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Oakland police and a cadaver dog with the Alameda County sheriff's office searched the home Wednesday of a computer programmer whose estranged wife hasn't been seen for 10 days.
Law enforcement officials pored over the home of Hans Reiser, 42, on the 6900 block of Exeter Drive in the city's Montclair district for most of the day in hope of finding clues to the whereabouts of his wife, Nina "Nenasha" Reiser, 31. He wasn't home at the time.
She was last seen at about 2 p.m. Sept. 3 at his home, where she dropped off their 6-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter. The children have been placed with Child Protective Services.
Hans Reiser hasn't been termed a suspect in his wife's disappearance, and police have yet to speak to him, said Deputy Police Chief Howard Jordan. "As far as we know, he was the last person to see her at the home," Jordan said.
A dog that can smell a cadaver searched a crawl space underneath the six-room home, located on a winding street off Skyline Boulevard in a steep wooded canyon, as well as the backyard and neighboring yards. Also on scene were agents with the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. The Reisers, who acquaintances said met through a Russian dating service, frequently traveled to Russia.
On Sept. 3, Nina Reiser dropped off her children and planned to go shopping at the Berkeley Bowl market before going to her friend Ellen Doren's house. She never showed up. Police found Nina Reiser's tan 2001 Honda Odyssey in North Oakland with groceries inside, Jordan said.
Doren, who picked up the couple's children from school on Sept. 5, said Wednesday that she plans to apply to become a foster parent to the Reisers' children. "No news is good news," she said. "We'll just keep waiting for Nina no matter what."
Nina Reiser's boyfriend, Anthony Zografos, said he wasn't surprised that police were investigating Hans Reiser. "(He) is really the only person I know who dislikes her. They really don't get along."
But Jack Clauson, who has lived next door to Hans Reiser for 25 years, said, "I've never seen or heard a bad thing about him in all the time I've known the family."
The Reisers married in 1999 and separated in May 2004. Nina Reiser filed for divorce three months later, citing irreconcilable differences and saying their children "hardly know their father" because he'd be out of the country on business for most of the year, records said.
Nina Reiser, who is trained as an obstetrician and gynecologist in Russia, was granted custody of the children. The couple's divorce has not been finalized.
Nina Reiser accused her husband of subjecting their son, then 4, to violent video games and movies, causing him to have nightmares.
"This is an activity that Hans does almost obsessively to relax," Nina Reiser wrote in her divorce filing. "Hans believes a child should 'know the real world' and sees nothing wrong with this behavior. He doesn't seem to grasp that children are not little adults."
Hans Reiser, in turn, denied that movies were to blame for their son's nightmares and accused his wife of having an extramarital affair with Sean Sturgeon, a former friend of his, and that Sturgeon was a danger to the children. In an interview Wednesday, Sturgeon, 42, of Oakland denied having been a threat to the kids. Sturgeon said he became romantically involved with Nina Reiser only when her husband made it clear that the couple were through.
Sturgeon filed a lawsuit in 2004 against Hans Reiser accusing him of failing to pay back an $84,000 loan. Greg Silva, an attorney for Hans Reiser filed a notice of settlement in the case Wednesday. Silva declined comment.
Sturgeon said Hans Reiser had made a lot of "irrational" accusations against him. "He has shown increasing signs of mental instability," Sturgeon said.
But Nina Reiser is the one who is mentally unstable and physically abusive, her husband claimed in court filings that touched on Francis Bacon, Aristotle, Ralph Waldo Emerson and the scientific method.
He said his son played "more hours of educational games" than those depicting violence and told the court that he was being "scammed" by his wife. He wrote of Nina Reiser, "She is a product of a KGB-dominated society and is the child of someone who works for the KGB."
Hans Reiser has prided himself in interviews as having been accepted to UC Berkeley at the age of 15 after dropping out of junior high school. He attended the university off and on before graduating in 1992 with a bachelor's degree in "systematizing," an individualized computer-science major. He operates his own business, Namesys, from his home.
Nina Reiser was granted a temporary restraining order against her husband in December 2004 after she reported that he had pushed her and was abusive to her. A year later, she agreed not to seek a permanent order.
But earlier this year, Hans Reiser allegedly failed to pay 50 percent medical expenses and child care expenses as ordered by a judge, records show. He pleaded not guilty Aug. 25 to a civil contempt charge and is scheduled for trial in October.
"I would like to think -- and I hope -- that he had nothing to do with this," Shelley Gordon, Nina Reiser's divorce attorney, said Wednesday. "This has been a very acrimonious divorce, and I'm very fond of Nina and quite heartsick over her disappearance."
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