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Reiser gets fifteen to life
Author: Gareth HalfacreePublished: 2nd September 2008
Hans Reiser will have plenty of time to think up improvements to his journalling file system in prison.
The programmer was arrested and charged with the offence following the mysterious disappearance of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser, in 2006 due to evidence of suspicious behaviour on his part – behaviour Reiser claimed was due to his geeky personality and incipient paranoia, rather than the result of someone trying to hide a body. Sadly for Reiser – although not for justice – the jury didn't believe his story, and found him guilty.
Following this verdict, Reiser made an agreement with prosecutors: he would lead them to the body of his wife in exchange for a lesser charge of second degree murder – a deal which could see the programmer freed in fifteen years, compared to the original twenty-five year minimum sentence for first degree murder.
Reiser is reportedly planning to put his file system technology and the company he founded to drive the development – Namesys – into a trust fund to provide for his children; he also plans to continue programming from within prison, with all proceeds made to be placed in the same trust fund. Whether anyone is likely to hire a convicted murderer – albeit one with some interesting ideas on what makes an efficient and secure file system – to work on their project remains to be seen: technical limitations in the system along with the stigma of the murder case have seen ReiserFS dropped from the vast majority of mainstream Linux distributions since Reiser was arrested in 2006.
If you're looking for insight into the man behind the file system, Wired has a transcript of Reiser's confession, although it makes morbid reading.
Does the mind boggle that a seemingly talented programmer could be capable of such an atrocity, or is it something you've always expected Linux geeks to be capable of? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (7)
the confession sounds interesting. I'll have to give it a read.
on edit: the 34 page confession wasn't morbid in the least to me. it seemed simply just a description of how it all took place without much detail. the man seems very analytical. as Solidus says below, the man seems to be fighting with some memories and conflating/confusing parts of his story. nothing too morbid or sick in the thing, and I get the feeling he cut up the body or at the least, severed some parts for easier traveling with it (they don't make it clear in the PDF document).
He could always be given a WiFi laptop in his cell lol.
When presented with evidence from a centuries-old crime, we do not ask for taste and restraint to prevail, any more than scientists or doctors would prefer to know less about a subject that made them squeamish. The problem with publicly exploring more recent crimes is the near relations' lives that might be affected.
I myself am a man whose ex-girlfriend disappeared a few years after we stopped seeing each other. Though the relationship was over, I still wanted the best for her. If it were possible to know what happened to her, and to hear the confession of whoever took her, I would ask to hear it all. Better to know than reach into empty darkness for a lifetime.
Long ago, I wrote a book inspired by the girl who disappeared. It was published and won an award, so I imagine readers identified with my sense of loss. Years have passed and still I feel haunted by failure and regret. And when her case achieved notoriety, journalists and parasites began misrepresenting her life and character. They've continued doing for a decade.
In the absence of knowledge, we project our own sense of responsibility. However vain and misguided the exercise, we fantasize about going back in time and saving the lost one. Perhaps we do it for her sake, and perhaps to avoid the curse of conscience.
Whatever sordid truths emerge are still pieces of what was taken. Whatever can be regained, however vile, is a stepping stone toward peace. The questions are what pall, pall and call, as time winds down.