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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.
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.
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
Alan Turing murdered himself (or perhaps he was poisoned).
Is he known as a murderer or the father of computer science?...I forget.
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.
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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.
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.
I know. Meg Ryan was the real genius.
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."
of course trying to kill yourself is crazy so you also have an automatic insanity defence.
Sometimes killing yourself is the rational thing to do, not that you'll ever see a bible thumper admit it out loud except when they get to be publicly flaming hypocrites and tell everyone how various criminals should do the world a favor and just kill themselves.
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.
Yeah. Would you choose a neurosurgeon who pokes around people's brains in his spare time? I wouldn't.
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This kind of thought is the reason that we have the system that we do. Just because someone is a complete and utter dick doesn't mean that they're guilty of murder. Controlling? Probably. Abusive? Perhaps. But there are a lot of controlling, abusive dicks that don't murder their wives. There's evidence against him, but it has to go through a court first. I was saying this to others in the Scott Peterson case, too, and it's important that it not just be a formality.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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How come? Do you think it's likely that he will murder someone else?
You actually want to end a persons life, with no means what so ever to undo your judgment if it happens that these circumstantial evidence are proven wrong?
c++;
We're not talking about laws. We're talking about morality. Sure, for insurance purposes and others, it's good for the laws to disincentivize suicide. But it ain't as bad as murder, and if that's not self evident to someone, that person is psychotic (seriously, they would have to be mentally ill).
You own yourself. You don't own other people. Therefore, whatever is wrong with ending your own life is totally different from destroying someone else.
Turing is a genius, and often geniuses are tortured. And probably suffering from an illness. It's even possible to say Turin did not kill himself, but rather died of insanity. That is why he is still loved.
Reiser (if this story is true) is a bastard.
I don't know what fascist dictatorship you live under, but in my part of the world it's "innocent until proven guilty".
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.)
Suicide is usually distressing for family and friends. It is sometimes the result of mental illness. But it is not "deplorable".
You own yourself. You don't own other people.
That is highly dependent on culture - In many cultures, you don't own yourself, the land or community owns you. If you suicide, you're stealing from the community you exist to serve.
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...
Europeans are all whores.
:-) Besides, I'm an American, and Nationalism is perfectly acceptable. It's only an insult to you, because you make it one.
will be dead quite soon. Sign yourself up for the needle, TJ. Death penalty
That's not a dickish comment, its just sort of a statement of fact!
Now, if I beat and killed my wife and neglected my kid, then yeah, I'd deserve the death penalty, but, calling Europeans whores, why that's all good. See, those are just words...
This is my sig.
Whichever it is, I'm happy to have had the chance to serve on a jury; I had the opportunity to diplomatically convince my fellow jurors to ignore the preconceived rantings of one prejudiced hick in our group and instead look at the evidence for the crime under consideration. Indeed, this hick happened to conclude guilty as I did - the difference was that I came to the conclusion based on what was presented to me throughout the case and after hours of discussion with my fellow jurors; this dolt had come to the decision by first recess on day one.
Oh, I get it. You're trolling. You almost got me there.
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
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.
"... overwhelming statistical evidence that predicts Reiser would in fact kill his wife." The thing about statistics is that they do not model the real world; they model a world in which almost everything works according to logic, and patterns actually make sense. So (for example) there is a 99% statistical probability that, in the situation Reiser was in, any given person would murder his Wife. That just means that 99% of the time his wife would have been murdered. When you start using statistics to determine guilt, you are beginning to move into the world of the Minority Report, where people are locked up for crimes that they would probably have committed. "REISER, wife abusing bastard who is guilty of first degree premeditated murder ..."
That's another problem with basing things on statistics: you move from "he probably did it, based on the knowledge we have of what other people in a similar situation have done" to "he did it, because the computer/expert/math says so. All hail the computer/expert/math!"
