SFGATE.COM BLOG REPORTS ON THE HANS REISER TRIAL. Hans Reiser Trial: Day One Join the Chronicle's Henry K. Lee as he flies mobile updates from the courtroom of the Hans Reiser murder trial. 10:18 a.m.: Prosecutor Paul Hora told reporters that the trial has been delayed until tomorrow. Opening statements are now Tuesday morning at 10. No explanation was given by Hora. 9:56 a.m.: Hans Reiser's mother, Beverly Palmer, is among dozens of people waiting in line to get into court. 9:15 a.m.: The foyer on the fifth floor of the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse near Oakland's Lake Merritt is steadily filling up with reporters and trial watchers. A TV crew from the CBS newsmagazine "48 Hours" is setting up in the hallway. Sketch artists Joan Lynch and Vicki Ellen Behringer, who attend all high-profile trials, are here, as well as reporters from the local TV stations, AP, Wired, ABC's "20/20" and yours truly from The Chronicle. Posted by Eve Batey on November 05 2007 at 10:23 AM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=21674 Hans Reiser Trial: Personalities Chronicle Reporter Henry K. Lee's blogging of the Hans Reiser murder trial continues, with opening statements scheduled to begin today, after a last-minute postponement yesterday. 4:25 p.m.: Court adjourned for the day at 4 p.m. The prosecutor will continue his opening statement tomorrow-likely taking one more entire day--prompting one observer to gripe, "It's not an opening, it's a filibuster." The defense will likely open on Thursday instead of tomorrow. Asked how long his intro remarks would be, lead defense attorney William Du Bois responded, "Nothing like he's doing," referring to the DA. 4:13 p.m.: Nina Reiser charged $15.18 on her Visa to buy deli items-including soup, egg rolls, pot stickers and soybeans-at Berkeley Bowl at 12:30 p.m. Sept 3, 2006, the prosecutor said, displaying a picture of the store receipt that police later found in her car. At 1:55 p.m., she went through the store's checkout after spending $144.48 for 51 items, including crackers, yogurt, sour cream, Lucky Charms cereal, pretzels, English muffins, seven kinds of fruit, extra-large brown eggs, chicken and butter, Hora said. All this, "because she was planning to run away?" Hora asked. "She vanished 30 minutes later," he said, after she dropped off her two children to Hans Reiser's house on Exeter Drive in the Oakland hills. Her car wasn't found until Sept. 9, 2006 on a street in the city's Montclair district, the Berkeley Bowl groceries rotting inside and strewn about as if someone had been driving the vehicle wildly, according to police. 2:52 p.m.: Hans Reiser railed against the Alameda County judicial system in its handling of his family law case in numerous e-mails to county Supervisor Gail Steele, prosecutor Hora told jurors. Are judges and child custody evaluators biased or using a "sound scientific method" in making decisions, Reiser, a self-proclaimed computer genius, wrote in one of many long missives to the supervisor in July 2006, two months before Nina Reiser disappeared. "He's putting a lot of effort into 'Marriage of Reiser,' " Hora told the jury, referring to divorce proceedings that were pending at the time. "He's angry. He's frustrated," the prosecutor said. 12:00 p.m.: We're on a lunch break. Outside court, defense attorney William Du Bois tells reporters that the "prosecution is reaching." As far as the DA's portrait of Nina Reiser as a loving mother who would never leave her children Du Bois said, "That was the image she projected" and that she left them on two occasions. He didn't elaborate. Hans Reiser, meanwhile, "worships his children," Du Bois told the media. "That's why I'm convinced he didn't do this." Prosecutor Hora has no comment Court resumes at 2 p.m. 11:54 a.m.: Hans Reiser is wearing a charcoal suit. He is listening attentively to the DA's statement and frequently consults with William Du Bois, his lead attorney. 10:37 a.m.: "She would have never, EVER abandoned those kids. Ever. Impossible," prosecutor Hora said of the mother of two, startling some in the gallery when he shouts the word "ever." 10:18 a.m.: Deputy District Attorney Paul Hora has begun his opening statement. By the way, it's not called an opening argument. At this stage, attorneys can only give an overview of the case, describing to the jury what they believe the evidence will show. Not until the end will they give closing arguments and actually "argue" the case. 10:12 a.m.: The jury has been sworn in. The panel consists of seven men and five women and is ethnically diverse. There are two male alternates and two female alternates. 9:14 a.m.: A number of personalities will take center stage during opening statements this week in the Reiser murder trial. Prosecutor Paul Hora helped send the self-proclaimed San Leandro sausage king Stuart Alexander to prison in 2004 for murdering three sausage inspectors at his plant. Alexander died a year later at San Quentin Prison. Hora is the son of retired Alameda County Superior Court Judge Peggy Hora. He attended Cal State Hayward and the University of San Diego School of Law and is a 15-year veteran of the district attorney's office. Lead defense attorney William Du Bois, a former Alameda County prosecutor, defended Jose Merel on charges that he was among several men who murdered Newark transgender teen Gwen Araujo in 2002. Merel was sentenced to 15 years to life in prison for second-degree murder. Du Bois (pronounced du-BWA) has been practicing law since 1970 and graduated from the University of Oregon and UC Hastings School of Law. Managing it all is Judge Larry Goodman, known for his stable hand. He often addresses attorneys in court by their first names but tells jurors that's because everyone knows each other and that doing so doesn't make the proceedings any less professional, just more personable. Goodman has presided over numerous high-profile trials, including that of a former couple sent to Death Row in 2002 for luring a Pleasanton student into a specially rigged van where they sexually tortured and strangled her before dumping her body on a snowy embankment. Goodman, who once served in the Coast Guard, has also been a volunteer "homeland security maritime specialist," training Alameda County sheriff's deputies for duty on the department's 32-foot gunboat. Posted by Eve Batey on Nov 06 at 04:19 PM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=21713 Hans Reiser Trial: Day Two 4:20 p.m.: Court recessed for the day at 4 p.m. The judge told jurors that prosecutor Hora has about one more hour to go in his opening statement, which is to conclude tomorrow. But outside court, Hora told reporters that he might go longer than that. At the same time, Hora said he "really, really, really" wants to be done by tomorrow morning. As for defense attorney William Du Bois, he told reporters that the longer Hora talks, the shorter the defense's opening will be. What might have been a three-hour intro could now be an hour-and-a-half intro, Du Bois said. Court resumes at 9:45 a.m. The trial will be dark on Fridays, and this Monday is also dark because of Veteran's Day. 4:08 p.m.: Oakland police launched a major surveillance operation of Hans on Sept. 18, 2006, 15 days after his wife went missing, Hora told the jury. Cops tailed him in numerous undercover vehicles and even in a plane circling overhead. They followed him as he left a daylong child-custody hearing in Oakland, had lunch with a friend at Fonda restaurant on Solano Avenue and then watched as he was dropped off near his Honda CRX at San Pablo and Ashby Avenues. It's the car the cops had been searching for. Hans then drives the car to Monterey Boulevard off Highway 13 in Oakland, parks, gets out, circles the hatchback four times, fiddles around in the car and then leaves. A cop sees Hans talking to a cab driver who appears on scene. By then, it's nightfall. When the cab leaves--and Hans is nowhere in sight--the cops radio each other excitedly, "He's in the cab! He's in the cab!" Police start following the cab and tail it as it heads toward the Oakland airport. But wait! Hans isn't in the cab, the cops realize. Then an officer sees Hans "sprinting up the hill" up Shepherd Canyon Road, looking nervously over his shoulder. The cops lose him in the Oakland hills and never see him again that night, Hora said. But OPD still has Hans' car--and it's missing the right front passenger seat, Hora said. The seat was there when Hans was pulled over by Redwood City police six days earlier, the DA said. 3:26 p.m.: Prosecutor Hora showed jurors security videotape of Hans Reiser paying cash for two books at the now-shuttered Barnes and Noble bookstore on Shattuck Avenue in Berkeley on Sept. 8, 2006, five days after his wife went missing. The books were "Masterpieces of Murder," about true notorious murder cases, and "Homicide," a book about the Baltimore police homicide squad by David Simon. Hora noted that Barnes and Noble clerks always ask if customers are "members," which makes them eligible for discounts. Hora reiterated that Hans paid for the books in cash-and not a credit card. Yet police later found a Barnes and Noble member card in Hans' fanny pack, Hora said. The defense has countered that those books don't prove anything--and that Hans bought them because he knew he was under police investigation and simply wanted to know how the cops operate. 2:47 p.m.: The defendant's mother, Beverly Palmer, wasn't at this morning's session. But she made it to the afternoon session. Palmer, an artist who was at the Burning Man festival in the Nevada desert when police say her son killed Nina, is sitting directly beside another artist--Joan Lynch, a veteran of high-profile trials who sketches courtroom scenes for the media. Lynch dropped something during a sketch this afternoon, and Palmer picked it up. The sketch artist thanked her, and Palmer gave a quick smile in response. She's been glancing at Lynch's sketches. 2:29 p.m.: Bloodstains found on a pillar in Hans Reiser's living room contained DNA belonging to both him and Nina, the prosecutor said. Testing linked Nina's DNA profile with such certainty that only 1 in only 45 trillion women would also match, Hora said. He acknowledged that DNA testing can't confirm when the blood was left there. "Science won't do that for us, so we don't have that information," Hora said. Police recovered Nina's DNA from underwear, a razor and a contact-lens case taken from her home on 49th Street in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood, the DA said. Elsewhere: While Henry K. Lee breaks for lunch, catch up on the fine Reiser trial blogging by David Kravets at Wired blog network's Threat Level. Court TV's message boards also have a great Reiser Trial forum. If you're blogging the trial, let us know! 12:02 p.m.: Prosecutor Hora showed jurors pictures of the Berkeley Bowl groceries found in Nina Reiser's van. Also found in her van, abandoned on Fernwood Drive in Oakland's Montclair district, were her purse with the minutiae of everyday life; credit cards, her cell-phone with its battery removed (but there in her purse), about $121 in cash and an envelope with a check for $2,100 for rent for her home in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood. There were also parenting and self-improvement books with titles like "Parent Power!" "Best Advice I Ever Got" "First Things First" and a book for would-be doctors called "Kill as Few Patients as Possible." Nina Reiser was a gynecologist trained in Russia and hoped to undergo similar training to work as an OB/GYN in the U.S. Missing from her 2001 Honda Odyssey van? Her car keys, Hora said. Nina Reiser "would have been at her refrigerator in 15 minutes" with the groceries after dropping off her children at the defendant's house, said Hora, who used GoogleEarth to show the jury the route she most likely would have taken. "Nina didn't put the van there, Hans did," the DA said. We're now on a lunch break. Court resumes at 1:45 p.m. 10:43 a.m.: The son of Hans and Nina Reiser, now 8, will testify in the murder trial, Hora announced to the jury, ending months of speculation over whether the little boy would come from Russia to provide potentially damaging evidence against his father. The boy testified at the preliminary hearing and undercut his own previous statements to police. He told cops that he heard his parents arguing on Sept. 3, 2006, the day authorities believe Hans killed his wife. But at the prelim, the boy testified that he saw his mom leave his father's home, apparently none the worse for wear. The boy has also provided conflicting accounts of what he saw and did with his mother and father in the weeks before she disappeared. Nonetheless, the DA told the jury today that they'll hear from the boy directly in the trial. As far as any discrepancies, Hora said, "He's just not reliable, because he's so little." 10:32 a.m.: The prosecutor showed jurors surveillance video from the Berkeley Bowl grocery store showing Nina Reiser and her children. The overhead shot first shows her son. A stuffed animal falls to the ground and is then picked up by Nina's daughter. Later we see the little girl "hanging on the side of a shopping cart" full of groceries, Hora said. Soon after, there's a fleeting glimpse of Nina, wearing a sun dress and flip-flops, pushing the cart out of camera view. "That's the last picture of Nina," Hora told the jury. 10:19 a.m.: Judge Larry Goodman greeted jurors this morning, telling them to expect another full day -- at least -- of opening remarks by prosecutor Paul Hora. But the judge added with a smile, "I'm sure there will be no more e-mail today," referring to Hora's exhaustive recitation yesterday of numerous e-mails written by the defendant to his wife and to an Alameda County supervisor. 10 a.m.: Co-defense counsel Richard Tamor fixed Hans Reiser's collar before the start of today's session. Reiser spoke animatedly with lead attorney William Du Bois before jurors were brought in this morning, apparently voicing complaints about why certain things were allowed to be presented by the DA yesterday. Reiser rubbed his brow in frustration at one point. He then turned around and scanned the gallery, nodding almost imperceptibly at someone in the audience. Posted by Eve Batey on November 07 2007 at 12:30 PM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=21742 Hans Reiser Trial: Parrying 4:10 p.m." By the end of the trial, jurors will be convinced that they must find Hans not guilty of murder, defense attorney Du Bois tells jurors, wrapping up his opening statement in two hours. The trial is dark until 9:45 a.m. Tuesday. 4:06 p.m. (technical difficulties): Over the past few days, prosecutor Hora has had some minor problems with a projector that shows pieces of evidence to jurors on a large flat screen hanging from a wall. At one point, "low battery" flashed on the screen. Hmmm. Hora took a look around. Turns out a cord was unplugged. This afternoon, the defense team accidentally flashed some pictures of porn on the screen during Du Bois' opening remarks. Jurors, the judge and the audience tittered. Those pictures HAD been intentionally shown by the defense earlier this afternoon. The defense says those pictures had been found in the "history" of Nina's computer. 