Los Angeles County’s top prosecutor said Tuesday his office is filing two charges of first-degree murder against Nick Reiner, the son of legendary Hollywood director Rob Reiner and photographer-producer Michele Singer Reiner. Authorities say Nick killed his parents in a gruesome double-slaying at the family’s home on Sunday.
If convicted as charged, Nick, 32, would face a maximum sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole or potentially the death penalty, DA Nathan Hochman said.
“I’m here to announce that our office will be filing charges against Nick Reiner, who is accused of killing his parents,” Hochman said. “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.”
Hochman said no decision has been made with respect to the death penalty.
Police responded to the Reiner’s Brentwood home around 3:40 p.m. Sunday for a death investigation. The Reiners’ daughter Romy, 28, discovered the grisly scene, Rolling Stone previously confirmed.
Police confirmed Tuesday that Nick was located at Exposition Park near the University of Southern California and taken into custody without incident around 9:15 p.m. Sunday. They declined to give details of the investigation but previously said they determined he “was responsible for their deaths.” Nick remained in custody without bail pending his first appearance.
Rob Reiner, who played Meathead in the groundbreaking sitcom All in the Family before his extraordinary run as the director of beloved 1980s movies This is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, When Harry Met Sally…, Princess Bride, and A Few Good Men, previously worked with Nick on the 2016 movie Being Charlie. Nick co-wrote the script, loosely based on his struggles with heroin addiction, and Reiner directed the film.
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Nick told People magazine in 2016 that he was only 15 when he first went to rehab for his drug addiction. He said more than a dozen future stints at recovery centers followed, and he experienced homelessness in Maine, New Jersey, and Texas.
In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Reiner and his wife said they desperately tried to help their son but made some mistakes along the way. “The program works for some people, but it can’t work for everybody,” Reiner said. “When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen. We were desperate, and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son.”
Michele added that the couple was “so influenced by these people. They would tell us he’s a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them.”
Being Charlie tells the story of the troubled, drug-addicted son of an actor with political aspirations in California. In a video interview with AOL’s BUILD Series in 2016, Rob Reiner called the movie the most personal and “satisfying creative experience” of his career.
“The fact that we were dealing with things that Nick had gone through and how I had related to it, and how his mother had related to it… It forced me to have to see more clearly and understand more deeply what Nick had gone through. And I think it forced him to see things that I had experienced during this process. And it definitely brought us closer together,” Reiner said. “It did make me understand him a lot more.”
Nick called the movie a “bonding” experience with his dad.
From Rolling Stone US