I will admit that all of the things you are saying make a bit of sense - enough to confuse an average American into killing someone who is not technically guilty (guilty until proven innocent, remember?), and that it would all make sense in a perfect and logical world. But humans do not act logically most of the time - or, for some people, any of the time.
Everything is subjective.
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.
Freedom is based on ownership of your own body and mind. You get to define what your life means to you, and no-one else. To state that suicide is deplorable is to deny an immediate consequence of the most basic principle of freedom.
Suicide is usually distressing for family and friends. It is sometimes the result of mental illness. But it is not "deplorable
Suicide is deplorable because people have responsibilities to the family and friends they leave behind, and in choosing suicide, they have abandoned those responsbilities.
This is my sig.
What you say is true, but you gotta admit that things do not stack up well for this guy, at least as seen from our seats at the peanut gallery.
So by all means, due process and all that, but I am sure that you realize that utter abusive narcisstic dicks are more likely then other kinds of people to do things ... that utter abusive narcisstic dicks do, which includes rage and spousal homicide.
Is it possible that a byzantine set of coincidences coupled with his completely weird and kooky behaviour, accompanied by Tom Clancy-nesque plots by the Russian Mob, hitherto unknown serial killers and Houdini-like spiteful wives all conspired to make poor Hans look like a murderer? Sure, but in my view that is just a tiny, wee bit improbable.
What gets me here is something that could be a fruitful field of sociological study: for some reason Slashdot crowd appears to show some unreasoning, instinctive sympathy towards this guy. Is it because he is a programmer? Or a socially-misfit nerd? Or because he did post on lklm? Is there some sort of deep-seated, subconscious resonance that some here feel with him which results in their need to defend him?
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
"Child support" was never dictated - the custody battle did not get to that level. She alleged that he failed to support the children, but he disputes that. He was under serious financial hardship, but he claims she stole from him. As for the restraining order, it means nothing. There was no proof, and a huge percentage of divorce cases have the woman getting a restraining order. Twas a good troll until the last sentence. I mean come on, who in this day and age is so naive to believe a woman in a divorce case? I guess, maybe if you are like 14 and living under a rock - but me, I was well aware of these shenanigans even when I was in high school.
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
Twas a good troll until the last sentence. I mean come on, who in this day and age is so naive to believe a woman in a divorce case?
./ has a lot of international posters that pretty much buy into Reiser's "she was terrible" defense, as if, she deserved it. So, that's what liberalism -really- is!
Boy, that's an openly sexist admission, if I ever heard one. So, that's really what we have here, is that,
This is my sig.
how funny is it that Nina is totally trolling here
No, she's dead, because Hans killed her.
This is my sig.
Breakfast served all day!
None of my friends and none of my family have a "responsibility" to me not to end their lives. I support and love them, and I am happy to help them through any tough periods, but I do not believe that any of them should either live or die for me.
In fact, "as my friend, you have a responsibility to me to live" has to be one of the most nonsensical, contradictory lines you can deliver to a suicidal friend. You might never deliver it, but if you're thinking it yet have to hide it, you've demonstrated to yourself how inappropriate it is.
Do you have some great insight into why it is we should even kill the ones that have ever hit their wives or children?
Keep in mind that you are bestowing on people of minor assaults the death penalty. That tells me that you have a rather perverted sense of justice, and can't fathom what the repercussions to people would be.
Hitting your wife and child is not a minor assault.
Why don't kill yourself and do society a favor? You have clear signs of a dangerous personality disorder. Physician, heal thyself.
And you call yourself society? Do you do that before or after you beat your wife and children?
Just checking.
This is my sig.
Suicide is deplorable because people have responsibilities to the family and friends they leave behind, and in choosing suicide, they have abandoned those responsbilities.
Wow, what selfish family and friends is all I can say. Yes, sometimes it is deplorable, but sometimes life is just not worth living. Consider those terminally ill people in serious continual pain, who decide that committing suicide is better than being in permenant pain and dying soon anyway. Do they really have a responsibility to their family and friends, or do theit family and friends have a responsibility to them? Responsibility like not keeping around the terminally ill person simply because they're unable to let go?