3:38 p.m. (DA vs DA):Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff, the top prosecutor, is sitting in the back row watching the trial. He's taken the same exact seat that had been used before a break by prosecutor Angela Backers, who is suing Orloff in Superior Court on the grounds that he failed to promote her and routinely discriminated against her and other women in the district attorney's office. Orloff denies the allegations. 2:44 p.m. (Defense opens): Nina Reiser solicited for future American husbands by advertising in an Atlanta publication called "European Connections" featuring mail-order brides, defense attorney William Du Bois said as began delivering his much-anticipated opening statement. Nina was number 5279 in the catalog, he said, adding, "That's Nina Reiser as she really was" at the time. Nina got pregnant within two months of meeting Hans as part of a calculated plan, Du Bois said, painting her as a "world-class, people-skilled individual." His client, meanwhile, is "an odd person" yet extremely smart, with a photographic memory. Hans is "devoid of social skills. Nina is almost the opposite. Perhaps that is what attracted the two of them initially," Du Bois said. Nina is a master of deception who "let's say, left the area" last year to "let's say, really screw Hans to the wall," Du Bois said. The defense attorney said Nina, while still married to Hans, fell in love with Hans' best friend, Sean Sturgeon, whom Du Bois described as a sadomasochist. Prosecutor Hora objected at this point, but Judge Larry Goodman said, "We won't argue in front of the jury" and overruled the DA's objection. The courtroom is packed with prosecutors eager to see Du Bois at work. 2 p.m.: Your faithful blogger just saw the "other" Reiser prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Greg Dolge, ambling toward Ratto's, the popular sandwich shop in Old Oakland (which is near a second county courthouse, Oakland police headquarters and this scribe's office). "Greg, you're missing a good show!" I called out as I passed him while driving back to court after lunch. "I've been following your accounts," Dolge called back. He handled the Reiser case up until the prelim--or PX as it's known, short for preliminary examination--at which a different judge, Julie Conger, declared, however reluctantly, that there was enough evidence to try Hans. Different judges, different DAs. That's the norm, however. 12:07 p.m.: Prosecutor Hora concludes his opening remarks after more than two days of talking by telling jurors there is only one "simple explanation" about what happened to Nina. "And that's that THIS man," said Hora, walking over to point at Hans, "killed her." Hans turned in his seat to look at the DA as he said this but gave no outward expression in response. At the end of the case, Hora said he will ask jurors to return a verdict of guilty to murder. "Thank you for your patience-I know it was long," he said. After jurors were excused for lunch, defense attorney William Du Bois then asked for a mistrial on the grounds that wiretap evidence and the contents of Hans' fanny pack shouldn't have been admitted. Judge Larry Goodman denied the motion for a mistrial. We're on lunch break. Du Bois delivers his opening statement at 2 p.m. 11:56 a.m.: It was bound to happen-the legal pundits are BAACCCKK. You know, those talking heads who wax poetic about the trial du jour on local TV and national programs. Steve Clark, who has worked as both a prosecutor and defense attorney, is sitting in the courtroom gallery this morning. He's the first pundit to make it here. Clark said he's impressed by the DA's opening remarks so far. It's a circumstantial-evidence case--no body, no murder weapon, no eyewitnesses--and "it's like a jigsaw puzzle. You can't tell what you have until all the pieces are in place," Clark told me during a brief court recess. The defense's job is to "remove and explain each piece" and perhaps provide innocent reasons for Hans' actions, Clark said. Legal analyst Dean Johnson weighed in today by e-mail: "It seems to me that after two days of opening statements there is a gaping hole in the prosecution's presentation. Namely, how and where does Hora think the murder took place?" We haven't forgotten about legal eagle Michael Cardoza, who has talked about this case on KTVU. Cardo, come on down,... 11:04 a.m.: On Sept. 23, 2006, 20 days after his wife disappeared, Hans phoned his mother, Beverly Palmer, in a call that was recorded by Oakland police and played for the jury today. Hans railed against Nina in the call, discussing their bitter divorce battle and essentially giving a list of reasons as to why "Nina is dead," the DA said. Palmer--who is in court today and appeared to be listening to the call with her eyes closed--tells her son that Nina "didn't deserve whatever it is that's happened to her. Don't you think?" Hans replies, "I think my children shouldn't be endangered by her. 'Cuz all I ever wanted was to be nice to her." Palmer says, "Still, Nina didn't deserve whatever it is that happened to her." "And neither did I, and neither did (his son)." Palmer says in closing, "Well hopefully we'll somehow get through all this." Hans tells her, "I love you a lot." Palmer laughs, says "Good" and the two hang up. 10:29 p.m.: Hans was contemplating whether to rent a Manteca storage locker that was big enough to hide his Honda CRX, prosecutor Hora told the jury. Cops later found inside the car a front-page newspaper article dated Sept. 14, 2006 detailing the police search of his Oakland hills home. So Hans knew "the heat is on," the DA says. Nina disappeared on Sept. 3. Ultimately, Hans decided not to rent the locker and instead removes the passenger seat from his car with a 40-piece socket wrench set that he bought from a Kragen auto parts store, Hora said. Also found in the CRX was a sleeping-bag stuff sack with stains matching the DNA of both Hans and Nina, Hora said. 7:47 a.m.: Prosecutor Paul Hora and defense attorney William Du Bois are as skillful in court as they are outside in the hallway, dealing with us media types. Reporters--especially TV folks--are desperate for quotes during breaks in the trial. Typically there will be a gaggle of media surrounding each attorney as he exits Dept. 9 on the fifth floor of the Rene C. Davidson courthouse in Oakland. But it's not like they're really answering our questions. Hora, like most DAs in high-profile trials, is being very careful in what he says. "I do it in court," the tall, balding Hora says politely as he passes a bank of TV cameras and reporters who are trying, without much success, to get him to say something about the case. "It's in the record, so there's no question," Hora says in response to a question from a reporter trying to confirm details of what he told the jury earlier in the day. The prosecuting attorney tells us we can get overnight transcripts to assist in our reporting. Du Bois, however, is decidedly more expansive in his remarks. But the bespectacled defense attorney is especially adept in parrying the questions we lob at him. Take a look: Q: "How difficult is it defending someone as smart as Hans?" Du Bois: "Very difficult." Q: "In what way?" Du Bois: "In every way." Q: "What was Hans doing with the storage unit?" Du Bois: "You get it yet? There's nothing to get." That may have been a riff on what Hora had asked the jury: "Figure it out yet?" (Other than Du Bois' assertions that his client once contemplated sleeping in the storage unit, we're waiting for the DA to tie up the storage-unit issue later. Du Bois also promises that we'll see more when he presents his case). You have to credit Du Bois, however, for some solid sound bites. Here's this gem in response to the DA's suggestion that the Reiser's son, then 6, may have seen his father carrying Nina's body down the stairs of his Oakland hills home: "That certainly didn't happen," Du Bois said. "You think that Hans carried the dead mother down to his children's bedroom? Is that what the DA is going to ask you to believe? Of course that didn't happen, and of course Hans would never do that, even if he did what the prosecution suggests he did. That's something that didn't happen. It's an illusion. It's a dream." Posted by Eve Batey on November 08 2007 at 05:00 PM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=21774 Hans Reiser Trial: Day Four 4:38 p.m.: Prosecutor Hora played for jurors a videotape of the 8-year-old son being interviewed by an Alameda County child-welfare official after his mother goes missing. While on the stand, the boy drank from a cup and smiled at times as he watched himself being questioned. The DA will continue questioning the boy tomorrow. Defense attorney William Du Bois said he will likely begin cross-examining the boy on Thursday. Hans Reiser looked at his son as he left the courtroom today. The boy didn't make eye contact with his father. He has, however, glanced at the defendant from time to time while testifying. TV crews have gathered in the hallway outside court in hopes of getting video of the boy, but that won't happen. He's been escorted in and out of the courtroom by Alameda County district attorney's inspectors through internal stairwells and hallways of the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse. Court resumes at 10 a.m. tomorrow. 3:09 p.m.: The 8-year-old son of Hans Reiser wrote the defendant a series of letters over the past year, asking him where his mother was, the boy testified this afternoon. "Were is Nina?" the boy wrote repeatedly in one letter, misspelling "where." Prosecutor Hora asked the boy whose idea it was to write the letters. "Mine," he replied. "Did anybody tell you to write this letter," the DA asked. "No," the boy said. In another letter, the boy wrote his dad, "I don't want to see you, Hans." Why didn't you want to see your dad, Hora asked. "I'm mad at him," he said. Why, the DA asked. "Because he hides Nina," the boy said. How do you know that, the DA asked. "Because no one knows about her except her friends--and Hans," he said. The boy told Hora that he never received letters back from his dad. That drew an objection from defense attorney William Du Bois, who called that speculative. Judge Larry Goodman overruled the objection. The boy described a picture he drew recently that he said showed "Hans going down the stairs with somebody." Asked by Hora who that "somebody" was, the boy said he didn't know who it was. But he said he thought his father might have been carrying a bag and that his mother was in the bag, curled up like a ball. The boy got off the stand and demonstrated, prompting the judge, some jurors and a few audience members to stand up to take a look. 12:48 p.m. (Lunchtime): We're on a lunch break now, so here's some thoughts about the Reisers' son. The little boy at the center of the trial seems to be a typical 8-year-old kid--save for the atypical circumstances surrounding him in this murder trial. He has dark hair and dark eyes and does resemble both his mother and father. He told the DA today that he speaks English and Russian fluently. Today, I picked up a decidedly more Russian accent and intonation when he spoke certain English words, compared to when he testified at the preliminary hearing last year and was still living in Oakland. He's been living with his 6-year-old sister and his maternal grandmother, Irina Sharanova, for about a year now. He speaks with a slight lisp at times, pronounces some words in the way some little kids do at this age: "brought" becomes "bwought," for example. He got something in his eye at one point today, and the judge was quick to make sure he was OK. He briefly left the courtroom but was back on the stand within minutes. He's made jurors laugh a number of times, including when he correctly told the time to the minute--undercutting any potential attack that he's not a reliable witness--and when he opened his arms several feet wide to describe the size of his bed. "About a meter," he said, demonstrating his proficiency in the metric system. Defense attorney William Du Bois told reporters outside court that he believes Sharanova and Russian psychiatrists have taught him to "hate his father." Whether that's true remains to be seen, although he did testify this morning that he loves his mother and, until September 2006, loves his father. The boy told the DA that his feelings about his father have indeed changed, but he couldn't really explain. 10:56 a.m.: The Reisers' son told prosecutor Hora this morning that he understands the difference between the truth and a lie. He said he's 8 years old, lives with his maternal grandmother in St. Petersburg, Russia. Hora asked him a number of questions to make clear to jurors that while he's young, he can answer many questions accurately. The little boy just proven that he knows how to tell time; he looked up at the wall clock and elicited laughs when he nailed it to the minute: "Ten....forty-nine." Moments earlier, Hora asked him these questions: Hora: "Have you seen your mom since you've been in Russia?" Son: "No." Hora: "Have you gotten a phone call from her?" Son: "No." Hora: "A letter?" Son: "No." Hora: "Do you have any idea where she is?" Son: "No." Hora: "How do you feel about that?" Son: "Sad." 10:36 a.m.: Testimony begins today, but there's a delay. The attorneys, without jurors present, are haggling over the expected testimony of the Reisers' 8-year-old son. Defense attorney William Du Bois told Judge Larry Goodman that he doesn't think the boy should be accompanied on the stand by a Russian social worker. Nor does the defense want Nina Reiser's mother, Irina Sharanova, present in the courtroom gallery. Prosecutor Paul Hora countered that as a courtesy, he allowed Hans Reiser's mother, Beverly Palmer, to watch the proceedings since trial began. As for Sharanova, "I don't think she'll be signaling the witness," Hora said. The judge said while he appreciated the negotiations involving the two respective mothers, all witnesses in the trial would have to be excluded. Out went Sharanova, and out went Palmer, with some mild protest to courtroom bailiffs. The boy has taken a seat on the stand, and the jurors have filed in. The social worker is sitting next to the boy. Posted by Eve Batey on November 13 2007 at 05:44 PM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=21901 Hans Reiser Trial: Day Five 1:19 p.m.: The little boy is done testifying for the prosecution. He will be cross-examined tomorow by the defense during a morning session. After Thursday, the trial is dark all of next week because of a previously agreed-upon court schedule. Outside court today, defense attorney William Du Bois didn't want to go into specifics about what he will ask the boy. But he acknowledged that it must have been "real tough" for the 8-year-old to be testifying in court with his father watching him. Du Bois said the boy seems to be faring well "under the circumstances, which are lousy." Prosecutor Paul Hora declined to discuss the boy's