Slashdot Mirror
Hans Reiser Leads Police To Nina's Body
jlmcgraw was the first to alert us that Hans Reiser has led police to the location in the Oakland Hills where he buried the body of his wife Nina. (We discussed the rumor that he would do so last month.) SFGate.com reports that remains were recovered but have not yet been identified. Reiser is to be sentenced on Wednesday. CBS5 claims that Reiser made a deal for a reduced sentence, to 15 years, in exchange for revealing the body.
I feel bad for the kids - that is such a messed up situation.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
All you people who said "I still don't believe Hans did it" -- do you doubt it now?
My blog
Even after the conviction, given the circumstantial case some doubts remained. This certainly removes all remaining doubts.
At this point, fuck him. Good luck to his kids.
Personally, because I'd have liked to have seen her turn up alive and well. A living person is better than a dead person any day.
Sadly, circumstantial evidence or not, the guy was clearly guilty as all hell from minute one. Even the weirdest, most anti-social geek I know doesn't do the strange shit he pulled in the days following her murder.
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
No matter how much we argue or try to make "programming jokes" about this incident the truth is these kids' mother is dead, their father is going away for a long time and they are going to be the ones bearing one of the heaviest burdens in this particular case.
He duped a minority, methinks.
There were lots of us who thought he probably did it: the "she ran away" excuse just never floated, and there was too much stupid circumstantial excuses (I don't care HOW much of a geek you are, doing BOTh the seat AND flooding the car AND saying you slept in the wet sopping car is just ridiculous)
Test your net with Netalyzr
This is just one more thing for the 15 year olds who think they're e-badasses because they use Linux to brag about.
"Oh yeah? Who designed your WinBlow$ file system? Just some monopolist? My file system was designed by a murderer. I totally have you beat."
Oh, come off it ... there was no reasonable doubt. Doubt that isn't reasonable isn't sufficient to let him walk, and the *jury* - not the prosecutor - got it right.
Bottom lne: Hans tried to bullshit them, and they saw through it. If he had shut his moutn, maybe he would have walked, but he thought he could "put one over" on a bunch of "dumb jurors."
He forgot that jurors don't have to be smarter than the accused - in his case, all they needed was a baloney-meter.
Fuck you, ShaunC.
Don't you mean "fsck you?"
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
The correct English idiom is a bit different: the proof of the pudding is in eating. It is interesting to note that the idiom is paradoxical. What proof would remain, if youa ate Nina's body?
I hope he gets his in prison.
As understandable as the sentiment is, that won't bring Nina Reiser back. I've lost a loved one to a drunk driver, and it isn't much comfort that the bastard went to prison. I hope his kids get a little bit of peace from the fact that at least they have a final answer on the matter, and that they'll be able to visit their mother's grave. This is just really sad; everybody involved loses.
512 MB RAM, 20 GB disk, 200 GB transfer, five datacenters. $19.95/month.
all the people from LA.
last time I saw that sort of hopeful thinking it was kobe and people saying he didnt cheat on his wife. And he did. We all love our heros, dont we?
Well, heros are usually only good at the one thing they are touted for... im not asking kobe to fix my car for sure.
With all the smart people around here, why would anyone think that a computer programmer is any less suceptible to violent acts than any other?
I mean, is it just because computer geeks are well known as the most well adjusted people on the planet? :)
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
Maybe he was angry with her because she was having an affair. He bought a gun out of anger, but didn't want to kill her. He goes home, to find her with her lover. In a struggle with the lover, the lover the lover wrests the gun from Hans. He's got the gun pointed at Hans, who reveals that his wife has in fact ANOTHER lover. In anger, the lover shoots Nina and flees. Hans has no idea who he was, and Nina dies sadly in his arms. The only way he can avoid blame for the murder (having just legally purchased the gun) is to bury Nina himself. In the end, Hans feels responsible for her death, having driven her away from him due to his obsession with work, and of course, the foolish decision to buy the guy. He sees only too late that he should forgiven her for such a minor human flaw, and if he had, then he would still be with her.
