OAKLAND, California – Hans Reiser, the Linux developer accused of murdering his wife, had nearly $9,000 and his passport with him when authorities detained him three weeks after his wife went missing in 2006, a police officer testified here Thursday.

The officer, Jesse Grant, said that the authorities were exercising a search warrant on Sept. 28, 2006 and took a host of clothed and unclothed photos of the defendant in the Oakland police station to chronicle whether he had been in struggle. The wife, Nina Reiser, was last seen Sept. 3, 2006, after she dropped off the divorcing couple's children to his house in the Oakland hills for the Labor Day weekend.

The clothed pictures, which were displayed to jurors on a large monitor, showed an overweight Hans Reiser with a small mark on his chest and back. The defendant is about 40 pound slimmer now. He sat in court with the same dark coat he has donned for months, often peppering his attorney with questions.

"Other than those acne or a scratch, you didn't find any other marks that indicate a struggle that day?" defense attorney William DuBois asked Grant, who was under cross examination.

"Correct sir."

UPDATE at bottom of the jump.

He said he detected a small mark on his chest and back, which was photographed and shown to the jury.

He later added that "There were some small marks, but nothing of significance."

The officer also testified the defendant flatulated in his face when the authorities were snapping nude photos of him Sept. 28, 2006. The officer said Reiser told him: "'You're about to experience chaos' and, for lack of a better term, he farted in my face."

Jurors snickered and the defendant grinned.

"Did you make a report of that?" DuBois asked the officer.

"No. But it stays vividly in my head."

DuBois asked him whether the department had any other "persons of interest."

The officer responded that the authorities checked out Anthony Zografos, the woman's boyfriend at the time she vanished. The officer, however, said Hans Reiser "was probably the main one at a certain point."

"I was assigned to interview Anthony Zografos," Grant added.

Under direct examination, he testified that the battery of the defendant's cell phone was removed.

(Prosecutor Paul Hora has told jurors during his opening remarks in November that the whereabouts of a person with a dead cell phone cannot be traced. Nina Reiser's cell phone, which authorities found in her van a few miles away from the defendant's house, also had its battery removed.)

The defendant, operator of Namesys, has pleaded not guilty and faces a life sentence if convicted. He remains jailed without bail. He claims his wife moved back to Russia, where the divorcing couple met, and abandoned her two young children, now 6 and 8.

The jury is being excused for the day and testimony will resume Monday.

UPDATE

After the break, the lawyers haggled with each other in open court over exhibits and other procedures. The jury had left. At one point, the defendant was by himself at the defense table. Testimony resumes Monday.

Wired News' Norman Quebedeau moved to the vacant jury box and captured the images on this jump.

THREAT LEVEL is providing gavel-to-gavelcoverage.

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