Reiser Murder Case Gets Stranger 500
Fahrvergnuugen writes "Wired is running a story about how an ex-lover of the missing wife of accused spouse killer Hans Reiser has confessed to killing eight people unrelated to the case. While Reiser will still stand trial for the murder, this development will undoubtedly complicate things."
I did that too! (Score:2, Interesting)
Light on details (Score:3, Interesting)
Does anyone know any more about this Sturgeon guy and his confessions?
Re:What are the odds? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Though no body has been found, Reiser was arrested Oct. 10 after the Oakland Police Department found small drops of blood in his house and in his Honda CRX"
Makes it a little fishy although I am sure I have small drops of blood around my house and in my cars too from small cuts and stuff happening while doing stuff outside. I would hope they need more than that to tie the "murder" to him. I think she just took off somewhere myself, I mean she was cheating on him so I don't think it is too far out of the ballpark.
Re:What are the odds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Son of a bitch (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I did that too! (Score:2, Interesting)
I see what you mean, but given that he's just decided to mention that he killed 8 people (or maybe 9 : he's not sure whether the ninth one was dead!) and adds that he's decided to confess because it "seems relevant" then I find his behaviour far enough outside the norms I'm used to dealing with that I don't expect to understand his motives for anything. Maybe he wants to harm Reiser by leting him rot in jail, just like he wanted to kill a bunch of other people.
A real sharp-witted fellow (Score:4, Interesting)
When this reporter responded that it was relevant, Sturgeon said, "Then you have the answer to your question."
Sturgeon added that confessing was one of the most difficult decisions of his life. He also regrets being a source of distraction in the case, joking that he is not so much a red herring as a "red Sturgeon."
Yep... a regular old Hannibal Lechter. Do you think he might have had some sort of grudge against Reiser? Spurned love, and then his friend gets the girl... yathink? Maybe he set it up so that not only does Reiser lose his wife... but then has to defend a murder case for killing her.
From what's been in the press, it seems that all the evidence is circumstantial. A criminal case can be proven by circumstantial evidence, but only when it's enough to exclude all other reasonable conclusions based on the evidence. Looks like this shoots the prosecution right out of the water.
On the other hand, if the prosecution had this confession a long time ago and they are still moving forward, it's possible they have some other evidence that we don't know about yet.
Re:Bad line wrapping! (Score:5, Interesting)
As I understand it, this is mostly a myth, but without a body it can be awfully hard to prove that the victim is dead in the first place. As an example, spouses in abusive relationships often disappear and hide themselves.
DIg a little deeper... (Score:3, Interesting)
Sturgeon was allegedly molested as a child which directly motivated the killing of the other eight people AND the development of extreme sado-masochistic sexual tendencies... Which is a purported reason that Hans's woman both began and ended her affair with him.
The missing link is how Hans became friends with this guy and a gossipy answer at this point is that BOTH of them were involved in some very dark sexual practices & became close friends because of this.
Please note: I hope Hans is innocent, but this development does not appear to help him at all. If anything it may cause Hans's character to be called further into question based upon investigations into this other side of his life that was previously undisclosed.
The bus factor of OpenSOurce (Score:2, Interesting)
If linus got hit by a Bus tommorrow, Linux would no doubt survive but there would be a giant glitch in the force and depending on how things got restored Linux might very well start to lose it's focus.
It's a big opportunity for the Microsofts, IBMs, Oracles, SAPs and Novell's to point out that for bussiness operations continuity you should only buy software, open source or private, backed by a commercial vendor.
Wow, what are the odds? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:hmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:just to be clear (Score:5, Interesting)
It also says that if I wanted to frame some guy who I hate because I failed to steal his wife from him, I'd confess to everything but killing the woman, so that the cops will think exactly what you thought. So far in this case it seems the cops have been easy suckers, so it just might work.
