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Reiser Shows Jury Where He Dumped the Car Seat -- Update

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

OAKLAND, California -- The Hans Reiser murder trial resumed here Wednesday with the defendant fumbling on the witness stand.

"Are you just making these things up?" Alameda County prosecutor Paul Hora asked at one point.

Hans Reiser underwent a second day of grueling cross-examination by Hora who claims the Linux programmer killed his wife, Nina Reiser, amid a bitter divorce and custody battle over their two young children. The defendant had spent nearly five days on the stand under direct examination before it came to an abrupt halt at noon Tuesday.

"I am not consistent in my thinking," the defendant testified.

"That's the hallmark of lying, isn't it?" Hora replied.

"That's the hallmark of real people," the defendant responded.

The defendant's testimony largely centered on the 44-year-old open source programmer having thrown away the passenger seat of his two-seater, 1988 Honda CRX in the aftermath of his wife's Sept. 3, 2006 disappearance. The question-and-answer session also focused on why that same vehicle's floorboards were soaked with an inch of water when police seized it after his wife vanished.

The defendant testified the car's inside was dirty and that's why he took a hose and sprayed down the inside. He said he had done that with a 1991 Plymouth Laser sometime years before.

He said the Plymouth's floorboard had a hole, and the water drained. That is why he falsely assumed the water would drain out of the CRX, he testified.

"I thought they all had holes," the defendant testified.

Prosecutor Hora wondered aloud if, when the defendant drove the Plymouth on the rain-soaked freeway, whether water was "coming in through the car through the floorboard?"

The defendant responded that the car was "well designed."

"Ever heard of shampooing the car?" Hora asked.

"It costs money," the defendant responded. Moments later, he added: "I'm not sure I even knew at the time you could even rent these shampoo machines."

Prosecutor Hora maintains the defendant transported his dead wife's body in the vehicle. That's why it was scrubbed down and why the seat was gone, Hora maintains.

Nina Reiser, at age 31, was last known to be at her estranged husband's house in the Oakland hills, where she dropped off he couple's children for the Labor Day weekend.

Hora maintains the mother of the couple's boy, now 8 and girl now 6, never left the house alive. The 44-year-old developer of the ReiserFS filesystem claims his wife abandoned her children after he accused her that day of bilking funds from his software company, Namesys. He remains jailed here without bail.

The defendant repeated again Wednesday that he removed the passenger seat because he was sleeping in the tiny car. He said he slept in it to avoid going back to the Oakland hills residence he shared with his mother.

He testified that he thought his mother, Beverly Palmer, would have a better chance of winning custody of his two children if he avoided going to the house in the aftermath of his wife's disappearance. That is why he said he tossed the seat in a dumpster outside of an Oakland hardware store because he didn't want to go back to the house, he testified.

(The wife had legal custody of the children before she vanished, and the police were urging the family courts not to award the children to the defendant. Nina Reiser's mother, who lives in Russia, won custody of the kids.)

Still, he said he returned to the Oakland hills house at least "a half dozen times" after his wife vanished and before his Oct. 10, 2006 arrest. One time, he said, was to get a sleeping bag. The cover to that bag, when police discovered it in the vehicle, had he and his wife's blood on it, according to earlier testimony from a Oakland Police Department forensics technician.

"You could go to the house to get a sleeping bag but not to the house to put the car seat away?" Hora asked.

"I guess that gives you an idea of what an inconsiderate person I am," the defendant replied, noting that the car was leased from Palmer, his mother.

In open court, the defendant demonstrated how he threw away the seat while handling a similar seat.

"Come over here and lift it up," Hora demanded. "Will you show me how it was you threw it into the dumpster?"

The defendant, wearing the same dark coat he has donned since trial began Nov. 6, stepped down from the witness stand and showed the 12 jurors and two alternates how he unfolded the seat and heaved it into the dumpster after unbolting it.

"Don't throw it on the table, please," Hora said, motioning at the prosecution's table.

"It was necessary to do a slinging motion because it wasn't easy to get it over the tip of the dumpster," the defendant testified. "I got it on the first try."

"How tall was the dumpster?" Hora asked.

"Maybe as tall as your shoulders."

Hora told the judge that, "For the record, I'm about 6 feet 1 and my head is about normal size." (The gallery and jurors chuckled.)

Speaking of jurors, many of them sat pondering the testimony with their hands to their mouths or propping their heads. They jotted notes and sat slumped in their brown-leather swivel chairs at the defendant's immediate right. A deputy sat to the defendant's left.

The defendant said he tossed the seat into the dumpster sometime "later in the afternoon" about two weeks after Nina Reiser went missing.

"These memories are all very vague," he said. "It was a long time ago."

