“I was looking at his eyes,” the Oakland man said in a telephone interview. “He was faking it.”

Mr. Dunn is a fifth-grade school teacher. What exactly are his qualifications for being able to look into another person’s eyes and and ascertain guilt?

After two days of deliberations, Dunn said the panel had concluded that Reiser had killed his wife, Nina Reiser, on Sept. 3, 2006.

I would like to know what evidence convinced them of this. There was very little DNA evidence. None of which could actually prove anything. Cadaver dogs were unable to find any trace of a body at Reiser’s residence, the minivan or the CRX. There is no weapon and no body.

Dunn said jurors arrived at the conclusion based on evidence that Reiser had strong motives for killing his wife, and his calculative behavior.

Here are the strong motives:

The 31-year-old wife had an affair with the defendant’s best friend. And days before the murder, child welfare workers accused Reiser of being more than $10,000 in arrears in child-support. Jurors also noted that Reiser was frantically calling a local politician in a bid to change the family court system, which he blamed for initially giving full legal custody to Nina, Dunn said.

Hans was pissed off at the family court system. He was fighting to retain partial custody of his children. The fact of Nina’s affair came up briefly during the trial. I didn’t get the impression that Hans was obsessed with this. I’m not exactly sure what Dunn meant by calculative behavior. Perhaps he picked that up when he looked into Reiser’s eyes.

“It was a combination of things,” Dunn said. “The fact that he was able to get rid of the body. It’s something you do if you premeditate … He wasn’t an impulsive type of a guy. He planned things. He researched things.”

This is the comment that really gets to me. Vince Dunn states that it is a “fact” that Hans Reiser got rid of the body. Yet there is absolutely not one bit of evidence to support this fact. And, once again, Dunn gives us another example of his great ability to see into the psyche of other people. What things did Hans plan or research?
When Dunn was asked how he thought Hans had killed Nina, he comes up with this little gem:

“I think he choked her and at some point and stabbed her,” Dunn said.

Stabbed her? If you choke someone and they are dead, why risk splattering blood all over the place? Once again, we have no evidence to support this.

Dunn also comments on Reiser’s guilty behavior of having thrown away the passenger seat and the fact that the battery in Nina’s cellphone was removed. As was Hans’ cellphone battery. I hate to keep repeating myself, but there is no evidence to support that Hans was ever in Nina’s minivan; no fingerprints, no DNA, and no scent was picked up by the dogs. If Hans was so calculating and planned and researched things wouldn’t he have simply gotten rid of Nina’s cellphone? Why not hide it along with her body? The car seat wasn’t removed from the car until 12 days after Nina went missing. Mr. Dunn’s reasoning doesn’t quite work. I agree that it’s odd behavior, but it doesn’t prove premeditated murder.

“We all agreed that she was dead,” Dunn said. “We all agreed that she would not have left her kids.”

Well, she didn’t abandon her kids. Nina wanted to take them with her to Russia but was told by her lawyer that the law would not allow that. The kids are now living in Russia with their grandmother.
All we have from this first juror interview is someone stating facts where none exist. I hope another juror will come forward who can give us a better insight into what actually happened during deliberation.

Sentencing has been scheduled for July 9th.

Sentencing will be today, I think. I’ll post it as soon as I find out. There is also the appeals process. The folks on the In Session forum don’t hold much weight for an appeal to be granted. The legal heads in their say that in order for an appeal to happen there would have had to have been an error made during the trial. An error that if reveresed would change the outcome of the trial. Except maybe for the gag order on Sean Sturgeon, I don’t think there was such an error. However, the judge does have the authority to change the verdict to a lesser charge if he feels the jury made an error. Again, my legal heads at the forum don’t think this will happen either.

Correction: I didn’t read the article clearly. A sentencing date will most likely be scheduled today.

Some of the jurors are starting to speak out in interviews. I’ll be keeping a look out for those and post back what they say. It’s going to be very interesting to find out how they decided upon premeditation. I have had nothing but doubt during this entire case. And I have been following this from the beginning. However, I have been following this trial from the comfort of my living room. I haven’t had to spend six months in a courtroom suffering through days of mind numbing testimony.

There is one little tid-bit that I found interesting after the verdict was read. The attorneys were asked asked the following question:

Both sides were asked if Reiser would be afforded any leniency should he divulge where his wife’s body is.

“We’ll have to talk to the prosecutor about that,” Du Bois said. “I mean, that would have to be something the prosecutor would have to participate in.”

Hora said, “There are no scheduled discussions, and so the only discussion that I’m looking forward to is the discussion about when the sentencing date will be.”

My socks would be completely blown off if Hans came forward and told us where the body was and how he did it.
Here is a link to Wired’s Threat Level with a video of the verdict being read.