Death Yogi (Score:5, Interesting)
This of course can be a strategy in itself, it's a card he's earnt by confessing and can play against Reiser, someone he clearly wants to see lose everything (re 2004 case for attempted seizure of Reiser's business [cbs5.com], Namesys Inc.).
Re:The bus factor of OpenSOurce (Score:2, Interesting)
So what if ReiserFS get's not developed further? There's still dozens of other file system to choose from.
We use both commercial and free open source software in our company, and support or bugfixes are not generally faster/slower better/worse from one or the other. The only thing you can't to when you don't have commercial support is pin the blame on someone else when it isn't working.
I have had very good personal experiences with Oracle support. Microsoft often has a "Yeah, we now it doesn't work in your case, but we can't be bothered to fix it" approach. Guess our 2000 client licenses plus a few dozen different servers don't get us much priority.
And take a case like PeopleSoft for example a commercial company can get bought up, and the support for your product dumped sooner or later without anyone actually getting hit by a bus.
Just take XP / Vista. If you want to continue using XP you are out of luck, because it's going to get de-supported pretty soon. ( And we are still using Windows 2000 mostly, because some special software from a commercial vendor doesn't even work on XP )
I think when an open source product has enough people using it, there will always be someone to pick the pieces up when the original writer leaves the project for whatever reason.
Re:The bus factor of OpenSOurce (Score:3, Interesting)
Namesys (the company behind ReiserFS) is still around even without Hans. You ask "why isn't that happening with ReiserFS" -- but the business behind ReiserFS hasn't even gone away in the first place!
Re:What are the odds? (Score:3, Interesting)
>hasn't been recovered yet.
I understand all about rules of evidence and presumption of innocence, but this was a very strange detail.
I've been a vintage car enthusiast for a long, long time, and I could probably name the time, place, and parties to almost every single car part that was ever traded, installed, or removed from one of my cars. I'd definitely be able to tell you what happened to something as significant as a passenger seat. Of course, in my case, that would probably be the whole front seat from a 1959 Chevrolet which would be a $3000 part, but still. It's weird that we know about the seat, the tools, the blood, but we don't know Hans' explanation. Without his explanation, the jury is only going to hear the prosecutor's theory, which is going to sound quite plausible to a jury.
Re:What are the odds? (Score:1, Interesting)
Still alive? (Score:5, Interesting)
It was also revealed that Nina Reiser obtained Russian citizenship for her daughter 2 years before and surreptitiously obtained Russian citizenship for her son two months before she disappeared.
Now how likely would it be that she is somewhere is big Russia
Re:hmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Last I heard, they still haven't found a body. What Kind of evidence do they have against him outside his wife is still missing. I mean books are nothing more then circumstantial, But then is a ex-lover who turns out to be a serial killer (I believe 5 or more still qualifies). Some blood in the car, was it a lot or an amount that someone could have cut themselves at some point of time and have it there?
It would be interesting if this Ex-lover is the one who did it and he is innocent. I'm wondering how he would be accepted back into the community if this happens.
Re:hmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The bus factor of OpenSOurce (Score:2, Interesting)
Time to give up computing... (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:just to be clear (Score:3, Interesting)
Abandoning it because no one else can maintain ReiserFS is a legitimate reason, but I'm certain that someone will be able to figure it out and maintain it. However, I would think that a name change would be in the works.
Re:Why is a confessed serial-killer not in jail? (Score:3, Interesting)
This isn't to say I agree with such tactics, but double jeopardy means that they have to get their cases right the first time. They can't produce a version 2. This is true of both Sturgeon and Reiser. The margin for error is zero, the risks are extreme. That limits the authorities to having to play it as cool as they can.
This all assumes they're smart, of course. They could just be be stupid, too. The easy way to find out is to see if Sturgeon is arrested a month or two after Reiser is convicted or freed, and/or if he is able to kill again. If the authorities are smart, Sturgeon will be under 24-hour watch by people in a position to prevent him killing someone. If Sturgeon succeeds, or even gets close to succeeding, then the authorities are out of their tiny little minds. Alternatively, if Sturgeon is really delusional, those same authorities should have him in a secure ward the first moment they have enough evidence to prove it.