Was Fabio on the cover of this book?
I think the conviction (first degree murder, i.e. preplanned) is still ridiculous. The evidence for preplanning was very weak. Part of it was that Hans bought a book about murder investigations--but he bought it AFTER Nina's disappearance. You'd think someone planning a murder and wanting to foil an investigation would buy the book BEFORE doing the deed. Another part was that he removed his cell phone battery to avoid being tracked--again AFTER the disappearance. I've been neutral about Hans's possible innocence (60% of Wired Magazine readers in a survey thought he was innocent) but I always thought the premeditation charge was ridiculous. If it was preplanned there are a million less crazy ways he could have done it, such as hiring professionals from Russia or at least making better arrangements to get rid of the body far away. I've felt it more plausible that he lost self-control in the heat of an argument, found himself with a dead wife and a potential giant heap of trouble, and then, after the fact, decided (unsuccessfully) to try to outrun/outsmart the police. That would be second degree murder rather than first, if I remember my Perry Mason reruns.
If I were separated from my wife and bound by a restraining order, and she was having sex with her new lover IN MY HOUSE, I would probably kill her, too.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows." - Bob Dylan
After being out-of-order in court, he spilled the encryptic details about where his wife was stored and from there on, the jury knew he was corrupted. Strangely enough, due to his cooperation, officials didn't even have to raid his home...
You know what though...? inode he was a criminal all along.
There, I'm glad to have gotten that out of my system.
Fact: Everything I say is fiction.
The urge to divide everything into two -- black or white, friend or enemy, capitalism or communism, christian or heathen, disorganized or organized -- is a recognized mental oddity.
In most cases, there is not only a sliding scale (or shades of grey, if you like), but multiple axes.
That we so easily try place things in a two-bin system might be because it makes it easier for us to make decisions.
Hans Reiser is an odd man out in many ways, but can't be explained this easily. He's not just a disorganized person. He's a complex person. And if you'd ever talked to him, you'd know that in some things he is meticulously organized, while in others, not. Binning him like you did seems silly, but if it makes it easier for you to deal with, hey, whatever sinks your bathyscaphe.
Agree. I think where he went wrong was killing his wife. Also, optimizing for edge cases which rarely appear standard operation...
DATABASE WOW WOW
Remember to enable soft updates before executing this plan.
While there ARE certainly plausible ways that he could have been not guilty AND known where the body is, I would imagine that if he was innocent and knew where the body was that he would, oh, I don't know.... maybe.... CALL THE POLICE AS SOON AS HE KNEW WHERE THE BODY OF HIS DEAD WIFE WAS.
I mean, if it was me, I'd be trying to find all of the evidence to clear my name that I could - and if I hadn't done the killing, you better believe I'd be demanding the police go all CSI on her body and the crime scene before we even get to the point of me being arrested. The fact that he knew where the body was and kept quiet is an indicator to me of intent.
And while indicative of intent, it is not further proof of his guilt. At least it DOES bring closure to the family of the deceased.
--endcycle--
Why doesn't he deserve that?
Gandhi? "An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind"? We are not barbarians.
The punishment is the prison time, not rape, let along the long, drawn-out suffering that is an AIDS death. Yes he's a terrible person for having killed his wife, yes he should be punished and no the 15 years he's getting probably isn't enough for someone who can kill their wife and then calculatingly lie to the police and a jury about it for so long. That doesn't mean he deserves to be raped. At the very least it's mob justice, and the reason we have courts to hand out punishment instead.
The sick individuals gloating at the idea of anyone being raped are no better than the people they wish it upon.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Unless she was pointing a gun at him and it was self-defense, there is *no* excuse.
If a woman makes you angry, are you going to hit her?
If she cheats on you, are you going to kill her?
Will you give her the same rights in return? How about if she just cuts your pecker off instead and feeds it to the dog?
How about if it's your kids? If they don't listen to you, are you going to wack them to "teach them a lesson"?
