Rob Reiner’s Son Arrested After Parents’ Violent Killings: Report

A member of Hollywood royalty reportedly murdered alongside his wife inside their Southern California mansion. Rob Reiner was a star who rose to fame in the 70s on shows like All in the Family. He went on to become a legendary director for movies like When Harry Met Sally and the Oscar-nominated A Few Good Men. But now, police are searching through his home looking for answers as to whether Reiner and his wife were killed. And the trail seems to be pointing at someone very close to them who is now reportedly in custody.

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Real gold that you can have, save or pass down. Secure your wealth and take control of your future. Start today at getacregold.com slash on the case. All Alright, information kind of coming in as we're working today and we have seen some horrific reports about what may have happened to Rob Reiner and his wife. And one of those reports just coming in a bombshell, stating that their alleged killer is in custody. Now before we get to those details, I want to show you the

scene outside as news became public that Rob Reiner and his wife Were dead. This was the scene outside of their home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles on Sunday Police roped off the home where the 78 year old Rob Reiner lived with his wife 68 year old Michelle Singer Reiner It was around 3 30 in the afternoon when the Los Angeles Fire Department received a call for medical aid and when they arrived they found something incredibly dark inside of that home. Rob Reiner dead as well as his wife. TMZ is reporting that the couple had their throats slit. TMZ is also reporting that the couple's adult

daughter was the one who found her parents dead. Now a lot of what we know at this point is through media outlets like TMZ and People because the LAPD, they have tried to keep things tight-lipped. They had specially tried to say as little as possible overnight but that created a ton of speculation. Law enforcement at the time of this recording, they haven't confirmed what those outlets are reporting. Police are only saying that

the robbery homicide detectives responded to the scene yesterday.

Chief, why are you not exactly looking for a suspect? Are you confident you know who did this? We have not identified a suspect at this time. Well, then shouldn't you be looking for one so these neighbors aren't worried about their own lives and their own safety? Yeah, so at this time, after we determined, so I need everyone to understand something. In order to comply with the legal process, before we do anything here, we have to get

a search warrant because there are issues regarding standing at this residence. So as long as those legal requirements are met, we can continue the investigation. Now when I tell you that we have not identified a suspect, it doesn't mean that we're not working the case. We will not identify a suspect until that person is identified as a suspect, and we're legally seeking them.

If there is a crime to be reported, and if that person is a suspect in that crime,

has anyone been there?

Hold on, hold on, hold on. Alan, is that answer your question, Sir? No, has anyone been? Has anyone been detained yet for questioning? Are you questioning people now that could be possible suspects and or a person of persons of interest? Specifically your first

question no one has been detained. Specifically your second question no one

is being interviewed. What were the injuries? What were the injuries? We're

not gonna yeah so we're not gonna comment on the injuries at this time that information will be coming forward in the coming days as it's publicly releasable. If it is part of the investigation and it is not publicly releasable, we will not be releasing.

Now you can see the back and forth with the media there between the LAPD and the people who had gathered outside of the home in Brentwood. Now, as much as the police tried to keep that information close to the vest,

so many reports have been leaked out to the media. And it's not just the identities of the victims, high profile victims like Rob Reiner, but also the person who may be responsible that has since made it to media outlets. Now People Magazine says members of the Reiner family spoke with sources who said the couple's adult son may allegedly be responsible for the deaths of his parents.

I'm gonna dive into his background in just a moment, but I do wanna talk about what we know about the final hours of Rob Reiner's life. In fact, it appears to have been a very normal Sunday, at least from what we can see. An actor, Eric Idle, you might know him from Monty Python, he wrote on X after the news of Rob Reiner's death became public, saying, quote, Rob Reiner was a lovely man. I spoke to him last night for over an hour

I always enjoyed his company. I met him at his dad's in 1975 he was telling me about filming at Stonehenge and his thoughts for the future. This is so awful I shall miss him a clever talented and very thoughtful man. So awful end quote now Reiner has a lot of friends in Hollywood He was born in the Bronx, but he really made a name for himself in California. First as a star on screen, he was on the show All in the Family. That aired between 1971 and 1979.

