Comment by pfisherman
2 years ago
I grew up down the street from Hans. I did not know him well, as he was the age of my older brother. I remember they worked on a couple of teenage electrical engineering projects together. Some of the filtered down to me. Hans was autistic and had the mind blindness thing going on, which sometimes made social interaction difficult for him. I think that most of my family did not want to believe that he killed his wife; and that some of his bizarre behavior could be explained by just not having that instinct that drives people to conform to social norms. But once he led police to the body the realization set in for us. Maybe we were the last know.
Our understanding was that it was a crime of passion - a heated argument over custody of children. He was not mean, evil, or a bully or anything - growing up in Oakland I have met a few of those. He is someone who lost it and made a really bad decision that ended a life and destroyed his family. I wonder if things might have turned out differently for him if he had been born 20 years later when there was more awareness and resources for neurodivergent people.
Hans Reiser was convicted of first degree murder. It was premeditated, not a crime of passion. He ruthlessly planned it and executed the murder of his wife. Only because of a plea deal was he sentenced to a second degree.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_United_States_law#De...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Reiser
The article also says that he wasn't diagnosed as autistic. It's interesting seeing how eager folks are to share their excuses and lies. Some don't want to see evil or fear it. A few appear to identify with this murderer.
Read the details of the case.
Did they diagnose people with high functioning autism back in the 60s and 70s? Was Asperger’s even refinished as a thing back then? I don’t know for sure that he got a diagnosis. But was pretty obvious to all in the neighborhood in retrospect.
Anyway, I shared my perspective as someone who was a little closer to the whole episode than most. Perhaps there are some details in there that did not make the Wikipedia page. You are free to discount it or not. Ain’t a thang to me.
Diagnosed Aspie here. No, they did not diagnose high functioning autism back then, at least in English speaking countries. The first English translation of Dr Asperger's research appeared in the 80s. That's when they first coined the terms "Asperger syndrome", "autism spectrum", etc. These didn't become mainstream ideas until the 90s.
It should also be noted that Asperger syndrome as a diagnosis was removed from the DSM in 2013, and Asperger himself has fallen out of favor with the autistic community in recent years due to his connections to the Nazi eugenics regime.
> He was not mean, evil, or a bully or anything
He killed his childrens mother. If those words have any meaning it was mean and evil.
He freaked out in the midst of an acrimonious custody battle. I don’t know if you know or have been close to anyone who has gotten divorced; but people can stop thinking straight when their kids are involved.
This guy is what a mean bully looks like.[1] Crossed paths with him when we were kids and I am not at all surprised he ended up where he did.
1. https://www.justice.gov/archive/opa/pr/2005/February/05_crm_...
Does it matter? Going through a divorce and freaking out doesn’t explain or justify murder.
2 replies →
I struggle to think what should be done when someone is dragging your children away to Russia faster than the courts can stop.
Obviously not murder, but the desperation must have been a pit of despair. The children are about 20 now (draft age) and were in Russia shortly after the case. They may very well have ended up as trench soup in Donetsk or something by now thanks to the wife's psychopathic branch of the family.
Reiser tried, albeit in probably the wrong way.
probably the wrong way?
Some of these comment are sickening.
I say probably because I'm not familiar enough with certainty of the situation to know if this was the only real opportunity Hans had to try to stop the children being taken to be sacrificed to the dice of the Russian legal system and ultimately to be exposed to the child harvesting cannon fodder regime of Putin.
He probably had other options to try, but I'm not sure what they were. I'd feel much safer with him on the street than his psychopathic family court judge.