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.

I see!

[gowen]

Interviewing Hans Reiser about the Hans Resier murder, eh? Clever.
How about interviewing Harry Buttle about that known terrorist Harry Tuttle?

Re:

[doom]

gowen wrote:

Interviewing Hans Reiser about the Hans Resier murder, eh? Clever.

Actually, that's what they've got here that's new. Previously we haven't had Hans Reiser's side of the story, just the case the police were making against him in the media. And I have to say, it's nice to see a story that more-or-less takes Reiser's side on this, everyone else seems anxious to convict him before the trial... including "Wired", slashdot, etc.

By the way: How would you feel if you were on a jury and found out

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Re:

[megaditto]

Maybe Chewbacca is a paedophile?

Whoosh!

[A nonymous Coward]

Hint: check the spellings ... carefully ... very carefully ...

Re:I see!

[Frank T. Lofaro Jr.]

Anyway, I'm typing this up on a machine running Reiser FS

Any of your files gone missing?

Re:

[Bazman]

I think the allegation against Reiser is a bit more than a spot of rogue plumbing...

[I'm only writing this so that you can see that at least ONE person laughed at the reference!]

She's in Russia

[FunkyELF]

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.

Re:She's in Russia

[imsabbel]

Of course she also removed his car-seat, and put that "how to dispose a body" book into his stuff, too...

Re:She's in Russia

[Serge_Tomiko]

1) As the article says, he was living out of his car. Strange, but not unheard of - especially for someone who likely has few friends and is of limited financial means. 2) He didn't have a book on how to dispose a body, he had a book on murder investigations. As he was the target of one and didn't have a lot of money, this seems pretty reasonable. I'd probably do the same thing.

Re:

[Edmund Blackadder]

The article also says he was walking around with 9000 cash in his pocket and he was running some kind of business out of Russia. He also has a commercial lawyer not a court appointed one. I am sure the police will find out exactly what his finances are, but thus far he does not seem destitute at all.

Sorry, but I do not believe the living out of his car story one bit. People that do that do it as a last resort. Nobody lives in their car and walks around with 9000k in their pockets and runs a business. Being

Re:

[AVee]

Being homeless is very very dangerous. Well, actually driving a car may well prove to be far more dangerous then living in one. And sleeping in a home containing a very visible expensive TV set may well be far more dangerous than being homeless.
I know I could survive pretty fine on my own in a car, certainly when I still have a bank account and the ability to eat in a restaurant every day. That pretty much makes it trivial to do. And if that is what it takes to see your kids sometimes, I might just do the

Re:

[imsabbel]

Well, the thing is, everything hints to the fact that the seat had to be disposed because of the gore that couldnt be cleaned.
Its been a while since i have read up on the case, so i might be wrong, but IIRC, he claimed that he "spilled something" on it, and it had to be removed.

Re:She's in Russia

[porkThreeWays]

The direct physical evidence against Reiser is limited, but police have built a detailed circumstantial case.

In this day and age I didn't know you could take a murder to trial purely on circumstance. I'll admit it's extremely weird, but do they actually think they can convict him beyond a reasonable doubt in this day and age with no direct evidence? It almost seems irresponsible to try otherwise. No body. No DNA. No weapons of any sort found. Basically they have more evidence for Jimmy Hoffa's murder than they do this one. Heck, good luck proving she was actually murdered!

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Re:She's in Russia

[DustyShadow]

At least they had a body in the Peterson case.

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Re:

[EvilRyry]

It's like my old boss always used to tell me when he was pissed at someone (including myself), "It's hard to prove that someone's dead without a body"

Re:

[yoprst]

The chances of her being in Russia are just plain reasonable
People don't fly anonymously, do they? Isn't it easy to check if she's left the country?

Lovely sig, by the way

Re:

[sumdumass]

We have 12 million illegal Mexicans in this country and I don't know how many other ethnic illegals. I know of one from Canada right now(she overstayed her visa by about 18 months and is working a decent job. If they can get in so easily, what makes you think they cannot get back out.

