In recent years, thousands of women from Russia and other former Soviet republics have married Americans. Several of these women have been killed by their husbands. Such murders have not yet become an epidemic, but I have already accumulated a thick folder of material on the subject and have permitted myself to share with my readers.
One of the most notorious murders of a Russian wife occurred in California in 2006.
In April 2008, having plodded through two and a half days, a California jury found 44-year-old programmer Hans Reiser guilty of murdering 31-year-old Russian [citizen] Nina Reiser, maiden name Sharanova. I've already written about this case in the past; now, I will present it more succinctly.
The trial lasted almost six months and aroused great interest among American computer aficionados, who were familiar with Reiser as the creator of the file program, ReiserFS, for the Linux operating system. Reiser, who was considered a child prodigy, left high school at 15 years of age and enrolled in UC Berkeley. After graduating, he started his own computer company. He made extensive use of the services of Russian programmers and spent a good deal of time in Russia.
In 1998, one of St. Petersburg's matchmaking agencies recommended a woman for Reiser, but it was her interpreter that caught his fancy. She was gynecologist Nina Sharanova. Soon they were married, and Nina moved in with her husband in California. By May 2004, tired of the frequent absences of her husband, who was in Russia nine months out of every year, she filed for divorce, claiming that their two children "hardly knew their own father."
During the course of the lawsuit, Reiser paid his wife an eight thousand dollar monthly alimony and, although the court gave Nina custody of the children, he was granted the right to see them regularly. According to investigators, when they still lived together, Reiser did not once beat his wife or threaten to disfigure her for life.
On September 3, 2006, Nina brought the children to Reiser and drove to the store in her light-brown minivan, a 2001 Honda Odyssey. Since then, she has not been seen. Friends of Nina, who opened the site ninareiser.com, could not believe that the young woman disappeared without a trace on her way between Berkeley and Oakland on a sunny day. They combed the surrounding hills and spread out messages with her photograph. A reward of $15,000 was offered; then it increased to $25,000.
The site disappeared from the internet long before the trial.
Although the body of Nina had not been found, her former husband, who had not yet managed to finalize their divorce, was arrested for murder after traces of her blood were found in his house and his car.
His lawyer, William Du Bois, emphasized that police dogs were not able to find any evidence in Reiser's house that Nina was killed there. Du Bois pointedly remarked that the press would do better to dig up Nina's ins and outs, claiming that she led an "unbelievable extramarital life."
Police searched Reiser's 1988 Honda CRX on Sept. 19 and found that it was missing its front passenger seat. Inside, they found an opened roll of black garbage bags, a box spanner and a map of Northern California.
Moreover, they found two books in the car: "Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets" by David Simon, and "Masterpieces of Murder" by Jonathan Goodman. The books were purchased on Sept. 8 - five days after Nina's disappearance – at a Barnes and Noble bookstore in Berkeley. As noted by the police, both include detailed descriptions of investigative techniques.
His defense countered that buying books is not proof of guilt.
After removing the carpet from under the front seat of the Honda, police found a layer of water and concluded that the car had recently been thoroughly washed. In the car lay a sleeping bag, on which there was a blood stain one to three inches in size. Analysis showed that the blood belonged to Nina.
He could not explain why, so it must have been an old spot.
Reiser explained that he had lived in his car for some time.
On September 28, 2006, the police detained him in passing to get a sample of his DNA for analysis. They found $8,900 in cash and a passport on him. Americans do not usually carry so much money and a passport. They came to the conclusion that Reiser was preparing to go into hiding.
Du Bois responded with this explanation: "There is nothing sinister here. It was the salary of his staff in Russia."
The defense argued in court that Nina is hiding in Russia, where she still has many friends. Similarly, the lawyers of Dmitriy and Julia Yakovlev, arrested last summer in New York, now claim that the missing translator, Irina Malezhik, who, according to the Yakovlev's, stole money from them, returned to Ukraine.
