quote:

Hans Reiser is waiting for me, standing on the other side of an imitation-wood table. The room is small, the concrete walls bare. A guard locks the steel door from the outside. There is no sound. Reiser is wearing the red jumpsuit of a prisoner in solitary confinement, though he has been allowed to meet with me in this chilly visiting room. There was a time when he was known as a cantankerous but visionary open source programmer. His work was funded by the government; he was widely credited (and sometimes reviled) for rethinking the structure of the Linux operating system. Now he is known as prisoner BFP563.

quote:

He [Reiser's Father] thinks the cash reserves are shrinking inexplicably fast. Within a year, a check bounces, and Ramon warns his son that Nina may be to blame. Reiser doesn't believe him. To help make payroll, he accepts a loan from Sean Sturgeon, a childhood friend.
...
Reiser thinks of Sturgeon as a brother but is concerned about his friend's taste for bondage and sadomasochism. Reiser once watched Sturgeon carve the letters R-A-G-E into his arm, and was alarmed when his friend told him he went to the ER after an S&M experience led to a burst blood vessel in his chest. Reiser is worried that Sturgeon is trying to teach Rory and Niorline [Reiser's son and daughter] that pain can be fun and is furious when Sturgeon gives them what Reiser refers to in a sworn court filing as "gender confused alternative sexuality dolls."
...
"Nina and Sean both seem to be searching for more and more excitement, and going farther and farther to find it," Reiser writes in the court papers.
...
Sturgeon doesn't understand why Reiser is upset. It's true that he was involved in the "leather" community and that he's bisexual. But Sturgeon has started going to church, and by the beginning of 2002 he had sworn off kinky sex parties. He's left that life behind. Either way, Reiser stayed friends with him all those years and didn't seem to mind it at the time. Reiser even watched him carve those letters into his arm — it happened back in 1996. It was just body art — Sturgeon saw a lot of people doing it at the time. It was no big deal.
...
Reiser fears that Nina is sleeping with Sturgeon and that the two are mixing sex with sadomasochism. Nina confirms his suspicion that they are having an affair when she files for divorce. In court filings, Reiser accuses her of being seduced by a "lewd tattooed drug addicted BDSM pimp/whore" with multiple personality disorder.
...
[Sturgeon,] Reiser's childhood friend and Nina's ex-lover [...] wants me to understand that he is a Christian now. He is eager for me to know this because last week, on the phone, he told me he had killed eight people.