + loan amount that you give to ensure you'll be there. If you skip court, they keep the money. The more serious the crime, the more they want, also the more assets you have the more they want. They also weigh in things like how much of a flight risk you are (for example if you have little ties to the community and travel often).
In some capital cases, there is too much risk of flight and the judge denies bail, and just orders remand. That means you stay in jail until trial. It's not all that common, but it happens. Some people are a very large flight risk and it is allowed for serious crimes. It is also occasionally ordered in cases where the accused may be in danger from vigilantes or the like.
Nothing about this case is at all out of the ordinary here, and I don't just mean with current law, I mean with the way law has been practised in America for a long time. If you get charged with murder, the court is going to at least want a large chunk of change (which you'll stay in jail if you can't come up with) to ensure your presence at trial and perhaps may just deny bail entirely. This is because it turns out that a good number of people accused of murder, if left with all their money, decide that it might be a good idea to take all that and flee the jurisdiction.
The way i understand things, is that initially Hans' mom had cutody of the children. Then after the wife disappeared, and since Hans was a murder suspect they awarded custory to the wife's parents who took them to russia.
I am very doubtful Nina took off to Russia. First of all she would have had no way of knowing whether Hans would be suspect and whether her parents would win custody at all. She had no control of him ripping out his car seat buying a bunch of murder books and all the other behavior that made him a suspect. If he was not a suspect, then she would just never be able to see her kids again.
Also if Hans really did not murder her, then he would hire a cheap Russian private eye to just hang around her parents' and look for her. Therefore, even in russia, she would not be able to see her kids. If that was the case, then what was the purpose of her big conspiracy?
Turing (most likely) killed himself because he was found guilty of the crime of being a homosexual. He was consequently stripped of his security clearance and given female hormones as a "cure," causing him to grow breasts. A story almost as fucked up as whatever is really going on with Reiser.
Yeah...I know what you mean...I wouldn't say she would 'never' see he kids again...more like an unknown period of time. I don't see why Hans' parents ability to be responsible toward the kids would be eliminated by the fact that their son was juuust a suspect, even to this day he is still not guilty right? I know that family law is quite different than criminal law, but knowing that Nina's mom doesn't have any ties to this community here, and more importantly, strong ties to her Russian community (practicing medicine with the rest of her family is a pretty strong tie) would present a flight risk, just the prospect of guilty should not be enough to permit their grandmother to take the kids wherever she wants effectively eliminating the possibility of Hans seeing his children at least during the trial (he probably had to surrender his passport until exoneration), and potentially ever again. How's that for a run-on sentence...anyway, my point is that it's not a huge stretch to believe that she could have orchestrated the events with the help of a few people...nor is it a stretch that he actually did it. If I were on a jury panel, I'd want to have some sort of evidence of foul play beyond a shopping bag by a car with its door left open in a parking lot. Blood? Witness to some badness? I say that a lack of evidence is NO EVIDENCE at all. Certainly, some things can be proven, but not enough to convict. Even in the article, they state that the cops have only a CIRCUMSTANTIAL -story- at best. I bet the cops can build a circumstantial case against anyone for anything if they really want.
How many people get convicted on circumstantial evidence and (forgive me Nina, if you can hear me) no body?
And the whole "we're going to ignore the crazy guy claiming to be a serial killer" just isn't right either.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=mIrMVPnxa04
Last I checked, they don't issue exit visas for the US. If she is a US citizen now, she could have just gone, and tracking that would involve looking through a lot of airline records.
My name is Christopher. If I buy a ticket as C. R. Travers, that is OK. If I buy one as Chris Travers, that is OK too. Depending on her identification, she might even have been able to book a flight with her maiden name. In short it is harder than it would seem to check this. Yes, it is possible to check, but probably not exactly trivial.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
That would seem to be pretty strange, having the children being afraid of the U.S., considering they were both born here...
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
can you imagine circumstances where suicide would be a responsible choice?
I can. Just because the vast majority of suicides are at least arguably not responsible choices doesn't mean it couldn't be.
What if you are terminally ill and this is a way not only to reduce your own suffering but also reduce the medical expenses for your care? Is this sort of suicide still deplorable?
What if you are committing suicide in order to spare your family from persecution over your alleged involvement in something? Is that still as deplorable?
Can you think of any others?
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
For instance, much is made of the fact that the woman is a doctor, from a family of doctors who apparently are well off, so she is not a gold digger.
Except that they met while she worked as a translator for a dating service. A dating service involving a russian female and an american male, can you say mail order bride?
Mail order brides are just a small step away from the human trade, I am not saying that ALL of them are criminal, but it is a grey area.
Why does a doctor work for such an agency? That automatically sends alarm bells ringing.
On the other hand, why was he living out of his car? And why remove a seat to do so? If he was that poor that he could not afford to rent even a single room, surely he could not afford to vandalise his car either.
The fact that the father warned his son of suspicious stangers sound weird as well. Who would want to follow him? Mail order bride agencies are often shady but they are in the business of getting russian women hooked up for a fee, not murder or trailing people. Fake russian papers, sure, operations on american soil, no.
