Rob Reiner and his wife Michele were murdered in their Brentwood home, and the story that has come out since is as grim as it is familiar. Their son Nick spent years lost to addiction and severe psychiatric illness, diagnosed with both schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder. Weeks before the killings, doctors changed his antipsychotic medication, supposedly to manage side effects. The result was disaster.
Nick Reiner, 32, now faces two counts of first-degree murder, accused of stabbing his parents to death. Prosecutors say he could spend the rest of his life in prison or face execution, though they have not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty. He sits in solitary at Twin Towers, on suicide watch, still delusional as jail doctors keep adjusting his meds.
Rob, 78, and Michele, 70, were found by their daughter in the master bedroom of their Brentwood house on the afternoon of December 14, with multiple sharp‑force injuries; the medical examiner lists multiple stab wounds as the cause of death, though full autopsy reports remain sealed at LAPD request. Police and prosecutors say they were killed in the early hours that morning, likely within minutes of each other, in what investigators describe as a brutal close‑quarters attack.
Nick had been living in the guest house, but when police arrived, he was gone. Detectives tracked him using phone data and surveillance footage, finding him 15 miles away near Exposition Park. He surrendered without a fight.
Several strands now point to a serious, long‑standing psychiatric history. US outlets report that Nick was diagnosed with schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder years ago and had been treated at a Los Angeles mental‑health centre over an extended period, on top of a long record of heroin addiction, rehab stays and periods of homelessness; he spent a year in a court‑ordered mental‑health conservatorship from 2020 until 2021, when a judge and fiduciary like Steven Baer took control because the state deemed him too broken to handle his own life. Family friends told reporters he had “mental health struggles for years” and that his parents spent years trying to get him help, while his own past interviews described teenage heroin addiction and repeated relapses.
The key new element is the timing of a medication change. Multiple reports say his antipsychotic regimen for schizophrenia was adjusted three to four weeks before the killings, on doctors’ advice to address side effects, in an attempt to stabilize him. An Israeli report, echoing US coverage, says that about a month before the murders, doctors changed his medication, after which his condition deteriorated, and he became “mentally unstable” and “scattered and dangerous.” Sources quoted by tabloids and entertainment outlets claim that once the new combination took effect, “Nick was out of his head,” and that clinicians were still trying to find a working dose at the time of the attack.
Court and medical records remain mostly sealed. On the Friday after his arrest, a Los Angeles judge signed a sealed order related to Nick’s treatment and mental state, and the precise drug names, dosages and schedule have not been made public; autopsy details are also blacked out under LAPD push. It is also unclear how closely doctors monitored his response in the weeks after the switch, or whether any warnings were passed to family or authorities as his behaviour reportedly worsened.
Investigators are probing what set Nick off. Relatives say he fought with his father at Conan O’Brien’s Christmas party the night before the murders. Witnesses saw him withdrawn and disheveled. Friends and neighbors say he grew more volatile after the medication change, worse than any drug binge before.
The case is just beginning. Nick showed up in court once, wearing a blue suicide smock. His arraignment keeps getting pushed back. His private lawyer quit, replaced by a public defender, partly because Nick was not cleared for transport. He has not entered a plea. His old lawyer claims Nick is not guilty of murder under California law, and legal experts expect a fight over his sanity and responsibility, given the schizophrenia and the recent drug switch.
For now, prosecutors emphasize the strength of the physical and circumstantial case even without a recovered weapon. They point to crime‑scene evidence, items seized at arrest, Nick’s statements to police, and digital traces tying him to the house and to the movements after the killings. His siblings, Jake and Romy, have called the murders “horrific and devastating,” asked for privacy, and urged the public to remember their parents’ lives rather than speculate, while the legal system works through a case that sits at the intersection of family violence, addiction, severe mental illness, and questions about psychiatric care.
Was Rob Reiner a good man? Not really.
Did he deserve to get murdered by his own child? Absolutely not.
Disgusting, sad decay: a son butchers his own parents in their bed, after years coddled by liberal psychiatric fantasies that swapped real control for pill-tinkering and released him under flimsy oversight. This family implosion exposes how elite Hollywood rot and soft-on-mental-illness policies breed killers who walk free until they slaughter.