5 ms·

Hans Reiser Guilty of First Degree Murder

79 points by mcxx 18y ago

xenoterracide 18y ago
:( Here I was hoping he didn't do it... I hope it doesn't reflect poorly on the open source community. Next thing you know they will be calling us murderers.
- staunch 18y ago
  > Here I was hoping he didn't do it... We still don't know if he did.
  - xenoterracide 18y ago
    guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. although, I suppose I don't really trust the US justice system. I've seen people I know innocent get convicted recently. But his behavior is unfortunately highly suspect.
    - tptacek 18y ago
      It's guilt beyond a jury's reasonable doubt, not guilt beyond your reasonable doubt.
      - ardit33 18y ago
        yes. But there are still people that believe Elvis is alive. No matter the evidence, some people can't be convinced something has happen, if they don't want to believe in it. Where do you draw the line? In this case, 12 people of the jury thought he did it. Since I wasn't in the trial, and didn't see the evidence, I have no recourse but to believe that there was reason enough to convict him. This was not a racially charged situation, so it is hard to argue that the jury was biased, or anything like that.
        michaelneale 18y ago
        Whilst not racially charged, as SwellJoe points out, Hans (and others) have personalities (aspergers??) so different from any member of the jury he may as well be totally foreign to them.
        deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
        xenoterracide 18y ago
        my gf has aspergers and although she acts strange she wouldn't go to the lengths that hans did. which is more than a little strange especially given the circumstances.
  - ardit33 18y ago
    "We still don't know if he did." -- well the us justice system thinks he did it, that's what matters.
- ken 18y ago
  Open-source got off easy: "Hora speculated that Reiser might have choked his wife, based on little evidence except that Reiser was a black belt in judo, a martial art where choking is a specialty." Judo, meaning "gentle way", is apparently the martial art that teaches you how to kill your wife.
  - deleted 18y ago
    [deleted]
  - ComputerGuru 18y ago
    I can just imagine it: "And Hans Reiser was heard arguing with his wife - just like he'd practiced for years on the mailing lists of open source communities where overly-violent and highly-sensitive people are known to dwell and practice verbal abuse quite often."
    - menloparkbum 18y ago
      You just described the OpenBSD mailing lists quite accurately.
      - rbanffy 18y ago
        Well. Just wait until Theo's wife goes missing.
  - rbanffy 18y ago
    As a kid, I had a few years of Judo training and I have never learned how to choke a person. From my experience, Judo is about catching or throwing opponents off-balance (often with their unwilling help) and disarming and immobilizing them so they can't harm you. Of all martial arts, Judo is one of the gentlest. I can hardly imagine using it to kill someone who does not really want to get killed. As for Mr. Sturgeon, misreporting a crime, specially if it's done with the intention of compromising a murder investigation, is a serious offense. I am not sure why the police didn't get him. And, while we are at it, it is a real no-no do screw your friend's wife. This case begs for an appeal.
breily 18y ago
Regardless of whether he did it or not, this seems like a failure of the justice system - sentencing someone to 25 years in prison for a murder in which there is "no body, no crime scene, no reliable eyewitness and virtually no physical evidence". He must have had an absolutely horrible lawyer.
- ashu 18y ago
  The article states that he refused to let his lawyer act and took charge of proceedings himself many times, so it is not clear how bad the lawyer was.
- rms 18y ago
  His lawyer told him not to take the stand. Instead he testified for 11 days.
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    Once you take the stand, you have no control over how long you will be on the stand. The fifth amendment insures you don't have to testify if it will hurt your case...but if you agree to be questioned, both sides get to ask pretty much all the questions they want within the bounds of the law and the patience of the judge. But, yes, it's clear that him taking the stand was the worst possible thing he could do and he apparently fought loudly and repeatedly with his lawyer over this decision.
    - tptacek 18y ago
      To be clear: his lawyer was opposed to him taking the stand.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    The very first thing he did when he took the stand on cross from the DA was to admit that he had lied about a material fact of the case, allowing the jury to be instructed that the rest of his testimony was untrustworthy. He did a pretty spectacularly bad job on the stand. I'm surprised he went down for murder 1, but there was a pretty damning array of things lined up against him. Aspergers or not, he admittedly ripped up and flooded his car while trying to actively hide it from the police in a storage locker; he claimed a 6-inch(!)-wide blood stain on a bag (not a sleeping bag, but its pouch) in that car was from having sex; and finally, he built his case not on the premise that he didn't kill Nina, but that she was still alive --- a very simple assertion for the DA to knock down.
SwellJoe 18y ago