The question really is, do people want us to know if she got back out? I mean if she was "afraid" of something and wanted to go back, she could do it without a trace. On another more sinister note, lets say she left him for a w

Re:She's in Russia

[budgenator]

She was a translator for a Russian "Dating Service" or one of it's clients, seems a few "seasoned" freinds could be pretty easy fot her to aquire along the way. As likely as not a few parasitic "seasoned" freinds would be hard to avoid around that business.

Re:

[budgenator]

There are four countries that border the US, Canada, Mexico, Cuba and Russia; you can almost drive a car to Russia. The last little bit is by boat plane or snowmobile. A Japonese compnay has offered to dig a tunnel between Russia and the US for half-price. It would be very cool to travel from New York to England by rail the long way!

Contradictions abound

[A nonymous Coward]

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.

Re:

[sumdumass]

Well, what is the chances of your bed getting all bloody by some "unknown to you" reasons and you running out on (or just after) a holiday to buy a new one after dumping the old on in a dumpster all cut up into separate pieces just after returning from fishing at a spot (again on a holiday) and your wife turned out to be missing in the middle of this.

Circumstance? More like circumspect in covering your tracks.

Re:

[Jugalator]

They've convicted someone recently with only a shit-load of circumstantial evidence

In this case they don't seem to have much though. A book on crime investigations and a missing car seat? WTF?

Re:

[KutuluWare]

In this day and age I didn't know you could take a murder to trial purely on circumstance. I'll admit it's extremely weird, but do they actually think they can convict him beyond a reasonable doubt in this day and age with no direct evidence

In the United States, at least, "circumstantial evidence" is not a legally defined term. It's used very loosely (mostly on television) to indicate evidence that is two or more steps removed from directly linking a suspect to a crime. The reality is many, if not most

Todays Juries

[nurb432]

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 )

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

In Soviet Russia!

Re:

[jav1231]

I'm confused are you suggesting women wear burkas to help prevent rapes?

Re:

[vertinox]

Can't hide over there. In the land ruled by KGB.

Russia a pretty big place.
If you had connections, you could hide out east in a Siberian Oblast and no one would be the wiser.
Then again, your connections would need to have a reason for hiding you but money could always be that reason.

Re:

[Xiph1980]

You might want to watch this TED-talk about statistics before you say something like that:
Peter Donnelly: How juries are fooled by statistics [ted.com]

Is that pic caption right?

[bl8n8r]

"Hans Reiser, left, and his attorney, William Dubois"

I think the pic caption is wrong - isn't that Hans on the right side?

Re:Is that pic caption right?

[should_be_linear]

I think the pic caption is wrong - isn't that Hans on the right side?

Who knows, only Reiser certainly knows for sure. Mysteries just keep adding up in this strange story.

Re:Is that pic caption right?

[ickoonite]

Who knows, only Reiser certainly knows for sure.

One would presume that the lawyer has a reasonable idea which one he is as well...

:P

Re:Is that pic caption right?

[mickwd]

Wow, he's a smart one, this Hans Reiser.

A simple switch when his lawyer isn't paying attention, and his lawyer spends the rest of his life in jail....... .....while Hans gets paid all the money he paid him in fees.

That's just cunning.

Re:

[FPCat]

But wouldn't revealing that violate attorney/client privilege?

Re:

[Skater]

I hope so, because if I were Reiser, I certainly wouldn't want my lawyer to have that expression on his face. (For those who haven't clicked on the article, it's a hand-to-the-forehead "I'm screwed and I can't believe this" expression.)

Re:

[virgil_disgr4ce]

Haha, I know, that's exactly what I thought when I saw the pic.

Re:

[sumdumass]

OMG. I though that was a joke. Let me sound it out for you, I didn't know you were serious until I double checked. I wonder if whoever wrote the article was thinking the same thing?

Hans Reiser left his attorney, Well I am dubious. "Hans Reiser, left, and his attorney, Will-i-am Dubois"

Talk about having a bad day. This just throws subliminal stuff out there.

Renaissance man, indeed.

[bryanp]

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.

Re:

[ScrewMaster]

I dunno. Honestly, if I could find an intelligent, highly educated doctor who would take care of her practice and leave me home to cruise Slashdot (ahem!) raise the kids ... I'd marry her in a split femtosecond.

