This image was lost some time after publication.

Five days before convicted murderer and former high-tech hero Hans Reiser led police to his wife's body, local writer Stephen Elliott interviewed him for Salon. Reiser defended his innocence and slammed prosecutors and witnesses. Also, he talked about S&M. What many of us still want to know: How does a convicted criminal plea-bargain after he's been sentenced — someone please explain the legal mechanics of that? Some choice quotes from the piece:

Hans told me the investigator had failed him. He maintained his innocence and said there was a list of people who should be looked into. The first was "Alexia Orange." (I'm protecting her real name.) He said she had lied about Hans pushing his wife, painting him as an aggressor during a custody hearing. Alexia never testified in Hans's murder trial. But that wasn't the point. The point was that he felt like he was mistreated; his concerns hadn't been taken seriously. Next he named the teachers at the children's school. They had also fabricated information, he said.

"We would like it to be true that S/M is neatly compacted inside the mind," he said. "S/M crosses the wires of pleasure and pain, and those wires run deep. It crosses the wires between loving and hating as well. The result is that the more a sadomasochist cares about someone the more dangerous they are to them." He thought there should have been more of a focus on Sean's sexuality during the trial. But we both knew that Sean hadn't killed Nina.