Burdened with the privilege of being Hollywood royalty and troubled from a young age, Nick was not like Rob and Michelle’s other children. As a young kid, he often threw fits, demanding extra attention and care. Consequently, he never fit in, but his family made sure to look after him. They kept an extra eye on him, and his siblings pitched in to help as much as they could while growing up. As a teenager, however, he was in and out of rehabilitation centers and battled homelessness.
Dealing with substance abuse is only a temporary band-aid—a mere moment’s relief before things get bad again; the deeper underlying cause is often left unseen. This was the case with Nick. With 18 stints at different rehabilitation centers, his parents hired sober coaches to help him while he lived at their guest house. For a few months, he would be fine before things went downhill again—and they always did. Due to age constraints, he could not be legally diagnosed with schizophrenia, although medical professionals deemed that to be the case.
The only regret Nick’s parents had was that they listened too much to the professionals with degrees and diplomas instead of their son, who repeatedly told them the procedures were not working and pleaded to be taken home. In 2015, the father-son duo collaborated for the first and only time on their feature film, Being Charlie based on their shared battle with drug addiction. When the film failed to make a dent in Hollywood, Nick slipped back into the dark alley of his old habits.
The Breaking Point
On the night of December 14, Rob and Michelle were invited to late-night host and comedian Conan O’Brien’s house party, which involved some of Hollywood’s most powerful and creative figures.
By no means a child, Nick had grown into a 6-foot-3-inch man weighing over 200 pounds, yet he was still a liability. He could not be left alone at the Brentford guesthouse, where he lived a life governed by his parents’ watchful supervision. Nick, albeit uninvited, went along with Rob and Michelle once Conan accepted their friends’ plea to bring their son as well. Little did anyone know that this night would set off a chain of events that would mark the last night of their lives.
At the party, the troubled man hovered like a dark shadow, disrupting the cheerfulness of the occasion, asking people if they were famous before bumping into Bill Hader. According to sources, Rob Reiner was talking to Hader and other guests about Nick’s worsening condition and the desperate need to return to rehab, which only made his son more erratic. Hader calmly dealt with Nick, but soon after, a loud argument broke out between Nick and his father. A pin-drop silence fell; time seemed to freeze, and people stood still.
Mortified and embarrassed, the Reiners left the party with an apology. Once they were gone, the energy at the party shifted back to normal, but no one knew that what they had just witnessed would forever alter the course of the remaining hours before sunrise.
No Way Back
Nick had reached the Pierside Hotel, roughly five miles from his parents’ Los Angeles estate. Ridden with anxiety and jitters, the black sheep of the Reiner family rented a $300-a-night room. He covered the semi-panoramic view offered by the floor-to-ceiling windows in his suite with bed linen.
He went out to buy a drink at a gas station convenience store. The LAPD, using the latest gadgets and surveillance technology, tracked his digital footprint and arrested him near the Exposition Park area. Nick showed no signs of resistance and submitted to their authority. The cleaners, discovering his prolonged and unnotified absence, found the shower area and bed stained with blood. Nick had stabbed his parents in the early hours after the father-son confrontation at Conan O’Brien’s house party in the Palisades. The first to witness the horrific scene was his sister, Romy, who screamed for help upon seeing her beloved parents’ bodies soaked in blood.
Nick appeared in court wearing nothing but a blue suicide-prevention vest. Ensnared by his own troubled mind, he was now also in handcuffs. There is no possibility of bail or the death penalty. In short, there is no escape for Nick Reiner, and the train to hell will have to wait to pick him up.
The story isn’t over—stay tuned to The World Times for updates and deeper insights