In the end, Nina was found, not in Russia, but in the grave, which Reiser dug for her. Irina Malezhik has also not yet been found, although the FBI has long been digging up the Yakovlev's basement and, according to Julia, nearly bringing down their house, where she sits under arrest.
Unlike most defendants, Reiser volunteered to testify and, apparently, it did him more harm than good. "I am sure that he made a bad impression on the jury," his lawyer said after the trial.
Reiser really knows how to make a bad impression on people. One of those people was his own defender Du Bois, who, with difficulty, concealed hostility toward his client during the sentencing. On the Internet, you can find a video of Reiser's last words [before the jury].
The murderer was threatened with a sentence of 25 years to life. He did not wish to serve so much jail time and, after the trial, he struck a deal with prosecutors. The computer genius promised to lead investigators to Nina's grave, honestly describe the circumstances of her death and not to lodge an appeal after the verdict. Prosecutors promised that they would require the judge to sentence Reiser to a more moderate term: 15 years to life.
The record of Reiser's testimony is 34 pages in length. It is a striking document. Although his statements concern purely practical matters, Reiser sometimes expresses them figuratively. Blaming his deceased wife for lying, he mentioned Baron Munchausen, who is better known in Russian than he is in America.
The murderer and two prosecutors, who both refer to him as "Hans," engage in an almost friendly business conversation, rich with terrifying details.
Paul Hora, the public prosecutor at the Reiser trial, asked, for example, why he took out the front seat out of his car. Wasn't it to carry Nina's body? No, Hans responded calmly. While he spent two nights in a row digging her grave, her body lay in a large bag in the back seat of the car; he took out the front seat and threw it in a dumpster because there were blood stains on it.
According to him, the blood continued to flow from Nina's nose long after her death. Not because Hans hit her on the nose, but because, as one of his interlocutors mentioned, after death, a person might leak a number of things.
On that fateful night, they were discussing who would receive what after their divorce. "Much of the debate took shape to my advantage," remembered Reiser. "She agreed to let me keep the company."
But they came to an impasse when they could not agree on custody of the children, who were playing in another room at the time. Reiser, having become increasingly furious, cut Nina's face. He hit her in the mouth, cutting his finger on her teeth. Then he grabbed hold of her throat and strangled her.
As Reiser put it somewhat casually, "I grabbed her neck from both sides. I squeezed in the most artless manner, for which any judo trainer would begin to despise me, and strangled her ... In a manner used by those who are entirely unfamiliar with martial arts ... For her, it was completely painless. It is the least painful death.
"I got angry and killed her," he said simply. "I did not have to do it. I am very sorry for this. "
On that day, things did not go smoothly for Reiser. He tried to pack Nina in black garbage bags, pulling one up over her head and another from below. It turned out that the bags were too small. That's when Reiser found a big bag with a zipper in the house, stuffed Nina inside it, carried her into the bathroom, wiped small droplets of blood from the wall, found Nina's minivan in the garage and set out to put the bag with the corpse inside. However, in the confusion, Reiser lost the keys and was forced to put her into the Honda.
After tucking the children in, the killer drove the car with Nina in it onto another street, surveying the road for a suitable place to bury her corpse. He dug two nights in a row, while the children slept, and was extremely tired during the day.
The bag turned out to be unfit to contain the corpse because it was not waterproof, but Reiser did not have many options.
"Can I say something?" asked Reiser, as the prosecutors were preparing to leave. "You know, in many respects, Nina was a wonderful ..." – "Hans, can you speak more loudly?" interrupted his lawyer Du Bois. "If you want to be heard." – "OK," said Reiser. "I will regret this deed for the rest of my life."
Since Reiser has been in jail since 2006, he is eligible to apply for parole in 11 years. But he may not be released even then.
In his final statement, Reiser apologized before Nina's mother and her lover, Anthony Zografos, and praised the police and Hora, the prosecutor. "But neglected to mention his defense," growled his lawyer, Du Bois.
Nina Sharanova is by and far not the only Russian wife to have died at the hands of an American husband.
