Six months ago, Nick Reiner tried to participate in a display of family unity as he posed on a Hollywood red carpet with his parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, and his siblings to celebrate the premiere of his father’s new movie, a sequel to his groundbreaking 1984 comedy, “This is Spinal Tap.”
But following Reiner’s arrest in the murder of his parents, who were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood mansion on Dec. 14, people have looked back on those red-carpet photos and say that he looked a bit detached from everyone else and even from the reality of the moment.
The public image of the happy, close-knit Reiner family also has been shattered, with the 32-year-old now incarcerated in the grim Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles, 14 miles east of the family home, and his grieving siblings reportedly distancing themselves from him and his case, according to the Daily Mail.
It’s also been reported that Rob and Michelle Reiner struggled for years to get help for their son, who had been open about his drug addiction and whose diagnosis with schizoaffective disorder, a serious mental health condition, came to light following his arrest.
Given the high-profile nature of Reiner’s case, he has been segregated from other inmates in a solitary cell, unlike the dorm-like setting that’s typical for most inmates in the general population, the Daily Mail reported.
Reiner appears to be in “mental observation housing,” due to the violence of his alleged crime and his history of poor mental health, the Daily Mail added. In this unit, inmates are checked every 15 minutes due to suicide risk.
Adding to Reiner’s isolation is that he reportedly has had no visitors since his arrest — save for his public defender, according to the Daily Mail.
“It appears only his attorney has visited at this time,” a source told the Daily Mail.
Reiner’s siblings, older brother Jake, 34, and younger sister Romy, 28, have decided to distance themselves from him and his prosecution, which means they won’t be visiting him at the Twin Towers, entertainment writer Rob Shuter reported on his Naughty But Nice Substack. The siblings also have decided to not use any money from their parents’ estate to hire a private attorney to defend him and they don’t plan to attend the trial, or to ever be in a room with him again,
“They will not attend the trial,” a source told Shuter “Sitting in that room would be too painful.” It was Romy Reiner who discovered their parents’ bodies.
“This has devastated the entire family,” the source explained to Shuter. “They’re grieving in their own way. Protecting their mental health has to come first.”
It’s true that Rob Reiner, the director of such beloved films as “When Harry Met Sally,” “A Few Good Men,” “Stand By Me” and “The Princess Bride” also was a political activist who advocated for social justice causes, including the abolition of capital punishment. Legally, his son could be eligible for the death penalty if convicted of his parents’ murder, because the two murder counts include a special circumstance of committing multiple murders. But prosecutors have not yet decided whether to seek the death penalty.
For Jake and Romy Reiner, their decision to shun their brother is not about punishment — it’s about survival, Shuter reported.
“They’re still heartbroken,” the source added. “But they’re doing what they need to do to move forward.”
Meanwhile, in an essay for the New York Times, acclaimed writer and psychologist Andrew Solomon offered reasons that Nick Reiner still deserves compassion, despite being accused of murdering his parents in such a horrific way and after they always tried to love and support him.
Solomon noted that Reiner has been castigated in the media as a “nepo baby,” “pure evil” and someone who supposedly “chose” addiction and his other destructive choices, when he could have instead enjoyed a Hollywood version of the American dream.
Solomon brings up Reiner’s diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder, an illness that can involve mania, depression and the delusions, hallucinations, and disorganized thinking associated with schizophrenia. The author said he met with Rob and Michele Reiner a few times and came to know that they were “visionary idealists who loved their son intensely, even as they were profoundly frustrated by his challenges.”
The New York Times also reported that Reiner had been placed into a yearlong mental health conservatorship in 2020, “which underscores the severity of the mental health challenges he faced in recent years.” These challenges are likely to be a factor in his criminal defense.
Solomon said that Rob and Michelle Reiner were “not vengeful people.” When it came to their son, they revealed that they “recognized the depth of their son’s suffering as a call for their own compassion, and they recognized that Nick’s behavior was often outside his control.”
“I imagine that had they survived, Rob and Michele would be more heartbroken than furious,” Solomon continued. Legally, their son’s fate in court could hinge on whether he knew right from right at the time of his parents’ murder, regardless of whether he was in a state of psychosis and had suffered a break from reality, Solomon added. Evaluation by court-appointed psychiatrists could find that he was still capable of understanding the ramifications of his actions even if he was psychotic.
“No one can know what Nick would have been like without psychosis; perhaps he was a ‘bad’ person or perhaps a ‘good’ one,” Solomon said. “In either case, his crime is itself his punishment; the horror of awakening to one’s own psychotic acts exceeds any third-party punishment.”
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