testimony but said jurors could expect to hear next from Nina's mother, Irina Sharanova, after the defense is done cross-examining the boy. That could take place tomorrow, Hora said. We now turn to legal analyst Steve Clark, who attended today's proceedings, to parse what we've heard so far from the boy. Clark said the boy's testimony helps both the DA and the defense. The DA wants the boy to help set up a timeline and to confirm to jurors that he was the last person to see Nina alive and that "Nina is not alive now," said Clark, a former Santa Clara County prosecutor who is now a criminal defense attorney. The defense has pointed out numerous inconsistencies in the boy's recollection of events and has trumpeted his testimony at last year's preliminary hearing at which he said he saw his mom leave his father's house on the day she was last seen, Clark said. "Him saying 'Mommy left' is going to help the defense, but what the prosecution wants to show is that mom was never seen again. She never picked him up from school," Clark said. Clark said, "This young boy was obviously a pawn in the divorce. Obviously, both sides were pulling on him to curry favor. He's been through a difficult investigation, he has to testify--I can't imagine anything worse for an 8-year-old boy." Du Bois has a tough road ahead of him in his cross-examination tomorrow, Clark said. "No lawyer ever wants to cross-examine a kid, because you don't know what they're going to say," he said. Du Bois will focus on the fact that the boy hasn't "given the same story twice," Clark said. "He can only give very small pieces of the puzzle, but he is the last person to have seen her. I think he's doing well under the circumstances."' The DA had no choice but to bring the boy to the stand, given his interviews with police and his testimony at Hans' preliminary hearing, Clark said. Not calling him to testify at the trial would "look very suspicious," Clark said. The boy's statements, however contradictory they may seem, must be seen through the "prism of an 8-year-old boy. You have to take his testimony with that prism," Clark said. Clearly, the DA isn't going to rely solely on the boy's testimony in this case, Clark said. 11:49 a.m.: During a court break, Alameda County district attorney's Inspector Bruce Brock asked veteran sketch artist Joan Lynch for a favor. Lynch asked Brock if she needed to move her stuff in the gallery. Oh no, said Brock, a former Oakland police homicide investigator who worked the Reiser case when he was with OPD and has continued to do so after switching to the DA's office. Brock asked her if she wouldn't mind showing the Reisers' 8-year-old son some of her work. Lynch quickly obliged, and she walked over to the bar separating the gallery from the rest of the courtroom, as Brock had requested, to meet up with the little boy. She flipped through some sketches, and the boy seemed to enjoy looking at the artwork, which includes drawings of him on the stand. "He's very smart," Lynch told me. The boy noticed that the jurors' faces weren't shown and asked why, Lynch said. She tried to explain to him that it's the rule--any identifying characteristics of jurors can't be shown. But that seemed to be a concept that was too difficult for him to grasp, she said. 10:24 a.m.: The jurors have filed in, and Judge Larry Goodman told the panel that prosecutor Paul Hora is expected to wrap up his questioning of Hans Reiser's 8-year-old son by noon today. Court will be dark this afternoon to allow the defense to prepare for its cross-examination of the boy. Court then resumes at 9 a.m. tomorrow--we usually start by 9:45 a.m. or 10 a.m.--for the cross, which is expected to wrap up by lunchtime, the judge told the jury. The boy is back on the stand now, accompanied by a Russian social worker. Hora is continuing to play a videotape of the boy being questioned by an Alameda County social worker shortly after Nina disappeared. 7:44 a.m.: The 8-year-old son of Hans and Nina Reiser, the first witness in the trial, is back on the stand today for the second day. How's he been doing depends on who's talking. Some courtroom observers say his testimony is altogether heartbreaking and damaging: the boy said he hasn't seen his mother for more than a year, hasn't been talking on the phone with her or getting any letters from her. He loves his mother but isn't quite so sure about his father because he "hides Nina." He testified that he may have seen his father carrying a bag--possibly containing his mother's body curled up in a ball--down the stairs of the defendant's Oakland hills home in September 2006. But defense attorney William Du Bois told us outside court, "His memory's changed since he's been in Russia, that's exactly what I meant. We may have to call an expert in the field. I'm sure you outstanding members of the press will find people that will tell you, memories can be changed. Memories can be worked on and his has been--clearly--worked on." He added, "They influenced him. They've been influencing (him) since January. He's been to psychiatrists, he's been talking to them, they've got him completely hating his father." Du Bois maintains that Nina could still be in hiding in Russia, even if her son--who lives in St. Petersburg with his maternal grandmother and his 6-year-old sister-- said he hasn't seen her at all over the past year. Why wouldn't Nina contact her kids, if that's the case, we asked. She wouldn't do that, Du Bois says, "not if she wanted to carry out a scheme of her being missing, at the behest of some sort of foul play. (If) she wants to carry this charade out, she has to stay away until this trial is over--at least--before she talks to her children." Surrounded by media, Deputy District Attorney Paul Hora continued his policy of not commenting outside court. "It's hard to tell," Hora said when asked how he believed the boy was doing so far as a witness. Was he satisfied with his testimony? "That's a fair question, but one I don't want to answer," Hora said. "The case is pending, so it's just not a good idea." We can't ask either of the boy's grandmothers about how the little boy is doing, because they've been kicked out of the gallery by the judge as potential witnesses in the case. Irina Sharanova, Nina's mother, had accompanied the boy to court from Russia. Beverly Palmer, Hans' mom, was upset after being ousted. "I wanted to see the trial," she told reporters. "I don't think it's fair. Also, I was looking forward to seeing my grandson and now, maybe I won't get to see him at all." Palmer had been a daily presence at the trial. Now, she might have more time to read "Death in Venice" by Thomas Mann, in the form of a yellowing paperback that she'd been bringing to court. All told, the boy's been keeping the DA on his toes. In court, the boy corrected Hora when the prosecutor asked if he recognized a letter he wrote to his father. The boy said his sister wrote that one. And that one too. At another point, Hora, told jurors that he was again showing a surveillance video showing Nina and her children grocery shopping at the Berkeley Bowl. The prosecutor then turned to the boy and asked if he recognized himself in the video. Yes, he said. Do you know where you are? Berkeley Bowl, he replied. How do you know that, Hora asked. The little boy--who had testified that he didn't remember going to that store-- paused, then said, "A few minutes ago you said Berkeley Bowl." Everyone laughed. Posted by Eve Batey on November 14 2007 at 02:00 PM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=21930 Hans Reiser Trial: Day Six 4:00 p.m.: Defense attorney William Du Bois has concluded his cross-examination of his client's son. Jurors spent much of the day listening to tapes of the boy being interviewed by police or the DA. Judge Larry Goodman then dismissed jurors, telling them to come back at 10 a.m. Nov. 26. Court is dark until then. The judge gave the panel his standard admonition, telling them not to talk about the case, to avoid reading or viewing media accounts about the trial and not to conduct their own investigations. After jurors left, that's when the fireworks began. Defense attorney William Du Bois said his client had something to say to the judge. Hans had been talking to his attorney during testimony this afternoon, irking Du Bois, who had to shush him. "I think my client wants to be heard," Du Bois said. "Since I can't finish what I was doing, he might as well be heard." Du Bois continued, "Since he's so insistent, since he can't help but interrupt me while I'm trying to address the court, I'd rather have him get it off his chest." In a barely audible voice--the court reporter asked the defendant to speak up--the defendant voiced concerns to the judge about American CPS (Child Protective Services) and Russian CPS and how he believed his son was improperly being spirited back to Russia now that his testimony was over. "Wait a minute, Mr. Reiser," the judge said. "You're not just trying your attorney's patience, you're also starting to try my patience." Goodman continued, "You can have whatever paranoid delusions you want." But the court won't have any of that, said the judge, describing himself as simply a "lowly trial judge doing a criminal trial," with no jurisdiction over the juvenile court system or any international issues with regard to the boy. Hans Reiser asked if he could be appointed co-counsel so that he could ask questions of witnesses, but the judge said no. Du Bois is a good lawyer with sound tactical reasons for asking the questions he asks, Goodman told the defendant. Court observers said Hans looked very troubled as he was led out of court by sheriff's deputies. 3:14 p.m.: "Mr. Reiser, I'm not going to admonish you again," a stern Judge Larry Goodman told the defendant this afternoon, just minutes after a similar warning. The judge told the defendant that he shouldn't be disrupting the proceedings by talking to his attorney, William Du Bois, during testimony when jurors are present. "Shh!" Du Bois has told his client on a number of occasions in the past few minutes. The judge similarly rebuked Hans for talking on Tuesday afternoon. 12:49 p.m.: Defense attorney William Du Bois, noting the boy's fluency in Russian and English, asked the 8-year-old if there were different words in Russian for certain English terms, such as "spaghetti" and "macaroni and cheese." Yes, the boy said. Are you able to discuss the case in Russian, Du Bois asked. Yes, he replied. Would it be better for you to testify in Russian than in English? Eyebrows were raised in the gallery. The boy paused before answering no. "Good try," Judge Larry Goodman mouthed to Du Bois. We're grabbing lunch. Court is back at 1:30 p.m. 9:50 a.m. Defense attorney William Du Bois has started to cross-examine his client's 8-year-old son. The boy told Du Bois that he's been telling the truth to the DA, to social workers and to police. He identified his father, Hans, in court. The boy said he takes Russian and math classes in St. Petersburg, where he lives with his maternal grandmother and his 6-year-old sister. He said he is enrolled in kung fu, tae kwan do, aikido and judo and that he has English classes on Tuesday and Thursdays. Du Bois elicited chuckles from jurors when he asked the boy if he agreed that he's at an advantage over his Russian classmates because he already speaks English. Yes, he said. Du Bois then asked the boy if he could say--in Russian--what classes he takes. "Hold it," said Judge Larry Goodman to Du Bois. "How do you expect the court reporter to take this down?" Du Bois said he wouldn't have a problem with the court reporter not transcribing anything the boy says in Russian. The boy then listed his classes in Russian, then obliged when Du Bois asked him to say "Where is Nina?" in Russian. He sounded quite fluent. Du Bois asked if he could talk about this case entirely in Russian, and the boy said yes. He acknowledged that he's talked to his grandparents in Russia about his belief that "Hans hides Nina." Turning to a key part of the DA's case, Du Bois asked if the boy had been dreaming when he said he saw his father carrying something big down the stairs of his Oakland hills home. (The boy testified this week on direct examination that it might have been his mother curled up in a ball inside a bag. Prosecutor Paul Hora showed jurors a picture the boy drew in recent months showing a figure carrying something; the picture included a note from the boy, "I think here is Nina.") In court today, the boy said "I was not asleep" when he reportedly saw his father going down the stairs. He denied that his maternal grandmother, Irina Sharanova, told him what to say in court. 8:09 a.m. Today, defense attorney William Du Bois will cross-examine his client's 8-year-old son. All eyes will be on the avuncular Du Bois and whether he will handle the boy with kid gloves, so to speak. If Du Bois is too aggressive in his questioning, he might be seen as bullying. If he's too meek, Hans Reiser might get upset. Then again, this is his own son on the stand. "I've raised an 8-year-old--have you? They're always challenging," Du Bois told the media outside court Wednesday, answering one of our questions with a question of his own, as is his practice. Prosecutor Paul Hora broke his silence about the boy's testimony, telling reporters Wednesday, "I think he's doing fine, a brave young man in difficult circumstances." Legal analyst Dean Johnson said how the jury regards the boy's testimony will be critical. "Deciding whether to put a child witness on the stand is a tough, strategic choice for any lawyer," Johnson says. "We know that jurors are all over the map when it comes to their attitudes toward children. Some believe the old saw that 'out of the mouths of babes comes the truth' and tend to accept anything that a child says. Others know that children live a large part of their time in a world of imagination and that many of the things that kids remember best never really happened." Posted by Eve Batey on November 15 2007 at 04:06 PM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=21972 Hans Reiser Trial: Nov. 26, 2007 4:56 p.m. Nina's divorce attorney, Shelley Gordon, will be back on the stand Tuesday morning for direct and cross. We'll then hear from Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele in the afternoon, says prosecutor Paul Hora. Hans Reiser had railed against the Alameda County judicial system in its handling of his family law case in numerous e-mails to Steele before his wife disappeared, according to the DA. 12:25 p.m. Shelley Gordon, Nina's divorce attorney, has taken the stand. Nina told her that the case "would probably be difficult." "Did you know what was in store for you?" prosecutor Paul Hora asked. "No," Gordon replied. How would she characterize the divorce, the prosecutor asked. "It went from bad to worse," Gordon said. "It was very adversarial. It was very hostile, and it just dragged on at a snail's pace." Among the issues the two fought over were the selection of a child-custody evaluator and whether a judge could order that the couple's son not be shown violent movies or be allowed to play video games of that nature. Nina had accused Hans of allowing their son, then 4, to play disturbing video games, prompting nightmares. "It was a huge bone of contention, pretty much spanning the whole case," Gordon said of the video-games/movies issue. Outside court, defense attorney William Du Bois told reporters that "appearances can be deceiving" with regard to the DA's portrayal of Nina being a devoted, caring mother. As far as the divorce, Du Bois said it was "contentious over a lot of technical points" and that it didn't necessarily have a " 'War of the Roses' element that some divorces have." Du Bois added, "It takes two to be contentious" and "two to have an argument." We're on a lunch break. 