Family friends said argument between Reiners hours before killing was ‘overblown’ as they provide new details on shocking murder
Nick Reiner, the youngest son of Hollywood director Rob and photographer Michele Reiner, appeared briefly in a Los Angeles court Wednesday morning after being charged with the murder of his parents.
The 32-year-old was arrested Sunday night after allegedly stabbing his parents to death in their Brentwood home. He did not enter a plea, but, if convicted, he could face the death penalty.
Reiner’s struggles with addiction were well-known, as were the lengths his parents went to in order to help and support him throughout their lives.
On the night before their deaths, guests at an A-list party recalled Rob Reiner chastising his son over his behavior – though accounts now differ as to how severe the argument were.
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Past struggles
Nick Reiner has spoken openly and extensively about his lengthy battle with addiction, which resulted in him being in and out of rehab; entering into a program for the first time around his 15th birthday in 2008.
Over the course of four years he returned to such facilities at least 17 times, but said, in time, he learned to work the system.
“I just was like, ‘You know what, I want to go home,’ and so I just stayed sober long enough ‘til I could go home and then yeah, I just went home and did (drugs),” Reiner said in 2018.
In between the stints in rehab, when he refused treatment, Reiner spent time on the streets and in homeless shelters. “If I wanted to do it my way and not go to the programs they were suggesting, then I had to be homeless,” he told People.
“I was homeless in Maine. I was homeless in New Jersey. I was homeless in Texas,” he told the outlet. “I spent nights on the street. I spent weeks on the street. It was not fun.”
Reiner has alluded to his famous family’s reputation as contributing to his substance abuse at such a young age. “I had no identity, and I had no passions,” he said, speaking during an interview for the 2 Chairs and a Microphone podcast in 2016.
“And I think the reason I had no identity was because I had a famous dad and a famous grandpa, and that fame sort of informs who you are. So I wanted to edge out my own identity with a more rebellious, angry, drug-addicted sort of persona,” he added.
A supportive family
Though he struggled for more than half his life with drug addiction, including heroin, a person close to the Reiner family told The New York Times that they were accustomed to working through his problems together.
“They loved their kids so much, and they never stopped trying to be really good parents,” the journalist Maria Shriver, ex-wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger and a friend of the couple, wrote after their death.
Rob and Michele Reiner had at times adopted “tough love” tactics to deal with their son but later regretted the decision.
“When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen,” Rob Reiner told the LA Times. “We were desperate and because the people had diplomas on their walls, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son.”
Speaking in an interview in 2016, Nick Reiner acknowledged that he was “lucky” to have parents that continued to care about his wellbeing, and that relapsing gave him a “tremendous amount of guilt.”
That same year, the father and son had made and released a film, Being Charlie, together that was loosely based on their experience of Nick Reiner’s cocaine and heroin addictions. The younger Reiner was sober at the time the movie was released, but later relapsed again.
Rob Reiner later admitted there had been many disagreements in the creative process but that it had helped him better understand his son. “Working on this with Nick was like being in therapy with him,” he said. “I learned how to be his father.”
In a scene from Being Charlie, David, the character based on Rob Reiner, tells his son, “I’d rather you hate me and you be alive” than allowing the addiction to kill him. The line was reportedly taken verbatim from an argument shared by the real-life father-son duo
A Hollywood holiday party
At the time of their deaths, Reiner was living in the guesthouse on his parents’ property, according to family friends. In the weeks leading up to the incident the family had become increasingly concerned about his mental health, the LA Times reports.
On Saturday December 13, Nick Reiner accompanied his parents to a holiday party at the home of comedian Conan O’Brien, where multiple Hollywood A-Listers were in attendance.
Accounts appear to differ on what happened at the party, though sources told The Wall Street Journal the 32-year-old was asked to leave after he disturbed other guests — including comedian Bill Hader — by asking them a series of strange questions.
“Nick was freaking everyone out, acting crazy, kept asking people if they were famous,” a source told People. Hader has said that out of respect for Rob and Michele Reiner, he will not discuss the conversation he had with their son publicly.
