Jake Reiner has given his first interview since the killing of his parents, the film-maker Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, saying: “I will never understand why this happened.”
Reiner, who directed films including The Princess Bride, This Is Spinal Tap and Stand By Me, was found dead alongside Singer Reiner from apparent stab wounds in their home in Los Angeles in December.
Their 32-year-old son, Nick Reiner, was indicted for two counts of first-degree murder and has pleaded not guilty.
If he is convicted, he could face the death penalty. Prosecutors have not yet indicated whether they will pursue capital punishment.
Jake and Nick’s sister, Romy Reiner, 28, lived across the street from her parents, and discovered the body of her father.
Speaking to KABC in Los Angeles, Jake Reiner, 35, recalled the moment he heard from his sister after she called 911.
“Romy told me our dad was dead, and then she said, ‘I can’t find mom,’” Reiner said. “I immediately went into shock.
“Our parents had unconditional love for all three of us. I will never understand. I don’t care how it is explained to me, I don’t care what facts come out, I will never understand why this happened,” he said.
Reiner said he had lost everyone in his family but his sister.
“[Nick]’s in jail. It’s like, I physically lost my parents, and then Nick was arrested, now it’s just me and Romy, and we have to navigate this by ourselves essentially,” he said.
“For me, it manifests into anger. It manifests into rage, into how unfair this was, how I didn’t get a say in what happened. I didn’t get to stop it from happening. I had no choice in the matter. I just have to accept the reality of it, and to me, that is just one of the most infuriating parts of all of this.”
Reiner told KABC he had not spoken with his brother and declined to say whether he would want to in the future.
He said his parents “never stopped helping” Nick through his reported struggles with addiction and mental health. The 2015 film Being Charlie, which Nick wrote and Rob directed, was loosely based on Nick’s life.
Reiner added: “The worst kind of grief is your own because you’re the one living through it, and so, just because I lost my parents in the way that I did, it doesn’t mean that you losing a loved one in some other way is not also devastating.
“You can’t compare it, because it’s what you’re going through, and there are a lot of people out there that are living through that, and I think for the first time in my life, I see them.”
He went on to say that the eight months since the deaths had felt like “eight years”, adding: “It also feels like eight minutes because every moment that I wake up, I’m reminded of my reality.”
Reiner wrote a Substack essay about his parents’ deaths in April, saying the situation was “almost too impossible to process” and “my living nightmare”.
Nick Reiner’s pre-trial hearing for the murder charges is scheduled for 15 September. He has attempted to access $1.6m in a trust his parents set up for him as a child in order to pay his legal fees, but the trust’s professional fiduciary and trustees have blocked him, citing California’s slayer statute, which prevents anyone from financially benefiting from the estate of a person they are accused of killing.