10:44 a.m. We are back after the Thanksgiving break. Prosecutor Paul Hora told reporters that we won't hear from Nina's mother, Irina Sharanova, until January. She had been scheduled to be the next witness, but that was before the extended holiday. Marni Hunter, a friend of Nina whose daughter was in the same class as Nina's son at Grand Lake Montessori in Oakland, has taken the stand. Hunter said she had gotten to know Nina for several years as parent volunteers. She later assisted in the search effort for Nina and helped organize candlelight vigils for the missing mother. "Nina was a parent that volunteered readily in the classroom," Hunter told jurors. "Nina's name was constantly on the sign-up sheets." Referring to Nina's two children, Hora asked Hunter, "In your opinion, based on your contact with Nina in those three years, do you think that she would have ever abandoned them?" "No," said Hunter, shaking her head. Hunter said she spoke once to Hans Reiser on the phone during a call to make sure that parents were paying for a pizza event. He apparently didn't know who she was, because he railed about Nina during the call, she testified. "He was very upset," she said, demanding to know what Nina had said about him and saying that his wife always accused him of not paying her. Hans insisted that he always paid Nina. Hunter told him that she was simply a "room parent" who had no control over any alleged payment problems on Nina's part. Hora asked Hunter what kind of mom Nina was. "I really, truly believe that she was a fabulous mom. She had the most infectious smile," Hunter said."A very kind person. I think she was a very wonderful person, and I think the children loved her dearly." On cross-examination, defense attorney William Du Bois asked Hunter if Nina had ever discussed her children's therapy sessions, former boyfriend Sean Sturgeon or sadomasochism with her. (Nina had an affair with Sturgeon, who at one point practiced S&M, according to the defense). No, Hunter replied, adding that her only contact with Nina had been in the school setting. Posted by Eve Batey on November 26 2007 at 06:14 PM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=22256 Hans Reiser Trial: Nov. 27, 2007 4 p.m.: Hans Reiser sent his estranged wife a flurry of angry, accusatory e-mails during their divorce proceedings, according to e-mails that Nina's divorce attorney, Shelley Gordon, read to jurors on redirect. The e-mails mentioned the fact that she had an affair with his best friend, railed about the decisions she made about their two children and accused her of having Munchausen-by-proxy syndrome, in which parents make up illnesses for their children in order to get attention for themselves. Defense attorney William Du Bois has questioned the admissibility of the e-mails, saying they haven't been authenticated and that Gordon was selectively given only the e-mails that Nina wanted her to have. Gordon is now finished with her testimony. Despite irking the judge today, Du Bois has managed to get a couple of interesting words into the record: "Diatribical," referring to Gordon's propensity to explain her answers without prompting, and "strategery," referring to Nina's alleged schemes. "Strategery" happens to be one of your scribe's favorite nonsensical words. Comedian Will Ferrell employed this word while mocking President Bush's oratory skills on "Saturday Night Live." We're back at 10 a.m. Wednesday. Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele is expected to be the next witness. Hans railed against the legal system's handling of his divorce in e-mails and phone calls to Steele and/or her office. 3:52 p.m.: Alameda County District Attorney Tom Orloff has taken a seat in the gallery. He stops in from time to time. He chatted with prosecutor Paul Hora during a short break -- the second one we've had this afternoon. Usually, we only take one break between lunch and 4 p.m., when we go home for the day. Seems like Du Bois' cross of Nina's divorce attorney has been taking a while. Anyways, back to Orloff. He hesitated before taking a seat in a row marked "Reserved for Press." I motioned for him to take a seat in my (empty) row. "You're honorary press," I told him. "Honorary press," said the tall, bespectacled DA, chuckling. Orloff's been the DA since 1995, and he's been with the district attorney's office since 1970. He remembers when both Nina's divorce attorney, Shelley Gordon -- who is on redirect -- and Hans' defense lawyer, William Du Bois, were prosecutors. Over the years, many prosecutors have gone on to become high-profile defense attorneys, a la Du Bois (that should rhyme if you pronounce his name correctly). As for Hora? Orloff said he didn't think Hora would ever switch sides. Orloff has since slipped out of the courtroom. 12:34 p.m.: More squabbling in court. Defense attorney William Du Bois, continuing his cross of Nina's divorce attorney, Shelley Gordon, is pressing her on details of the couple's acrimonious divorce, including e-mails sent by Nina and Hans to each other. At one point, Gordon described what she believed was the "myopic focus that Hans has on things." Du Bois wasn't pleased with that answer, nor others she's been giving this morning-- and he made it clear, once again, in his tone to her. For the second time today, Judge Larry Goodman rebuked Du Bois in front of the jury. "Bill, if you ask a question and you don't like the answer, it's not her fault," said the judge, who calls attorneys by their first names. Jurors were dismissed for the lunch break. After the panel left, the attorneys then continued with their complaints with Goodman, but not before Du Bois asked that Gordon be excluded. The divorce attorney smiled and told the prosecutor she'd be in the hallway. Prosecutor Paul Hora told the judge that "the defense attorney--Bill" was repeatedly and inappropriately challenging Gordon as to how she reached her opinions and what her sources were. "And he's not liking the answers," Hora said. "It's not fair to the witness to be asked a question and then not be allowed to give a complete answer regarding the question. He doesn't like the answer, and he modifies the question." When it was his turn, Du Bois said, "This witness is giving the most run-on, protracted, diatribical answers that I've ever heard. I suppose the problem is she's a lawyer. However, she hasn't been responsive. She's been allowed to run on, instead of answering questions yes or no." Gordon has used every opportunity to "open her mouth" and let flow a "stream of consciousness" that goes far beyond the questions asked, Du Bois said. He said Gordon is "trying to put in information and material that we've moved to exclude." The judge said he was very concerned that Du Bois, despite being "one of the best trial lawyers I know," seemed to be having problems controlling a witness, which shouldn't be a problem to veteran attorneys. "I don't want to let her ramble, because she's a good rambler," Du Bois said. More back and forth. More legal arguments over the admissibility of out-of-court statements in accordance with a U.S. Supreme Court ruling known as Crawford. The judge has had enough. "We're not playing this game," he told Du Bois, accusing him of trying to "bootstrap Crawford." Sigh. Can't we just all get along? After all, Du Bois and Gordon were once in the Alameda County district attorney's office like Hora is now, only at different times. 11 a.m.: Defense attorney William Du Bois is cross-examining Shelley Gordon, Nina's divorce attorney. Du Bois is known as a skillful cross-examiner, and it shows: he's been making it clear that he doesn't like some of her answers by using phrases like "Listen carefully" and "Thank you for sharing." Only thing is, Judge Larry Goodman doesn't seem to like Du Bois' style. Du Bois asked Gordon if Nina Reiser would have any stake in his client's computer company, Namesys. "I suppose she would have an interest in that--however, I think it's valueless," Gordon said. "If you have an interest in something that's not worth anything, it's not worth pursuing." Du Bois paused. "Thank you for sharing," said the defense attorney, who throughout the trial has been objecting repeatedly when the DA's witnesses don't answer a question with a simple yes or no and, instead, add unsolicited commentary. The judge, who routinely addresses attorneys by their first name, said, "Bill, stifle yourself." Du Bois said he simply was trying to cross-examine Gordon on a number of points. "I understand, but you can do it in a respectful manner," the judge replied, making it clear he was especially irked by Du Bois' use of the phrase, "Thank you for sharing." Du Bois used that same refrain throughout his client's preliminary hearing, but Judge Julie Conger, who presided over that session, didn't call him out on it. In other defense news, co-counsel Richard Tamor's cell-phone went off shortly after the morning session began today. But Goodman just gave Tamor a slightly amused smile. The defense attorney didn't notice, however, because he was busy fiddling with his device. Posted by Eve Batey on November 27 2007 at 03:56 PM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=22267 Hans Reiser Trial: Nov. 28, 2007 4:38 p.m.: Joyce Harnett, who works with Alameda County's Dept. of Child Support Services testified this afternoon that Hans Reiser owes $30,645 in child support as of a few days ago. The amount has been accruing since a court-ordered settlement in December 2005 and has continued after his arrest in October 2006. "If all that money were to come in today--30 and whatever dollars you said--where would that money go?" prosecutor Paul Hora asked Harnett. "It would probably be put into 'exceptions,' " Harnett said, referring to an administrative category. "Because we don't know where the mother is?" Hora asked. Yes, she replied. "What if we knew where the mother was?" the prosecutor asked. "It would go directly to her," Harnett said. There was a small discrepancy in one of the billing statements, but Harnett said she didn't work in accounting and couldn't reconcile the issue. Hora told her it wasn't a problem, because there would be time to clear it up because of the length of the trial. Defense attorney William Du Bois asked a few clarifying questions on cross. Another question came up, and Hans said something that was semi-audible in the courtroom. Judge Larry Goodman told Du Bois that he should tell his client to be quiet. After all, "He's not testifying now," the judge said. We're back tomorrow. At the end of each day, there's a running joke between the judge and the jury as to when we'll start the following day. Sometimes the judge needs some extra time, sometimes a juror has a special request. In the past, we've started anywhere from 9 to 10 a.m. Today, the judge jokingly asked the panel when they'd feel comfortable coming back to work. They all laughed. Consensus? 10 a.m. Next on deck: an Oakland police officer, an employee at the now shuttered Barnes and Noble bookstore where Hans bought a couple of books on homicide and murder cases and several teachers of the Reisers' children. 3:39 p.m.: Ron Zeno, the executive director of Safe Exchange in Oakland, where Hans and Nina dropped off and picked up their kids in 2005, is on the stand. Zeno, who has been with the service for 18 years, testified that every time Nina came in, she'd get down on one knee, put her hands out and both kids would run to her. Over defense attorney William Du Bois' objections, prosecutor Paul Hora asked Zeno if he believed Nina was the kind of person who would "voluntarily just disappear" and leave her kids. "No, sir," said Zeno. He testified that on one occasion, Hans told him that he'd be surprised if he knew "what Nina was into" with an ex-boyfriend, purportedly the one who was into S&M. Hora asked if Zeno knew why Hans told him that, and Zeno said no. When he's not supervising child visitations at Safe Exchange, Zeno confirmed to me outside court that he's been greeting kids as Santa Claus for the last 15 years at Children's Fairyland in Oakland. 2:39 p.m.: Defense attorney William Du Bois has begun his cross-examination of Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele. Steele acknowledged that she may not necessarily recall the details of conversations with people who call her office. She had testified under direct that neither she nor her staff recalled talking to Hans in two separate phone conversations on Sept. 1, 2006, two days before Nina disappeared. Du Bois flashed onto the screen part of a list of her 2006 campaign contributors. None of them was from county supervisorial District 2, or the Hayward, Union City, Newark and Fremont area that she represents. (Prosecutor Paul Hora earlier today had Steele confirm that she doesn't represent Oakland or the city's Montclair district, where the defendant lives. Hans donated $2,000 toward Steele's re-election campaign last year). Steele noted that one of the contributors shown on the screen was a county employee. Another was none other than her son, Tim Tivoli Steele, of San Ramon. Some laughter erupted in court. Under questioning by Du Bois, Steele testified that she believed it would have been "fruitless" to bring in then-U.S. Rep Ron Dellums to help revamp the family-court system, as Hans had suggested to her. It's hard to get elected officials to do things, the elected official said. 12:13 p.m. Hans Reiser sent Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele a number of e-mails after the two met in 2005, she testified today. The two shared a desire to improve the family-court system, she said. On Jan. 3, 2006, Reiser sent her an e-mail that prosecutor Paul Hora said essentially gave her advice on how to interact with her grandchildren. Steele testified earlier today that her grandchildren were about the same age as the Reiser's children. "I just thought it was a friendly message" that dealt with how to interact with and appreciate kids, "all that, in one fell swoop," Steele said. In another e-mail Hans sent to the supervisor on July 7, 2006, he wrote, "I'll talk again with the attorney. I think he may be being (sic) overconservative. Hans." Steele told the prosecutor that she didn't know what Hans was referring to. The defendant then wrote her a five-page, single-spaced e-mail several days later, she testified as Hora flashed a copy of the missive on a screen for the jury. "This e-mail is his attempt to articulate the issues