But of course he went on to be a legendary director. You think of 1989's hit When Harry Met Sally? That was with Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan. 1992, he directed A Few Good Men, more of a drama, and that starred Tom Cruise. And that actually went on to be nominated for Best Picture at the Oscars. I mean, he was behind classic films. And he continued

to act up until his death, continued to work up until his death. He recently made an appearance on the hit show The Bear this year. Reiner's wife was Michelle Singer. He met Michelle when he was directing When Harry Met Sally. Michelle was a photographer by profession. The two of them went on to have three Children together. The bombshell development that's just coming on Monday, KTLA and other media outlets are reporting that Robin Michelle Reiner's son, Nick Reiner, has been

arrested after his parents were found murdered in their home. He's allegedly been booked into jail in Los Angeles and is being held on $4 million bail. The outlet says that is according to police. Officially, the LAPD have not released any information publicly at the time of this recording.

Now we found Nick's Facebook page. It does appear that he hasn't posted since 2018, but this is a picture of Nick and his dad. Now, Nick, it appears, really battled some demons in his life and we don't know if that played a role in what he's being accused of but it's certainly something you can't overlook. In 2016

People magazine actually spoke with Nick about his battle with addiction. He told the outlet that he went to rehab when he was 15 years old that he had been to rehab more than a dozen times. He actually co-wrote a film that was directed by his dad, Rob Reiner. It's called Being Charlie. And the movie is about a character who struggled with heroin addiction and struggled with homelessness. Nick said, quote, it's not my life, but I went to a lot of these places.

So I had a lot of these stories in that interview with People Magazine more than a decade ago. He also said, quote, I was homeless in Maine, I was homeless in New Jersey, I was homeless in Texas. I spent nights on the street, I spent weeks on the street. It was not fun, end quote. Now TMZ is reporting that Rob and Michelle were murdered possibly after an argument at their home.

It's unclear right now what may have triggered the alleged violence inside of their house in Brentwood. Law enforcement has not yet released details on the death investigation. Now, as far as more of what we know about Nick, it doesn't appear that he was very active

in the film industry after the release of Being Charlie back in 2016. Right now it has a 6.2 rating on IMDb. At the time of this recording, the LAPD, they haven't released information on any arrests. They haven't said much more beyond that news conference we saw get pretty hostile with the media overnight, just saying

that their homicide and robbery detectives are working a death investigation. And as we wait for more information related to the circumstances surrounding Rob Reiner's death, many in Hollywood are remembering a man who touched so many lives. Actress Kathy Bates. She starred in Reiner's 1990 film Misery, she released a statement to NBC News that reads, quote, I loved Rob. He was brilliant and kind, a man who made films of every genre to challenge himself as an artist. He also fought courageously for his political beliefs. He changed the course

of my life. Michelle was a gifted photographer. She shot my beautiful photos for the Misery campaign. My heart breaks for them both. My thoughts are with their family. Neil deGrasse Tyson, another celebrity, he posted on X quote in a world where fewer and fewer people concern themselves with the plight of others, the loss of Rob Reiner who cared deeply about humanitarian causes feels that much more devastating. Join us now to talk a little bit more about this investigation and where it could go from here is retired NYPD detective David Sarni.

Thank you for being with us. Whether it's a celebrity, whether it's a normal person, I mean, just an incredibly, incredibly sad situation. From the law enforcement perspective, there's this call for medical aid yesterday. You go to this home in Los Angeles and you make this terrible discovery of, you know, and sadly, it's their adult daughter, apparently, who made the the find of her parents who had been stabbed to death.

What's the first step? What do you do to try to figure out who might be responsible?

Well, what you do primarily, and thanks for having me, is you're gonna secure the scene, as you know, we're gonna check to make sure you have the daughters there, tells you what happened, but you secure the scene. So that plays on a lockdown. You're gonna interview the daughter, obviously, to find out, you know, get her information about that. You're then gonna get, well, once you have EMS, probably he's responding, give you a time of death, which you have, and they already,

that doesn't mean anything particularly right now. It'll mean something later on, but you already have two DOAs at the house. house, you have a daughter that's visiting them, you have a seat, now you secure that crime scene. So you're going to look obviously, for, and one thing you look for is anything particular out of law out of out of the ordinary, maybe the murder weapon is there. So you're going to do a basic overall thing, but

you're not doing a search yet. And that's the one thing you're doing it for, to secure the scene, making sure that there's no one else dead or injured in that house or the perpetrators in the place. So what you're doing once you secure the scene then because if you're not they have anyone who's alive who resides in that house she's a guest you're gonna need a search warrant so that's why it's gonna take a little while because once you get that area done you're not gonna do a real full search you're gonna do pretty much if you see anything in plain view, and just secure it, leaving it there, let get

the search warrant, let crime scene do their work, obtaining all the forensic evidence available. And as that's going on in that house, you're still looking to see are there any cameras within the house? Are there is there a ring camera or the surveillance cameras on the property or anywhere around that. And as you're talking, interviewing the daughter, you're trying to find out anything of when she last spoke to them. When did you last see them and get some information from her.

