Hans Reiser arraigned on murder charge
By Harry Harris and Jason Dearen - STAFF WRITERS
Article Last Updated:10/13/2006 07:56:27 AM PDT
Nina Reiser's children were in the house when police believe her husband killed her, according to a prob-able cause statement filed by in-vestigators Thursday.
Hans Reiser, 42, also told his two children not to say anything to police if they were asked about him, according to the statement.
Police arrested Reiser on Tuesday after confirming tests on DNA extracted from splattered blood in the living room of his Montclair house and in his car could not exclude it as his estranged wife's.
Handcuffed and wearing a red jail-house jump suit, Hans Reiser was arraigned in court Thursday on a murder charge. He delayed entering a plea sohis defense attorneys can review evidence.
His attorneys, William Du Bois and Daniel Horowitz, said the case against their client is flimsy at best, and will not hold up under scrutiny in court.
While police believe Nina Reiser is dead, they have not found her body. Prosecutors charged Reiser with murder even though no body has been found, a rare legal occurrence.
The Reisers' two children, a girl, 5, and a boy, 7, were taken into protective custody and interviewed by police in the days after their mother's disappearance.
Nina Reiser, 31, dropped off the children at her estranged husband's house about
2 p.m. Sept. 3, after picking up groceries at the Berkeley Bowl market. Police later reviewed surveillance footage showing that Nina Reiser and her two children left Berkeley Bowl about 1:55 p.m., before heading to her husband's house.
Police said the youngsters were downstairs playing video games at Hans Reiser's Montclair house Sept. 3, and heard their parents arguing.
"One of the children indicated that Hans Reiser and Nina Reiser were possibly involved in an argument," wrote police missing persons Officer Ryan Gill.
"The child indicated that his parents were talking at a 'medium' volume and that they were using 'not nice words,'" Gill wrote.
The son later told an investigator he had gone upstairs when his mother and father were in the living room. The child said his father told him to go back downstairs and not to come back up, according to the statement.
Nina Reiser has not been seen since. Two days later, on Sept. 5, she failed to pick up the children from school, and concerned friends notified police.
On Sept. 9, Nina Reiser's tan mini van was found on the 1500 block of Fernwood Drive in Montclair. It was locked, and groceries were "strewn about the vehicle."
"Nina Reiser's cell phone remained in the vehicle, and had been dismantled (battery removed and phone flipped open)," according to the statement.
Also inside the van were personal checks, receipts and more than $100 in cash. The evidence recovered in the vehicle did not indicate to investigators that robbery was the intended motive.
Search and rescue dogs scoured the area around the van, but did not come up with any scent trails. That led investigators to conclude Nina Reiser had not been to the location where her van was found. Witnesses in the neighborhood told police the van was parked there Sept. 5.
Attempts to interview Hans Reiser immediately after his wife's disappearance were unsuccessful. "When the officer attempted to gather information for his preliminary investigation, Hans Reiser became uncooperative and advised the officer to contact his lawyer," Gill wrote in the statement.
Police also interviewed Hans Reiser's mother, Beverly Palmer, who refused to provide a formal statement. Palmer was not at home Sept. 3, and told investigators she was attending the "Burning Man" festival in Nevada.
Palmer, who refused to comment after her son's court hearing Thursday, did not allow investigators inside her home when first asked, the report states.
History of violence
Nina and Hans Reiser met in Russia in 1999, later married and lived together until about April 2004, when Nina kicked her husband out, police said. That's when Hans Reiser moved into his mother's Montclair house.
Nina Reiser filed for divorce in 2004, and eventually won custody of the children.
Investigators said that during the course of their separation, Hans Reiser physically assaulted his wife and threatened to cause her bodily harm "for the rest of her life."
On the weekend Nina Reiser disappeared, the couple had argued about the weekend custody of their children. Nina Reiser had agreed to split the weekend days with her husband.
Though Hans Reiser was granted visitation of his children, he was only allowed to pick them up under police supervision at the Oakland police department. Officers who observed the exchanges said they were concerned for Nina Reiser's safety at times, and one officer recommended she consider buying a firearm to protect herself.
Horowitz, one of Hans Reiser's two attorneys, said the case against his client is weak and noted the absence of a body. He said police searches with cadaver dogs did not turn up any evidence that Nina Reiser died at Hans Reiser's house.
In addition, both he and Du Bois complained about the police department's leaks of information to the media, and said there is much more to the story.
Du Bois added he is disappointed the media has not looked deeper into Nina Reiser's background, and claimed she had an "incredible extramarital life," without elaborating.
In the days after the disappearance, police said they began following Hans Reiser, and he began trying to lose them by driving at varying speeds, turning down quiet residential streets, and making abrupt stops.
Collecting clues
Police finally recovered the 1988 Honda CRX that Reiser drove near the Montclair Golf Course on Monterey Boulevard on Sept. 19, and noticed it was missing the right front passenger seat. The seat is still missing.
Inside the car investigators found a roll of large, black trash bags — with some bags missing — a socket wrench, masking tape, a map of Manteca and an atlas of Northern California.
Investigators also found two books in the car, "Homicide, A Year on the Killing Streets" by David Simon, and "Masterpieces of Murder" by Jonathan Goodman. The books were purchased Sept. 8 — five days after Nina Reiser went missing — from Barnes & Noble in Berkeley. Both volumes provide detailed accounts of homicide investigations.
Forensics investigators found a 1-by-3-inch blood stain on a sleeping bag "stuff sack" in the car. The stain was tested and Nina Reiser could not be excluded as the source, the statement said.
In addition, investigators found evidence they believe shows the car was cleaned — including water residue under the rug and a siphon pump.
They found a traffic ticket Hans Reiser received Sept. 12 from a Redwood City police officer, who later remembered him being "very nervous." He told Oakland police the front seat was "definitely in place and he would have remembered if it was missing."
When police on Sept. 28 briefly detained Hans Reiser to obtain a DNA sample, he had about $8,900 in cash, his passport and receipts, including one for the siphon pump.
Police said the last purchase they've been able to track by Nina Reiser is from the Berkeley Bowl on Sept. 3. Her last phone call was made to Hans Reiser's house.
Nina Reiser's mother, Irina Sharanova, and best friend, Ellen Doren, said after the court hearing they think Hans Reiser knows what happened to his wife.
"We don't feel numb anymore," Doren said. "We feel angry and we want justice. Hans had something to do with it or he knows who did."
Hans Reiser will be in court again at 9 a.m. Nov. 28. His attorneys said he will enter a plea of not guilty. He is being held without bail.
Staff Writer Jason Dearen can be reached at
jdearen@angnewspapers.com.
http://www.insidebayarea.com/oaklandtribune/localnews/ci_4486527