Comment by dale_glass
2 years ago
He was far less of a mastermind than he fancied himself at the time.
If I recall, he bought a book on murder investigations and a socket set after his wife's disappearance (which was easily tracked back to him), removed car seats (blood) from his car, and willingly testified in court that it was his manly dream to sleep in the car, or something along these lines.
He could have likely gotten away with it if he kept his mouth shut. Luckily he had the arrogance of believing he had actually come up with a convincing story.
For those interested in the trial, the SF Chronicle's Henry K. Lee ran a very detailed blog on it: https://web.archive.org/web/20080501184401/http://www.sfgate...
I go back periodically and read the Wired article about it.
It is totally bananas:
https://archive.is/BcMRF
The wildest part was the friend who had an affair with his wife who blurted out unprompted on the stand that he had killed 7 people. They let that guy go!
The 'weird nerds' defending Reiser brought this up time and again during the trial. But Reiser showed them all up by leading the authorities to where he had buried the body afterwards so I guess that that particular angle is now settled.
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I've read the same Wired article you have, it's confusing but it does not actually say that Sturgeon testified during the trial. Read it again.
Sean Sturgeon was not called by the prosecution or the defense. He did not testify at the trial. The defense hinted several times during the trial that the police had not adequately investigated Sturgeon for the murder.
Before the trial, Sturgeon called the Oakland police and said "I've killed 8 and half people, but I didn't kill Nina." The police didn't know what to do with the 'half' part, and discounted him as a crank.
I will always remember the Slashdot comment that said that removing the passenger seat of your car so you could sleep in your car was a reasonable thing to do, and everyone saying it was suspicious was a hater. (Bro. A car floor isn’t even flat.)
I think it was my first experience with absolute egregious fanboism.
That /. thread was amazing. So many people trying to justify behavior that cleanly pointed to murder. Not every action by itself, but the combination of all of them: buying crime books, removing the seat, cleaning his car and there were more actions. But the slashdot technical community defended him until the moment he confessed.
It was really cringey.
Don’t forget, leaving his cell phone at home on the day of his wife’s murder when he otherwise always carried it with him.
It wasn't fanboism, it was something else entirely: solidarity of the ingroup.
Hard to believe for the younger folks around here, who grew up in a culture that praised and valued technical skills, but Slashdot was a place for the prior generation, for whom technical skills were mocked and ridiculed.
Hans was "one of us", and it's a very human thing to believe that a member of your specific outcast group would ever be one of the baddies.
The fanboys spilled over to HN as well: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=240814
Best comment on that thread, calling out their ridiculous takes:
> I gotta say it: the guy was a f-cking murderer and yet you guys are arguing about whether he got a fair trial, even after he led the cops to the strangled, decomposing corpse. And then complaining about the sheer brass neck of a journo who fails to show appropriate respect to this f-cking murderer. What, just because he hacked on Linux once upon a time? Jeez, you really couldn't make this stuff up.
Nah man. The best is https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=241000
Hans Reiser gives a jailhouse interview to Salon, and when he comes off as unremosrseful murderer, the peanut gallery says:
> I find it to be just another case of math envy, the imbecile KNOWS that he could never in a million years achieve 1% of what Reiser has achieved, however Reiser is now a convicted murderer, thus the idiot can now feel better about himself, and hurl contempt and scorn on Reiser.
Like anyone gives a shit about some computer filesystem.
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It is reasonable, although niche enough to be a bad defense.
Here is a popular Instagram account where someone does exactly what you are saying is unreasonable: https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic
> Here is a popular Instagram account where someone does exactly what you are saying is unreasonable: https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic
Except they don't. First post shows them asking themselves if there's a more comfortable way, second post shows them installing a flat surface.
https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic/reel/CyGu0vUuXsz/
https://www.instagram.com/salvagetoscenic/reel/CyWqTSSJV7U/
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It's certainly not common, but I had a friend in highschool that took out the front passenger seat of his VW bug, to make it easier to get surfboards into the car. He normally just had a folding chair for passengers.
Did this friend also do it exactly when the murdered wife and mother of his children went missing?
Driving with a folding chair in the car seems very dangerous. Is that legal where you live?
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Here's a 16 year old Hackernews thread from the day after the conviction, you'll see lots of even to this day prolific HN commenters writing that well we don't know if he REALLY did it, and even if he did, he has definitely down a net good for humanity with his contributions to software (and then tptacek reliably shoots them down)
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=176098
It was probably him.
He could have likely gotten away with it
He had a plea deal offer for not much more than time served so he even had a definite option to a form of getting away with it.
I briefly worked with Hans around 2005. My impression at the time was that he declined the manslaughter plea because he thought he was smarter than everyone around him.
Why didn't he take it? It's pretty much the best what murderer on trial can hope for.
... then again, if he was reasonable he'd probably never commit murder.
You can get the details from the contemporary coverage linked in the sibling comments but it seemed like he felt he'd go to trial and be acquitted. If I had to guess, having to admit he'd been lying to everyone through the whole process was probably also a factor - the deal was something like plead to a manslaughter charge and reveal the location of the victim's body.
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I figure it was because he thought he was so intelligent that he could run circles around the court.
He probably didn't take the deal because it would have meant he would never see his children again.
Makes you wonder how many people do actually get away with it.
It really depends on what you're looking to get away with.
If you're looking to get away with orchestrating the murder of someone you know, it can be difficult.
However, if you're just looking to get away with murdering someone in general, that's surprisingly easy. Just go a town or two over and knife a random someone in a random parking lot. Police success rates are comically low.
Police success rates on completely random murders are insanely low partially because they're insanely rare.
Complete success is something like 50% overall, but in general in many of those cases that "aren't solved" they know who did it, they also know they can't prove it.
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