I worked with Hans and his team a few years back on an experimental ReiserFS-based filesystem for Squid (still the fastest Squid ever, as far as I know), and find the whole thing difficult to believe. He very likely suffers from Aspergers ("suffers" in this case, since it seems to have led to his conviction due to his insistence on taking the stand and deep misunderstanding of human nature and how his behavior would appear to others...it seems to be a beneficial condition for some folks, ordinarily, at least with regard to productivity, but when it comes to a jury they aren't likely to be your peers), or a similar condition, and I always found his famously obstinate behavior more amusing than threatening. I, of course, have no idea if he committed the crime, but I find his bizarre explanations far more believable than the jury. He really is just that kind of person...a bit paranoid, extremely analytical, and significantly smarter than the vast majority of people. This is true even among extremely smart folks, like those on the Linux kernel mailing list, he's probably among the smartest in the conversation. But he's also lacking in many social skills to the point that his involvement in a discussion usually hurts more than helps--reading his numerous arguments on the LKML is like seeing a warm up for his bizarre performance on the stand. So, one could make the case that Hans' feeling of superiority, which might be hard to avoid for someone as smart as he is, and his paranoia combined to produce this very result. Perhaps he figured he'd get away with it, because he's so much smarter than everyone else. And perhaps his paranoia convinced him that Nina had plans to steal away with his children and he'd never see them again (there is some evidence that this was actually her plan). Since the average American has a rather deeply ingrained mistrust of really smart people, his particularly ornery and superior attitude certainly didn't help him. I genuinely like Hans, and think very highly of him as a developer...so I'm not going to spend a lot of time dwelling on the uncomfortable thoughts of whether he committed the crime or not. I'll just hope that if he did, he gets some help for his mental illness while imprisoned (I'm assuming that if he did it, it's due to his paranoia being far worse than is apparent in his public persona), and that he's able to accept responsibility for the act. And, if he didn't do it, I hope that something comes out that exonerates him before he's too old to enjoy a return to freedom.
- ardit33 18y ago
  "significantly smarter than the vast majority of people." -- And criminals too. If he really did it (IF), he did a good job hiding the body.
Alex3917 18y ago
My theory has always been that this is Sean Sturgeon's tenth murder. Number nine was Nina. And the plan for number ten was getting Hans convicted of murder and put to death by the state. The ultimate thrill for the serial killer who no longer draws excitement from mere axe murdering and dismemberment.
- greendestiny 18y ago
  Hans couldn't possibly be a murderer despite the evidence, but you believe some guy killed 8 people with no evidence whatsoever? They might not have found Nina's body, but the supposed other 8 victims don't even have names. It was just a bullshit story to cast some doubt.
  - Alex3917 18y ago
    Just to be clear, I don't actually believe that. I just think it's a cool idea, but I didn't want to log out and make a new account just to post it as a short story. Speaking of which, isn't it time to add Paul Graham to the programming language creator or serial killer game?
    - SwellJoe 18y ago
      He's too cute to believably be a serial killer. tlb and rtm on the other hand...especially now that tlb has shaved his head.
      - randomhack 18y ago
        I am not sure why .. but PG sometimes reminds me of the fat majin buu.
        SwellJoe 18y ago
        For anyone else that has no idea what "fat majin buu" means (it's surprisingly hard to Google for, as most links are dead or tiny): http://www.comicvine.com/buu/41116/costumes/&c=8591 http://www.comicvine.com/buu/41116/costumes/&c=8591 I don't see the similarity.
ardit33 18y ago
I have to say, his wife looks cute and very normal. He looks weird. No wonder the jury was sympathetic to the prosecutors claim. It is just normal human reaction.
keating 18y ago
Via Reddit: "Never mind the fact that her ex-lover states that he's killed multiple people in the past, her family has ties to russian organised crime, and the kids have gone to St Petersburg, most likely with their mother."
jrockway 18y ago
I'm going to have a bit of a laugh when Nina comes back from her vacation to Russia.
kf 18y ago
Summary of the evidence, from /.: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=537280&cid=23231328 http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=537280&cid=23231... 1. Reiser showed up at his childrens' school the day after Labor day, the first school day after Nina disappeared and a day when Nina was supposed to pick up the kids. The prosecuter claims he was making sure the police didn't show up to ask where the kids' mother was. Reiser claims he went there to add his mother, Beverly Palmer, to the list of people that could pick up the kids. He was scheduled to pick up the kids the next day. 2. Hans' Honda CRX was missing the front passenger seat. It went missing sometime after he got a speeding ticket (after Nina disappeared) and before the police seized the vehicle. 3. Hans admits his hosed out the inside of the car. He removed the seat and threw it away. He also removed the carpet and disposed of it. 4. The car was also missing a piece of trim that Hans admits to throwing out. 5. Han's admits he was trying to hide the car from the police. 6. Nina's van was found three miles from Hans' home. Her cell phone was found in the van with the battery removed. 7. When Hans was taken into custody his cell phone did not have a battery in it. On the stand he claimed that he did not remove the battery from his own phone. He later admitted he lied about that. He actually removed it frequently after Nina disappeared. 8. Along with his cell phone, Hans was carrying his passport and several thousand dollars in cash. 9. Reiser was seen hosing down the driveway to his mother's home shortly after Nina disappeared. 10. The police found two books on murder in Reiser's car. He had purchased them with cash shortly after Nina disappeared. 11. He paid a $5,000 retainer to a criminal defense attorney just days after Nina disappeared, while the investigation was still a missing person's case. He didn't even bother to try calling her to find out if she was alive before he shelled out for the retainer.
aflag 18y ago
I don't understand it, the article says he faces a sentence of "25 years to life in prison", but what exactly is the number of years he will have to be in prison? Why is it a range?
- hollerith 18y ago
  The law gives the judge some discretion in sentencing: in this case the judge can pick any duration between 25 years and life. Reiser has not been sentenced yet.