And back to the GP post about Alan Turing. Have you read about what happened to him? That's deplorable.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
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.
None of my friends and none of my family have a "responsibility" to me not to end their lives. I support and love them, and I am happy to help them through any tough periods, but I do not believe that any of them should either live or die for me.
If your friends do not have any sense of commitment or responsibility to you, and vice versa, then I would question the worth of your friendship. It may suck, as you say, to be my friend, but a friendship with you would be entirely pointless.
This is my sig.
Reiser: "I didn't kill my wife."
Cops: "I don't care!"
Wow, what selfish family and friends is all I can say
Selfish that you want people that you love to live? Selfish for a son to ask his father not to blow himself away but to try and find a job so he can see him grow up? Selfish for a daughter that needs her mother, a husband who needs his wife?
Those are some lazy, worthless relationships, you advocate. The best of human bonds are unbreakable... what you have, is pure Walmart family.
This is my sig.
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.
Define "statistically likely" and maybe we can agree. However, there are millions of households that have abusive relationships, but we don't have millions of murders, even over the course of 20 years.
You can never go home again... but I guess you can shop there.
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.
I see your point but suicide is simply one possible result when a persons coping mechanisms are outweighed by the situation they are in, be it a result of circumstance, events or mental instability.
It is of course horrible for loved ones left behind but one of the most commonly experienced feelings is not anger but guilt because people often believe that they could have done something to prevent it, which is not always the case.
A thistle is a fat salad for an ass's mouth...
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!
Dicks that abuse their wives are statistically likely to kill them.
and
Answer the question - do domestic abusers to live.
You are a complete fucktard.
All emotion, zero critical thinking skills.
YOU don't deserve to live. People like you are so easily manipulated, you are responsible for the deterioration of modern society.
Wife-beaters hurt their families, fucktards like you hurt the entire country.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Yes, and it's just coincidence that she had an affair with a confessed serial killer (and said affair was supposedly the basis for the breakup of their marriage.) And it's ALSO a coincidence that Nina managed to secretly obtain Russian citizenship for her son two months before her disappearance (she secretly obtained Russian citizenship for her daughter years prior.) And it's also a coincidence that both children are now in Russia under the care of their maternal grandmother, who refuses to send them back to testify even though they were with Hans at the time during which he was supposedly committing this murder.
I don't know if Hans ever loved anybody. And I don't know whether or not he's an asshole like so many people claim. But to claim, without qualification, that he killed his wife in the face of such insanely suspicious circumstances is reprehensible. Maybe the police are hiding some crucial piece of evidence, but so far the only evidence they've presented is that Hans was a dick, and that he was living out of his car.
Oh yes, and that Nina was in his car while suffering a hangnail or recently-popped bleeding pimple or some such. (i.e. Single-drop blood detection means NOTHING.)
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!
Wow, I guess you've never seen anyone suffer. I've watched my grandfather waste away for years; quite frankly, its a crime that he's still alive in his condition. I work in EMS and fire, every once in awhile, we get called to the scene of a suidice, and yes, it is a tragic thing, but when you think about the conditions some of these people are living in, or the pain they are constantly in, then I don't see a problem with it.
This signature was left intentionally blank.
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.
Turing was also gay. Horrible habit, 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?
Could you please shut the fuck up?
As other people have pointed out in this thread, you are the one being selfish.
You notion of what friendship is is like an asshole - it's full of shit and it stinks.
Retard.
I think, therefore I am an Atheist.
- Reiser bought books on how to stymie forensic homicide techniques
Of course, one of the first techniques such a book should tell you is, don't let anyone know you're buying books on how to stymie forensic homicide techniques.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
Is it possible that a byzantine set of coincidences coupled with his completely weird and kooky behaviour, accompanied by Tom Clancy-nesque plots by the Russian Mob, hitherto unknown serial killers and Houdini-like spiteful wives all conspired to make poor Hans look like a murderer? Sure, but in my view that is just a tiny, wee bit improbable.