But, yeah. If a woman decides that her career choice is one of raising a family, that's one thing. If she already has a career, one which took her many years of schooling to achieve and which her husband wants her to just forget about ... well. I can see where the conflict came in.

Reiser always

Re:Renaissance man, indeed.

[Plutonite]

Bullshit. She seems to be one hell of a bitch, obviously married him only for the money and the oh-so-prized citizenship.

"She divorced me the day she became a citizen. I don't know whether it was the exact day but same month"

And from TFA she also was cleaning out his money. He introduced her to his best friend, to take care of her while he was away, but this highly intelligent, educated doctor you speak of let the man introduce her to drugs and fuck her while reiser wasn't there. Sounds like some Russian skank who wanted to escape being a translator for a dating service in KGB land. And beautiful? She looks barely average.

As for your blood-mare comment, I'm sure the governments of Sweden and similar nations who pay women to stay at home and care for their children several YEARS have something to say to you. I have the utmost respect for stay-at-home moms who are helping to build solid families for this country.. definitely more than your favorite juknie/ho "doctor".

Reiser could've had so much better for a wife, no matter how "weird" he is. Reiser also doesn't have the nicest of friends, unfortunately. Kind of tough when you're best friend is a homosexual serial killer who wanted to sleep with you then decided to give it to your Russian wife when you said no. Jesus fucking Christ, Hans, are there no other people in the world to make friends with?

Re:Renaissance man, indeed.

[kv9]

Kind of tough when you're best friend is a homosexual serial killer who wanted to sleep with you then decided to give it to your Russian wife when you said no. Jesus fucking Christ, Hans, are there no other people in the world to make friends with?

this story is so badass (especially if he killed her, manages not to get convicted then kills his buddy by bashing his head in with an oversized dildo) that Tarantino should consider it for one of his next movies.

Re:

[arth1]

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.

She wasn't a doctor. She was something that lacks a counterpart in the US -- a mix between a paediatrician and obstetrician without an MD's qualifications. This Russian profession doesn't translate to an doctor, but more like a midwife in that they have limited practitioner's privileges in their specific field only.

Re:

[Teancum]

On this, you got it wrong. Nina was a doctor with full credentials that she could practice medicine in the USA...at least from an educational point of view. And she did have the equivalent of an M.D. in gynecology and obstetrics.

The reason she didn't practice in the USA was mainly an issue of her trying to pass the medical board tests that are required when any foreign-educated physician tries to practice medicine in the USA. From what I understand, Nina passed all of the knowledge-based sections of the

Re:Renaissance man, indeed.

[bryanp]

Actually I was insulting a man who marries a woman and tries to force her to stay home with the kids when that wasn't what she wanted to do. But then you might have know that if you'd RTFA.

I have no problems with one parent staying home. I know several people who do that. Two families I'm thinking of the wife is the breadwinner and the husband is the stay-at-home dad.

OT: two job familes bad?

[doom]

Partly for that reason. In my opinion, it's rare for a maladjusted child to come from a home where the father works, and the mother cares for the children, but it's common for maladjusted children to be latch key kids with both parents working 2 jobs.

Do you have stats to back that up, or are you living your life based on what you've seen on television?

Re:

[G Fab]

Pal, it's cool that most women want a family and are willing to sacrifice for it, but it's up to the chick to do that on her own.

This is the opposite case, where the woman wanted to have a nice profession herself, obviously worked her ass off to earn one, and then was forced out to serve her lord husband's interest.

Note: your girl might change her mind. PEople get married young, hoping to have kids, and the girl will do ANYTHING for that family ideal. A few years of college can make her more interested in

Re:

[teg]

I happen to know different, I'm marrying one. Partly for that reason. In my opinion, it's rare for a maladjusted child to come from a home where the father works, and the mother cares for the children, but it's common for maladjusted children to be latch key kids with both parents working 2 jobs.

If one has a university education, it's a waste to just stay at home with the kids. Also, the kids will be better off in good kindergartens, with educated personnel and many similarly aged friends to play with.

Re:Renaissance man, indeed.

