LOS ANGELES – Lit by the fluorescent lights of the Arco gas station, Nick Reiner walked out of the am/pm market thirsty. A blue Gatorade in hand.
Security footage captured the moment near the University of Southern California on Sunday, Dec. 14.
Dressed in jeans and a green track jacket, a baseball hat covering his dark hair, a red backpack slung over his shoulders, he waited at the bus stop near Exposition Park, a place often filled with homeless people.
Alexis Hernandez, a security guard at the market, crossed paths with the 32-year-old. It was the beginning of a typical night shift as Nick exited.
“He acted normal,” Hernandez says.
Nick cut across the street to the bus stop, where Los Angeles Metro Bus 204 could take him as far as Hollywood.
Hernandez watched as officers with the Los Angeles Police Department and U.S. Marshals descended on the bustling S. Vermont street, followed by USC police. The waning crescent moon hung overhead.
Around 9:15 p.m., law enforcement ordered Nick to the street and handcuffed him, face down.
He was 15 miles from home. Wanted for killing his father. And his mother.
Now, Nick is in downtown Los Angeles jail, held without bail, charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the killing acclaimed director Rob Reiner and his wife, producer and photographer Michele Singer Reiner. Prosecutors added special circumstances to the charges, which mean he could face the death penalty.
The tragedy has gripped Americans who grew up with Rob Reiner. Through a career that spanned six decades, Rob told heartfelt stories like “Stand By Me” and “When Harry Met Sally.” He carried us through generations from Michael Stivic’s Meathead on “All in the Family” to playing America’s dad including on the millennial favorite “New Girl.” Rob changed the way we love, think, and laugh. Michele, with her passion and fierce love for family and friends, helped drive him. (“She is my Bunsen burner that lights the flame in my ass” he once joked.)
Actors and friends, including politicians and celebrities, have shared anecdotes about one of the last Hollywood greats, and called the couple’s deaths a tragic ending to a storybook life.
Rob and Michele Reiner’s children break silence on parents death
Rob and Michele Reiner’s children released a statement asking for privacy after the “horrific and devastating loss” of their parents.
‘He’s in a really good place’
Rob Reiner spent fall promoting “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues.” The sequel came 41 years after he directed the cult hit, a mockumentary about a metal band. (He and his wife and their three children, Jake, Nick and Romy, met with Paul McCartney on set when the former Beatle filmed a scene for the long-anticipated sequel.)
As part of the press run before the film’s release, Rob sat down with NPR’s Terry Gross, who also asked him about 2015’s “Being Charlie.”
“Your son co-wrote it. You directed it,” Gross said. “And it seems like it’s semi-autobiographical because your son had dealt with a drug addiction.”
Rob had rarely been asked about Nick since that very singular collaboration. It was, Rob said, his most personal work; and both talked about the turbulent times the family faced during the time he battled addiction – the guilt Rob and Michele felt as parents. The worry and stress Nick had imposed on the people who loved him so much. But that was all behind them, it seemed.
“Did you feel like you were sometimes too busy to pay attention to him?” Gross asked, bringing up those painful teenage years.
“No. no, I was never, ever too busy,” Rob told her. “I’m sure I made mistakes. You know, he’s been great. He hasn’t been doing drugs for over six years. I mean, he’s in a really good place.”
The second son of the great director, who had openly talked about how hard it was grow up with a famous dad – a man who also struggled in the shadow of his famous father, Carl Reiner, until he found his own path – was growing up.
Nick told a podcaster Paul Mecurio in 2016 that talking about addiction isn’t difficult. What was difficult was when he shared vulnerable stories only to be told “you’re a spoiled, white, rich kid,” by the world.
But he and his father agreed that talking about addiction helped others.
“That’s what we do it for, to start that conversation,” Nick said on the podcast. “I think I’m lucky because I have parents that care about me. … When I would go out and do drugs I would feel a tremendous amount of guilt. They are thinking about me, they want me to do good.”
The family of five celebrated the Spinal Tap sequel’s movie premiere in Los Angeles on Sept. 9, posing for photos on the “black carpet.”
Photos and videos of Rob on his daughter’s Instagram account in May of this year show their closeness – sweet conversations and silly interactions.
Romy, 27, who lives close to her parents’ home, shared photos with her dad two days after Thanksgiving.
She and her father are in their swimsuits floating in the waves of a turquoise ocean, Rob in his Spinal Tap baseball cap. “Thankful for family, health and followers of any age. Not thankful for the president and the state of our country,” she wrote.