I would point out that in criminal cases, the burden of proof is "beyond reasonable doubt". The only people who have a right to judge that are the judge and jury when the case reaches court.
FWIW, IMO Hans Reiser is guilty at the very least of being bloody stupid. If his marriage was falling apart and he knew he was likely to lose his temper with his wife, then hanging around any more than is strictly necessary is damn foolish.
... but they still find her blood on his person. I didn't hear of any of her blood on his person. And I am quite sure that you would find my blood, my wife's blood, and some other people's blood at my home. What more do you really need? What about evidence?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.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
I agree, I'm not a whore I'm a manslut :P
;)
Come here hot women
This is the sig that says NI (again)
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.
Actually, back then "gay" and "tortured" were not too far from each other.
USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
it's flamebait if your a homophobe, it sickens me what happened to Alan Turring especialy after the contribution he made to the world; he easily saved millions of lives by leading the team that broke the enigma cade.
Apocalypse Cancelled, Sorry, No Ticket Refunds
Well, it's always disappointing to see people who you respect for their good work (if you consider reiserfs good, which I do) getting accused of something heinous.
As irrational as it is, I'm sure many of us would feel less inclined to use reiserfs if reiser was found guilty.
Well, there's always zfs at least... is anyone writing a zfs patch for linux? If not, why not? I did a quick google search, but I couldn't turn up anything.
-------
Incite and flee.
I think Aristotle said it best, "To run away from trouble is a form of cowardice and, while it is true that the suicide braves death, he does it not for some noble object but to escape some ill."
You're making this up as you go along. Minute amounts of blood in the (alleged) victim's home is meaningless.
He bought books on *detective techniques* and he bought them *after* the disappearance, not "how to get away with murder" before the fact.
Any "secret" evidence the police has is apparently too secret for even the trial judge.
I don't have to come up with evidence to the contrary -- that's not how our criminal justice system works. If the prosecution can't come up with sufficient evidence to disprove alternate theories, the guy can't legally be convicted. The defense is under no obligation to prove anything.
If you claim I am making up conspiracy theories, please point specifically to any such conspiracy theory, or first learn what the term means.
As to your belief that anyone leaving the country must leave proper records of their departure, this is ludicrous. I suggest you take a stroll down South from San Ysidro and find out how much ID you need to leave the US.
Guns don't kill people; Physics kills people! - John Lithgow as Dick Solomon on Third Rock From The Sun
Reiser's defense isn't "she had it coming", it's "she's not dead, she's hiding out somewhere."
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
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 ----
You're simply lying, Anonymous Coward.
You have no argument based upon anything I've actually written, so you make stuff up and attribute it to me. None of what you've written is true, nor is it based upon anything I've written.
Why don't you try to actually *read* what I've written in this thread, instead of resorting to your ridiculous, baseless, ranting.
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 ----
The same goes for Reiser. His file system is really good. Don't let unrelated things influence your judgment of that.
Oh and the AC is an idiot for saying that
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."
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.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.
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?
Maybe you are right, I never was too impressed with ReiserFS, primarily because I am a veteran of the IT trenches and I have scars to show for every new and fancy technology meant to replace some mundane, pedestrian, not very sexy, but exceedingly tested, well understood and backwards compatible solution.
So I was plodding over the years with ext, ext2, ext3, and they haven't let me down once yet in all that time. In the days before ext3 one could make serious accusations based on lack of journalling, but once ext3 rolled around, the only thing remaining is filesystem performance. Which while critical in some cases, has only marginal impact in many of the typical IT concoctions and which can also be drastically improved by just a modicum of common sense in userland organisation of what is actually stored and where on these file systems.
