Nick Reiner pleaded not guilty on Monday to killing his parents during his arraignment following two delayed proceedings connected to the shocking Hollywood slayings.
Reiner, 32, entered the plea in Los Angeles Superior Court more than two months after director Rob Reiner, 78, and Michele Singer Reiner, 70, were found fatally stabbed on December 14 in the master bedroom of their 10,000-square-foot estate in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles.
Reiner, who has been held without bail since his arrest later that day, appeared in court to be arraigned on two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances alongside public defender Kimberly Greene, who replaced his former high-profile attorney, Alan Jackson, following a hearing last month.
Reiner, one of the director’s four children, faces death or life in prison without possibility of parole if convicted.
Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman has said prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek the death penalty in the shocking slayings of the beloved Hollywood actor-director and his wife, who worked as a photographer and producer.
“The prosecutors have that on the table, but they have certainly intimated that’s the direction they are looking to go,” Los Angeles-based attorney Tre Lovell told USA Today, adding a formal decision isn’t likely to be made for months.
Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner died from “multiple sharp force injuries,” according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner. Prosecutors have yet to publicly announce an alleged motive in the slayings, but police had responded to the couple’s home seven times between August 2013 through December 2025, including twice on the day they were found dead, CBS News reported.
LAPD officers responded to the home for a welfare check in 2019, as well as for a mental health call for a male patient that year. The remaining three calls pertained to minor disturbances in 2013, 2014 and 2017, according to CBS News.
Sources previously told the Los Angeles Times that Rob and Nick Reiner argued the night before the slayings at a holiday party hosted by comedian Conan O’Brien, where guests said Nick behaved erratically.
Nick Reiner had been living in a guesthouse on his parents’ sprawling property and Michele Reiner had become increasingly worried about his mental health. He had also been prescribed medication to treat schizophrenia prior to allegedly killing his parents, sources told the newspaper in December.
O’Brien, meanwhile, detailed the agony of losing two close friends in a recent interview.
“My wife and I were seeing them a lot, and they were so — they were just such lovely people,” O’Brien told 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.”
Reiner has previously spoken publicly about his struggles with drug addiction and homelessness. In 2015, he co-wrote “Being Charlie,” a semi-autobiographical film directed by his father that examined the strain of his troubled youth and repeated stints in rehab.
Rob Reiner later praised the project during a 2016 interview, saying the “cathartic” and therapeutic experience only brought the pair closer together.
“The fact that we were dealing with, you know, things that Nick had gone through, and how I had related to it, and how his mother had related to it, it forced us to have to — it forced me — to have to see more clearly and understand more deeply what Nick had gone through,” Reiner told the BUILD Series. “And I think it forced him to see things that I had experienced during this process.”
Collaborating with his youngest son on the film, which portrays a Los Angeles teen mired in drug addiction, ultimately became the most rewarding partnership of his career, Reiner recalled.
“It definitely brought us closer together,” he said. “It was, like, over the period of a year, it was intense, it was difficult at times, but it was also the most satisfying creative experience I’ve ever had.”
Reiner’s next court appearance has been set for April 29.
This is a breaking news story. Updates to follow.