that happened in family court and what we could do to change it," she said. It included a "methodology study proposal" to change the family-court system, she said. Steele noted that even as a supervisor, "I can't do anything with the courts, unfortunately. What I am saying is that the difficulty--in all due respect to the courts--is when there are issues of any kind, supervisors, nobody else has any authority to change it unless the court system chooses to do that." "Did you tell Hans that?" Hora asked. "Oh, I'm sure I did," Steele replied. On Aug. 19, 2006, Hans wrote Steele another e-mail proposing that a new department--completely different from family court--oversee child-custody evaluations. If this "institutional framework," one "designed to reduce issues of bias" was successful in Alameda County, then other states and countries could replicate the new system, Hans wrote the supervisor. Asked again by Hora if she took any action, Steele said, "The issue of changing court processes, I don't even know how to do it. And it turns out, unless one can get the support of the judiciary to make some changes within themselves, it feels almost impossible for either a lay person or an elected official to get these changes made." On Aug. 28, 30 and Sept. 1, 2006, Hans left numerous messages with Steele's office. Steele said she didn't call him back. However, Hans' phone records show that on Sept. 1, there was a 16-minute phone call and a separate six-minute call between Hans and someone in Steele's office. But the supervisor said neither she nor her staff recalled talking to Hans. On Sept. 3, 2006, Nina disappeared from the face of the Earth, as Hora has told jurors. Steele testified today that she felt bad about not returning Hans' calls after learning that Nina was missing. "I'm very good at returning phone calls, but I get overwhelmed," she said. "I wish I had returned them because I didn't know what was going on." Steele said she never found out why Hans was trying so hard to get a hold of her in the days before his wife disappeared. "He hasn't talked to us since that week," she said. Steele did not testify at the preliminary hearing late last year, and that's because she never came forward to Oakland police about her contacts with Hans, she testified, adding she didn't think it was relevant. The supervisor confirmed to Hora that it wasn't until June of this year that investigators contacted her after finding her number on Hans' phone records. We're on a lunch break, back at 2 p.m. 10:56 a.m.: Alameda County Supervisor Gail Steele is on the stand on direct. She represents District 2 in Alameda County, which includes Hayward, Newark, Union City and parts of Fremont. A supervisor since 1992 and a former Hayward city councilwoman, Steele does not represent Oakland or the city's Montclair district where Hans lived, she told prosecutor Paul Hora. She's known for having a soft spot for children who have lost their lives to violence and organizes an annual tree-planting memorial in their honor in an East Bay park. And each time a child dies violently, she asks that county flags be lowered to half-staff. In court today, Steele said she first met Hans in 2005 outside the county Administration Building in Oakland, which sits across the street from the Rene C. Davidson Courthouse where this trial is taking place. Hans was upset about the family-court system and was gathering signatures for a petition, said Steele, who did not sign his petition. Nevertheless, Steele testified that she was also concerned about family court and the plight of children in the system. "I was interested in what he had to say," said Steele, who estimated that she had a 10-minute conversation with Hans. At one point this morning, Hora referred to the supervisor as Gayle Bishop. Bishop was a former Contra Costa County supervisor convicted in 1997 of misappropriating public funds and lying to a grand jury. But Hora didn't seem to know that and asked Steele, "Who's Gayle Bishop?" "Different county," Steele replied with a smile. In subsequent meetings or phone calls with the supervisor, Hans complained about the unfairness of the family court system, voiced his belief that child-custody evaluators were biased and said he didn't like what Nina was doing with regard to their children, Steele testified. "He didn't like her choices," she said. Asked by Hora if Hans was obsessed about his beefs, Steele said she wouldn't go that far. Still, he was very upset, she said. On one occasion, Hans brought his children to meet the supervisor. Hans didn't ask her to assess them, she said. In early 2006, Steele was running for re-election. She testified that on April 28, 2006, Hans gave her two unsolicited money orders totaling $2,000 toward her campaign. In previous testimony, Nina's divorce attorney, Shelley Gordon, said that donation was made at the same time Hans was refusing to pay child support. Posted by Eve Batey on November 28 2007 at 05:05 PM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=22301 Hans Reiser Trial: Nov. 29, 2007 5 p.m.: Helen Campbell, the "head of school" or principal of Grand Lake Montessori, where the Reiser children went to school, was the last witness on the stand today. Campbell said she founded the school in 1978 in a church basement. As founder, does that mean you own the school, Hora asked. "No, it owns me," Campbell said, prompting guffaws from the jury. The school is now in its 30th year and is located in the Adams Point neighborhood of Oakland near Lake Merritt, Campbell said. "Congratulations," Hora offered. "You're still accepting applications?" the prosecutor asked. More laughter. Hans was "extremely hostile" in his dealings with Nina and school officials, Campbell said. "He felt that the teachers were attacking his child as not being normal and that there was something seriously wrong about his son, and he was saying that was adamantly not the case," Campbell said. "He was angry at Nina but he was also angry at the teachers," she said of a conference in early 2006. Hans once angrily told Nina through clenched teeth that their son was "absolutely normal," Campbell said. Hans complained to Campbell that he believed Nina was "manufacturing problems" with their son. "He shared with me in an e-mail that she felt she was putting (their son) at risk, that she was a doctor and she knew about symptoms." "Did he ever tell you that she was a pathological liar?" Hora asked. "I do remember a conversation where he told me she was connected to the KGB and that she was a good liar," Campbell said. Defense attorney William Du Bois objected to that answer, saying it was non-responsive. Judge Larry Goodman overruled the objection. Campbell testified that the boy was drawing pictures at school that concerned teachers. "I don't recall detail, but I remember they involved violent images of persons or robots," she said. At one point this afternoon, Hans was busy conferring with Du Bois. That distracted the defense attorney, who asked the court reporter to read back the last question Hora had asked. The judge told Du Bois, "Tell your client to not do that, so we don't have to keep reading back stuff." It's the latest in a series of warnings the judge has made to Du Bois to shush his client. Hans railed against Nina, accusing her of falsely claiming that their son had "weakness in his fingers," causing him to have problems learning how to write, Campbell said. In an e-mail read to jurors, Hans said the real reason for any calligraphy problems was that his son thought writing "is boring and uninteresting and does not want to learn it. I told him not to grip the pencil too tightly and to relax and enjoy what he is doing." In a May 2006 e-mail to school officials, Hans wrote about a visit he made to the school. "I asked (my son) to do cursive for 45 minutes straight without any pause. I assume you will agree, that is sufficient to completely dispel any possible notion that he has any weakness of the grip. He did it on the first attempt. I must say, he completely despises learning cursive now, but he did it in hopes of settling the issue. I think there is no task in this world he dislikes more, perhaps not even cleaning his room." Campbell said she wrote an e-mail back to Hans that said, "Please refrain from visits where you become the director instead of the observer. The classroom setting is not appropriate. You are welcome to schedule visits where you follow your children's interests by observing politely and not disrupting." Female teachers complained that Hans had a tendency to dictate to his son what to do and that Hans seemed to prefer male teachers, Campbell said. Court is dark until 10 a.m. Monday. 3:06: U-Sef Barnes, who answered the child-abuse hotline run by Alameda County's Department of Children and Family Services, testified this afternoon that he received a phone call from Hans Reiser at 7:18 p.m. on Sept. 7, 2005, about a year before the defendant's wife disappeared. Hans told Barnes that he believed Nina Reiser has Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, in which parents exaggerate or make up medical problems for their children to get attention or sympathy for themselves. Hans told Barnes that he was concerned about his son, then 5. Barnes, reading from notes he took during the 20- to 30-minute call, said Hans -- identifed as the RP, or "reporting party" -- believed his wife -- identified as MO for "mother" -- had Munchausen "based upon his own research and knowledge about how people behave who have this disorder." Barnes wrote, "RP stated that MO believes minor is suffering from Traumatic Stress Disorder, dissociation disorder and borderline bipolar disorder because minor plays too many violent video games. RP said he believes the mental disorders named by MO are nonsense, and that V (for "victim") is affected by ongoing divorce proceedings. RP describes V as normal, mentally healthy, brighter than most and a little lazy when it comes to school work." In his notes, Barnes wrote, "RP said that the psychologist RP obtained to evaluate V supports RP's view about minor's mental health. RP said that the psychologist obtained by MO supports MO's beliefs about V's mental health. MO is not seeing a therapist." Hans said his son was taking two different medications leading up to the boy's scheduled date for ear surgery. The surgery is necessary, Hans opined, noting that his son had a history of ear infections. But Hans said Nina did not give their son medications for the last two days before the surgery and that, as such, Nina was "medically negligent" during that time. This afternoon, Barnes testified that he independently remembers Hans' phone call because of his insistence that Nina had Munchausen by Proxy and his assertions that "he had done a lot of research." Barnes said this was his first call about Munchausen by Proxy. He said he recommended that the complaint by "evaluated out," meaning that there was no need to send social workers out to check on the boy, either immediately or within 10 days. Instead, Hans' call was simply made part of the department's records, Barnes said. On cross, defense attorney William Du Bois asked Barnes if the decision to simply log the call means "take no action." "When I listened to the call, I didn't, from my opinion, see any child abuse that we could go out on," Barnes said. "Right," the defense attorney responded. "In other words, take no action." "The action would primarily be to make it part of the record, but not to send someone out to investigate, right," Barnes said. 12:12 p.m.: In what has become a familiar refrain, Mary Aima, a teacher at Grand Lake Montessori in Oakland where the Reiser children attended, said she didn't believe Nina would abandon them. "Those kids were her life," said Aima, who taught the couple's daughter. On cross examination, she acknowledged to defense attorney William Du Bois that she didn't know the details of Nina's life outside the school setting or in Russia. We're on a lunch break. Back at 2 p.m. 11:53 a.m.: Retired Oakland police Officer Ben Denson testified this morning on direct that he saw Nina and Hans exchange their two children at the Police Administration Building in downtown Oakland on a number of occasions in 2005, when he worked the patrol desk. Denson said he recognized Hans in court today. Hans would play with his children for about 15 minutes during the exchanges, taking time to "toss them up in the air, swing them around," the retired officer said. As for Nina, "My impression was that she was a caring, loving mother," Denson said, citing his 27 years as a police officer and his experience assessing people. Denson said the enmity between Hans and Nina was apparent at the Police Department. "It was almost an ever-present thing," Denson said. "They rarely talked for any length of time, but when they did engage in face-to-face conversation, it was my impression -- this is what I observed -- the defendant displayed hostility toward Nina, and I would call it barely restrained aggression." Prosecutor Paul Hora asked, "Nothing physical happened in the Police Department?" "No sir," Denson replied. But during one visit, Denson said he was so concerned about the potential for fisticuffs that he went outside the police building to check on them. Denson said he didn't believe Nina would voluntarily disappear and abandon her children. "She cared about them," he said. "She loved them." Denson said during one visit, Hans seemed very upset. "He never put his hands on her but, you know, I could tell by the way he was looking at her, there was menace in his eyes," Denson said. "It was very hostile." That's when the officer said he gave Nina some chilling advice: "I told her, 'You need to get yourself a gun.' " On cross, Denson acknowledged that he's rarely--if ever--testified for the defense and that he was interviewed before his testimony by Alameda County district attorney's Inspector Bruce Brock--himself a former Oakland police officer and a lead homicide investigator for the Reiser case at that. Denson confirmed that he never saw Hans touch or assault Nina to the point that the officer had to restrain him. But he told Du Bois that his client "used to loom over her. He used to glare at her. The hostility was palpable." And Hans acted this way in front of the police, Du Bois asked. People embroiled in domestic situations "don't care if the police are there or not," Denson replied. "That doesn't enter people's minds, because they're so wound up. They're so emotional." Denson told Du Bois that yes, his impressions of Hans were all negative and that his impressions of Nina were all positive. "Would it change if you found out she committed multiple acts of grand theft in her spare time?" Du Bois asked. Hora objected, saying there was no foundation for that, and Judge Larry Goodman agreed, saying, "It assumes facts not in evidence." 