Kyle Ritter, a computer forensic specialist, testifies he found no evidence linking Hans Reiser to the murder of his wife, Nina Reiser.
Courtroom sketch: Norman Quebedeau/ Wired.comOAKLAND, California – A computer forensic specialist testified in the Hans Reiser murder trial here Monday that the two hard drives the defendant hid from the authorities did not contain evidence linking the Linux programmer to the 2006 disappearance of his estranged wife, Nina Reiser.
"Did you specifically find anything pertaining to the murder of the defendant's wife?" defense attorney William DuBois asked Kyle Ritter, the Alameda County Sheriff's Department technician.
"No," Ritter replied. He also said his 4.5-day examination of the drives "did not turn up any evidence related to this case."
On April 2, DuBois brought the two 80-GB hard drives to court after the 44-year-old defendant testified he removed them from his computer before police searched his Oakland hills house. Reiser gave them to his lawyer DuBois, who entered them as evidence.
Ritter, who said he reviewed a portion of the data on the drives, concluded there were no bulk erasures.
"I didn't see a lot of data that was overwritten," Ritter said.
Jurors soak in the testimony of a computer specialist as the Hans Reiser murder trial enters its sixth month.
Courtroom sketch: Norman Quebedeau/ Wired.comJurors seemed unmoved and took few, if any notes. Some yawned while others sat with their arms crossed in a trial that began Nov. 6 and is expected to conclude within days.
The developer of the ReiserFS filesystem testified earlier he had removed the drives because he was paranoid and did not want the authorities to view his data.
Nina Reiser's last known whereabouts were at Hans Reiser's house on Sept. 3, 2006. She brought the divorcing couple's two young children to stay with their father for the Labor Day weekend.
The defendant had testified he saw Nina Reiser drive away from the house, and said she abandoned the children after he accused her of bilking his Namesys software company. The authorities said she never left the Oakland hills residence alive.
Ritter testified the drives contained videogames and cartoons, financial information and e-mails between Hans and Nina, who were undergoing a bitter divorce and custody battle. The files generally were dated between 2003 and 2006, Ritter said.
Ritter testified that his forensic tools could read most of the partitions on the hard drives but not the thousands of files stored in Reiser4 FS.
"Reiser3 is allocated, but not Reiser4," Ritter said.
Ritter described the Reiser4 as "one of the newest file systems out there." The filesystem is not compatible "with any of the forensic tools we use."
Still, keyword searches in that unmapped data is how Ritter found e-mails and other data that he said was not helpful in prosecutor Paul Hora's case against Hans Reiser.
The forensic specialist said he required a least five weeks or longer to adequately review the drives but was given less than a week.