Nick Reiner has pleaded not guilty to the grisly stabbing murders of his parents, the celebrated Hollywood director Rob Reiner and photographer-philanthropist Michele Reiner.
Nick, 32, appeared Monday in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom wearing a brown jail uniform, his third hearing before a judge in the case. He seemed engaged with the proceeding, looking around the courtroom from a plexiglass holding pen. He entered his plea through his public defender, speaking only once when addressed by the judge. He answered yes when asked if he understood that his case would return on April 29 to set his preliminary hearing.
Speaking after the hearing, Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said prosecutors had turned over most of their evidence to the defense but were still awaiting the final coroner’s report. He said the case remained eligible for the death penalty and that his office was undertaking a “rigorous process” to determine whether to seek it.
“We will be looking at all aggravating and mitigating circumstances, and we have invited defense counsel to present to us both in writing and orally in a meeting, any arguments that they would like to make in consideration for our going forward or not going forward with the death penalty,” he said. “The most experienced individuals in the DA’s office with death penalty experience will be helping me evaluate that information.”
Nick was arrested Dec. 14, 2025, just hours after his parents’ bodies were found dead in the primary bedroom of their home in the upscale Brentwood neighborhood of Los Angeles, police said. Rob Reiner, who acted in the groundbreaking sitcom All in the Family before directing the hit movies 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,” the county medical examiner said. Nicke was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, with prosecutors identifying the alleged murder weapon as a knife.
After the slayings, Nick’s struggles with 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 homicide. Last month, a source told The New York Times that Nick also had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a condition that combines psychotic symptoms, like schizophrenia, with mood issues, such as depression or mania. Sources reportedly told The Times that Nick had been placed in a confidential conservatorship in 2020. The newspaper further reported Nick had been on psychiatric medication as part of his treatment and that the medication appeared to be working, but that side effects led him to switch to something different about a month before his parents were killed.
It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted Nick’s conservatorship, but police records obtained by Rolling Stone confirm LAPD officers responded to the Reiner’s house twice in 2019. The first call, on Feb. 25, 2019, was listed as a welfare check received at 9:51 p.m. It included a notation for the responding officer to check with a woman at the house. The second call was received at 4:39 p.m. on Sept. 27, 2019, and was listed as a “mental” call involving a male. The logs did not list the person who placed the requests or the subjects. When Nick first appeared before a judge on Dec. 17, he was wearing a sleeveless blue suicide-prevention gown and a waist shackle.
The Reiners attended Conan O’Brien’s holiday party the night before they were discovered dead, with sources telling Rolling Stone that Nick “exhibited antisocial behavior” at the gathering, such as staring at people ominously. O’Brien recently broke his silence about the tragedy on a podcast. “I knew Rob and Michele, and then increasingly got closer and closer to them, and I was seeing them a lot. My wife and I were seeing them a lot, and they were so — they were just such lovely people,” said O’Brien when speaking to The New Yorker. “And to have that experience of saying good night to somebody and having them leave and then find out the next day that they’re gone…. I think I was in shock for quite a while afterward. I mean, there’s no other word for it. It’s just very — it’s so awful. It’s just so awful.”
Nick previously spoke openly about his years of treatment for drug addiction. He told People in 2016 that he first entered rehab at 15 and later cycled through more than a dozen treatment programs. He also experienced homelessness in Maine, New Jersey, and Texas. He later wrote a film script loosely based on his struggles that became the 2016 movie Being Charlie, directed by his father.
In a 2015 interview with the Los Angeles Times, the Reiners said they struggled to navigate their son’s care. “When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen,” Rob said. “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.”
Speaking on the Dopey podcast in 2018, Nick openly discussed his addiction and recalled a violent episode during a drug binge in which he trashed his parents’ guest house. “I went 10 rounds with my guest house,” he said, describing days spent awake on stimulants before he began punching objects, including a television. Asked if he injured himself, he said he couldn’t remember. The incident led to another intervention and a flight to Boston, during which he said he suffered a cocaine-induced heart attack. His actions, he said, had “no logic.”
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