It's called murder because it wasn't justified. Blaming the victim is just fucked up.
From the article, the location where he dumped Nina must be approximately here:
http://maps.google.com/maps?q=37.833531,-122.182109
~Ben
If I were separated from my wife and bound by a restraining order, and she was having sex with her new lover IN MY HOUSE, I would probably kill her, too.
And if you admitted as much to the cops, and testified to such in court, the district attorney would likely seek no more than manslaughter.
Crimes committed in the heat of passion, when the murderer is truthful with the police and penitent, aren't always prosecuted as a capital crime. To do so costs the state much more.
Hans Reiser insisted on lying about every aspect of the disappearance of Nina Reiser from the moment he was questioned by police. The DA had no choice but to prosecute it as a murder case - and given the facts in evidence, he was convicted because he made a lot of stupid mistakes - typical for someone who commits a crime of passion and then thinks they can cover it up because they're so much smarter than the 'average bear'.
If Reiser had even pled guilty and recanted his story after lying to the police and being arraigned for murder, he might have gotten off with a much lighter sentence for murder. But he waited until the sentencing phase, after he'd lied to the court.
No, Hans was so much smarter than everyone else. Now he's going to go to prison for 15-to-life - and lying to the court as Reiser did means his parole hearings aren't going to go well for him, if he even survives 15 years in prison.
Yes, I remember it well... particularly when he jumped up and shouted:
"It's chowdah! CHOWDAH!! Say it RIGHT!!!"
"I'll kill you-- I'll kill all of you, especially those of you in the jury!!!"
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Only on fucking slashdot does the one guy who offers a rational opinion NOT get modded up. So far the first page of comments is mostly jokes and inane - "I'd murder the bitch too" remarks - all getting modded up.
Assholes, this is a real person with a real family, not some fucking Manga or Anime or video game.
This doesn't prove he's guilty. He may have had knowledge of the murder, and use that to reduce the sentence. I still have faith that the real story will come out.
He is the O .J. Simpson of nerds. We can't believe he's guilty because he's one of us.
I do find it worrisome that several jurors basically said that they convicted him because they didn't like him.
Gut feelings, intuition, aren't just random whimsies, they can be your subconscious' way of communicating its' analysis of anothers' subconscious body language and uncontrollable facial subtleties.
You can't take the sky from me...
"Maybe Nina had it coming."
Maybe he made her make him kill her.
Maybe she made him make mer make him kill her.
Maybe he made hr make him make her make him kill her.
No, fuck you, a line has to be drawn, and it's drawn at the point where you fucking kill someone.
Or worse, we don't care if he's guilty because he's one of us.
I'm all for innocent-until-proven, believe me - but he's been PROVEN guilty at this point. Clinging to an idea of his innocence is a weird sort of cognitive dissonance I can't get behind.
--endcycle--
The urge to divide everything into two -- black or white, friend or enemy, capitalism or communism, christian or heathen, disorganized or organized -- is a recognized mental oddity.
In most cases, there is not only a sliding scale (or shades of grey, if you like), but multiple axes.
So there are people who divide everything into two, and those who do not?
Stop right there. There is no such thing as "making X kill Y". Reiser always had other options than murder, and phrasing it as "she made him do it to her" is blaming the victim for the actions of a murderer.
No, let's not lay off. Vast numbers of other people extricate themselves from fucked up situations like Reiser's without resorting to murder. Vast numbers of people don't get into fucked up situations like Reiser's because they see problems developing and deal with them rather than hiding behind a geek badge that reads "proud to be aspie". Vast numbers of people suffer through their problems and don't brutally murder someone, hide their body, maintain their innocence in court, and then use their knowledge of their crime to get a reduced sentence for something they're totally, 100% guilty of.
Well, you do.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
This doesn't prove he's guilty. He may have had knowledge of the murder, and use that to reduce the sentence. I still have faith that the real story will come out.
Yeah, because the "I didn't do it but I know where the body is buried" argument will look so good on appeal.