[mingot]

But, hey, you can insult women who want to devote their lives to their children all you like. And I could call you a feminazi supporter. But I won't, because I'd like to think I'm above that.

Is there a name for this sort of statement? You know, the "I'd call you x, but I'm above that sort of thing".

No body

[hey]

In a reasonable system there is no way somebody can be convicted of murder without a body.

Re:

[schnikies79]

No, that would just make an unreasonable system where anyone with the skill to properly dispose or hide the body would never be found guilty.

Re:

[ScrewMaster]

Besides, circumstantial evidence has always been used to convict. It's more difficult from a prosecutorial perspective, of course, but it's still a viable way to get a conviction. "Reasonable doubt" doesn't mean they have to find you standing over a dead body with a smoking gun in your hands (hey, I watch CSI.)

Re:No body

[Ossifer]

The problem for the prosecution is that in the absence of any real evidence suggesting murder (pool of blood, scene of an altercation, etc.), any conceivable theory by the defense trumps a murder story.

The cops/prosecution decided Reiser must be guilty since he's really weird, despite no real evidence that a crime was committed at all. Having followed the case locally (from across the bay), I and many others were surprised the case even passed basic plausibility by the judge holding the preliminary hearing.

The reality is, in fact, that she may very well be alive and well in Russia...

Re:

[doom]

The cops/prosecution decided Reiser must be guilty since he's really weird, despite no real evidence that a crime was committed at all. Having followed the case locally (from across the bay), I and many others were surprised the case even passed basic plausibility by the judge holding the preliminary hearing.

One of the Great Mysteries in the case is the behavior of the police. Do they always try to convict people in the media when they know that they don't have any evidence that's worth a damn? Isn't th

Re:

[ewieling]

I don't know about convicting them in the media, but I do know that DAs in the USA can be real scum. One of my former clients is a law firm that provides legal defense for poor people on death row. They discovered (and proved) that the police and DA knew the accused could not have committed the murder because he was caught on a security camera miles away. He could not have physically been present near the time of the victim's death. They hid the evidence and continued to try the case. The accused had a

Re:

[kithrup]

They don't have a body; they do have evidence of a crime.

What has been disclosed to the media so far -- and that doesn't need to be all of the evidence, mind you -- includes her car, with groceries still in it, left abandoned somewhere, in a bit of disarray; a statement (by a child, who later recanted, and then disappeared) that Hans and Nina argued on the last day anyone saw her alive; and drops of her blood in the house, and in his car.

It's not a lot of evidence, and it's very circumstantial, and some o

Re:

[Ossifer]

> They don't have a body; they do have evidence of a crime.

What's the evidence of a crime? And which crime? Arguing with his wife -- something the child strenuously denies *ever* having said? Groceries in disarray in the car? If that's a crime then my wife deserves a lethal injection...

You can find drops of my blood in my house, I'm sure, but that doesn't mean my wife is a murder (yet)...

None of this alleged evidence suggests murder, let alone definitively. And *all* of this easily supports a defens

Re:

[kithrup]

Evidence has to be disclosed to the defense. Not to the media. The defense should (by this time) know all the evidence, and all the witnesses, that the prosecution is going to present (and vice-versa).

That does not mean that we, the public, already know all that evidence.

You can argue against what they've presented in support of their case so far -- I even said that it was refutable -- but that doesn't mean it's not evidence of a crime. It's just not strong evidence.

Re:

[doom]

We watched the show. Before, I thought he was probably innocent, and she thought he was probably guilty. After watching it, we've each changed our minds. (Although I think it more likely he paid someone to get rid of her.)

If he paid someone to get rid of her, than you wouldn't expect his own car was used in any way, and if so, a good half of the circumstantial evidence in the case just fades away -- e.g. the missing car seat, the supposed concealment of the car, all of that has nothing to do with the cas

Re:

[ari_j]

In a reasonable system there is no way somebody can be convicted of murder without a body.

I'd like you to take a moment to think about that, and then try again.

Re:No body

[risk one]

Indeed, people without a body have enough to worry about without being convicted of all sorts of crimes.

Simple discrimination against being unable to manifest on the corporeal plane, that's what it is.