One of the party guests, who remained anonymous, told the Times that Rob Reiner had told his son off, and said that such behavior was “inappropriate for a guest in someone else’s home.”
However, in a later interview, another source said that the heated nature of the argument had been “overblown,” the Times reports, and that the intensity of the conversation between Rob Reiner and his son may have been misinterpreted or exaggerated.
The deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner
The Reiners were killed inside their home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles in the early hours of Sunday December 14, the LA District Attorney’s office said in a news release.
On Sunday afternoon a massage therapist arrived at the Reiner’s house for an appointment and called their youngest daughter when they could not contact the couple. They had been due to have dinner with Barack and Michelle Obama a few hours later, according to the Times.
Romy Reiner, who lived opposite her parents, walked into the home and discovered her father’s body. Her roommate called 911. A source close to the family told the Times that the 28-year-old did not see her mother’s body in the house and only learned that she too had been killed by the paramedics.
The couple died of apparent stab wounds, according to the DA’s office, though an official cause and time of death is still being determined by the coroner.
Police responded to the Reiners’ home around 3:40 p.m. local time on Sunday, Los Angeles Police Department Chief Jim McDonnell told reporters. There were no signs of forced entry at the property and Nick Reiner was not on the premises.
Romy Reiner did not mention her brother was a possible suspect in the killings.
Nick Reiner arrested
Nick Reiner was arrested without incident later that evening, around 9:30 p.m., by officers from the Los Angeles Police Department Gang and Narcotics Unit.
He was detained about 15 miles away near the Exposition Park Metro station near the University of Southern California campus. It was not clear how the police found him.
Video obtained by the New York Post showed Reiner calmly raising his hands and getting down on the ground after being swarmed by police vehicles. Surveillance footage also showed him waiting in line to buy a drink in a gas station moments before the arrest.
Reiner was booked on suspicion of murder at 5:04 a.m. Monday and has since been charged with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the death of his parents.
“These charges will be two counts of first-degree murder with a special circumstance of multiple murders. He also faces a special allegation that he personally used a dangerous and deadly weapon, that being a knife,” McDonnell told reporters.
LA district attorney Nathan Hochman said later at a news conference that “prosecuting these cases involving family members are some of the most challenging and heart-wrenching cases that this office faces because of the intimate and often brutal nature of the crimes involved.”
First court appearance
Reiner appeared briefly at Los Angeles Superior Court in downtown LA Wednesday morning, but did not enter a plea.
His arraignment has been postponed to January 7, at the request of his attorney, Alan Jackson, who said it was “too early” for a plea to be entered. Jackson, who has represented high-profile clients such as Kevin Spacey, Harvey Weinstein, and Karen Read, gave brief remarks outside court following the hearing.
“First of all, and most importantly, this is a devastating tragedy that has befallen the Reiner family,” Jackson said. “We all recognize that, our hearts go out to the entire Reiner family.”
“There are very, very complex and serious issues that are associated with this case,” he added. “These need to be thoroughly, but very carefully, dealt with and examined and looked at and analyzed.”
Jackson reiterated that Reiner’s arraignment was postponed to next month. “Nothing happened today. Substantively, we’ll be back for an arraignment in the same department on the seventh of January,” he said.
Reiner was initially expected to make his first appearance Tuesday, but was not medically cleared in time.
What will happen now?
If convicted, Nick Reiner faces a maximum sentence of the death penalty or life in prison without parole, according to Hochman.
“No decision at this point has been made with respect to the death penalty,” Hochman said Tuesday.
California is not currently carrying out executions, although it is legal in the state, after Governor Gavin Newsom put a moratorium on capital punishment in 2019. If that moratorium was lifted, executions would resume.
Following his court appearance Wednesday, Reiner’s siblings, Jake and Romy, issued a joint statement asking for privacy.
“Words cannot even begin to describe the unimaginable pain we are experiencing every moment of the day. The horrific and devastating loss of our parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, is something that no one should ever experience. They weren’t just our parents; they were our best friends,” their statement read.
“We now ask for respect and privacy, for speculation to be tempered with compassion and humanity, and for our parents to be remembered for the incredible lives they lived and the love they gave,” they added.