79 points by mcxx 18y ago

:( Here I was hoping he didn't do it... I hope it doesn't reflect poorly on the open source community. Next thing you know they will be calling us murderers.

staunch 18y ago
> Here I was hoping he didn't do it... We still don't know if he did.
- xenoterracide 18y ago
  guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. although, I suppose I don't really trust the US justice system. I've seen people I know innocent get convicted recently. But his behavior is unfortunately highly suspect.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    It's guilt beyond a jury's reasonable doubt, not guilt beyond your reasonable doubt.
    - ardit33 18y ago
      yes. But there are still people that believe Elvis is alive. No matter the evidence, some people can't be convinced something has happen, if they don't want to believe in it. Where do you draw the line? In this case, 12 people of the jury thought he did it. Since I wasn't in the trial, and didn't see the evidence, I have no recourse but to believe that there was reason enough to convict him. This was not a racially charged situation, so it is hard to argue that the jury was biased, or anything like that.
      - michaelneale 18y ago
        Whilst not racially charged, as SwellJoe points out, Hans (and others) have personalities (aspergers??) so different from any member of the jury he may as well be totally foreign to them.
        deleted 18y ago
        [deleted]
        xenoterracide 18y ago
        my gf has aspergers and although she acts strange she wouldn't go to the lengths that hans did. which is more than a little strange especially given the circumstances.
- ardit33 18y ago
  "We still don't know if he did." -- well the us justice system thinks he did it, that's what matters.
ken 18y ago
Open-source got off easy: "Hora speculated that Reiser might have choked his wife, based on little evidence except that Reiser was a black belt in judo, a martial art where choking is a specialty." Judo, meaning "gentle way", is apparently the martial art that teaches you how to kill your wife.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- ComputerGuru 18y ago
  I can just imagine it: "And Hans Reiser was heard arguing with his wife - just like he'd practiced for years on the mailing lists of open source communities where overly-violent and highly-sensitive people are known to dwell and practice verbal abuse quite often."
  - menloparkbum 18y ago
    You just described the OpenBSD mailing lists quite accurately.
    - rbanffy 18y ago
      Well. Just wait until Theo's wife goes missing.
- rbanffy 18y ago
  As a kid, I had a few years of Judo training and I have never learned how to choke a person. From my experience, Judo is about catching or throwing opponents off-balance (often with their unwilling help) and disarming and immobilizing them so they can't harm you. Of all martial arts, Judo is one of the gentlest. I can hardly imagine using it to kill someone who does not really want to get killed. As for Mr. Sturgeon, misreporting a crime, specially if it's done with the intention of compromising a murder investigation, is a serious offense. I am not sure why the police didn't get him. And, while we are at it, it is a real no-no do screw your friend's wife. This case begs for an appeal.