(I have nothing of value to add to this discussion)

Re:

[linuxci]

Yea, so even if someone kills the president on live tv with thousands of eye vitnesses, he gets off without conviction if he manages to destroy the body.

"reasonable"

Yeah, if it's Bush :)

Soo...

[DustyShadow]

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.

Re:

[kithrup]

The implication by the narrator was that the "confessions" so lacked credence that the cops don't feel a need to do anything. (For example, if they checked on one of the alleged victims, and found that he's still alive -- or died in a different manner than the wannabe-killer described -- then he's just a nut.)

Don't get me wrong -- I read about the confessions when Wired reported it, and thought it would be immediate reasonable doubt. But this show pointed out that the judge has barred them being mentione

Re:

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

So if I'm ever accused of a crime I admit to killing 40 people, name names, and when those people turn up alive or having died in a different way than I have described I'm let go and all suspicion is dropped?

Re:Soo...

[Martin Blank]

Police frequently focus on more than one subject at a time. There have also been cases where they will stop public focus on one suspect while monitoring him for changes in behavior. This doesn't mean that they've ruled out whomever they're publicly talking about, but if the pressure is removed from one that is deemed more likely, then that person may slip up. Details of ongoing investigations are often not public records, so we won't know until after any trial is finished.

Things don't add up on both sides of this story...

[inject_hotmail.com]

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 ab

Re:Things don't add up on both sides of this story

[fwr]

It's kind of hard to give the natural father custody of the kids if said father is in custody himself.

Re:Things don't add up on both sides of this story

[doom]

Now I probably won't get updates for my ReiserFS....damnit.

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 wo

What is going on?

[realdodgeman]

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!

Even if innocent

[nurb432]

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.

Re:

[FunkyELF]

Alan Turing murdered himself (or perhaps he was poisoned).

Is he known as a murderer or the father of computer science?...I forget.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Suicide, while deplorable...

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".

Re:

[tjstork]

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.

Re:Good way to screw up your life Reiser

[tjstork]

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.

Re:Good way to screw up your life Reiser

[Mr2001]

Selfish that you want people that you love to live?

Yes, actually, it is selfish to expect someone else to live in suffering so that you don't have to feel the pain of their loss.

Re:

[G Fab]

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

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Turing, Posterchild for Tolerance

[mechsoph]

It's even possible to say Turin did not kill himself, but rather died of insanity.

Turing (most likely) killed himself because he was found guilty of the crime [wikipedia.org] 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.

Re:Good way to screw up your life Reiser

[phaunt]

If Einstein murdered his wife, he would be a murderer, not a genius.

He would have been both a murderer and a genius. Maybe you meant he would have been remembered today as a murderer only, but I very much doubt that.

Re:Good way to screw up your life Reiser

[witte]

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.

Re:

[maop]

I know. Meg Ryan was the real genius.

Re:He couldn't get a hotel room?

[Wonko the Sane]

For several years prior to his wife's disappearance, he's been very strapped for money. He basically bankrupted himself to keep paying the russian programmers who were working on the reiser4 file system. His wife or friend may or may not have been involved in his money problems.

Re:He couldn't get a hotel room?

[JWSmythe]

I've carried large sums of cash and my passport. Does that make me a murderer on the run?

    It's completely circumstantial evidence.

    But, if you put enough pieces together, circumstantial evidence can be damning in front of a jury, regardless if the truth is there or not.

    From what I've seen, there are several ways it could have gone.

    1) He killed her (the presumption of law enforcement)
    2) Her new boyfriend, the drug and kinky sex fiend, killed her.
    3) She's a sex slave, living in a crack house somewhere in the less friendly neighborhoods of any major US city.
    4) She left town, and is living somewhere else in America or Canada.
    5) She left the country, possibly for Russia.

    As someone else said, they don't believe she could be in Russia. Any country with enough land and population, provides a place for anyone to hide comfortably, even in plain site. She could be working as a doctor, using her own name, with enough clients to be very comfortable, and still no one would notice.

    I don't know all the facts, just the ones that have been presented in the media and in interviews. I'm not following closely though. I just know, none of us have all the evidence at our disposal, so none of us can make really educated opinions on it.

