Who is Nick Reiner? Son of Rob, Michele Reiner booked for murder in parents’ deaths

Nick Reiner, the 32-year-old son of celebrated Hollywood director Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, was charged with murder on Monday after his parents were found stabbed to death at their home on Sunday afternoon.

The Los Angeles Police Department’s robbery-homicide division is investigating the deaths, according to LAPD Chief Jim McDonnell.

“We were able to take into custody Nick Reiner, a suspect in this case,” McDonnell told reporters on Monday. “He was subsequently booked for murder.”

Nick Reiner’s bail was originally set at $4 million, but it has since been revoked.

The Reiners have two other children together: Jake, 34, and Romy, 28. Rob Reiner also has a daughter, Tracy, 61, from his first marriage to director Penny Marshall. The director was 78 and his wife was 70.

“Our hearts go out to the family and friends of the Reiners,” McDonnell said. “A tragic incident.”

Rob and Nick Reiner reportedly argued during a party hosted by Conan O’Brien on Saturday evening, where Nick had been “acting strangely,” according to family friends who spoke to the Los Angeles Times. The same sources said that Nick had been living in a guesthouse on his parents’ property and that his mother “had become increasingly concerned about his mental health in recent weeks.”

In recent years, Nick Reiner has spoken publicly about his struggles with mental illness and addiction. The father and son even collaborated on a semi-autobiographical 2015 movie Being Charlie about Nick’s troubled life and the strain it put on their relationship. Nick co-wrote the screenplay and Rob directed.

In a 2016 interview with People magazine to promote the film, Nick, then 22, said that his family first sent him to rehab around 15 years old, and that he had been in and out of facilities 17 times over the next four years. He became increasingly estranged from his parents — and even resorted to living on the streets — when they insisted he keep returning to rehab against his wishes.

“I was homeless in Maine. I was homeless in New Jersey. I was homeless in Texas,” he told People. “If I wanted to do it my way and not go to the programs they were suggesting, then I had to be homeless.”

“There was a lot of dark years there,” Nick recalled. “When I was out there, I could’ve died. It’s all luck. You roll the dice and you hope you make it.”

Speaking to NPR in 2016, Nick Reiner admitted that in the throes of addiction he had “definitely done things similar” to Charlie, his cinematic counterpart, such as stealing OxyContin from a sick old woman.

“I can’t say I’ve done that in quite some time, but when I was going through a lot of that stuff — sure,” Nick said. “You really don’t think about anything — you throw your morals out of the window.”

In a 2015 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Rob Reiner expressed regrets about how he had approached his son’s battle with addiction.

“The program works for some people but it can’t work for everybody,” Rob 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.”

“We were so influenced by these people,” Michele Reiner added. “They would tell us he’s a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them.”

In that same 2015 interview, Nick Reiner said he had stopped taking heroin because he “got sick of it.”

“I come from a nice family,” he said. “I’m not supposed to be out there on the streets and in homeless shelters doing all these … things.”

Though the fictionalized Being Charlie is “not my life,” as Nick Reiner told People, the family confirmed at the time of its release that it closely mirrored their real-life dynamics.

“I’d rather have you alive and hating me than dead on the streets,” the film’s Rob Reiner figure, David, says in a climactic confrontation with his son, Charlie. “So what do you want me to do?”

“You don’t have to do anything,” Charlie replies. Then he suggests that mental illness is the real problem, not drugs. “It was never about the drugs. All I ever wanted was a way to kill the noise. But the more I used the louder it got.”

Nick Reiner told AOL in 2016 that he “didn’t bond a lot” with his father when he was growing up. But Rob Reiner said at the time that “our relationship had gotten so much closer” while making the film.

“I said it to his face. I’ll say it on the air: He was the heart and soul of the film and any time I would get an opportunity to work with him I would do it,” Rob told NPR. “He’s brilliant and talented and he’s going to figure out his path.”