And it seems like she already led them to her brother. Yeah. What do you make of that? Because

I mean, he, you know, we've gone through his history and this is a guy who struggled with addiction. He struggled with homelessness, did a movie about it back in 2015. Don't know if he was living with his parents, but when you have an adult sibling who has just found her parents the way that it is being reported

that this woman found her parents and she immediately says, this is the person who did it, how do you handle that as law enforcement?

You're still going to investigate. You don't want anything biased in the investigation. You're just going to get that's a lead in the investigation. She's saying, look at my brother, in a sense. So you're going to look toward him as a possible. And everything, you want to make sure all the evidence

is still available. Because you don't, just because someone they did it, we have to show that they did it. And that's why probable cause is very important. To obtain information and evidence to secure that the suspect that you're looking at is the one who committed the crime, thereby your probable cause. So he is part of the investigation.

She gave you a lead to it. You're gonna do your background check on this individual based on what she's telling you, and any criminality that he's done, any victim, you know, perpology in a sense, any background criminally we're going to look at. And then when you find this person, you find her brother in a sense, you're going to take him back and conduct an interrogation about that,

about where his whereabouts were during this time. And when she recovers, she sees this situation then, you're going to go back and pretty much develop a timeline for her brother as to when she last saw them and all of those things.

And we don't know, I mean, again, he did a movie in 2015, 2016 that came out, did it with his dad. And then it doesn't seem like there's a lot of, I mean, as far as IMDB is concerned, he wasn't really active in the film industry,

it seems like for the last decade. This is a, you know, got to go to a morbid place to kind of ask these questions, but I mean, clearly this was a horrific way for two people to lose their lives. When you're gathering evidence, you know, compared to, you know, some other cases we've seen, suffocation, strangulations, in this case, it would be very apparent. There's a lot of evidence all over the place, sadly, with the way that it's believed that the Reiners were killed. How does that factor into building your case,

knowing that you have a crime scene where there is going to be a lot of blood?

Well, that's the thing you have, the ferocity of the attack. We don't know how many stab wounds that they sustained. We know apparently the next were slit based on reports that are coming in but now if you're looking at a person of interest and she's and the sister saying the brother was involved you're gonna look for and do the severity of the injuries to the to the deep to the decedents

uh... to robin his wife you might look for injuries to his hands or self-defense wounds because you know you're dealing with two individuals who have been stabbed somewhere along the line there must be some sort of defense behind them trying to stop them. We don't know where the placement of the bodies were. We don't really know nothing.

We really don't have enough right now. We're just speculating on this, but two individuals that are murdered. Somewhere along the line, someone is going to attack the perpetrator doing this. So you're going to look for injuries, possibly to his hands, because, you know night with stabbings and if there's you know the ferocity of the stabbings there could be an injury to his to the perpetrator's hands so that's something you'd be looking for you look for any injuries to his face you're gonna also when you're dealing with the DOA's one of the things you'll look at is not just severity injuries you're gonna look for any

forensic evidence a lot of times we look at our fingernails inside the fingernails because is there a chance that they scratched at him and his finger and there's his skin cells with it on their fingertips on their fingernails or inside if underneath their fingernails there's a lot of things you know you you have the DOA's right there you have that part of the crime scene and extends out with throughout the house you're also looking for the weapon if this apparently is knife involved did that person bring a knife or was a knife removed from the kitchen that's where you have when you spoke to

this the daughter you know how is this kitchen look you know yeah I don't understand how you can as a as a daughter you know have to be able to explain all this right away so it's a lot of things you have to really be emotionally involved in a sense that emotionally bubble empathetic and you have to really understand that this is a person who's gone through, is going through severe trauma.

Her two parents have been murdered. And now you're trying to gather information to find the perpetrator. So I don't know the emotional state that she was in when this took place, but you're gonna ask questions like about the kitchen.

Is anything missing in the kitchen? Is a knife missing? Maybe that was the one that was utilized in killing Rob and his wife.