A person close to the Reiner family told the New York Times that nothing in recent weeks suggested that Nick would be capable of the violent murders. He also said that Rob and Michele had not been apprehensive about Nick’s behavior lately.
Barry Markowitz, the cinematographer for “Being Charlie,” stayed at the Reiners during a visit to Los Angeles three weeks ago, he told The Wall Street Journal. He, too, said Nick seemed to be doing well and he watched him playing tennis.
Friends have said Nick was living in the guest house of the Reiners’ Brentwood area home. It’s the same guest house where he once told a podcaster that he had suffered from a “cocaine heart attack and I started punching out different things.”
A night with friends
Conan O’Brien’s annual Christmas party is known as a who’s who of comedy in Los Angeles. Past guests have included Martin Short, Adam Sandler and Tom Hanks.
The get-togethers are full of laughter and lots of food, and one year, a gust of wind sent the patio fire pit embers onto an outdoor couch, setting it ablaze. O’Brien’s wife put it out with a fire extinguisher, comedian Bill Hader said.
Rob and Michele attended with Nick this year on Dec 13. O’Brien lives close to the Reiners, a windy 1.7 miles away in a gated and hedge-surrounded mansion in an area of Pacific Palisades spared by this year’s fires.
Nick wasn’t invited to the party, but his parents brought him along because they were reluctant to leave him alone due to recent behavior, according to the Hollywood Reporter.
Hader was there, as was Jane Fonda.
Nick wore a hoodie when others were dressed more formally. He caused a scene at O’Brien’s house: He stared at guests and asked them their first and last names and if they’re famous, and yelled at his father, according to media reports.
Nick acted “entitled,” a family friend told People; others have said the episode was overblown. Nick was simply trying to make his way in the shadow of his father and grandfather, others have said.
What people agree on, and even Nick has said, is that the Reiners really wanted to help their son.
At some point during that Dec. 13 party, the three of them left O’Brien’s house. It’s unknown if they left together or if they all returned home.
The next day, Rob and Michele had planned massages at their home, and dinner with Barack and Michelle Obama.
A massage therapist says she arrived Sunday, Dec. 14, and when no one answered at the wooden gate to the family home, she called the Reiners’ daughter.
Romy came to the house.
At 3:38 p.m., police were called.
Soon, yellow caution tape surrounded the Reiners’ home, and neighbors said they saw the Reiners’ close friends Billy Crystal and Larry David headed toward the house that afternoon.
Los Angeles police held a press conference just before 9 p.m., only saying that two people had been found dead in the house.
By then, police already were focusing on the couple’s youngest son, Nick.
Nick, reports suggest, was not far from the family home. At some point on Dec. 14, he went to the Pierside Santa Monica hotel, sources have told The Los Angeles Times, possibly early Sunday morning. Hotel workers told the Times that police began investigating on Dec. 14. It’s unclear what led them to the beach-themed hotel, which sits a few blocks from the Pacific Ocean, and 11 miles from the Reiners’ Brentwood area home. They did not find Nick.
By 9 p.m. on Dec. 14, Nick seemed to be traveling on foot, stopping into the am/pm market 18 miles from the hotel. Security cameras captured him walking in and leaving, then returning to buy a blue Gatorade. He wasn’t in a rush. He strolled across the parking lot.
Within 15 minutes, Nick was taken into custody. He was booked into the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, a county jail in downtown Los Angeles in the early hours of Dec. 15.
On Tuesday, Dec. 16 at 1 p.m., prosecutors charged Nick with two counts of first degree murder. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner’s Office says Rob and Michele Reiner died from “multiple sharp force injuries.” Prosecutors have yet to share what made police focus on him as a suspect, or a potential motive.
On Dec. 17, wearing a blue protective smock, Nick appeared briefly in a special holding area of a Los Angeles courtroom away from cameras.
Nick’s attorney, Alan Jackson, asked the court for patience, requesting the arraignment be delayed until Jan. 7.
The judge asked the defendant if he was waiving his right to a speedy arraignment.
“Yes, your honor,” Nick said quietly.
Two hours after their brother’s court appearance, Jake and Romy Reiner shared this statement: “Words cannot even begin to describe the unimaginable pain we are experiencing every moment of the day. They weren’t just our parents; they were our best friends.”
The couple, friends say, had lived a storybook life.
Rob Reiner was considered America’s dad in so many ways. Most important, he and Michele were mom and dad to Jake and Romy. And Nick.