So in short I tend to prefer well behaved and compatible even if older and slower over fancy, sporty, constantly changing, just a bit too self-important and more then once out of control cutting edge stuff.
And so you are probably right, that all of the above probably adds some colour to my skeptical outlook on a guy who is responsible for a piece of software with just such characteristics.
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.
Things haven't changed too much if you look at it from the sphincter's perspective.
;)
Oh yeah, I went there.
Yeah and look on the bright side, since all of his work is Open Source, someone else that sees value in Reiser4 can pick up the torch and run with it. Although I haven't seen that happen yet, it may someday.
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
If Einstein murdered his wife, he would be a murderer, not a genius.
... "he'd be Orenthal the bus-driving murderer."
No, he'd be a murdering genius.
Just like Robert Blake is now a murdering washed up actor.
In the words of Chris Rock "If OJ Simpson had been a bus driver"
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
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.
Your example reminds me of Einstein's pal, Fritz Haber.
He drove his wife Carla Immerwahr nuts by demanding she be a housewife (like Reiser) while she a chemistry researcher with ambitions, and it was not a happy marriage.
She committed suicide, coincidentally right after Haber introduced gas warfare in WW1 and killed 5000+ allied soldiers at the first front line trial in Ypres.
(Look it up on wikipedia, it's a colorful story.)
Interesting detail : Fritz Haber received a nobel prize for the "Haber" process for production of ammonia.
He also invented zyklon B.
Irony : Haber was of jewish origin.
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.
Don't let these AC rants get to you... they are by uninformed and ignorant individuals who have not really looked at the situation, and would rail against anybody just for the sake of an argument.
BTW, you are spot on with what you have said here, and disclosure laws would have required the police to at least release any of this "secret evidence" that supposedly exists.
Hans was arrested because he was a "hacker" (therefore criminal) and a bit too "smart" for the police. They are scared of people like Hans because he is more intelligent than they are, and does things that are just a little different than the "typical" individual. Hans is clearly somebody who doesn't necessarily conform to societal norms, and (has been pointed out in reference to his net postings) quick to engage in an argument. Police certainly don't like individuals who fight back in this way. And I'm speaking (unfortunately...but not for murder) from experience. I've had my own run-ins with police for some of the most incredible and stupid reasons.
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
In Turing's case, the torture which propelled him to suicide was Britain's forced chemical treatment of his "condition", homosexuality. He had the choice between prison, and a program of estrogen therapy.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
it's flamebait if your a homophobe, it sickens me what happened to Alan Turring especialy after the contribution he made to the world; he easily saved millions of lives by leading the team that broke the enigma cade.
Not just broke Enigma, either, but, also, arguably invented computers in the modern sense to do it. It's like, let's invent something previously impossible to do something that is completely unimaginable, and do so under the pressure of wartime. It's arguably the greatest intellectual feat of the second world war.
This is my sig.
OK, I'll bite. Yes people that beat their wives deserve to live. Why? well because beating your wive is not a capital offense. So there. Even the law agrees with me. We do not kill people for beating their wives. Killing their wives? That's a totally different subject. And, BTW, it really doesn't matter if it is their wives, children, neighbors or strangers in a bar. Physical violence is physical violence and we already have laws regarding it. And the penalties do not involve capital punishment for such offenses. So your question/assertion is stupid! Yes emotion is a human trait. But logic is the kingpin. A totally emotional and devoid of logic person is the kind of person you meet in insane asylums. Now I know that's where you like to hang out but still - most of us here in the real world are rational beings... And there's a big difference between "you think it's OK to beat your wife" and "you think such people should be murdered by the state". Hmmm... The George Bush thing... What's the Usenet law that says that arguments eventually boil down to some non-related thing about Hitler? I forget it. Seems to me like we can now officially substitute "George Bush" with "Hitler"... And/or perhaps 9/11 truthers/government conspiracy theories...
