Hans Reiser on the stand in 2008 during his 11 days of testimony that ended with a jury convicting him of murdering his wife, Nina. Illustration: Norman Quebedeau/Wired Four years after being convicted of killing his wife, Linux guru Hans Reiser returns Monday to court, this time to defend himself from a wrongful-death suit brought by his two children. Reiser, the developer of the ReiserFS filesystem , was convicted by an Alameda County, California jury in 2008 of the first-degree murder of his wife, Nina. Defendant Reiser and his legal team had argued that his wife was not dead, and had abandoned her children to sneak away to Russia, where the couple met in 1998, after he accused her of embezzling from his software company, Namesys. But jurors didn’t buy Reiser’s story, and weeks after his conviction he led the authorities to Nina’s body hidden in the Oakland hills, for a reduced term of 15-to-life instead of 25-to-life. Now he has a new story — he killed his wife to prevent her from possibly killing their children. And he plans on telling a new jury about it while wearing his Pleasant Valley State Prison jail smocks and acting as his own attorney.

Read more here: 
Convicted of Murder, Linux Guru Hans Reiser Returns to Court to Fight Civil Suit