Reiser reportedly leads police to wife's body (CNET)
By Steven Musil, CNET 20 minutes ago
Hans Reiser, the Linux programmer convicted in April of murdering his estranged wife, led police to what is believed to be her body, authorities told the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday.
The remains were found Monday afternoon buried next to a deer trail in the hills of Oakland, Calif., Reiser's defense attorney, who accompanied his client to the site, told the newspaper. Police said the body has not been identified. A news conference is planned for Tuesday.
In April, following a drama-filled six-month trial, a jury found Reiser, 44, guilty of first-degree murder in the 2006 killing of Nina Reiser, with whom he was undergoing a bitter divorce. Reiser is currently behind held without bail pending his sentencing scheduled for Wednesday.
Throughout the trial, Reiser maintained his innocence. Arguing the so-called "geek defense," his attorney maintained that while Reiser may be strange, arrogant, even abnormal, his odd behavior following Nina's disappearance wasn't evidence of murder.
However, Wired reported in June that a deal was in the works in which Reiser would lead authorities to his wife's body in exchange for a reduced sentence. Wired writer David Kravets quotes an anonymous source familiar with the deal who says Reiser's cooperation could reduce his April conviction from first-degree murder to second degree. A second-degree conviction in California carries a mandatory sentence of 15 years to life, Kravets wrote.
Reiser is known to the technology world as the founder of the ReiserFS file system software, which is available for Linux. Nina Reiser, then 31, was last seen alive on September 3, 2006, in Oakland, as she was dropping off the couple's two children for the Labor Day weekend. Despite exhaustive searches by authorities, Nina's body was not found before the trial.
CNET News.com's Michelle Meyers contributed to this report.