And even on that note, you know, and we don't know, I mean, police have barely said anything, but this is one of those stories. I mean, especially out in LA when it involves a celebrity, people are going to find out and they certainly did. And we can talk about how police are kind of handling the information part of it, you know, at least through the overnight hours, we'll see how they handle it today. But when you're gathering evidence, because I think if I was a prosecutor

and you're trying to figure out was this a premeditated attack? Did somebody come to the house with the plan that he was going to kill their parents? And we don't know what it's going to be, but we'll just give a blanket allegedly at this point.

But if the knife was something he brought with him, as opposed to it being a knife that was found in the kitchen. How does that factor into, you know, just when you're gathering evidence to present to a prosecutor of this is the timeline that I think played out. How does something like that factor into

what you're gathering on the scene?

Well, you're looking at possibly intent. You know, when it comes to law enforcement, as far as detectives, investigators, the intent is already there written in the law. So that will be a prosecutorial aspect to it because we find out about the knife and I guarantee during an interrogation they probably asked about a weapon and that may have come out in that interrogation. Again we're talking about speculation because

right now he's been arrested so they have enough evidence to show that he did it whether he made admissions, omissions, or there's something forensically involved that ties him in immediately that's why they made the arrest. So right now, you're dealing with what you have to make that arrest. The next step will be, you know, looking to prove this case beyond a reasonable doubt, and that will be the other part of the investigation.

That's why this crime scene is not going to be shut down right away. I've seen crime scenes in houses take two or three days to actually end because if this person had access, and we're looking at this way, if the daughter had access to the house, if she had access, then was there damage to the door or damage or entrance or egresses

through other locations in the house?

When it comes to his background, and it's being widely reported, I mean, again, he made a movie about it. You know, he struggled with heroin addiction, struggled with homelessness. A lot of people can relate to the struggle of that being in a family, no doubt about it.

At the same time, when we're talking about motive for murder, and we don't know, reportedly there was some sort of argument between the parents and this suspect, you know, yesterday when they lost their lives. But just in your experience, how can addiction play into something as horrific as what he may have done?

Yeah, you know, addiction, you know, I was in narcotics for about eight years and you could see the, how people fall into that dark pathway. And what you knew who they were before the addiction started place, whether drug addiction or substance abuse, whatever it's going to be, alcohol, they are different. They are not the same people. And as many rehabs as they go through, and apparently he didn't, according to, again, new sources, he did his own rehab. He went several times. He didn't believe in it.

He thought he could do it on his own. But the reality is, you know, that darkness in people don't, you know, comes out when you deal with this. And I've seen it firsthand with, with family members who I've dealt with in cases. They're not the same person. So you know, this is their son, but it's not the son that they remembered prior to the

addiction. And he was homeless for several, for several times on his life. He'd been to rehab dozens of times apparently. It's something that may weigh into his defense, but the reality is that's not what's important. What's important for us are the facts of the case. We'll determine that through the continuing investigation as to his mental, culpable mental

state at the time. Intentional, reckless, you know, this is not an accident. No people aren't, two people aren't, have this throat slit and stabbed accidentally. There had to be some intent to that.

That's what we look at right now, but when it comes down as far as the trial process, the defense may utilize that as a reason as to why he did, or what he did is why he did what he did. Sounds kind of crazy, but that's how it is.

No, for sure. And, you know, turning kind of to the fact that we are talking about a guy who is, I mean, this is Hollywood royalty, right? Rob Reiner, everybody knows him. I mean, if you didn't know who he was,

you knew it was movies. And in LA, like you may be exactly the same, whether it's Rob Reiner, whether it's Joe Smith on the street, at the same time, there's gotta be a moment for investigators where it's like,

oh my God, this is going to be a national news story. How do you handle that situation? Because as much as you wanna dial in, at the same time, you kind of realize that, yes, it would be maybe a big LA story if two people were murdered like this, but now everybody's talking about it.

You're going to do the case as you're supposed to. That's why all these non-public media cases, non-social media cases, you do the same thing you always do. The thing is you just have to be aware that there will be leakage. And that's the one thing about this, especially this type of case. There are people, there's leakage out there that investigators don't want to have people have, but somewhere along the line, someone leaks out this information.

You try to keep everything tight within the unit themselves. You try to avoid any of that. But here's the problem about it is, since everyone wants to be communicated and every part of the department wants to know something, somewhere in that chain, somebody then pushes it out toward the media outlets. And then it kind of really sullies

what the investigation is, because now we have, we have to try to answer questions that we may have the answers to, but we don't put it out in the public forum yet. So the best thing you do, and we always say this, is we continue, the investigation is ongoing.

