Hans Reiser, the programmer behind ReiserFS, the first journaled file system included in the standard Linux kernel, was arrested last week for murdering his estranged wife.

Reiser3 is the default file system in SUSE, Xandros, Linspire, Slackware, Yoper, Kurmin Linux and Libranet Linux - at least it was the SUSE default until a few minutes ago.

Novell decided to ape Red Hat and switch to ext3 late last week after complaining last month about ReiserFS' scalability, support and narrow development community. Reiser4, underwritten by DARPA and Linspire, hasn't made it into the Linux kernel yet for similar reasons. Now it's ultimate fate and that of Reiser's company, Namesys, and its Russian programmers are questionable.

Reiser, 42, is being held without bail in the Santa Rita jail in California pending a hearing on November 28, when he is supposed to enter a plea. His lawyers, who now include Daniel Horowitz, whose own wife was murdered last year in a highly publicized case, said they delayed entering a plea so they could review the evidence against him.

The cops don't have a body, only circumstantial evidence, but enough to lock Reiser up. According to a police statement, "We interviewed a host of individuals. All avenues led back to Mr. Reiser being responsible for the death and disappearance of Ms. Nina Reiser."

Nina, who was suing Reiser for divorce and had a restraining order against him, went missing on September 3, the Sunday of the long Labor Day weekend, after dropping their children, a seven-year-old boy and a five-year-old girl, off with Reiser at his mother's house at about two in the afternoon. According to the authorities, the children heard them fighting and using "not nice words," and were told not to come upstairs.

The children, who were living with Nina, weren't picked up at school on Tuesday and when Nina failed to show up for dinner the police were notified. The children are currently in protective custody.

Detectives told the court that they found traces of blood that could be Nina's in both the house and Reiser's Honda hatchback and that the car's floorboard was wet from having been washed. The car, which Reiser allegedly hid from the police, who followed him to find it and seize it on September 19, is also missing its passenger seat and a policeman who stopped and gave Reiser a ticket on September 12 for a traffic violation thinks the seat was there then.

The police also found a large trash bags in the car, a bloodstained sleeping bag and two books on murder investigations that Reiser bought on September 8 according to store camera footage.

Reiser, who had threatened his wife with physical harm after they separated in 2004, was briefly detained by the police on September 28 to get a DNA sample and was found to be carrying his passport and $8,900 in cash.

According to surveillance tapes, Nina, 31 and a medical doctor in her native Russia, had driven to Reiser's house directly from a local grocery store the afternoon she disappeared. Her van was found a few blocks from Reiser's place on September 9. Police dogs couldn't pick up her scent, the cops said, suggesting that she didn't leave it there. There was money and her purse in the van and the groceries in the back were thrown around, suggesting erratic driving, they said. The battery was missing from her cell phone.

Before his arrest, Reiser never tried to call that cell phone to see where she was, the authorities said.

According to one of Reiser's lawyers, the evidence against him is "relatively flimsy."

Friends of the missing woman have set up a web site and a $15,000 reward has been offered for information on her whereabouts. See www.ninareiser.com. The police are also looking for information and can be reached at 510 637-0298. They think her body is in the Bay area.

--Copyright Client/Server News