I will refrain from calling you "Jackass" on the basis that you are taking the piss.
>Who knows? Not you or I. So let's lay off the fire and brimstone, what do you say?
Lay off? He murdered a woman! There is NO excuse for murdering someone... ever.. He didn't kill her, he MURDERED her! Soldiers on the battlefield kill, people who work on death row kill, doctors who administer euthanasia kill... Hans MURDERED her. The evil and selfishness of a person who would murder another, just to make their own life a little bit easier, can never be justified.
Sometimes, things really are black and white, right and wrong, evil and good.
In a US Criminal court the answer would be: Rarely. Like maybe if the judge and defense attorney were both asleep kind of Rarely.
A jury given the choice between a greater charge and a lesser charge will almost always convict on the lesser charge. Both when conviction on the greater charge may be more appropriate AND when returning a not guilty verdict may be more appropriate. To the point where a DA with a weak case would LOVE to be able to give the jury a 'middle ground' to compromise on. This is clearly prejudicial to the cause of justice.
Not to say it doesn't happen but usually a lesser charge will be dismissed in pretrial motions.
You might be wanting the "Post Anonymously" button there, dude...
>>I'm all for innocent-until-proven, believe me - but he's been PROVEN guilty at this point. Clinging to an idea of his innocence is a weird sort of cognitive dissonance I can't get behind.
Yeah, in the previous Slashdot articles on this case, it was bizarre watching people defend him simply because he wrote a filesystem that some of us use. You're right, it is cognitive dissonance, as the human brain has trouble putting a person in two different boxes for Good and Bad.
Of course, now that he's admittedly guilty, a different mental mechanism will come into play, and half his defenders will post on here that they thought he was guilty all along, and what's weirder, they will actually believe it. Dunno what that phenomena is called - maybe it could be called a false memory.
What people seem to forget is that while any one of these things doesn't mean anything by itself, they add up to a bigger picture. People keep trying to deconstruct individual facts. That's not how it works at trial. It isn't a case of "every fact must prove, on it's own, that this happened." They are all considered together. So while there is reasonable doubt for a given fact, there's not when they are all presented together. For example, suppose that someone claims I stole their laptop. They didn't actually see me take it and I don't currently have it, however the following is known:
--I was the last person seen in the area of the laptop before it was discovered missing.
--I had no reason to be in that area, and can offer no plausible reason as to why I was.
--There were security cameras in the area, however I moved in such a way to always avoid their lines of sight.
--My fingerprints were found around the area where the laptop was prior to going missing.
--I was was observed carrying a small box, that would hold a laptop from my car back to my house, after leaving the area.
--I suddenly have an amount of cash consistent with the sale of such a laptop that I can provide no plausible way for getting.
--I am discovered to have books on the topic of security systems, and removing tracking software from a laptop.
--Several pawn shop owners said I inquired about the discretion they exercise in relation to goods they buy.
At some point in there, it becomes pretty clear that I am the guy who stole the laptop. Any given fact on it's own isn't a big deal. Like getting extra money without a good explanation isn't indicative of theft, maybe I just got it in a way I'm not proud of. However taken all together and with no plausible alternative explanation, it really isn't reasonable to doubt that I stole the laptop. Just because I don't have the laptop itself, doesn't mean a jury can't find beyond a reasonable doubt that I did steal it.
Same deal in the Reiser case. You take all the evidence together and there is very little doubt. Any that remained he did a good job of erasing with his testimony. One of the things juries can certainly weigh is how ceredable the alternative explanations the defense and defendant offer are. If they offer a very credible, plausible explanation, well then that can make reasonable doubt, even in the light of strong evidence. However if they offer extremely unbelievable stories, well then the jury can infer they are lying.
Part of the problem is people here do the geek extremist thing and start taking ANY amount of doubt to be reasonable. No, that's not how it works. You don't have to prove a case beyond any doubt, because there's always some doubt. I mean there is some doubt that the sun will come up tomorrow. Very, very little, but still some. Just because it has always happened in the past, doesn't mean it will for sure, beyond any doubt, happen in the future.