Hora showed the defendant and jurors some photos of the outside of the Oakland hardware store where Hans Reiser said he heaved the car seat into a dumpster.

"I'm not able to rule out this photo of being the place," the defendant testified. "I remember the shape of the parking lot more than the details."

The defendant, using a yellow legal pad, drew an L-shaped picture of he building and parking lot, which Hora published to the jury on a large monitor. "That L-shape, I am certain of," Hans Reiser said.

Hans Reiser was attempting to explain the location of the hardware store when he caught the attention of his defense lawyer, William DuBois. "Why is my lawyer shaking my head in my direction?" the defendant asked.

"Bill. Bill. This is not Mapquest. Let him figure it out," the judge chimed.

The defendant and prosecutor got into a brief scrape when Hora asked Reiser whether he had studied how one could conceal evidence from the authorities.

"I wish to object to the question," Hans Reiser answered.

"Mr. Reiser, you don't get to object to the question. Only your lawyer can object to the question," Alameda County Superior Court Judge Larry Goodman said.

The defendant's attorney, DuBois, interjected: "I'm not objecting."

"Mr. Reiser, you're trying my patience," the judge added.

The defendant finally answered, saying his interest was in police corruption.

UPDATE

After the lunch break.

Moments before testimony broke for the day, the defendant conceded he removed the two hard drives from one of his computers perhaps as few as four days following his wife's disappearance. At one point he said Sept. 9 but settled on Sept. 7, 2006 as the day of removal.

"Why are you saying things when you know they're not precise?" prosecutor Hora asked.

"Because I'm a fool."

"Mr. Reiser. This is a murder trial. You got to get things right. This isn't a time to be loose or flip. You're under oath and you need to tell the truth. Do you understand that?" Hora asked.

"I understand."

The defendant did not say what was on the hard drives, but said the username was either Bitspit or Bitpit.

"Where are they?" Hora asked.

"Uhm. I gave them to my attorney."

"Why did you remove the hard drives? What were they going to see on those hard drives?"

"I don't think that anybody would particularly want the government going through their hard drive," the defendant said.

Hora asked: "Why did you think the police would be searching your house and or computer on Sept. 7?"

"I have been told by an attorney that as the husband, I would be the primary suspect," Hans Reiser replied.

"In what?" Hora demanded.

"In the disappearance of my wife."

At the outset after lunch, prosecutor Hora showed jurors and the defendant several 2005 e-mail exchanges between the Reisers, whose divorce began in 2004 and was never finalized.

In one, the defendant wrote his wife: "You cost much more than you are worth, in my view."

In another, she had written him about a variety of private school options for their children. "Trust in me to do odd, but effective things with their education," the defendant wrote back, noting that he wanted to school his children.

"Sounds like Nina has done a lot of research where she wants the kids to go for the 2006-2007 school year?" Hora asked.

"Nina's proposal is more reasonable than I understood at the time," he replied.

Hans Reiser wrote in that same e-mail: "Leave them with me and go."

Then there was the e-mail in which Nina Reiser accused him of scaring his young son who was about to have an adenoidectomy -- lumps removed from the depths of one's nose.

"Telling (the son) that a doctor would cut his head open during the surgery is inappropriate," the e-mail from the wife read.

"Did you tell (the boy) what's written in this e-mail?" Hora asked.

"Not exactly."

"What did you tell him?"

(Pause)

"I shouldn't have said to him what I said to him."

Wired.com is not publishing the children's names to protect their privacy.

Much of the afternoon's testimony centered on where the defendant slept during the five weeks from when his wife went missing until his arrest. He said he rented at least 10 hotel rooms from Berkeley to Reno and slept in the CRX at least three times.

He estimated he slept at the Oakland hills residence he shared with his mother three times.

Testimony is recessing until Thursday, when the defendant is expected to resume the stand.

THREAT LEVEL is providing gavel-to-gavel coverage.

See Also:

• Live Blog: Hans Reiser Denies Murdering His Wife
• Hans Reiser Murder Trial: The Vilification Defense Begins -- UPDATE II
• Hans Reiser Evading Police Because He Was Upset, Feared Arrest ...
• Hans Reiser Taking Witness Stand Now; Did You Kill Your Wife?
• Defense Planting Seeds of Doubt; Hans Reiser Likely to Testify ...
• Hans Reiser Murder Trial: Indigent, Technospeak and Evading Detection
• Hans Reiser Murder Trial: Indigent, Technospeak and Evading Detection
• Hans Reiser Murder Trial: The Ego, the Filesystem and No Mention ...
• Hans Reiser to Testify; Judge Says Sufficient Evidence to 'Sustain ...

Full post as published by Threat Level on March 19, 2008 (boomark / email).