Some of us thought, based on the lack of any real evidence in his trial, that Hans Reiser might be innocent of the supposed murder of his wife, Nina Reiser. We were wrong. On July 7th, Reiser led representatives of the Alameda County District Attorney’s office, and Oakland Police to her body.
According to the local CBS affiliate report on Reiser’s revelation, Reiser took authorities to where he had buried her body in the Redwood Regional Park in the Oakland Hills. The area, less than a mile from where Reiser had lived, has been searched in vain by police after Nina Reiser had been reported missing.
CBS reports that Reiser revealed the location of the body in return for a plea agreement. It is speculated that the deal will reduce Reiser’s first-degree murder charge, with its mandatory sentence of 25-years to life to second-degree murder with a sentence of15-years to life.
As for Reiser’s work, the open-source, high-performance file-system Reiser4, the code was last updated in mid-April. Edward Shishkin has taken over as maintainer of the project.
In an April note to the LKML (Linux Kernel Mailing List) Shishkin stated that the reiserfsprogs, reiser4 patches against vanilla kernels and reiser4progs will be kept in a Kernel.org directory. The Userspace utilities for the older ReiserFS and Reiser4 file systems are being kept in separate Kernel.org directories. While Reiser’s crime has removed him from open-source development circles, the development of his file system, for now at least, continue to live on
4 responses so far ↓
1 pogson // Jul 8, 2008 at 11:49 am
It might not be unreasonable that the penal system could permit Reiser to continue his development work while in prison between social adjustment courses. Some prisons permit/encourage creative/practical work and contacts with the outside world. I would expect a geek like Reiser might not even notice his new environment while coding.
2 LinuxGruven // Jul 8, 2008 at 12:41 pm
There was something about this in SFGate at http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/07/08/MNN011LDR8.DTL
The whole thing creeps me out. I guess Hans Reiser has been a bit of a misfit his whole life and couldn’t cope with high school and so went onto University of California at Berkeley at 13 I believe. The dude obviously is smart, smart enough to hide a dead body from the Oakland Police, but he is totally despicable.
3 sjvn // Jul 8, 2008 at 12:54 pm
On a purely personal note, I knew Hans well enough to think he might be innocent. I have had the misfortune of knowing truly evil people who could appear perfectly normal so I never believed he was innocent. But, from what I knew of him, the situation, the court case, etc. I thought he might well be innocent.
I feel sick to my stomach knowing now that someone I thought might be innocent was capable of murder.
Steven
4 LinuxGruven // Jul 8, 2008 at 3:12 pm
Steven, it is great to read your reports at your new gig. Go Mountaineers.
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