10:50 a.m. Sandra Starr Rudd, an employee of the now-shuttered Barnes and Noble bookstore on Shattuck Avenue in downtown Berkeley, was the first witness on the stand today. Under questioning by prosecutor Paul Hora, who flashed a store receipt for jurors on a screen, Rudd testified that Hans paid $28.25 in cash for two books on Sept. 8, 2006, five days after his wife, Nina Reiser, went missing. The books were "Masterpieces of Murder" by Jonathan Goodman, about true notorious murder cases, and "Homicide," a book about the Baltimore police homicide squad by David Simon. Hora played store surveillance video showing Hans--wearing a white shirt, dark pants and sneakers--making the purchase at 7:19 p.m. from Rudd, who is behind the counter. A second store camera shows Hans leaving a few minutes later as he walks out the front door of the store onto Shattuck with a green Barnes and Noble bag. Rudd testified today that she doesn't independently remember the transaction--and that she wouldn't be able to identify--today--the man who bought those books. Hora started to ask Rudd if she recognized the purchaser in court today, but defense attorney William Du Bois objected, saying she had already said she wouldn't be able to. On cross, Rudd told Du Bois that she hadn't read the two books that Hans purchased. Du Bois has said that the books don't mean a thing, and that his client just wanted to bone up on police procedurals because he knew he was being investigated. Hora told jurors in his opening statement that Barnes and Noble clerks always ask if customers are "members," which makes them eligible for discounts. Hora said Hans paid for the books in cash--and not a credit card, suggesting that he didn't want his purchases tracked. The prosecutor said cops later found a Barnes and Noble member card in Hans' fanny pack. Rudd testified today that even if members don't have their card with them, they can be identified through their phone numbers. Rudd said the Barnes and Noble in Berkeley closed in May 2007. Your scribe notes that Cody's Books on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley closed a year earlier. At least the Cody's on Fourth Street in West Berkeley is still open, knock on wood.... Posted by Audrey Cooper on November 29 2007 at 12:28 PM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=22332 Hans Reiser Trial: Dec. 3, 2007 3:13 p.m.: A picture of the Honda CRX that police say was missing its right front passenger seat after Nina Reiser disappeared was shown to Hans' mother, Beverly Palmer, this afternoon. The picture shows the CRX parked on Monterey Boulevard, which parallels Highway 13 in Oakland, at the time police said they tailed Hans to the area and seized it Sept. 19, 2006, after he left. After technicians removed the carpeting from the front seat area, they noticed that the floorboard had been saturated with water, according to investigators. Palmer said she doesn't recognize where the car--which belongs to her--is parked. She testified that she was angry that she couldn't find her CRX when she returned from the Burning Man festival on the Tuesday after Labor Day weekend last year. Palmer said she wouldn't have noticed if her car was missing its front passenger seat (at any given time) because she "very rarely" uses it and doesn't remember the last time that she did. "You wouldn't have noticed that the front seat is missing?" Hora asked. "I just never noticed that car," Palmer said. "I wouldn't have any reason to look inside it." "Do you ever remember a time when it was missing its right front passenger seat, the CRX?" the prosecutor asked. "No," she said. She said she usually drives her Honda hybrid. To make matters worse, her son then borrowed her hybrid around Sept. 6, 7, or 8, which "left me stranded, without a car," she testified. That's tough because she lives in the Oakland hills, she said. Palmer said she asked her son to return her hybrid. But Hans said he needed the hybrid because the CRX wouldn't start. She assumed that the battery was dead. 12:30 p.m.: Hans told his mother, Beverly Palmer, that Nina was missing on Sept. 6, the day after she returned from Burning Man, Palmer testified this morning. Hans waited because he knew she was tired and would get upset if he had told her immediately, she said. "I was upset when I heard about it the next day," Palmer said. "Why were you upset?" prosecutor Paul Hora asked. "Well, you wouldn't be upset if the mother of your grandchildren is missing?" Palmer replied in an even tone. Hora asked if she was concerned about the children, and Palmer said, "Yes, of course." What did Hans tell her, Hora asked. "I don't remember exactly what he said," Palmer said. "I just remember he said she was missing." Naturally, did she have any questions, Hora asked. "He didn't seem to know anything about it," Palmer said. "I asked him about it, and he didn't seem to have any information." Hora asked, "He didn't refuse to discuss the matter with you?" "No," Palmer said. She said that her son told her that he and Nina had a disagreement over who was supposed to have the kids that weekend and that they "decided to share them and split it up." Palmer testified that she believed "something must have happened to her," referring to Nina. She said she believed she could have been kidnapped. Hora asked if she thought "maybe she ran away to Russia." "That's possible," she said. She said Nina left her children twice before, once with a nanny and once with her parents, although Palmer acknowledged that she didn't tell police this when she was first interviewed by them on Sept. 8, 2006. "Do you know where Nina is?" Hora asked. "Do I know where Nina is?" Palmer repeated. "No." We're on a lunch break, back at 2 p.m. Noon: Beverly Palmer, Hans' mother, is a multimedia artist who attended the Burning Man festival in Nevada's Black Rock Desert during Labor Day weekend 2006, when police say her son killed his estranged wife. Palmer testified today that she's been to Burning Man four times in all. Last year, she said she left for Burning Man on Aug. 26 and returned on Sept. 5. Nina was last seen on Sept. 3, 2006 after she dropped off the couple's two children at the home Hans shared with his mother on Exeter Drive in the Oakland hills. Palmer testified that her son knew that she'd be going to Burning Man. She said she witnessed the actual burning of the 4-story wooden "man" on Saturday, Sept. 2, 2006. There is no cell phone coverage in the area of Burning Man, Palmer testified. Hans did not tell her who had custody of the couple's children prior to her leaving for Burning Man, she testified. During the 2004 Burning Man, Palmer helped create a "video installation" underneath the Burning Man structure entitled "Black Hole of Desire," according to a Web site maintained by her friend, video installation artist Mark McGothigan. McGothigan and Milton Fabert also worked on the project, which enabled people to "record their desires. A playback feature produced a cacophony of recorded desires. This has been combined with video and sound they collected to make an intriguing DVD," according to a Web site about the project. Another description said the project involved a round video projection screen mounted on a 10' by 10' wall. "We are using the metaphor of a black hole--a dense force drawing all matter around it inexorably around it--to portray the human capacity to relentlessly desire, never reaching a point of stasis." 11:05 a.m.: In an interesting aside, Alameda County prosecutor Christopher "Casey" Bates was briefly in the courtroom gallery this morning. Bates, the son of Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates, is prosecuting Eric Mora, who is charged with murdering his girlfriend, Cynthia Alonzo, in 2004. Alonzo's body hasn't been found, just like Nina's body hasn't been found. The defense attorney for Mora is none other than William Du Bois, Hans' attorney. And the judge presiding over Mora's ongoing preliminary hearing? Judge Larry Goodman, who is the trial judge in the Reiser case. 10:45 a.m.: Beverly Palmer, Hans' mother, is on the stand today. As court clerk Fil Cruz asked her to state her name and spell it for the record, Palmer apologized, saying if she could have a moment to put her hearing aid in. She also apologized to Judge Larry Goodman, but he motioned to her not to worry. Palmer said Hans is her only child, born Dec. 19, 1963, in Seattle. He was 7 when his mother moved to Exeter Drive in the Oakland hills in 1970. She confirmed for prosecutor Paul Hora that the home is in a wooded, brushy area about a block from Skyline Drive. Hans' father is Ramon Reiser, but he and Palmer broke up. Palmer remarried, but her husband died in 2000. Hans went to UC Berkeley at the age of 14. He eventually got a degree in "systematics." Palmer said she met Nina at the airport when she arrived in the United States from Russia. She told Hora she had a vague memory of Nina attending high school in Rhode Island. "What was your first impression of her?" Hora asked. "I liked her," Palmer replied. "She's very likable. She has a very likable personality." Her English skills were very good, she said. "Did they show love and affection for each other?" Hora asked. "Yes, I would say that's true," she said. The prosecutor asked if Hans ever expressed displeasure that Nina was pregnant with their first child, a son, or ever complained that Nina trapped him. No, she said. "He was excited about having the baby?" Hora asked. "That's right," she said. Posted by Audrey Cooper on December 03 2007 at 10:45 AM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=22427 Hans Reiser Trial: Dec. 4, 2007 5:14 p.m.: Defense attorney William Du Bois asked Hans Reiser's mother, Beverly Palmer, if Reiser had any social skills. Palmer laughed heartily at that question. "Hans is a programmer," she said, and programmers have a reputation for not having great social skills. She called her son a "klutz" socially. "A nerd among nerds?" Du Bois asked. Palmer laughed again and said yes. Du Bois ended his cross-examination of Palmer, and prosecutor Paul Hora had no redirect. Court broke 15 minutes early today because Hora thought Du Bois would go longer on his cross. During our mid-afternoon break, Hora had told his next witnesses -- teachers of the Reiser children -- that they probably wouldn't get to them this afternoon. We're back at 10 a.m. with the teachers on the stand. 3:30 p.m.: The jurors weren't immediately brought in after the lunch break. Hans Reiser is addressing the judge directly, complaining once again that he believes his 8-year-old son, as soon as he was done testifying as a prosecution witness just before Thanksgiving, was spirited back to Russia by his maternal grandmother in violation of a juvenile court judge. There are reports that Juvenile Court Judge Stephen Pulido is none too pleased that the boy failed to appear in his court and is considering sanctions. Today, Reiser expressed his displeasure with the whole thing and mentioned a ruling related to the custody issue by an appeals court. He said he wanted to attend a separate juvenile-court hearing this week in lieu of his criminal trial. Judge Larry Goodman, who is presiding over Reiser's murder trial, interrupted the defendant and saying that "in all due respect," the judge believed he could better interpret an appeals court ruling than Reiser could. "The bottom line is, Mr. Reiser, you're not going to the (juvenile court) hearing," Goodman said. Reiser was clearly unhappy and was about to continue talking, but defense attorney William Du Bois then told the judge that he wanted to withdraw his request that his client be able to address Goodman directly. Du Bois then said he was forwarding a second request on behalf of his client: Reiser wants to see all the evidence collected against him, minus the Honda CRX that police found after Nina Reiser vanished, its front passenger seat removed and interior apparently hosed down. "What about the two boxes that he's been schlepping all over the place?" Goodman asked. Well, there's plenty of other things, like exhibits, Du Bois said. Reiser, who prides himself for having been able to memorize pages and pages of discovery, admitted that there were some things he can't recall off the top of his head. Prosecutor Paul Hora said he's already handed over some 10,000 pages of discovery and that it's an "absurd request" to ask for everything. "So what do you want the court to do?" Goodman asked Du Bois. "Frankly, I hadn't gotten that far in my thinking of this issue," the defense attorney admitted. The judge suggested that the attorneys get together some other time to hash out a time where Reiser might be able to look at the exhibits. Reiser continued to confer with Du Bois as the jurors buzzed, signaling that they were ready to resume. "Mr. Reiser, you should have discussions with your lawyer somewhere else. The jurors are coming down," Goodman said. DuBois then resumed his cross-examination of Beverly Palmer, his client's mother. Palmer acknowledged to Du Bois that her memory hasn't been as good since her second husband, Bernard Palmer, died of cancer in 2000. "But I never had a good memory, to tell you the truth," Palmer said. She said she didn't search for Nina Reiser -- and neither did her son -- because they felt "unwelcome in the searches." Nina's mother, Irina Sharanova, and best friend, Ellen Doren, were both angry at them, she said. "Also, I can't walk through the Oakland hills, which is what they were doing, because I get poison oak, and it's full of poison oak and I get violent poison-oak reactions," Palmer said. "Does Hans have a similar reaction to poison oak?" Du Bois asked. "Yes, he gets bad cases of poison oak also," she answered. Du Bois flashed onto a screen pictures of her Exeter Drive home that were taken by police. As he showed her things in the picture, he tapped on a screen with a pen: Tap tap! Tap tap! That incurred the mock wrath of Judge Larry Goodman. "Do NOT hit the screen--I told you about that!" Goodman said, his face reddening as he laughed. "Sorry, I lost my head," Du Bois said. Hans Reiser paid his mother $600 a month in rent to stay with her, Palmer testified. She said she didn't remember whether she ever heard Nina say that she loved Hans. Palmer said the couple grew apart when Nina began having an extramarital affair with Hans' best friend soon after the couple's daughter was born in May 2001. Nina also moved in with the friend, Palmer said. She filed for divorce in August 2004. Du Bois asked if Nina's relationship with Hans' friend concerned her with respect to thie children. "It concerned me greatly," she said. "I was afraid that it would ruin the marriage, that the marriage would break up." And that's when co-counsel Richard Tamor's cell phone went off during testimony, for the second time during the trial. 