breily 18y ago

Regardless of whether he did it or not, this seems like a failure of the justice system - sentencing someone to 25 years in prison for a murder in which there is "no body, no crime scene, no reliable eyewitness and virtually no physical evidence". He must have had an absolutely horrible lawyer.

ashu 18y ago
The article states that he refused to let his lawyer act and took charge of proceedings himself many times, so it is not clear how bad the lawyer was.
rms 18y ago
His lawyer told him not to take the stand. Instead he testified for 11 days.
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  Once you take the stand, you have no control over how long you will be on the stand. The fifth amendment insures you don't have to testify if it will hurt your case...but if you agree to be questioned, both sides get to ask pretty much all the questions they want within the bounds of the law and the patience of the judge. But, yes, it's clear that him taking the stand was the worst possible thing he could do and he apparently fought loudly and repeatedly with his lawyer over this decision.
  - tptacek 18y ago
    To be clear: his lawyer was opposed to him taking the stand.
- tptacek 18y ago
  The very first thing he did when he took the stand on cross from the DA was to admit that he had lied about a material fact of the case, allowing the jury to be instructed that the rest of his testimony was untrustworthy. He did a pretty spectacularly bad job on the stand. I'm surprised he went down for murder 1, but there was a pretty damning array of things lined up against him. Aspergers or not, he admittedly ripped up and flooded his car while trying to actively hide it from the police in a storage locker; he claimed a 6-inch(!)-wide blood stain on a bag (not a sleeping bag, but its pouch) in that car was from having sex; and finally, he built his case not on the premise that he didn't kill Nina, but that she was still alive --- a very simple assertion for the DA to knock down.

SwellJoe 18y ago

I worked with Hans and his team a few years back on an experimental ReiserFS-based filesystem for Squid (still the fastest Squid ever, as far as I know), and find the whole thing difficult to believe. He very likely suffers from Aspergers ("suffers" in this case, since it seems to have led to his conviction due to his insistence on taking the stand and deep misunderstanding of human nature and how his behavior would appear to others...it seems to be a beneficial condition for some folks, ordinarily, at least with regard to productivity, but when it comes to a jury they aren't likely to be your peers), or a similar condition, and I always found his famously obstinate behavior more amusing than threatening. I, of course, have no idea if he committed the crime, but I find his bizarre explanations far more believable than the jury. He really is just that kind of person...a bit paranoid, extremely analytical, and significantly smarter than the vast majority of people. This is true even among extremely smart folks, like those on the Linux kernel mailing list, he's probably among the smartest in the conversation. But he's also lacking in many social skills to the point that his involvement in a discussion usually hurts more than helps--reading his numerous arguments on the LKML is like seeing a warm up for his bizarre performance on the stand. So, one could make the case that Hans' feeling of superiority, which might be hard to avoid for someone as smart as he is, and his paranoia combined to produce this very result. Perhaps he figured he'd get away with it, because he's so much smarter than everyone else. And perhaps his paranoia convinced him that Nina had plans to steal away with his children and he'd never see them again (there is some evidence that this was actually her plan). Since the average American has a rather deeply ingrained mistrust of really smart people, his particularly ornery and superior attitude certainly didn't help him. I genuinely like Hans, and think very highly of him as a developer...so I'm not going to spend a lot of time dwelling on the uncomfortable thoughts of whether he committed the crime or not. I'll just hope that if he did, he gets some help for his mental illness while imprisoned (I'm assuming that if he did it, it's due to his paranoia being far worse than is apparent in his public persona), and that he's able to accept responsibility for the act. And, if he didn't do it, I hope that something comes out that exonerates him before he's too old to enjoy a return to freedom.

ardit33 18y ago
"significantly smarter than the vast majority of people." -- And criminals too. If he really did it (IF), he did a good job hiding the body.

