The Adderall Diaries
Page 20
“Maybe it didn’t happen then,” he says. Though he clearly wants me to think that it did. But do I? This is my father.
20. New York Times, April 27, 2008.
21. Ellen Warren, Chicago Tribune, March 18, 2005.
EPILOGUE
On July 7, 2008, two days before he’s scheduled for sentencing, Hans Reiser leads the police to Nina’s remains. He takes them through the woods near his house to a thin deer path that cuts sharply off the trail, then sits for a moment in the dirt. He’s handcuffed to William Du Bois and accompanied by a team of SWAT officers. Helicopters hover overhead. “If you dig there,” he says, pointing to an end of turned earth, “you’ll find her feet.”
I had visited him in the jail just five days earlier. It was our first and only meeting. We spoke over a phone line, staring at each other through bulletproof glass. He told me he recognized me from court. He said he hadn’t received a fair trial and asked me to investigate witnesses against him. He said he would be very impressed if I could find out a few things. He didn’t show any remorse; he was angry about how he had been treated. I said, “Who cares if you received a fair trial if you’re guilty of murder?”
“You can believe whatever you want to believe,” he said, hanging up the phone. But with his sentencing approaching he finally gave in.
In late August Hans gives Paul Hora his recorded confession. He says on September 3, 2006, in a fit of rage, he punched Nina in the face, then choked her. He says he placed her in a duffel bag and stored her for two days in the back of the Honda CRX while he went out at night with a small shovel and dug the hole. He dug the grave at a plateau three hundred feet below a hiking trail. The hole is four feet deep at the end and four feet long in hard, packed ground.
The confession is itself a lie. The murder was premeditated. Sources tell me that prior to giving Hora his statement Hans admitted to digging Nina’s grave two weeks in advance.
On August 29, 2008, Judge Goodman approves the bargain negotiated by Hora. In exchange for leading the police to Nina’s body, confessing, and waiving his right to appeal, the charge is reduced from murder one to murder two with a mandatory sentence of fifteen to life. It’s not a significant reduction. Unless the California Department of Corrections changes dramatically Hans is unlikely ever to be released from prison. Nina’s remains are shipped to Russia so her family can give her a proper burial and begin the process of mourning.
Many think that, despite waiving his right to appeal, Hans will find a way to continue his case. “As long as Hans Reiser is alive,” Assistant Defense Attorney Richard Tamor says, “this story will never end.”
STEPHEN ELLIOTT is the author of seven books including Happy Baby, a finalist for the New York Public Library’s Young Lions Award, as well as a Best Book of 2004 in Salon.com, Newsday, Chicago New City, the Journal News, and the Village Voice.
Elliott’s writing has been featured in Esquire, the New York Times, GQ, The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2005 and 2007, The Best American Erotica 2006, and Best Sex Writing 2006.
In January 2009 he launched TheRumpus.net, a daily online culture magazine.