Linked by Thom Holwerda on Tue 29th Apr 2008 08:21 UTC, submitted by Jason Slack
In October 2006, Hans Reiser, creator of the ReiserFS filesystem, was arrested under the suspicion of the murder of his wife, Nina, who had disappeared off the face of the earth after dropping their two children off at Hans' home. The two were divorced, and fighting a legal battle over ownership of the Namesys company and the custody of their children. Even though the body was never found, he has been declared guilty of first degree murder.
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Member since:
2006-01-06
Yes, the evidence is circumstantial, but it's pretty damning. Blood traces found in his home and car. He was seen hosing out the inside of his car, and tried to explain that as "routine cleaning". He removed the passenger seat of the car. The car contained books about murder. Why is it so difficult to believe that the guy committed murder? He was human (like the rest of us), he was going through a bitter divorce, his wife was apparently seeing someone else, and he was under extreme emotional stress. People do horrible, irrational things under similar circumstances and, while I don't excuse the behavior, I can at least appreciate that it happens sometimes.
That said, it isn't clear to me whether a case can be made for premeditated murder. The books about murder were supposedly obtained after the alleged crime. I'm not sure why someone would want such a thing but, then again, people have all kinds of weird fetishes. There's also a world of difference between a planned killing and a crime of passion. One is absolutely intentional and the other is more accidental. Reiser would have been better off if he had gone straight to the police, and confessed to accidentally killing his wife during a fight. Hiding the crime created enough ambiguity that the prosecutor was able to exploit to accuse Reiser of premeditated murder.
Sad, truly sad what has happened to his family. If there's any lesson in all of this, it's that violence is never an answer to life's problems (aside from self-defense, that is). Reiser should have done what most people do: Deal with the emotional pain through therapy, move on after the divorce, raise his children, rebuild his life, meet someone else, be happy, etc. I suspect, though, that he's the kind of guy who was convinced of the primacy of his own intelligence, and believed that it was enough to push him through any obstacle -- and was more concerned with "losing" than trying to find some reasonable middle ground with his ex-wife.
Let this be a lesson to all of you single-minded fanatics out there. You know who you are.