Then there is the money he carried. Why would he need to carry the money with him? Russia doesn't have banks? Russians prefer to be paid in dollars? Did he also have his plane ticket already since he claims it was for his russian employers (was he going to mail the cash?)
Truly, truth is stranger then fiction. If you tried turning this into a manuscript your editor would tell you to stop being silly.
I just wish reporters would start to actually question what people told them.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
am I the only one who remembers Hans Resier as a complete asstool?
How often is it that we see a person, who is obviously an arrogant jackass who turns out to be, well, a murdering arrogant jackass.
Doesn't seem too off the mark for this smuck to me. Shrug.
I believe the technical term your looking for is "petty bullshit". IANAJ though. (Jedi)
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
It is wacky that you think drops of one's own blood are an unusual feature in locations where one normally resides. It is wacky that you think buying a book on police investigation after the police start investigating is something.
Regardless of the actual evidence, any straw available is grasped at to keep their hero a hero.
If the police and prosecution are your hero in this case, then I understand your statement. Most people are wondering why this is in a court of law at this point. And why the judge fucked up so monumentally to allow the children to be absconded to another country.
Hans Rieser's explanation is at least plausible. Very attractive women often begin to believe that no rules apply to them.
I would also state that many people in the ex-USSR also believe that no rules apply to them. It's not just attractive women. A few years ago I was engaged to a Ukrainian woman. We didn't get married though. Long story short - her control freak ways and constant anger killed our relationship. I can tell you as someone who can speak Russian relatively well and has spent a lot of time in that part of the world that the USSR just ruined these people for the most part. It left behind a large number of completely amoral people as its legacy. Many Russian, Ukrainians, Belarussians, etc. have no problems with lying, stealing, etc. They use some weird psuedo-Robin Hood type justification for their actions - "rich" foreigners (all foreigners are rich to them) won't miss it, so they can lie and steal to get it. There's also this weird sense of entitlement that seems to permeate the entire society over there. Many people, maybe most of them, have completely unrealistic attitudes about money and wealth. As Jim Morrison sang once, "We want the world and we want it now!" These people have no concept at all of delayed gratification and they want to be rich today. Not tomorrow, but today. You really cannot comprehend how many people are on the take over there until you go there. Justice goes to whoever pays the most. You can literally get away with murder because you can buy off the cops to botch the investigation or pay off the judge to dismiss the charges.
Yes, it's true that the women are really beautiful over there. They take care of themselves, aren't fat, and care about their appearance in public. But there is a dark side to them that gets overlooked. They are controlling. They grow up learning that all men are unfaithful drunks so they don't respect men at all. The whole concept of forgiveness is foreign to them. I can tell you that if you ever make one of these women mad, so will never in a million years forgive you for whatever it was, no matter how trivial. She will bring that stuff up again and again and again. Many of them have no problems with sleeping with other guys. They will rationalize it by saying that they don't love the other guy, so it's OK to sleep with him because it's only being unfaithful if you love the other guy. There are a very few women who aren't like this who are basically normal by Western standards, but the odds are that you'd never meet one if you go over there.
My personal opinion is that she is not in Russia. Unless she got a forged passport (always possible I suppose, but unlikely I think), there would be a trace of her traveling by air. It's also not like these women to disappear. They are vindictive beyond belief. What a Russian woman would do is stick around and watch you suffer in court in a divorce trial by taking your money and kids. And honestly, it is almost impossible to find a Russian person who would willingly leave once they have a taste of life in America. I've known of women who came over almost totally unable to speak English and married guys they met through the internet. These marriages often go horribly wrong because neither party can speak the other's language and they don't know each other well. In these cases, the woman stayed after the marriage ended, even with very poor English skills. So whatever happened to this woman, I'm pretty sure she is not back in Russia.
That is one of the most insightful replies I've ever seen on Slashdot. It fits with everything else I know.
My grandparent post is still marked "Off Topic". Crazy.
It should also be noted that he purchased the book AFTER the disappearance, which is documented by receipt. It would seem more likely to me, IMHO, he would have purchased the books before, as the whole thing -- if he did it -- seems to clean NOT to be pre-meditated.
-- Political fascism requires a Fuhrer.
I can't speak to the blood, but as to the second, that's classic INTP (and probably a few other along that axis) response; if I was involved in a murder investigation, I'd feel compelled to study all sorts of related material.
Vintage computer games and RPG books available. Email me if you're interested.
While the details of the trial are interesting, is there any effort to fork ReiserFS? There was a tremendous amount of excitement back when the details of version 4 were out, and I would expect the code to be maintainable by the right group...even though he was funding the development, you'd think there'd be many interested in working/improving/implementing it.
Of course a name change would be in order...
fak3r.com
a horrible place
Hans Reiser's father has the coolest Ramones name in the universe: http://www.flapjackempire.com/ramones/
Last I checked (and IANAL), one needed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty of a crime to convict. You might have a point if this were a wrongful death suit.
