Nick Reiner: Self-Made Monster Part 3 - He Looked HOW at 4:15?!

Tony Brueski (0:00)

January 2026, Twin Towers Correctional Facility, downtown Los Angeles.

Sources tell TMZ that Nick Reiner admits he killed his parents. He isn't claiming he wasn't there, and he isn't claiming someone else did it. What he reportedly cannot understand is why he's locked up. He reportedly believes his incarceration is a conspiracy against him. He is pleaded not guilty. A jury will decide the rest. But, he is half right. There was a conspiracy. It ran 32 years. Every person in it was trying to save him. It ended on a Sunday afternoon in December, and he is the only one who hasn't noticed.

Sunday, December 14, 2025, 4.15 in the morning.

A man in a hat with a black backpack walks into a beachfront hotel in Santa Monica called Peerside near the pier where a room goes for a couple hundred dollars a night. He checks in on his own credit card. One night. A staffer would tell reporters he looked, in the staffer's phrase, tweaked out. No blood on him. No cuts.

Four miles inland, behind the gate on Chadbourne Avenue, nobody is answering the door.

Late that morning, a housekeeper cleans room 207 at the Peerside. She finds blood in the shower and blood on the sheets and bedsheets hung over the window. The guest has not checked out. He never will.

2pm.

The Reiner's massage therapist knocks, rings, knocks again, leaves.

Romy Reiner lives across the street. She walks over. She goes inside. In the primary bedroom, she finds her father. She runs.

3.38pm. Her roommate dials 911

3.45pm. Rob Reiner, 78, is pronounced dead.

3.46pm. Michele Singer Reiner, 70

Romy didn't know about her mother until the paramedics told her. Billy and Janice Crystal were at the house while the responders were still working. Jake Reiner was at a celebration of life for his best friend when his sister called.

Romy told me that our dad was dead, he would say. And then she said, I can't find mom.

By one account, the house was still decorated for Christmas.

LAPD's Robbery Homicide Division took the case. In the first hours, a deputy chief told reporters they weren't seeking anyone as a suspect. By nightfall, an assistant chief said the early information pointed at one person. Romy, by one tabloid report, had told the first officers that a member of the family should be considered a suspect and that he was dangerous. They had the location data from his phone, a city's worth of cameras, and a light rail line that stops near the beach and near Exposition Park. 8.20pm An ARCO station across from the park. Nick Reiner walks in and buys a sports drink. The backpack is red now. The clerk, Alexis Hernandez, said later he looked like any other customer. Witnesses said he looked anxious, as if he were waiting for someone. 9.15pm Four police vehicles box him in at Exposition and Vermont at the edge of the USC campus. He puts his hands in the air. No incident. A US. Marshal's Task Force assists.

17 hours, with a hotel check-in, a shower, a train ride, and a stop for a sports drink in them. Whatever was happening in his head, his feet knew where they were going. Around 1 the next morning, a robbery homicide detective walked into the pier side and told the front desk he was there for a welfare check on the guest in room 207

He was there, according to a law enforcement source, because he was worried the guest had cleaned up and disposed of evidence. He taped the room off as a crime scene. Nick was booked at 504 that morning. The chief of police called it a very, very tragic incident. Bail was listed at $4 million for about as long as it took to say it out loud. Then, there was no bail at all. December 16th. The district attorney, NathanHochman, files two counts of first-degree murder with a special circumstance of multiple murders and an allegation that a knife was personally used. Death eligible. Hochman calls Rob Reiner one of the greatest filmmakers of his generation. We owe it to their memory, he says, to pursue justice and accountability.

Nick doesn't make it to court that day. Not medically cleared. December 17th. He appears behind glass, shackled, in a blue suicide prevention vest. He says almost nothing. He waves his right to a speedy arraignment. His lawyer is Alan Jackson, who had just won Karen Read's acquittal in Massachusetts and has represented Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey. Jackson calls it a devastating tragedy. He asks the public not to rush to judgment. He says there are very, very complex and serious issues here. That same afternoon, the medical examiner releases the cause of death. Both of them, multiple sharp force injuries, manner, homicide. A week later, the death certificates would add that the interval between injury and death was minutes.