12:54 p.m.: Outside court, defense attorney William Du Bois told reporters that he didn't think it was fair that Judge Larry Goodman barred hearsay statements with regard to what Hans Reiser told his mother, Beverly Palmer, about sleeping in her Honda CRX and washing the car's interior with water. Asked why Hans hosed the car down, Du Bois cited statements made by Palmer that her son was "such a slob, an inconsiderate slob, which is probably accurate." The whole issue of the CRX has "become part of a puzzle that each piece of the puzzle fits into, dangling modifier," Du Bois said. Du Bois said he was trying to determine whether he continue crossing Palmer for a little bit more this afternoon or to instead bring her back as a defense witness later. He agreed that Palmer is in a difficult position. "Obviously, they're mother and son," Du Bois said. Asked by NBC's Jodi Hernandez about sentiments that Palmer, 64, could be protecting her son, Du Bois said, "Some might say that, but if you heard her testimony, you probably get the idea that there are a lot of things in her life that she doesn't remember." Du Bois said he doesn't want to speak ill of someone whose memory is impaired but noted that her second husband, Bernard Palmer, died of cancer in 2000, a fact that he planned to bring up in court. Since his death, "she's hasn't been quite as mentally agile as she once was, but as you can see from her project at Burning Man, she still can put things together." Palmer, a multimedia artist, attended last year's Burning Man festival. Yesterday, Du Bois told reporters that Palmer's memory "fails more than, let's say, average memory. You've probably seen that from her testimony. She's a much more fragile person than a woman of her age might be otherwise." Bernard Palmer's obituary in the Chronicle said that the Berkeley Symphony violist and former San Francisco State education professor died at the couple's Oakland home on April 5, 2000, at the age of 79. He and Beverly Palmer were married 29 years. 12:34 p.m.: Prosecutor Paul Hora wrapped up his direct examination of Hans Reiser's mother, Beverly Palmer, this morning by having her confirm the conflicting sentiments she's had about Nina Reiser and whether she chose to disappear as Hans was charged with murder. "Well, I think people are a mixture of good and bad," Palmer said. "One doesn't necessarily exclude the other." Defense attorney William Du Bois then began his cross of his client's mother, and that's when the bickering began among Du Bois, prosecutor Paul Hora and Judge Larry Goodman in front of the jury. Du Bois tried several different ways to ask Palmer if she was aware that her son had been sleeping in the Honda CRX that he borrowed from her. (The defense has said Hans removed the front passenger seat to make the vehicle more comfortable for slumbering. The DA has hinted that Hans used the car to transport Nina's body somewhere.) Du Bois asked Palmer if she knew why he stayed in the CRX instead of at his mom's house in the Oakland hills, and Hora objected, saying there was no foundation for that question. The judge sustained the prosecutor's objection. "Did (Child Protective Services) say to you that they wouldn't let you have the children at the house if Hans was there?" Du Bois asked. "That's true," Palmer replied. Du Bois asked if it was after that CPS call that Hans said he was living in the car, and Palmer said, "That's right." As Palmer answered, Hora objected again on foundation grounds. "Was it after that that Hans informed you he was living in the car?" Du Bois persisted. Hora objected, this time saying, "That's hearsay." A frustrated Du Bois complained to the judge that Hora had "put in a lot of hearsay by my client" and that the DA "can't have it both ways." Goodman said, "Mr. Du Bois, Mr. Du Bois, if you don't object, I don't rule. If you object, then I rule," the judge said. Hora's hearsay objection was sustained. "Move on, Mr. Du Bois," said the judge, who usually addresses attorneys by their first name. "I don't know what he's afraid of," Du Bois said of Hora. Uh oh. "Bill, you know better than to make comments like that in front of the jury--don't do it again," the judge said. Du Bois then asked Palmer another question. That drew complaints by the prosecutor that Du Bois was leading the witness. The defense attorney next tried to ask Palmer how she became aware that there was a lot of water on the floorboard of the CRX. (The DA has suggested that Hans tried to rid the clean the area of incriminating evidence.) Hora said there's no foundation as to how the water got in the car, nor whether Palmer became aware of the fact that water was in the car. The attorneys squabbled with each other over when they objected and when they didn't. Goodman said, "Look guys, you're both trial lawyers, you both know what you're supposed to be doing. I'm not going to be making objections if you don't object." More grumbling by Hora. That drew a rare warning to the prosecutor by the judge, who addressed him as "Mr. Hora." In the middle of all this, Hans raised his finger a couple of times in hopes of getting his attorney's attention. It didn't work. Du Bois eventually resumed his cross of Palmer, but not before showing her a picture of a plainclothes Oakland police officer sitting in Palmer's Exeter Drive home in the Oakland hills. "If I said that was an Oakland police officer, would you object?" Du Bois said, addressing the prosecutor. Hora said he'd stipulate to that fact. Du Bois then asked the judge for more discussions about the CRX outside the presence of the jury. Goodman dismissed the jurors for lunch. Du Bois complained that the DA was allowed to bring in hearsay statements for his witnesses but that the defense essentially couldn't do the same with regard to what Hans had told his mother about sleeping in the CRX and hosing the front passenger seat area. The judge commented that Palmer's "memory was faulty on direct." Playfully, Du Bois asked the judge, "Why do you say that?" "Oh, I don't know," the judge replied. "Good answer," interjected Hora. The judge, mimicking many of Palmer's answers, said, "I don't remember," drawing laughter. Goodman told Du Bois that his dilemma could be solved if his client simply took the stand and testified about sleeping in the car and hosing it down. Du Bois insisted that his client's state of mind was "pure and not criminal." He grumbled that "the prosecution is allowed to offer all sorts of oblique statements by him and saying those are state of mind, whereas we offer statements that are not admissible." Du Bois said he believed this was violating his client's due-process rights and that he was objecting. Goodman gave a smile and said, "Very well, Mr. Du Bois." "Thank you," said Du Bois. "That's not what I'm saying, but that's your take on it," the judge told the defense attorney, referring to his accusation that the defense could only get certain statements in if Hans took the stand. There are other solutions, the judge said. There could be a witness who saw Hans sleeping in the car or hosing it down, Goodman said. 11:30 a.m.: Hans Reiser's mother, Beverly Palmer, is back on the stand today, still on direct. Prosecutor Paul Hora played for jurors a phone call between Hans and his mother that was recorded by Oakland police. The call was made Sept. 23, 2006, 20 days after Nina Reiser disappeared. As the call was played, Palmer, jurors, Hans and the attorneys followed along with the help of a transcription. Hans railed against Nina in the call, discussing their bitter divorce battle and essentially giving a list of reasons as to why "Nina is dead," the DA told jurors in his opening statement, during which this call was first played. Palmer tells her son that Nina "didn't deserve whatever it is that's happened to her. Don't you think?" Hans replies, "I think my children shouldn't be endangered by her. 'Cuz all I ever wanted was to be nice to her, give her an opportunity to come to the United States" and "have some children." Palmer says, "Still, Nina didn't deserve whatever it is that happened to her." "And neither did I, and neither did (the Reisers' son)," Hans answers. Palmer says in closing, "Well hopefully we'll somehow get through all this." Hans tells her, "I love you a lot." Palmer laughs and says, "Good. Bye-bye" and the two hang up. At the time of this call, Palmer assumed that her phone was wire-tapped but denied changing her behavior because of this knowledge, she testified today. In another wire-tapped call Sept. 19, 2006--the same night police seized the Honda CRX that Hans left off Highway 13-- Hans asks her to pick him up at the Mormon Temple in the Oakland hills because "I want to talk to you about something." "At the Mormon Temple?" an incredulous Palmer is heard on the call, which was also played for jurors. (By this time, Palmer was peeved that her son "stranded" her by taking both her CRX and her Honda Civic hybrid. She eventually found her hybrid). "Uh-huh," Hans says. "Hans, we're trying to set up this ... why do I have to pick you up there?" Palmer asks. "Mom, could you just do it, OK?" Hans replies. Oakland police tailed Hans and his mother as they went to a Budget Rent-a-Car in Hayward on Sept. 21, according to testimony. "Do you know why Hans was renting a car there?" Hora asked. "Well, I assume it's because the police had the CRX and he needed a car," Palmer said. Posted by Trapper Byrne on December 04 2007 at 11:29 AM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=22453 Hans Reiser Trial: Dec. 5, 2007 5:09 p.m.: Prosecutor Paul Hora this afternoon played a half-hour of voice-mail messages left on Nina Reiser's cell phone after she went missing Sept. 3, 2006. Those who left messages included her boyfriend, Anthony Zografos, who was on the stand as the messages were played; her best friend, Ellen Doren; her mother, Irina Sharanova; her divorce attorney, Shelley Gordon; and an ex-boyfriend, Sean Sturgeon, who had been Hans Reiser's best friend. Sturgeon -- who had dressed in drag as the "maid of honor" at the Reisers' 1999 wedding -- later had an extramarital affair with Nina Reiser, attorneys on both sides have stated in court. Hans Reiser did not leave any messages. "I'm panicked about your whereabouts, as your friends are," Gordon said in a message. Doren and Sharanova left a number of messages in Russian. "I'm afraid something is wrong, and I hope it's not bad," Zografos said in a message. "But I'm worried about you. Please give me a call." Sturgeon also left a message saying, "Please give me a call. Where are you at? We're all worried." In another call, Sturgeon said, "All I need to say is if you actually get this and you are ... need to get away from anything for a while ... when you can, you can call me and I won't say anything about it to anybody." He ended the call by saying, "I love you." Zografos' children also left a message. Zografos testified today that he encouraged his children to do so. Zografos appeared to tear up as he heard himself leave a message telling his girlfriend, "I want to see you. I'll come pick you up." The prosecutor showed the jury pictures of Nina Reiser in Lake Tahoe and near Big Sur during trips she took with Zografos in February 2006, a month after the two began dating. Many of those pictures were the same ones seen on missing-persons posters and on billboards throughout the East Bay and on television after she disappeared. Court resumes at 10 a.m. tomorrow. 3:24 p.m.: Anthony Zografos, Nina Reiser's boyfriend, is back on the stand this afternoon on direct examination. He described his unsuccessful search for her in the days after she disappeared in September 2006. He went to her home on 49th Street in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood, where she lived with her children and Basil the cat. "She loved her cat very much," Zografos said. Prosecutor Paul Hora showed jurors pictures of each room of her house as Zografos narrated. A framed picture of his girlfriend with her son as a baby hangs over her bedroom. Some of the rooms are adorned with pictures of butterflies or butterfly art. Zografos said he and Nina Reiser looked at Craiglist personal ads on her computer as entertainment. He turned over that information to police, he said, and also told them that he had found $2,000 in cash in her house. Nina Reiser sent him a text message on his phone on Aug. 8, 2006, less than a month before she disappeared. "Have a good trip, pirates! One beatiful (sic) cat and I are missing you a lot. Love you a lot. Love you." "Without getting too personal," Hora said, what's the pirate thing that she called you? "She called my entire family pirates because we like the ocean, and we tend to be a little rowdy," Zografos said. At least twice, Zografos expanded on his answers without prompting by Hora, prompting defense attorney William Du Bois to object on the grounds of "narrative." Zografos said he e-mailed Hans Reiser on Sept. 6, 2006, three days after she went missing. Zografos said he wrote that he didn't believe Nina Reiser would leave on her own and that the last time Zografos saw her, she was in good spirits. Zografos said he never received a response from Hans Reiser, nor was there any response when Zografos e-mailed him and offered to set up a play date with the Reiser children and Zografos' children. Zografos said he assumed the Reiser children would be in shock because their mother was missing and that a play date would help matters. Hora asked Zografos if he believed Hans Reiser had helped pass out any of the 5,000 "Missing Adult at Risk" flyers with Nina Reiser's picture. "I'm not aware," Zografos said. Zografos also arranged for 18 billboards with his girlfriend's picture to be placed in Oakland, Hayward, Berkeley for free. Zografos said he participated in searches for Nina Reiser but didn't see Hans Reiser at any of them. "Did you get any poison oak?" Hora asked. "No," Zografos replied. The reference to poison oak first came up when Hans Reiser's mother, Beverly Palmer, was on the stand. Palmer testified yesterday that neither she nor her son searched for the missing mother in the Oakland hills because they felt unwelcome -- and that both were susceptible to nasty poison-oak reactions. 