So the proof in court isn't about absolutes, it is about reasonable doubt. That means is it REASONABLE to doubt that someone did it. The jury said no, it isn't, and it looks as though they are correct, it wasn't.
There were some posts that contained it outright, others that you could see it in the subtext. It is something not surprising since there are an above normal amount of people here who have trouble dealing with women. It leads some of those people to dislike and distrust women. They believe Hans simply because they find it more likely that a woman would screw over a man than vice versa. Now combine that with the OSS hero status and you really have a situation that blinds them to the facts.
I think you'd find that had the situation been reversed (Nina killing Hans) that there would have been no doubt in their minds she was guilty, in no small part because of her gender.
"In Italy, this is permitted in certain circumstances"
IANAL, but as an italian this is what i know:
up to the seventies there was a law (number 587) on "honour killing", where you could kill your wife if they were having an affair and you would get a much reduced sentence because you were defending the honour of your family.
for the same reason you could somewhat get away with killing your wife if she just was behaving in an unappropriate way, or your sister if she was dating an undesirable man or if she lost her virginity before the wedding.
but it was even worse than that: when divorce was socially unacceptable (and legally forbidden) this law was used by some also to just get rid of their wife (as depicted in the movie "divorzio all'italiana").
this law was more popular in southern italy and in rural areas, but it was not the only one:
you could also beat your wife to "educate" her (ius corrigendi).
a raped woman could be forced to marry their raper (as depicted in the movie "sedotta e abbandonata)"
contraception was strictly forbidden.
and so on.
but NOW the italian law, while still lacking, is not as bad as some decades ago. if you commit a crime of passion you get a sentence for manslaughter or something like that.
If his ego was worth a damn, it wouldn't have bought a wife from a russian agency.
There is no excuse for murder. Initially my take on this case was that maybe he did it, or maybe he didn't - we just don't know. And now I'm pissed I even gave Hans that much.
What dissapoints me about Hans Reiser is that he didn't do the right thing. He didn't confess and in an attempt to avoid taking responsibility he tried to get away with it. A remorseful, intelligent man would've realized that a life with a murder on your conscience i just as bad as prison, maybe even worse. It suggests to me that he didn't feel guilt for what he had done, and I think it's a testament of poor charachter. He only confessed when he had nothing more to loose.
To further your point - I appreciate humor, but when the reality of what happened to Nina sinks in jokes seems to be of very poor taste. Nina was strangled by the father of her children and then buried to rot in a 4x4 foot grave, nearly upside down. Conjure up an image of what she looked like when they dug her up after all those months and then crack a joke. What - not funny anymore? Assholes indeed.
I think you misunderstand something about the Right to Remain Silent. The warning from the police when you are arrested is "anything that you say can and will be used against you" not "anything you say may help exonerate you". It is NEVER helpful to talk to the police when you are a suspect, even if you are innocent. You can say things that are truthful when you are innocent and still make you look like a murderer. Always talk to a lawyer first. Always. No matter what your circumstances are.
Burn Hollywood Burn
Surely the time to decide to do the right thing would have been just before he murdered his wife, not during the aftermath, when clearly no amount of "right things" would rectify anything but the most comparatively trivial aspects of this situation.
(1.21 gigawatts) / (88 miles per hour) = 30 757 874 newtons
We didn't get it because we don't know what the fuck you're talking about. Most likely because we aren't the kind of guys that go to musicals. You might have better luck in the Apple section.
Mod parent down - wrong.
http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/reiser-defense.html
"Hans and Nina met in 1998, in Russia, when he was overseas hiring programmers. He picked her out of a mail-order bride catalog, where she was advertised as "5279 Nina.""
Wheel in the sky keeps on turnin'.
Don't forget that investigators will most likely lie to you, in an attempt to "trick" you into saying something to incriminate yourself. Its all ok for them them to lie to you, but you can't lie to them. Strange isn't that?