Hans Reiser, creator of ReiserFS, an popular alternative filesystem, led Oakland, CA police to his murdered wife’s body yesterday afternoon. Nina Reiser disappeared on September 3, 2006 and no murder weapon or body were found. Reiser’s case lasted six months and it is believed that he brought the police to the body in order to bargain for a reduced sentence.
“It was difficult to reach the body,” Dubois continued. “There were steep hills involved. It wasn’t as bad going down it turned out, but we had to use ropes to get back up. It was an arduous process, and a difficult emotional trip for Hans Reiser. Very difficult.”
Reiser’s admission closes one of the oddest and most discussed crimes in open source hackerdom. “Admissions” of guilt were even found in the ReiserFS code and open source supporters held that Reiser was innocent.
There was an article in Wired magazine a while back which is an interesting read about this case.
I’ve been following the trial on one of the Wired blogs. I don’t understand how, having basically lied to the courts, he can get a reduced sentence. But I don’t understand the US legal system anyway.
Well, because it looks better for the prosecutors to have this case wrapped up. Lying to the courts or not, Hans was in prison (probably not having a very nice time at all…), and they approach him with a deal: “Tell us where the body is so we can put a feather in our caps, and we’ll help you get out of Big D’s cell block — hell, we’ll even give you a reduced sentence.” The morality of him having lied to the court doesn’t even come up.
The Reiser case is certainly the stuff of true crime books and movies of the week.
So when are you guys going to ditch ShareThis? Any site I visit that uses it takes 20+ seconds to resolve w.sharethis.com. Meanwhile the page isn’t visible until the dns lookup times out (which it usually does) and then no ShareThis button appears anyway.
just took it off. you’re right.
I am sure he could have set hidden attributes to the wife’s body! But sad!
http://slashdot.org/~hansreiser/friends/
(Yes, that’s his real Slashdot account.)
mdmadph:
Being cynical about the prosecution’s intentions in this instance is, of course, valid. Particularly, when viewed in light of other prosecutorial screw ups.
However, I think anytime you can bring closure to the victim’s family by finding a missing loved one alive or, sadly, dead reducing a convicted murderers sentence is warranted.