This is what we have. Whoever we have is arrested and go speculation. We have a person arrested. He's in custody and the investigation is ongoing and you leave it at that. Even though the questions come into play, you need people who are very experienced in disseminating public information to deal with this and sort of kind of nip it at the bud. You can't get confrontation with the media about it. You just have to be the ones just keep to shut it down saying this is what we have. This is all we're going to be able to tell you. We'll give you an update in two hours and that two hours, maybe you give them a B, then

the next two hours you give them letter C and then letter D and that's all you want to give. You want to give everything that you have the facts to. You don't want them, if they leak it out, it's going to be leaked out. But we determine the truth. It's just speculation. We police deal with the facts of an investigation. That's what we're looking for here.

Because you watch the overnight news conference where, you know, and you give the LAPD credit that they're trying to be open. They're trying to give the media something. You know, they know that this case, it's Rob Reiner's address.

We know that. the people who are reportedly dead inside the home that fits the ages of Rob Reiner, but then it creates this situation where you have a police officer saying like we just know it's a death investigation and our homicide detectives are working it and yet you flip on TMZ or People magazine and all the details of what actually happened it seems are out there and then it's suddenly like there's this disconnect between the media and hey we know what was going on and police that aren't gonna say it. How are you supposed to actually handle that situation?

Is it kind of the case where maybe a press release would have been a better better idea than a news conference?

Yeah, you know, I always say this press conferences and especially your health, you're rushed into it. You could just say we're doing investigation and it is 25 seconds and that's it and that's why you really need your uh... like in the NYPD we have DCPI, the Deputy Commission of Public Information, we have a unit of investigators, a unit of detectives and administrative staff and professional staff, right, professional uh... reporters in a sense who really know how to just nip it in the bud. This is what we have, this is all we can give you. Thank you very much and step away.

Regardless of what you're gonna deal with, and that's all in the ether, that's what they have, but let's not be able to, we can't prosecute what TMZ says. We prosecute what the facts of the case are. The problem is, and it happens in an unfortunate,

a lot of these investigations, leaking information to the media and you have to find out who it is and close that part of the, close him, or whatever group is doing that, out of the investigation. That's the problem because everyone wants to know something within the department, but the reality is you don't need to know until we know and we can confirm A, B, or C. That's why in an investigation, which were robbery, homicide detectives, they don't want to tell anybody, but there's always somewhere in that chain who wants to know what's going on.

And then somewhere along the line, a couple of 15 minutes later, out leaks out to a news outlet that this is what happened. I'm like, that's not what should be.

And then just lastly, thinking of, you know, if they take the son into custody and we don't when he was in custody. The story that came out about him being questioned came in overnight. But then we just heard this morning that he's been taken into custody. If he's not saying anything but you feel through the sister saying that she believes it was him, you have evidence on the scene. We don't know what his condition was. Was he someone who ran and they had to arrest him somewhere? We don't know any of that. What's the bar at that point where you say, this isn't just detaining someone anymore. This is where we need to charge him with something specifically instead of letting him leave

and who knows where he would go.

This is, again, this would probably be a conferral with the district attorney's office because you're not going to make an arrest unless you have the DA saying, yes, go ahead with it. We're going to be, you know, going back to New York, we have a homicide DA. When there's a homicide investigation, as a district attorney, a prosecutor is already assigned to that homicide. So we work hand in hand with those DAs to make sure, this is what the facts are, what do you want us to do?

Can we prosecute? Can we make the arrest? Because what we do in police work is we make the arrest based on probable cause. The district attorney's office, the prosecutor, is looking to make sure this case can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt that the person that you arrested is the one that committed that crime. So they have worked hand in hand with this,

and I guarantee you the district attorney has given them the green light in a sense to say, yes, we have enough to make the arrest, let's make the arrest, and then follow up with still the continuing investigation. It was just because he's a person's arrest, doesn't mean the case is over.

And we'll see where this case goes from here. Incredible loss, Rob Reiner, his wife, Michelle, and certainly what's being reported, just a very sad family dynamic at play. Retired NYPD detective, David Sarny, it's always great to have you on Law and Crime.

Thanks for being here. Thank you very much. Stay safe. That will do it for On the Case presented by Law and Crime. Subscribe to us on YouTube Thank you very much. Stay safe. That will do it for On the Case presented by Law and Crime. Subscribe to us on YouTube and Spotify. I'm Chris Stewart. We'll see you next time.