Hans Reiser gets 15 years to life for murdering wife

Here's an old photo of Hans Reiser from his Stanford days. A San Francisco Chronicle reporter said at his sentencing Friday, however, Reiser's hair was grown out and he looked more like Art Garfunkel.

(Credit: via Stanford University)

In what appears the final chapter of the Hans Reiser crime saga, the Linux programmer convicted of killing his wife was sentenced Friday afternoon to 15 years to life in prison under a deal he worked out with prosecutors in exchange for leading police to his victim's body.

Reiser--known to the technology world as the founder of the ReiserFS file system software--was found guilty in April of first-degree murder in the 2006 killing of his wife, with whom he was undergoing a bitter divorce. The jury convicted him largely on circumstantial evidence and despite the fact that Nina Reiser's body hadn't been found before trial.

First-degree murder carries a sentence of 25 years to life, compared with 15 years to life for second-degree murder. But in anticipation of his sentencing, Reiser, 44, brokered a deal with prosecutors that went generally like so: If he brought police to his wife's body and he gave up his appellate rights, he could plead guilty to second-degree murder and get 15 years.

And that's what happened in an Oakland, Calif., courthouse Friday, after Reiser pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, according to media reports. He'll be eligible for parole in about 13 years, having already served two years since his October 2006 arrest.

Nina Reiser

(Credit: California Department of Justice)

Throughout the drama-filled six-month trial, Reiser maintained his innocence. Arguing the so-called geek defense, his attorney said that while Reiser may be strange, arrogant, even abnormal, his odd behavior following Nina's disappearance wasn't evidence of murder. On trial, Reiser smeared the mother of his two children, alleging, among other things, that she was likely hiding out in her native Russia with money she stole from his now defunct company, Namesys.

Nina Reiser's remains were found in Oakland's Redwood Regional Park, about a half a mile from where she was last seen. Click image for full map.

(Credit: Google)

Reiser, handcuffed to his attorney, did in fact bring authorities to a grave site Monday containing his wife's remains in a heavily brushed, secluded area about 40 yards off a road in Oakland's Redwood Regional Park. The grave site was located about a half mile from where Nina was last seen in 2006 at Reiser's mother's house, where he was living.

It's unclear whether the cause of death was ever determined through an autopsy. But Wired reported that after the sentencing, prosecutor Paul Hora revealed some of the details from Reiser's confession. Reiser first punched Nina in the mouth, then strangled her to death, Hora said. Hora added that Reiser "stored the body in the bathroom, then moved it to his car, where it stayed for two days while he searched for a place to bury her," according to Wired.

Wired's David Kravets added that before he was formally sentenced, Reiser vowed to make up to society for what he had done and said he was putting Namesys and ReiserFS into a trust fund for his children. Reiser added that he hoped to earn money for his kids while in prison, assuming he's "able to get access to a computer and the Internet," according to Kravets.

[Mr. Dee]

I am sure every Linux distribution will not be using ReiserFS 15 years from now, especially knowing what the creator did. Also, they use Windows in prison's.

[victor_sf]

Why that? It's the technology what matters, not who wrote it.

[Penguinisto]

1) There was only one distro that uses ReiserFS in the first place (SuSE) - everyone else uses ext3.

2) what does the code matter versus who wrote it? After all, we have lots of instances where Microsoft employees were arrested:

http://www.stargeek.com/item/190445.html (Hacking)
http://www.komonews.com/news/archive/4153606.html (Pedophilia)
http://www.out-law.com/page-3674 (Software fraud)

[interval1066]

I'm sure that every Linux distro won't be using ReiserFS either but it has nothing to do with anything Reiser did. I've never read a more uninformed and frankly, stupid, collection of of news story replies in my life.

[The_Decider]

Novell ditched Reiser FS as its default in either 10.1 or 10.2.

[jimmy_jo_meeker]

Yes, well, some women and girls probably will stop using the ReiserFS, the way you don't see Jews driving
Volkswagons, or vegetarians eating hamburgers, or some Arabs filling up their cars with gas. Shades of
OJ Simpson: Did you know that according to the Law of Moses, the adulterer and the adulteress were both
to be put to death? And that adultery is when a man lies down with a married woman who is not his wife?
Jealousy is about relationships whereas envy is about earthly things like "higher education", or cars, or stock
options, or "who gets the dog". As far as what they use in prisons, my guess they also use hammers and
nails. For not every male in prison likes to watch sports, and work on cars. Some like to read. And libraries
continue to "digitize content" to keep paper and pens away from "terrorists" I suppose.

[sanenazok]

It's best that he owned up to what he did. Too bad he wasted all of that taxpayers' money on the trial.

[baisa]

I do understand the need and benefit of deals that are sometimes made, but this is ridiculous! It basically says that murders should just hide the bodies, lie during trial, and then later bargain down to 2nd degree in exchange for revealing the body??? In particular, in this case it should be noted that Reiser didn't just stay mum during his trial (of course his constitutional right) but actively lied under oath.

[Luigi Semenzato]

It's not as bad as it seems. Having him admit to the crime and leading to the body was probably an enormous relief for Nina's family. Dealing with ambiguous loss is much worse than having closure, even one that confirms the worst. it is also quite likely that it was an unpremeditated crime, or else he would have planned it a little better. In this case he's getting the "correct" penalty, 15 to life. He's getting away with lying under oath, true, but choosing to testify was a large part of his undoing, so it didn't exactly help him. Remember that the guy is quite smart and had he been less arrogant he might have gotten away with it. It looks as if the Oakland prosecutors did a good job, given how little evidence they had. Maybe they were lucky too, but if I were them I'd be fully satisfied with the outcome. If one can find any satisfaction in such sad story.