Thank GOD! For a minute there, I thought you were going to say there is nothing wrong with the republican part
And Democrats are better, how? The Reagan revolution laid the framework for a lifetime of general economic and military expansion of the United States. The liberal socialism that came before it was a complete and utter failure.
This is my sig.
Hans Reiser's father has the coolest Ramones name in the universe: http://www.flapjackempire.com/ramones/
So? I'm pretty certain you could find traces of my blood in both my house and my car. I still like to think I'm alive.
Damn reluctant zombies....
Word. I worked in a hospital as a helper, and I often got the impression that people hardly ever really allow someone dying to even say goodbye in any meaningful way (don't mention letting them die before the doctors run out of things to stick into them, that's just taboo), and THAT is walmart family. The nurses seemed more involved in the grief of patients and family, like some sort of buffer... but then again we don't practice taking life and death seriously, do we. We'd rather espouse platitudes that are worthless and even insulting.
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
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Atually, I think Hans was arrested for a different reason.
The police probably have a reasonable belief that a Nina was probably murdered, have done their best to gather evidence, and most of the evidence points to Hans. They probably know they don't have enough to convict, but want to be seen "doing something." THerefore they have taken a real long shot hoping that the jury will be sufficiently gullible to believe them.
In all fairness, if Nina was murdered, Hans would be the most likely suspect. Unfortunately proof beyond a reasonable doubt isn't very tolernat of the word "if."
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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
Suppose the father or mother is dying of a very painful cancer which can only be treated using prohibitively expensive (and torturous) chemotherapy.
I agree that many or most suicides are irresponsible. But does that mean that all are? Are there any counterexamples you would like to mention?
Finally I would also add that I have lost friends to suicide. In one case, it was serious, chronic depression, and in the other it was a bad reaction to medication combined with PTSD (from her tour of duty in Iraq). In neither case would I suggest that these people were competent to choose to die, so blaming them for their actions misses the point. While regrettable, these sorts of things deserve compassion rather than shame. If someone is competent to make a decision to die and has a rational basis for that decision, then I am not one to question it, but the cases you mention are cases where medical (not moral) intervention are required.
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
Listen pathetic loser, I haven't supported him.
[Try reading that again]
Listen pathetic loser, I haven't supported him.
All I've been doing is describing how weak the government's case is, which is something on which the press have made numerous commentaries.
You're so blinded by hatred that you create ideal enemies out of anyone even slightly less fervent than you. I'd really hate to live in your world--I'm sticking with the real one.
And don't tell me to be courageous, ANONYMOUS COWARD. This is one time where the shoe really fits...
1) She got Rory his Russian citizenship 2 months before she disappeared.
2) The children are then allowed out of the country with the idea that they will return. They do not.
3) The children are not allowed to testify at the trial by the Nina's mother.
4) She is accused (by both Hans and Ramone) of embezzling money from Namesys.
I am not saying she did, and I am not saying she didn't, but one possibility is that she became afraid fo Sturgeon, wasn't happy with Hans, and decided that the best thing to do was to return to Russia with her kids. This would only be really possible if she or her mother had full custody rights. Note that there is also accusations of Sturgeon trying to teach the kids to like pain, and getting Nina introduced to ecstasy. All in all, it is not an irrational choice to make, and not one which would have been beyond her means to do without messing up the fact that she is missing (and Hans is at least a suspect, etc).
In the end, unless Nina is found alive or dead, we will probably never know with any certainty what actually happened.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
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
In my view, no, it's not a matter of your culture's consensus. Either you positively own yourself or you do not. I asserted that you do, and I'm right. The cultures you are talking about are wrong. Your society only has a right to your help insofar as you join society and benefit from its laws and goods. If you want out, that's equitable.
And even if you're right, there is no fair comparison from suicide to murder, as even in those cultures that you reference, you still are the primary victim of your own death, and to murder is simply morally worse than to kill yourself, on the basis of damages.
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.