What I (and many others have said) is that this does not seem to be possible based on the evidence which has made it to the media.
1) Purchasing books on forensic techniques etc. after you are known to be the subject of an investigation? Doesn't sound like premeditation to me.
2) Motive? Sure. She had motive to do stupid and cruel things to him as well. Divorce does that.
3) Blood? What I have heard so far is not enough to suggest that she was actually killed. Suppose they did get in a violent fight? He would be guilty of a crime, but not necessarily murder. Or suppose the blood was just the result of a minor accident? No crime.
4) I cant comment on non-public evidence here. But it seems to me that the basic trend is that she is missing. Nobody knows if she is alive or not. In a case like this, *if* she was murdered, Hans would be the primary suspect, and there is some circumstantial evidence which may implicate him.
So, the real question is that there does not seem to be any direct evidence that Nina has been murdered which has been brought to the public attention. I think that such evidence if it existed would have been disclosed, if only for family and friends benefits. Unfortunately "If she was murdered, Hans almost certainly did it" is not good enough in this case. And I suspect that we will *never* get clear answers in the matter. Which really sucks for Hans if he didn't because there will always be a black stain on his reputation.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
have someone who has committed crime after crime. You sentence that person to a balanced punishment for a murder as a first step to rehabilitation, and after the individual gets out, that individual commits another, more gruesome murder.
Do you put that person away for life without parole (the low-cost solution)?
Or do you put that person to death?
Which is more humane? I argue that the death penalty, especially for certain very limited classes of criminals is a good thing, if only it could be applied justly and fairly (which I don't think it is at present). I think this problem is something that can be solved, but people are not interested in real solutions (I think that the first thing which needs to be done is to reduce the level of choice that a judge and jury have in deciding who gets the death penalty, and make these a matter of objective matters only, such as prior violent crime convictions, etc. Just because someone seems "cold" and "unremorseful" means absolutely nothing).
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
there was fairly strong evidence that someone had been killed and dissolved in the sulfuric acid (the gallstones), there was a confession, and there was strong evidence that he had fraudulantly sold various properties of the victims. What made that particularly horrible was the idea that he did this simply to pay gambling debts.
None of this applies tothe Reiser case. Is there even proof beyond a reasonable doubt that Nina was murdered by anyone? My point is that this sort of thing should be required *before* a murder case can proceed. I don't care if they have a body or not, or whether there is some suspicious sludge in the bottom of a drum of acid containing human gallstones, or if there is a substantial pool of blood, or some other strong evidence that the person was dead.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Let the police and courts deal with interpreting evidence rather than biased posters. Here's the real question: Why should anyone believe "she's in Russia"?
Any evidence whatsoever for that implied and overtly-stated claim? Otherwise, let's just write it off as a nutty, baseless, conspiracy theory. Deal?
QED.
1) After divorce proceedings were started, she got her daughter dual citizenship (with Russia) 2 months before she disappeared she completed the same process for her son. Obviously she planned to return to Russia and take them with her (there is no reasonable explenation for that action).
2) There were clear issues with her boyfriend (Sturgeon) and also with her estranged husband.
3) She does not appear to have had a license to practice medicine in the US as far as I can tell.
4) As far as I can tell, getting permission to take the children back to Russia would have been difficult due to resulting custody disputes (they can't easily just fly back for the one week night a week or the every other weekend, can they?).
So, after she disappears, the only witnesses who can testify to Hans's actual behavior that weekend (his children) are whisked away to Russia never to return. AFAICS, they are not coming back to testify at the trial. If she had money (which she did if Hans and Ramone are to be believed and she embezzled money from the business), there is no reason she couldn't have turned to the Russian mafia for help. The point is that as far as we know. all her plans were executed and her children were taken to Russia, so the only question remains whether she made it back there alive or not.
Note that this poses a few interesting issues. 1) The children are the key to any alabi by Hans. Their removal casts inherent doubt as to whether he could have killed her as police have suggested. 2) If there is evidence that her minivan was driven by someone other than her (as in fingerprints, DNA, or the like) this might be significant. Also if she was using ecstasy, that would also explain the wild driving, I would think. This represents a serious unanswered question. She could have bought the groceries specifically in order to frame Hans. People do strange things during divorce.
Ultimately things boil down to the following possibilities:
1) Nina is alive, lying low in the US until things die down, when she will return to Russia
2) Nina is alive in Russia
3) Hans killed Nina
4) Someone else killed Nina.
I would suggest that, based on the evidence we know of now, all four theories are not without doubt. We don't know if Nina is alive or not, where she is if she is alive, and, if not, who killed her. I would personally suggest that we will see an acquittal and the case will drop off the news, the kids will stay in Russia, and only if we are exceedingly lucky, will we ever learn the truth beyond a shadow of a doubt.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
I never have mod points when I need them.
Only in places with pervasive fundamentalist religions such an statment would make sense.
To compare murder with suicide is perverse to say the least.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
But with the latest testimony by Rory Reiser - it really doesn't look good for Hans:
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/hans_reiser_trial/index.html