His dad testified in court that it was a Reiser family tradition to hose out the interior of your car to clean it (when Hans was arrested in the car there was an inch or two of water in it )

Hans also claimed to have misplaced the passenger seat (it was missing from the car)

After trial he admitted he threw the passenger seat in a dumpster.

There's an even closer parallel: he'd recently purchased the books Homicide: Life on the Killing Streets and Masterpieces of Murder.

https://www.eastbaytimes.com/2008/03/06/update-hans-reiser-b...