2:27 p.m.: Greg Dolge, the Alameda County prosecutor who handled Hans Reiser's preliminary hearing late last year, is in an adjoining courtroom, before Judge Philip Sarkisian, handling a Piedmont robbery case this afternoon. Dolge confirmed to me that he didn't call county Supervisor Gail Steele to the stand during the prelim because investigators didn't know that she had been communicating with Hans Reiser about the county's family court system until June of this year. During the lunch break, a woman asked reporters in the hallway how she could get some flowers to Fil Cruz, Judge Larry Goodman's court clerk. The courtroom was closed at the time. Apparently, no sheriff's deputies were around because the same woman, flowers in hand, appeared in the doorway after jurors had settled into their seats for the afternoon session. Defense attorney William Du Bois asked Goodman if he could take "judicial notice" that it's Cruz's birthday. Everyone laughed. Prosecutor Paul Hora jokingly asked the judge if they should sing "Happy Birthday" to Cruz, but Goodman smiled and said no. The flowers were presumably brought into Goodman's chambers out of the view of the jury. 12:38 p.m.: Nina Reiser had plans to take a job with San Francisco's public health department assisting Russian immigrants, and she was also preparing to take a medical licensing exam at the time she disappeared, her boyfriend, Anthony Zografos, testified this morning. Reiser was a gynecologist in her native Russia, and she was seeking her license to practice in the United States. Prosecutor Paul Hora said he forgot to ask Zografos about his job and educational background. Zografos said he's the director of a medical-equipment company and that he has a PhD in engineering and an MBA from UC Berkeley. He was again hard to understand with his Greek accent, and some jurors looked at each other quizzically as he spoke. "Even after all that school, you still have that accent?" Hora joked as laughter erupted. "Maybe because of all that school," Zografos said. More laughter. Nina Reiser was studying for her medical exam at Berkeley Kaplan Center. Hora showed jurors a Kaplan log showing that she last attended a study session there on Aug. 31, 2006. She told Zografos that she and her estranged husband, Hans Reiser, had disagreed over who had custody of their children during Labor Day weekend last year. On Sept. 2, 2006, a day before Nina Reiser disappeared, she, Zografos and their children went to the beach in Alameda. Later that night, the six of them went to Pasta Pomodoro, he testified. After the meal, Reiser's daughter had what appeared to be paint on her face, and Zografos and Reiser realized that the girl had been busy eating crayons, which Zografos said he had found disturbing. Defense attorney William Du Bois wasn't sure he had heard correctly. "Eating crayons? Oh," the defense attorney said. As Zografos testified about the last few days he had with her, he began tearing up and drinking from a glass of water on the stand. Judge Larry Goodman handed Zografos some tissues. Zografos said he last saw Nina Reiser on Sept. 3, 2006, when he dropped by her home in Oakland before he took his kids on an overnight camping trip at Big Basin Redwoods State Park in Santa Cruz County. That day at 12:55 p.m., Zografos got a text message from her. A picture of that message was flashed onto a screen for jurors. It read, "We are at the BB finally and are having lunch. I'm sorry I missed your call, my love. It's great that you stopped to say goodby. Have a fun trip, pirates. Love you lots." BB refers to Berkeley Bowl, where Nina Reiser took her children shopping on the day she was last seen. Outside court, Du Bois said he'd reserve comment on Zografos' testimony until cross-examination. "He's been very helpful to us today," Du Bois said without elaborating. "We'll see what else he has to say." Asked about the video showing Nina Reiser as an attentive mother, Du Bois repeated a refrain he's used repeatedly in and out of court. "Well, looks can be deceiving," he said, adding he couldn't comment on the evidence nor what he believed would be coming because "that would be unethical." "There's going to be some real interesting revelations about this testimony, and we'll wait with bated breath for that," Du Bois said. As Du Bois was speaking to reporters, Hora led Zografos out into the hallway from the judge's chambers. The two dashed down the stairs, but a camera crew caught up with them and shot some video. Hora later returned to the courtroom because he forgot a bag. He was mum as he emerged, which has been his practice. We asked him about the import of the video, and he said he couldn't discuss it because it's a piece of evidence in the case and he doesn't discuss the evidence. Lunchtime. Back at 2 p.m. 11:27 a.m.: Anthony Zografos, Nina Reiser's boyfriend at the time she disappeared in September 2006, is the first witness on the stand today in the Hans Reiser murder trial. Zografos said he met Nina in 2005 after posting an online ad seeking play dates for his two children. Prosecutor Paul Hora asked if he and Nina had taken any serious steps in their relationship by the time she went missing in September 2006. "We had not discussed marriage, per se, no we had not," Zografos replied. "We had this discussion about possibly moving in together." Asked to describe her mothering skills, Zografos said, "She was a very good mother. She was very caring and very devoted." "Did she love her children?" Hora asked. "Very much," Zografos said. Hora asked him if he had ever heard her children saying negative things about her. "Unfortunately, I did," said Zografos. Mostly the Reisers' son -- but also their daughter -- would call their mother "a liar, a thief that stole their dad's money," said Zografos. At times, Zografos was difficult to understand because of his Greek accent, prompting defense attorney William Du Bois to ask court reporter Annie Mendiola to read back what Zografos had said. Mendiola also asked Zografos to repeat himself. Hora noted to Zografos that while his voice is strong, it might be his accent that is making him hard to understand. Zografos smiled and agreed that he did have an accent. "I don't think there's anything we can do about it," Hora said with a smile. Zografos said Nina Reiser was saddened by her children's remarks. He said he told her this was serious, that her son "needs help" and urged her to consult with a child psychologist because he believed this wasn't something she could handle on her own. Zografos testified that he also urged Nina to call Hans Reiser and "tell him what (his son) had just said." Zografos said he believed the Reisers' divorce affected their children. "Would it be fair to say you loved Nina?" Hora asked. "Yes," Zografos said. The prosecutor, repeating a question he's asked many other witnesses in this trial, asked Zografos if he believed Nina Reiser "would be the kind of mother that would just voluntarily vanish and abandon her kids." "Absolutey not," Zografos said. "Her kids were her life." Hora then showed for jurors a 21-minute videotape taken by Zografos in September 2005 at the Reisers' son's 6th birthday party at Head Over Heels gym in Emeryville. Present were the Reisers' son and daughter, Zografos' children and their friends. Jurors and Zografos smiled and laughed as they watched the kids romping around on mats, swinging on ropes, jumping into foam blocks and playing around on gymnastics equipment. At one point we see the Reiser's son doing the "crab walk." Later, we see the kids wearing party hats while eating cake. We also see a smiling Nina Reiser jumping around and tending to the kids. Courtroom observers smiled as they heard '80s songs being played at the party, including Debarge's "Rhythm of the Night," Pat Benatar's "Love is a Battlefield," Kenny Loggins' "Footloose," Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" and Whitney Houston's "I Wanna Dance with Somebody." At one point on the video, Zografos zooms in on the Reisers' son and asks him how old he is. "Six," he says. "Are you sure?" Zografos asked. "Yeah," he said. "Show me six," Zografos challenged. The boy apparently holds up seven fingers, and Zografos calls him out on it. "I'm six," the boy insists. "OK, if you insist," Zografos says. The kids sing "Happy Birthday" to the boy. Nina Reiser is again shown smiling on the video. "From what we saw there, was that typical Nina?" Hora asked Zografos. "Yes," he said. Posted by Trapper Byrne on December 05 2007 at 11:28 AM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=22486 Hans Reiser Trial: Dec. 6, 2007 6:47 p.m.: Dr. Dorit Bar-Din, who had been the Reiser children's pediatrician, was the only witness this afternoon. She testified that she wrote Nina Reiser a letter in 2005 saying that she could no longer be the children's doctor. Hans Reiser had written her an angry letter saying he didn't want his kids to be treated by her without his permission. He also threatened to sue the Berkeley doctor, who has received high marks on the Berkeley Parent Network, an online forum for parents. One parent wrote of Dr. Bar-Din in January 2000, "Our primary pediatrician is Dorit Bar-Din who has been wonderful, always willing to take the time to explain in as much detail as we wanted, and she has such a wonderful rapport with kids. I have never felt slighted for asking questions." Dr. Bar-Din graduated in 1982 from the George Washington University School of Medicine, according to records with the Medical Board of California. The trial is dark on Fridays, so testimony resumes Monday morning. Posted by Trapper Byrne on December 06 2007 at 11:16 AM http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/localnews/detail?blogid=37&entry_id=22518 Hans Reiser Trial: Dec. 10, 2007 5:08 p.m.: Monica MacDonald, a teacher at Grand Lake Montessori school in Oakland, was the last witness on the stand today. Both the Reiser children attended the private school in Oakland's Adams Point neighborhood. In 2004, the couple's then 5-year-old son was undergoing counseling for having "bad dreams," so teachers there "kept a closer eye" on him, MacDonald testified under direct examination by prosecutor Paul Hora. The boy brought candy to school early on, which was in violation of Grand Lake's strict no-sugar policy, MacDonald said. The issue was brought to Nina Reiser's attention, and she took care of it, MacDonald said. Teachers also had concerns that the boy wasn't gripping his pencil properly, she said. But there was even more concern when the boy drew pictures with "a lot of guns and a lot of dead people and violence," MacDonald said. Asked about the pictures, the boy told teachers that this was what he saw while playing video games at the father's house, MacDonald said. Teachers brought up this issue with Nina Reiser and gave her the pictures, in accordance with school policy, MacDonald said. On several occasions, the boy, when he was 6, made outbursts at school, telling MacDonald to "shut up" and that "I don't need to listen to you, you're a woman and women shouldn't have their rights in this country," according to MacDonald. "They were odd remarks for a 6-year-old." Nina Reiser was a kind and generous parent who opted in June 2006 to take her children to public school because "she was no longer able to afford our tuition," MacDonald said. When Hans Reiser picked up his children, he often made accusations against his wife, saying things like, "Did you know Nina is a liar?" or "Would you think Nina is a thief," or "Did you know that Nina had Munchausen...something," MacDonald said, referring to the defendant's belief that his estranged wife had Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome, in which parents exaggerate or make up medical problems for their children to get attention or sympathy for themselves. She agreed that Nina Reiser wasn't the kind of mother who would voluntarily vanish and abandon her children. On cross-examination, MacDonald told defense attorney William Du Bois that she didn't have the expertise to determine whether the Reisers' son had been experiencing post-traumatic stress at the time he drew those pictures depicting violence. Du Bois persisted in his questioning about MacDonald's lay opinion, prompting Hora to say, "Sounds like she wouldn't know." "Sustained," said Judge Larry Goodman. MacDonald told Du Bois that the boy was angry, violent and hurtful around the time he was dropped off or picked up by his father. She acknowledged to the defense attorney that she had known Hans Reiser for a number of months, compared to a number of years with respect to Nina Reiser. Du Bois asked her to clarify what she observed of the boy in 2004, when she first got to know him, and in 2006, when Hans Reiser began to pick him up more and more. He interrupted her a number of times, prompting both the DA and the judge to say, "Let her finish her answer." The boy would have "outbursts against children, where he would come in and he would be angry, violent or rude or just not himself," she said. Du Bois again interrupted her as she continued speaking. "May I answer your question?" said MacDonald. "Let her finish your answer, Bill," the judge told Du Bois. "Oh, I'm sorry -- I didn't know it was still going on," the defense attorney said. MacDonald said after the boy's episodes of bad dreams in 2004, everything became more or less normal until 2006, when teachers noticed the boy's problems resurfacing. "We noticed (the boy) coming with bad language, bad acts toward teachers, bad attitudes about women and violent pictures, with the blood and the guns and the people," MacDonald said. She confirmed that she told the boy that he couldn't tell her to "shut up." Instead, he would have to be quiet and speak to her when he was ready to speak to her in a polite way. 3:20 p.m.: Nina Reiser's landlord, Anthony Britto, took the stand this afternoon. Britto owns the house on 49th Street in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood where Reiser lived. Britto works in risk management at Wells Fargo Bank. Prosecutor Paul Hora asked if he should have gone into banking instead of the law. "Judging by your suit, you seem to be doing fine," Britto told the prosecutor as jurors and others erupted into laughter.] Hora laughed but didn't quite catch what Britto had said. Judge Larry Goodman told the DA that Britto had commented on his suit. The prosecutor motioned to his threads with a big smile and remarked that he doesn't get embarrassed quite easily -- and this might be one of those times. Hora showed Britto a copy of a Patelco check that Nina Reiser wrote on Aug. 31, 2006 for $2,100. It was her rent payment for September 2006; Britto never received. Cops found the check inside an envelope with Britto's name on it in her abandoned Honda Odyssey off Highway 13. Inside that vehicle were Berkeley Bowl grocery bags, its contents askew as if someone had been driving wildly, the DA has told jurors. Britto said he regained possession of the home, which he once lived in, in November 2006. "It was in very good condition," he said. Hora asked Britto if he would have returned her $2,000 deposit had she provided him with proper notice and moved out, and Britto said yes. Britto also confirmed that he would have used that last month's rent for her last month of tenancy had she given him 30 days' notice in late July or early August. "By her vanishing, she essentially gave up $4,100?" Hora asked. "Correct," Britto said. On cross-examination, defense attorney William Du Bois joked that he's been meaning to talk to someone at Wells Fargo about rates on his charge card. Britto said that's not his purview but that "I work closely with those folks." Britto said based on his discussions with Nina Reiser's boyfriend Anthony Zografos and her best friend, Ellen Doren, he got the impression that they didn't know where Nina Reiser but that they left open the possibility that she could come back. Britto told Du Bois that Nina Reiser never paid him in cash but that rent for one month came from ex-paramour Sean Sturgeon's account at one point. Britto also said that he believed Zografos wrote a check on her behalf when she was in Russia. 3:09 p.m.: Defense attorney William Du Bois is cross-examining Mark McGothigan, the artist friend of Hans Reiser's mother, Beverly Palmer. "Did Hans have a history of damaging Beverly's car?" Du Bois asked. "Unfortunately, yes," McGothigan said. "He put several dings in the CRX over the couse of the years, and he also put a dent in the hybrid," referring to Palmer's other car, a Honda Civic. Reiser hired some guys from the street to cover up the dents with putty, McGothigan said, adding