Re:just to be clear (Score:5, Interesting)
So's the theory that just because a person confessed to a lot of crimes at once, that it somehow must have been the whole of his sins. It's hard to test whether this theory pans out in reality, since whenever a serial rapist or murderer goes on the block, the prosecutors generally try to stick every open case in the book on them in order to clear out their backlog, whether the person actually committed the crime or not. Of those, I wonder how many were murderers who confessed to the murders of the 5 bodies in their basement in hopes of keeping the investigators from finding the other 20 corpses in the lime pit out back?
an obsession or anger on Sturgeon's part
So this Sturgeon guy tries to steal Hans Reiser's wife, tries to seize his company, tries to take his money, and just keeps coming back for more? Yeah, he can't possibly be obsessed or angry, obviously Reiser must have had a "harass me repeatedly" sign taped to his back.
Re:DIg a little deeper... (Score:3, Interesting)
Urgh. I really hate people like that - I don't know what he did, of course, but this whole thing sure seems to be giving SSC BDSM (which is healthy, fun, and totally normal) a bad name (yet) again. The press doesn't seem to have latched on it yet as far as I can tell (which admittedly isn't very far), but putting "extreme sado-masochistic sexual tendencies" (what does "extreme" mean, anyway?) on the same level as "the killing of the other eight people" is really rather ignominious.
(Seriously, just replace the above with "extreme homosexual tendencies", and you'll see what I mean. Hopefully...)
Re:DIg a little deeper... (Score:3, Interesting)
All of these allegations came before Nina Reiser disappeared, and are well documented (lots of press + the court proceedings themselves). If anything, I'd expect the defense team to bring all that up, and present all that as motive - either for murder (Nina Reiser had a new boyfriend) or as a setup to frame Hans Reiser.
If you'd RTFA, you might also have noticed that testimony in one of the preliminary hearings stated that Nina Reiser broke off the relationship with Sturgeon because she was unhappy with his BDSM tendencies. If that's the case, you'd think she'd have brought up things like that in the rather nasty divorce proceedings if Hans Reiser was into it too.
All of these allegations came before Nina Reiser disappeared, and are well documented (lots of press + the court proceedings themselves). If anything, I'd expect the defense team to bring all that up, and present all that as motive - either for murder (Nina Reiser had a new boyfriend) or as a setup to frame Hans Reiser.
Re:I did that too! (Score:3, Interesting)
There's simply no basis for thinking a likely serial killer's claims to have killed or not killed a specific person are reliable.
In this case even less so, since he's had a lot of grievances against Hans Reiser and might very well have seen not confessing as an opportunity to get rid of Hans or just to have some fun with the police.
Re:What are the odds? (Score:5, Interesting)
There's at the very least a chance she stage her own disappearance to get Hans in trouble and went back to Russia and got her kids brought there.
Re:hmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
If you want to get technical it's not serial killing unless all the killings follow the same motif and/or are part of an overarching "statement" (think of how a serial novel is released as a series of installments). If they were individual pre-planned murders all with their own justification that did not follow any theme then he is a mass murderer. If he just snapped one day and went out and killed 6 or 8 or however many people for no real reason, then he's a spree killer.
If you'd read a few of the books in Hans Reiser's collection you'd know this!
Re:Bad line wrapping! (Score:3, Interesting)
gag order? (Score:4, Interesting)
How can they gag that? That seems highly relevant to the case, considering that Sturgeon clearly had a grudge against Reiser.
Most of the other posters seem to assume that the case will be dropped because of this, but if the jury is *never allowed to hear about it* how can the come to the pretty reasonable conclusion that the highly circumstantial evidence against Reiser doesn't amount to much when the victim had dated (and dumped) a known serial killer with a grudge against the defendant?
If the prosecution knew about this, why'd they even bring it to trial?