Nick Reiner has taken a stand in the horrific knife attacks that killed his parents, celebrated Hollywood director Rob Reiner and photographer and philanthropist Michele Reiner. were killed, pleaded not guilty.
Nick, 32, appeared in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom on Monday wearing brown jail clothes for his third hearing before a judge in the case. He appeared attentive and looked around the courtroom from a Plexiglas holding box.
He had his plea read out by his public defender and only spoke once when the judge spoke to him directly. He replied yes when asked if he understood that his case would be recalled on April 29 to schedule the preliminary hearing.
Prosecutors are considering the death penalty
After the hearing, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said the prosecution had turned over most of its evidence to the defense but was still awaiting the coroner’s final report. He said the case remains eligible for the death penalty and his office is going through a “rigorous process” to decide whether to seek it.
“We will examine all aggravating and mitigating circumstances and we have invited the defense to present to us, both in writing and orally, in a meeting any arguments that they would like to make with regard to our further action or a decision not to pursue the death penalty,” he said. “The most experienced people in the prosecutor’s office with experience in death penalty cases will help me evaluate this information.”
Nick was arrested on December 14, 2025, just hours after his parents’ bodies were found in the master bedroom of their home in the affluent Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, police said. Rob Reiner, who starred in the seminal sitcom “All in the Family” before directing hit films such as “This Is Spinal Tap,” “Stand by Me” and “The Princess Bride,” and Michele Reiner, who met her husband on the set of his classic comedy “When Harry Met Sally,” died from “multiple sharp force injuries,” according to the county coroner. Nick was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, with prosecutors naming a knife as the suspected murder weapon.
Mental illness and history
After the killings, Nick’s struggles with his mental health and drug addiction made headlines. Four days after the arrest, sources confirmed to Rolling Stone that Nick had been treated for schizophrenia before the shocking double murder. Last month, a source told The New York Times that Nick had also been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a condition that combines psychotic symptoms like schizophrenia with mood problems like depression or mania. Sources say Nick was under a confidential conservatorship in 2020. The newspaper also reported that he had been taking psychiatric medication as part of his treatment, which appeared to be working, but side effects caused him to change about a month before his parents died.
It was initially unclear what led to Nick’s guardianship, but police records obtained by ROLLING STONE confirm that LAPD officers were called to the Reiners’ home twice in 2019. The first call, on February 25, 2019, was recorded as a welfare check call at 9:51 p.m., with a tip for the arriving officer to check in with a woman in the home. The second call came in at 4:39 p.m. on September 27, 2019 and was listed as a “mental” call involving a man. The logs do not list the person calling or the people involved. When Nick first appeared in court on December 17, he was wearing a sleeveless blue suicide prevention robe and an ankle bracelet.
Statements by Conan O’Brien and previous interviews
The Reiners had attended Conan O’Brien’s Christmas party the night before their bodies were found. Sources told ROLLING STONE that Nick exhibited “anti-social behavior” at the event, such as staring darkly at people. O’Brien recently broke his silence on the tragedy in a podcast. “I knew Rob and Michele, and then I got closer and closer to them and saw them a lot. My wife and I saw them a lot, and they were so – they were just such lovely people,” O’Brien told The New Yorker. “And to have that experience of saying goodnight to someone, watching them go, and finding out the next day that they’re dead… I think I was in shock for quite a while after that. There’s no other word for it. It’s just very – it’s so terrible. Yeah, it’s just so terrible.”
Nick had previously spoken openly about his years of treatment for drug addiction. He told People magazine in 2016 that he first went to rehab at age 15 and went on to go through more than a dozen treatment programs. He was also homeless in Maine, New Jersey and Texas. He later wrote a screenplay loosely based on his experiences, which became the 2016 film “Being Charlie,” directed by his father.
Previous escalation of violence and family statements
In a 2015 interview with the Los Angeles Times, the Reiners said they had difficulty arranging care for their son. “When Nick told us it wasn’t working for him, we didn’t listen,” Rob said. “We were desperate, and because people had diplomas on their walls, we listened to them when we should have listened to our son.”
On the Dopey podcast in 2018, Nick spoke openly about his addiction, recalling a violent episode during a drug binge in which he trashed his parents’ guest house. “I went ten rounds with my guesthouse,” he said, describing days without sleep under the influence of stimulants before he began hitting objects, including a television. When asked if he was injured, he said he couldn’t remember. The incident led to further intervention and a flight to Boston, during which he said he suffered a cocaine-induced heart attack. His actions, he said, had “no logic.”
