platypusian personality

(04-16) 19:39 PDT Oakland -- Computer programmer Hans Reiser is like a duck-billed platypus, odd and unattractive - but that doesn't mean he murdered his estranged wife, his attorney told jurors Wednesday.

Reiser "has to be one of the least attractive people," said William Du Bois, who likened his client to the unusual mammal and held up a stuffed-animal platypus on several occasions during his closing arguments Wednesday. "And she is a doll," he said, referring to Nina Reiser.

The jury must decide whether the circumstantial case against Hans Reiser has been proved beyond a reasonable doubt and ensure than even a self-described computer genius "who comes across as so lousy" is presumed innocent just like anyone else, Du Bois said.

"This has been a tough case for me, because my client is a difficult person to communicate with. He is a difficult person to relate to. He is a difficult person to present as a witness. The complaining witness, the missing person, Nina Reiser, is easy to like and likable," Du Bois said in Alameda County Superior Court.

"She is a pleasure to look at, a pleasure to be around, apparently, and projects very well. In a beauty contest, Mr. Reiser would lose, hands down. His hope is that you will not regard this case as a beauty contest," Du Bois said.

Du Bois referred to the platypus, one of the only mammals that lays eggs, in asserting that some of his client's conduct after his wife disappeared was a "product of his own platypusian personality."

The defense attorney acknowledged that his client has been obnoxious and disruptive while on the stand. "He gives the impression that he doesn't care about who's asking the questions," Du Bois said. "He only cares about his answer. Even when the judge is talking to him, he's still talking. He doesn't get it. That doesn't mean he killed anybody."

Because Nina Reiser's body hasn't been found, there's no proof that she's dead, Du Bois said.

"I cannot dispute that she was the victim of foul play," Du Bois said. "But the evidence hasn't told us even where she is. The evidence hasn't excluded her being in Europe."

Nina Reiser was 31 when she disappeared Sept. 3, 2006, after dropping off the couple's two children at her estranged husband's Oakland hills home. The children are now living with their maternal grandmother in St. Petersburg, Russia. Du Bois suggested Wednesday that Nina Reiser had an "ulterior motive in marrying Hans."

Du Bois will continue his final summation today, after which prosecutor Paul Hora will provide a rebuttal argument.

Earlier Wednesday, while finishing his closing argument, Hora said the fact that Hans' and Nina Reiser's cell phones were disabled to make them impossible to track is "probably the most incriminating circumstance" indicating that he killed her.

On Sept. 9, 2006, Nina Reiser's cell phone battery was found removed from the phone in her abandoned minivan near Highway 13 in the Oakland hills.

Police later detained Hans Reiser for a DNA sample and discovered that his phone, too, had its battery removed. He had also left a Honda CRX - which the prosecution believes he used to transport his wife's body - off Highway 13.

Cell-phone company employees testified during Hans Reiser's five-month trial in Oakland that a user's location cannot be tracked if the phone is off or if the battery is removed.

"That circumstance all by itself leaves no doubt that the defendant is guilty," Hora told jurors. "It's that convincing. It's that unique. It's a signature - so unique for both those cell phone batteries to be out."

He asked jurors to return a verdict of guilty to first- or second-degree murder.

"Nobody walks around with their cell phone battery intentionally removed, nobody," Hora said. "Who even thinks of removing their cell phone battery to hide their location and remain undetected? Someone who is familiar with technology - the defendant."

Reiser, 44, lied when he initially denied on the witness stand that he had never removed the battery from his cell phone, Hora said. Reiser later admitted to jurors that he had taken out the battery.

Because he was "lying through his teeth to you, under oath at his murder trial," Hora told the jurors they could reject his entire 11 days of testimony.

Hora said it was bad enough to have killed her, "but hiding the body is just so worse."

"The pain and suffering he caused to those little kids and the family, for life, it never, ever goes away," the prosecutor said. "You're never going to have that funeral, never get to go to the gravestone. It's just cold and callous, a cold and callous state of mind, to dump a body and sit and watch all this suffering as time goes by."


-- Trial blog: Follow Henry K. Lee's blog from the Reiser trial at sfgate.com/ZBLS.