[limefan913]

baisa: As to the last sentence of your comment, do you expect someone who's guilty to get on the stand and be honest? If they're going to be honest, they'll be honest to the DA for a deal.

[RighteousSoutherner]

The penultimate poster child of your typical Linux developer. That is, societal rules don't apply. Ignore trademarks, patents and anything representing law and order and captialism to boot. Arrogant, cavalier, slobs. That pretty much decribes your basix Linux enthusiast. Ever see one of those guys, lol? Reiser's a pretty boy compared to most of the miserable lot. His cellmates will now have fun with him. :-)

[Dead Soulman]

What in the world does that have to do with a man who murdered his wife and lied to the authorities until he could get his punishment reduced. You're freaking nuts. Linux provides an option to everyone, including the corporates, to free themselves from the laziness of companies when they become too big and arrogant to serve their customers. Think about IE. MS moved heaven and earth to kill Netscape. Once they did, they got lazy and indifferent to all the complains. It wasn't until Firefox came along and took a big chunk of IE's stake that MS figured out they better get moving and provide updates more regularly and add on features existing in other browsers.

[The_Decider]

Wow, you have brought idiocy from MS shills to new 'heights'!

Congrats!!!!

[interval1066]

RighteousSoutherner said:
> The penultimate poster child of your typical Linux developer.

Said the typical in-bred, bible-thumping country moron.

[SixString16]

Wow RighteousSoutherner... You sound like a really intolerant and misinformed individual (basically a 700 club-er, aren't ya?). You've taken the notion of what a linux-enthusiast is and completely distorted it. Most of the people involved with linux development are in it to give people a choice from the propietary (and much less secure) software/os options that are out there.

You obviously haven't figured it out yet, but open source is another boon to capitalism. Money's much better spent on a person's knowledge and ability to perform support than just a bunch of bits and bytes on a disk.

Keep your righteousness to yourself...Please.

[Penguinisto]

@the MSFT trolls:

Does the following link mean that Microsoft is a haven for pedophilia?
http://www.komonews.com/news/archive/4153606.html

...didn't think so.

[ethana2]

By the time he gets on parole, we won't be using mechanical hard drives anymore, and ReiserFS will be long dead.

I hope that prison is designed for storing lots of small men optimally..
And on that note, I want to see a journal of this whole ordeal, it could be called:
"I Did It, Here's How it Happened"

[jimmy_jo_meeker]

Action and intent are two different things, as well as opportunity. Did he do it? Yes.
But why did he do it? What if it turned out that his wife was like that creature in the
movie, Species? We are not told everything.

Americans, I've noticed, are much like Canadians. They seem to believe that a person
should have no "civil rights" when he goes to prison, unless that person happens to be
female. I think prisons should be co-ed. And as for males who think it is OK to allow a
man to be abused by another male, let that man be put to death. For a moral right is
not the same as a legal right. Neither a victim, nor a victimizer be. Did you know that
in some states in the US South, men who go to prison lose the right to vote for the
remainder of their lives? How many African American males in the US South have lost
the right to vote? Also, democracy is 'one person, one vote': By destroying males, "they"
can promote "women's rights" (male slavery). Maybe a "nanny state" will care more about
boys? I doubt it. I don't think females want to join the "jocks" in the iron cellars, when they
have an opportunity to join their sisters in air-conditioned office buildings instead.

That said, do not these posted comments take on the appearance of a "rorshach test"?
But who is testing who? If software makes a computer, who made you?

A man feels a need for a woman, but she may want him if he is useful. As Gloria Steinem
put it, A woman needs a man the way a fish needs a bicycle. She also said, If the shoe does
not fit, you don't change the foot.

Spiritually speaking, Adam wants his rib back. She is the key, and he is the lock. She wears
him like a garment, useful but not needful, it would seem. After all, he is not perfect, is he?

[eddified]

@RighteousSoutherner

Your remarks are very bigoted, very stereotyped. I could draw up a stereotype of U.S. southerners, but I won't, because it wouldn't be right--everyone is different. Accusations about people because they happen to like Linux, or live in the south, are ridiculous and childish.

And no, I'm not a linux "enthusiast". I like Windows for what it's good at (consumer desktops) and linux for what it's good at (web servers).

[Sentinel]

Many people seem to believe that Reiser's actions and the software he helped create are related. The truth is, programmers are also people, with their own lives. What Reiser chose to do with his life and the life of his wife, has nothing to do with everyone else's conflict over Linux being better than windows of ReiserFS being better than NTFS or any other filesystem.

But since some commenters brought up the "filesystem conflict", here's my take. I doubt ReiserFS will a have long life, or that it will be used for longer in the future. However, that has nothing to do with Mr. Reiser's current conviction. The truth is that, while ReiserFs was the first Linux journaling FS, it is not the best one out there. There are other readily available technologies that provide many advantages and features ResierFS does not provide. With its creator behind bars, and with the existence of other, better alternatives, I believe ReiserFS will soon be history.

Now some might say, that I too am bringing up the "filesystem conflict" and taking sides. But I am not making this up. Go ahead, look a filesystem comparison in Google and see for yourself. ReiserFS formatted partitions lack the speed and other features FS's like ext2 and ext3 provide.

[Ysangkok]

I was under the impression that ReiserFS is faster than ext3 when operating on small files. Yet faster with notail,data=writeback

Here's source: http://www.debian-administration.org/articles/388

Last test is on small files.