Mar 18, 2008

Reiser: Wife may be hiding

Bay City News

Computer engineer Hans Reiser suggested Monday that his estranged wife, Nina, may have disappeared voluntarily, because he thinks he was finally gaining the upper hand in what he described as their "contentious divorce" proceedings over a two-year period.

In his fourth day on the witness stand and with no end to his testimony in sight, Reiser, 44, said things "just didn't add up" when Nina's best friend, Ellen Doren, called him on his cell phone the night of Sept. 5, 2006, and said Nina had disappeared two days earlier and the Reisers' two children were staying with her.
Reiser said he wondered, "Why is she (Doren) picking up my kids" after school?

He said, "It didn't make any sense. It still doesn't make sense."

Referring to Nina's decision to file for divorce in August of 2004 and her court victories that gave her legal custody of their children, Reiser said, "Nina had beaten me in every round of the divorce and I thought I had the advantage and now something was going on."

Reiser said the reason he believed he finally had the advantage is that he thought a deposition of Nina by his divorce lawyer in August of 2006 proved his contention that Nina had embezzled money from his computer file business and also engaged in forgery.

Nina Reiser was born in Russia and was trained as a physician there and married Hans Reiser in 1999 after she joined him in Oakland.

But she disappeared on Sept. 3, 2006, at the age of 31, after she dropped off the couple's children at the house in the Oakland hills where Hans Reiser lived with his mother.

Her body has never been found, despite extensive searches in the Oakland hills and elsewhere. But in October of 2006, Hans Reiser was charged with murdering her because prosecutors believe that DNA and blood evidence proves that he killed her. He has pleaded not guilty to the charges against him.

Reiser's attorney, William DuBois, has said that Nina may still be alive and in hiding somewhere, possibly in Russia.

Repeating much of his testimony from March 3, which was his first day on the witness stand, Reiser said he had nothing to do with Nina's disappearance.

He said Nina came to his house about 2:20 p.m. on Sept. 3, 2006, to drop off their two children as part of a compromise agreement in which they shared custody of them that weekend.

Reiser said his relationship with Nina was improving in terms of spending time together with their children, but medical and legal custody of their children remained contentious issues.

Reiser said he told Nina that day that "she hadn't done well in her deposition" and that he no longer would pay her $1,000 a month in child support.

Reiser said he was prepared to talk to Nina about their divorce proceedings for hours, but after about an hour she said she had to leave.