    For all we know, it was some one-off killing, where some random lunatic saw a crying woman in a parking lot, killed her, drove her 1000 miles away, and buried her in a shallow grave. Heck, we've all done that once or twice. (j/k)

Re:

[oliderid]

I've carried large sums of cash and my passport. Does that make me a murderer on the run?

No but if you plan to pass the Russian borders with a large sum of money, you are crazy person.
There are plenty of western banks branches in Russia.

I have worked in Eastern Europe. If you are found with a large amount of cash while passing the customs: Even if the amount isn't over the maximum, you will face problems. You will have to give a good reason. They may suspect an illegal activity. Paying your oversee employee

Re:

[doom]

And so he finds himself living in his car. Which, for him, seemed the logical thing to do under the circumstances." When Reiser was picked up for DNA testing, he was carrying his passport and nearly $9,000 in cash.

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.

Their explanation is that this was money for some sort of business payments in Russia -- either, payroll or possibly, some sort of bribes (things are weird in Russia). I know

Re:

[tftp]

but $9000 isn't really a lot of money, however weird it is to carry it around with you.

Most people don't run a business. Those who do, however, understand very well that $9K is nothing if even a tiny business can easily burn through $100K/yr. It would be indeed a reasonable pocket money; an airplane ticket to Russia would cost about $2,500 probably, and he planned to fly there. We can debate why he wasn't using his credit cards and bank accounts, but when you are travelling hard, cold cash usually works

Correction and link

[Futurepower(R)]

Error: It is Reiser, not Rieser.

Reiser File System [wikipedia.org].

Note that the Slashdot story misspells Reiser's name.

Weird:

[Futurepower(R)]

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."

Re:Attractive women often think rules are for othe

[IamTheRealMike]

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 he

merits of Reiser FS

[doom]

Another question: What are the merits of the Rieser file system?

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 u

Re:

[Eternauta3k]

Finally, the most convenient way to put money in the hands of a Russian programmer is electronically.

Well, it's the best way, but some russians are kinda ass-backwards when it comes to that.

Re:Death Penalty!

[Martin Blank]

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.

Re:

[pipatron]

he still ultimately must wind up on death row

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?

Re:

[tjstork]

Europeans are all whores.
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! :-) Besides, I'm an American, and Nationalism is perfectly acceptable. It's only an insult to you, because you make it one.

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...

Re:

[Ant P.]

I don't know what fascist dictatorship you live under, but in my part of the world it's "innocent until proven guilty".

ANY evidence you'd like to talk about?

[SanityInAnarchy]

Let me assemble your "evidence" here:

Reiser was a very controlling husband who dominated his wife.

He trashed her career so he could work on his, would disappear for months at a time in Russia, and then, by other witnesses, often screamed at her over the phone.

remove the passenger seat.

$9000 in cash

That is the evidence. Now, here is where your speculation starts -- and by "speculation", I mean "making shit up":

I've had to live in my car, but I've never been in a situation where I felt like I needed to remove the passenger seat.

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.

Even in the USA, Reiser could have rented a room for like $200-$300 a month, an apartment for $500-$600

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 the hands of a Russian programmer is electronically.

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...

Reiser killed Nina in the car, and cleaned it out thoroughly, which explains why it was wet, except for the seat she was sitting in, which had to be removed. The seat is probably with the body, most likely. The $9000 in cash and passport were to allow him to leave the country and go to Russia, and the reason he ran from the cops, to begin with, is that he knew that he did it.

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.

Re:Doctor and translator?

[Cassini2]

Translators get paid in foreign dollars. Doctors are civil service positions in Russia, so they get paid poorly. A Doctor could moonlight as a translator in Russia, and make more money from translating than from saving people ...

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Your angry ranting leads me to believe you're one of:

1. A troll - in which case, a very bad one, as you've had to post many times to maintain this thread;
2. An abuse victim - in which case, unable to bring your tormentor to justice, you take out your anger on a man you only know from press reports;
3. An abuser - so ashamed of yourself and in such denial that you're condemning your fellow abusers to death to assuage guilt. Like a gay Republican, except that there's nothing wrong with being gay.

Whichever it is, I'm h