Nick Reiner vs. Lindsay Clancy: What Makes Them Different?!

Tony Brueski (0:00)

This is The Big Breakdown, a long look back at some of the biggest stories we're covering for you at the Hidden Killers Podcast and True Crime Today.

Tony Brueski (0:20)

Lots of comparing going on right now between the Nick Reiner case and the Lindsay Clancy case. And I want to address that in this piece. Before you start repeating that, before I start repeating that, before we start taking a real good hard look at the fact that the only thing we have in common here is a level of mental illness.

And that's where the two cases stop being common. Stop having many comparisons. The grand jury added lying in wait to the charges against Nick Reiner. Under California law, that means prosecutors believe he concealed what he was about to do from his own parents, waited for the right moment and then launched a surprise attack with a specific intent to kill. That allegation describes a brain that is planning and choosing. People are already comparing this case to Lindsay Clancy. Before anyone puts those two names in the same sentence, they need to look at what they're actually putting side by side. One of those people spent 17 years making choices. The other spent months losing the ability to make them. And I welcome your thoughts in the comment section on Substack and YouTube. Those links are in our description. That's where we'll continue our conversation here. The question isn't whether Nick Reiner's brain was broken. The question is whether a brain that chose destruction after 17 straight years suddenly stopped choosing on December 14th. Nick Reiner went to his first rehab facility around his fifth birthday. By the time, or 15th birthday, I should say, by the time he turned 22, he'd been through 17 or 18 stays. He said so himself in interviews he gave to promote his semi-autobiographical movie he co-wrote about the experience. He used heroin, cocaine and meth. He says in a 2016 interview that he was a spoiled white rich kid from a Hollywood family and that the drugs were so powerful, he didn't care about any of the privilege or money. He knew what he had and he chose to throw it all away for the next high. When he refused to say it in treatment, he chose homelessness.

That was his world. And that's what he chose. Wasn't anyone else's decision. He told an interview he'd been homeless in Maine, New Jersey, in Texas by choice. When I was out there, I could have died, he said. It's all luck. He wasn't describing a medical crisis. He was describing the consequences of a choice. He made repeatedly the choice to refuse treatment. Sources say he stopped going to recovery meetings because he called them too cultish. Eighteen rehab stays and three states of homelessness by the time he was 22 years old. Every fork in the road he took.

Every single one led him further from help. Nick Reiner lived in his parents' guest house on their Brentwood property. Sources say he destroyed it more than once. That the guest house became a revolving door throughout his life. On a podcast in 2018, he laughed while describing one of those times. I got totally spun out on uppers is what he said. I think it was coke and something else. I was up for days on end, man.

He described destroying the guest house piece by piece on a drug binge, starting with the television, then the lamp, then everything else in the room. Everything in the guest house got wrecked, he said. When the host asked if the violence was a way to release tension, Nick answered in two words, no logic. He acknowledged his parents had told him he had to leave before the rampage. He couldn't even remember whether he had hurt himself. Sources say he bragged about how he could get away with anything. Sources say he took money from his parents for drugs and showed no remorse. Sources say he threatened his sister when she confronted him about his behavior. His parents gave him the ultimatum again and again, take your medication and stop using or move out. Sources say they threatened to call the police more than once and they never did. The revolving door kept spinning. A family friend quoted in reporting after the killing said Nick's outburst had been violent enough to require physical restraint as far back as age 11 Held in bear hugs to keep him from hurting himself or others.

This had been building for most of his life. Sources say Nick Reiner was diagnosed with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder around 2020 A judge placed him under an LPS conservatorship, a court order in California, that allows involuntary psychiatric treatment when a person is gravely disabled or a danger to themselves or others. Getting one requires a doctor, a licensed fiduciary and a judge to all agree that this person can't safely manage on their own. And in California, you have to renew it every single year. And in California, the way it is set up is that, well, we can kick you off this conservatorship. But basically, any time you show the ability to feed yourself, the bar is so damn low. That's why you can't keep them in California. Because basically, if the person is able to pick up a fork and put food in their mouth, well, they're competent enough to not need a conservatorship anymore. That's literally the bar. The conservatorship ran from 2020 to 2021 and then ended. Nobody has publicly explained why it wasn't renewed, other than the fact that California doesn't renew them. That's why it wasn't renewed. Because unless he was in a catatonic state in the corner, shaking and not replying or responding to things, you're not going to get it renewed in California.