Nick Reiner, the son of film director Rob Reiner and singer and philanthropist Michele Singer Reiner, has been placed under suicide watch while being held at a Los Angeles jail after his arrest on suspicion of murdering his parents, according to a law-enforcement source familiar with the booking and custody arrangements.
Nick Reiner, 32, was arrested late on Sunday after police were called to the family home in the Brentwood area of Los Angeles, where Rob and Michele Reiner were found dead. The Los Angeles Police Department said officers responded to the address at about 3.40pm local time. Police have said the case will be presented to prosecutors on Tuesday.
A senior police official, Los Angeles Police Chief Jim McDonnell, said on Monday that Nick Reiner had been arrested and booked on murder charges. “Our hearts go out to the family and friends of the Reiners, a tragic incident,” McDonnell said at a news conference, according to CBS News.
Authorities initially said Nick Reiner was being held on $4m bail, but police later issued a statement saying he was being held without bail, CBS reported. The police did not disclose what specific evidence led detectives to suspect Nick Reiner, saying only that the investigation indicated he was allegedly responsible, and that he was located and arrested at about 9.15pm on Sunday.
Two sources familiar with the incident told CBS News that the couple were found with multiple stab wounds. Multiple sources also told the broadcaster that the couple’s daughter, Romy Reiner, discovered their bodies.
The suicide-watch arrangements add a further, highly sensitive dimension to a case that has sent shockwaves through Hollywood, where Rob Reiner was a defining figure for decades both in front of and behind the camera. In custody, suicide watch typically involves enhanced supervision and mental-health screening for detainees judged to be at risk, though specific measures can vary by facility and individual assessment.
According to the source familiar with custody decisions, Nick Reiner is being supervised by a jail mental evaluation team at the Twin Towers Correctional Facility, a major county jail complex in downtown Los Angeles. The same source said he was being housed in an area used for inmates who express suicidal thoughts.
Investigators were still compiling the case file on Monday and planned to submit it to prosecutors on Tuesday, the timetable cited by police and reported by CBS. Nick Reiner is expected to appear before a judge in the coming days.
The deaths of Rob and Michele Reiner have also revived public attention on a long-running and difficult family story that the director and his son discussed openly nearly a decade ago, when they made a film that drew on Nick Reiner’s experience with addiction.
Nick Reiner told People magazine in 2016 that he had been sent to his first rehab facility around his 15th birthday and had been through 17 rehab stays by the time of the interview, when he was 22. He said he had experienced homelessness in multiple states after refusing further treatment. “If I wanted to do it my way and not go to the programs they were suggesting, then I had to be homeless,” he said. “I was homeless in Maine. I was homeless in New Jersey. I was homeless in Texas,” he added. “I spent nights on the street. I spent weeks on the street. It was not fun.”
In the same interview, Nick Reiner described the period as shaping his identity and outlook. “That made me who I am now, having to deal with that stuff,” he said, before adding: “But there was a lot of dark years there.”
Rob Reiner spoke in similar terms about the impact of the film project, “Being Charlie”, which he directed and for which his son received a writing credit. In a 2016 interview with The Associated Press, Rob Reiner said the work had altered their relationship. “We didn’t go into it thinking this is going to be therapeutic or bring us closer, but it did come out that way,” he said. “It forced us to understand ourselves better than we had. I told Nick while we were making it, I said, ‘you know it doesn’t matter, whatever happens to this thing, we won already. This has already been good.’ We’ve worked through a lot of stuff.”
CBS reported that Rob Reiner later described the film as “loosely based on things Nick went through and his relationship to me and his mother,” and that “it was intense” and “difficult at times.” In the same joint interview cited by CBS, Nick Reiner said, “I wasn’t really that shy about including some of the bad stuff I did,” adding that many people behave in “pretty unsavory” ways during addiction, but that the finished story was not a literal account of his life.
Rob Reiner, 78, was widely known for directing films including “This Is Spinal Tap”, “The Princess Bride” and “When Harry Met Sally…”, and for his earlier acting role as Archie Bunker’s son-in-law in the US television sitcom “All in the Family”. Michele Singer Reiner, 68, was his wife of more than three decades. CBS reported they married in 1989 and had three children.
In the hours after the arrests were announced, police and media reports described an investigation still in motion. CBS said two sources who attended a party on Saturday night where Rob and Nick Reiner were present recalled “a brief but loud argument” between them. The broadcaster did not report what the disagreement was about, and police have not publicly linked any such incident to a motive.
Police said they have not yet publicly outlined a motive, and investigators have not released details on any alleged sequence of events beyond the timing of the emergency response, the subsequent arrest, and the intention to present the case to prosecutors.
As the legal process begins, the focus is expected to shift to formal charging decisions by prosecutors, and to any initial court hearing where bail status, representation and preliminary allegations are addressed. For now, authorities have emphasised that an investigation is ongoing, and that the case file is still being assembled for review.
If you or someone you know is struggling, confidential help is available in the United States via the 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.