View Larger Map

There’s a nice big park, a reservoir and the San Francisco Bay all in reasonable proximity. Sort of makes you start to think that he could have actually pulled this off. I have never said that he may not be guilty. I just don’t think the prosecution proved it. Their case was built solely on circumstantial evidence. We don’t have OJ’s bloody glove. We can speculate on the evidence until the cows come home. The trial is over and now we wait for 12 people to come to some sort of decision. I hope they do it soon – I would like to move on to something else.

In the meantime, there is a 20/20 interview available on YouTube.

Who is Hans and why do we care?

Hans is basically your run of the mill computer geek of the highest order. He is arrogant, aggravating and annoying. His social skills are completely lacking. He has spent most of the trial driving his lawyer and the judge insane. The jurors can’t stand him. No one cares about Hans. I wouldn’t know anything about him were it not for the fact that I read Wired magazine religiously from cover to cover. The entire case against him is just odd. The prosecution claims they have a mountain of evidence against Reiser. The problem (and there are many) is that this mountain is completely circumstantial. If you start to pick apart this mountain and look at every boulder separately, they don’t have dick. Here’s a quick list for you:

• Her minivan was found with bags of rotting groceries along with her purse, wallet and cell phone.
• Her cell phone had its battery removed.
• A fanny pack taken from Hans had over $8,000 in cash, his passport, and his cell phone – with the battery removed.
• Hans had removed the passenger seat and rear deck from his Honda CRX. He had also hosed out the interior leaving an inch of water in the floorboard.
• Hans had purchased two books from Barnes and Noble that dealt with murder and forensics.
• A neighbor testified that he saw Hans hosing the driveway late at night wearing heavy clothing.
• Forensics found blood matching Nina’s DNA on a sleeping bag stuff sack.
• More DNA evidence was found on a post in Hans’ house.
• Nina was a loving mother who would never abandon her two children.

Let’s take a look at this mountain of evidence:

• There wasn’t anything in the minivan that linked it back to Hans. Shouldn’t there have been a hair sample or fingerprints? Why leave her purse behind? If Hans is as calculating as the prosecution would like us to believe wouldn’t he have taken the purse and the cell phone and disposed of them later?
• By the time Hans was taken into custody by the police he was pretty paranoid. He knew they were tailing him. Why did he have so much cash and his passport? Was he planning on fleeing the country? Who knows. The cell phone battery is a bit suspicious. Suspicious in the fact that the picture of the cellphone taken by the police shows it with the battery in.
• OK, the CRX looks pretty suspect. Who takes out a car seat and throws it away? Hans was under tight surveillance for the three weeks after NIna disappeared until his arrest. He was pulled over for a traffic violation on the 12th of September (Nina vanished September 3rd). The car was completely intact. Hans testified that he was sleeping in the car and the passenger seat was in the way. He tore out the rear carpeting to eventually put in a futon. The car stank and was filthy, so he tried to hose it out. It’s a pretty hoaky explanation, but if there was blood all over the car would you drive it around for nearly ten days before doing something about it?
• The books were found in the CRX. Why not throw them out with the car seat? Hans said he bought them to learn about police surveillance.
• I don’t really understand the significance of Hans hosing down the driveway.
• The blood on the stuff sack is Nina’s. The problem with it as evidence is that there is no way of telling how old the sample is. Hans has testified that he and Nina had gone camping and it just happened to be Nina’s “time of the month”. The DNA taken from the post wasn’t collected properly and doesn’t prove much of anything except that some of the DNA belongs to Hans and some of it belongs to Nina. DNA from other unidentified individuals was also taken from the home.
• During the divorce proceedings and custody battle Nina had asked her lawyer if she could take the children to Russia. She was told that this would be impossible. So, where are the children now? With Nina’s mother who has sole custody – in Russia.

If you go through the blogs and read up on some of the testimony (there were over 60 witnesses called), you will find some strange tidbits. There are a few that really stand out. Hans met Nina in Russia where she was advertising herself in a Russian Brides catalog. Nina filed for divorce a few days after getting her US citizenship. Hans’ friend Sean Sturgeon had an affair with Nina while she was still married to Hans. Sturgeon has also admitted to killing 8 people. His testimony was not presented to the jurors because it would creat bias. He wasn’t even interrogated by the police. Nina ended up dumping Sturgeon for another man. Jilted lover? Investigators also found profiles of men who were looking for sex on Craiglist on Nina’s computer. None of those men were ever questioned. This is basically a fucked up mess.

As I have been writing this article the trial is nearing its close. The prosecution has made its closing statements, the defense is wrapping up theirs. The jury may actually start deliberating this week and I have no clue as to what the outcome will be. All I have are three theories:

1. Hans killed her. He murdered her with his bare hands (hence no blood), disposed of her body so well that it hasn’t surfaced yet and is so cold blooded that he can look everyone in the face and proclaim his innocence while being on trial for over a year.
2. Someone else killed her. The police didn’t really investigate anyone other than Hans. Sturgeon has admitted to killing people and is still out on the streets.
3. Nina is alive and well and is living in Russia.

Check back for more updates.