Alex3917 18y ago

My theory has always been that this is Sean Sturgeon's tenth murder. Number nine was Nina. And the plan for number ten was getting Hans convicted of murder and put to death by the state. The ultimate thrill for the serial killer who no longer draws excitement from mere axe murdering and dismemberment.

greendestiny 18y ago
Hans couldn't possibly be a murderer despite the evidence, but you believe some guy killed 8 people with no evidence whatsoever? They might not have found Nina's body, but the supposed other 8 victims don't even have names. It was just a bullshit story to cast some doubt.
- Alex3917 18y ago
  Just to be clear, I don't actually believe that. I just think it's a cool idea, but I didn't want to log out and make a new account just to post it as a short story. Speaking of which, isn't it time to add Paul Graham to the programming language creator or serial killer game?
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    He's too cute to believably be a serial killer. tlb and rtm on the other hand...especially now that tlb has shaved his head.
    - randomhack 18y ago
      I am not sure why .. but PG sometimes reminds me of the fat majin buu.
      - SwellJoe 18y ago
        For anyone else that has no idea what "fat majin buu" means (it's surprisingly hard to Google for, as most links are dead or tiny): http://www.comicvine.com/buu/41116/costumes/&c=8591 http://www.comicvine.com/buu/41116/costumes/&c=8591 I don't see the similarity.

ardit33 18y ago

I have to say, his wife looks cute and very normal. He looks weird. No wonder the jury was sympathetic to the prosecutors claim. It is just normal human reaction.

keating 18y ago

Via Reddit: "Never mind the fact that her ex-lover states that he's killed multiple people in the past, her family has ties to russian organised crime, and the kids have gone to St Petersburg, most likely with their mother."

jrockway 18y ago

I'm going to have a bit of a laugh when Nina comes back from her vacation to Russia.

kf 18y ago

Summary of the evidence, from /.: http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=537280&cid=23231328 http://yro.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=537280&cid=23231... 1. Reiser showed up at his childrens' school the day after Labor day, the first school day after Nina disappeared and a day when Nina was supposed to pick up the kids. The prosecuter claims he was making sure the police didn't show up to ask where the kids' mother was. Reiser claims he went there to add his mother, Beverly Palmer, to the list of people that could pick up the kids. He was scheduled to pick up the kids the next day. 2. Hans' Honda CRX was missing the front passenger seat. It went missing sometime after he got a speeding ticket (after Nina disappeared) and before the police seized the vehicle. 3. Hans admits his hosed out the inside of the car. He removed the seat and threw it away. He also removed the carpet and disposed of it. 4. The car was also missing a piece of trim that Hans admits to throwing out. 5. Han's admits he was trying to hide the car from the police. 6. Nina's van was found three miles from Hans' home. Her cell phone was found in the van with the battery removed. 7. When Hans was taken into custody his cell phone did not have a battery in it. On the stand he claimed that he did not remove the battery from his own phone. He later admitted he lied about that. He actually removed it frequently after Nina disappeared. 8. Along with his cell phone, Hans was carrying his passport and several thousand dollars in cash. 9. Reiser was seen hosing down the driveway to his mother's home shortly after Nina disappeared. 10. The police found two books on murder in Reiser's car. He had purchased them with cash shortly after Nina disappeared. 11. He paid a $5,000 retainer to a criminal defense attorney just days after Nina disappeared, while the investigation was still a missing person's case. He didn't even bother to try calling her to find out if she was alive before he shelled out for the retainer.

aflag 18y ago

I don't understand it, the article says he faces a sentence of "25 years to life in prison", but what exactly is the number of years he will have to be in prison? Why is it a range?

hollerith 18y ago
The law gives the judge some discretion in sentencing: in this case the judge can pick any duration between 25 years and life. Reiser has not been sentenced yet.