Jake Reiner — whose parents, prolific filmmakers Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner, were killed late last year and whose younger brother has since been charged with their murders — spoke Friday about the “living nightmare” he has endured since learning what happened to them.
Reiner, 34, wrote on Substack that on Dec. 14, he was attending a celebration of the life of a friend who died in October when his sister, Romy, called him to tell him their father had died. A few minutes later, she called again: their mother had left too.
“My world, as I knew it, had collapsed. I was in a trance,” Reiner wrote. The only thing I could focus on was that I had to return to my childhood home. I had to join my sister. I needed to understand what had just happened.
He wrote that so many things had been stolen from him that day.
“My parents won’t be at my wedding, they won’t be able to hold their future grandchild, and they won’t see me have the successful career I’m still striving for,” he wrote. “It breaks my heart and makes me angry at the same time.”
Rob Reiner, 78, and Michele Singer Reiner, 70, were found dead in the master bedroom of their Brentwood home Dec. 14 by paramedics responding to a call, officials said.
Nick Reiner, the couple’s second child and youngest son, was arrested the same day about 15 km from the house. He was charged with two counts of murder, with allegations of multiple murders in special circumstances. He also faces a specific allegation that he used a deadly weapon, a knife. He pleaded not guilty.
Jake Reiner wrote that “nothing can prepare you for what it feels like to instantly lose both parents at the same time.”
“This is too devastating to comprehend. I still wake up every morning having to convince myself that no, this is not a dream,” he wrote. “This really is my living nightmare.”
He said he keeps thinking about how scared his parents must have been and how they were “the last people in the world to deserve what happened to them.”
“They should enjoy the rest of their lives peacefully while growing old together. Instead, it was ripped away from them, from me, from Romy, and there was nothing we could do about it,” he wrote.
Reiner said his sister would share her own experiences and thoughts about her family during her time.
He described his parents as “the center of his life” and his “beacons, the foundation of who I am as a human being and the most generous people I have ever known.”
“A lot of people don’t have the luxury of having the best parents, mom or dad, but I do,” he wrote. “The love they have for me, my brother and my sister is truly unconditional.”
Reiner did not name his younger brother in the post, but wrote that “we lost more than half of our family that night in the most violent way imaginable.”
“Of course, any loss of a parent is devastating, but nothing compares to losing both at the same time and, on top of that, having your brother at the center of the situation. It’s almost too impossible to handle,” he wrote.
He acknowledged the public has questions about what happened, but said some answers will come with time — and some details belong only to the family.
“Keeping them private is the only way to protect what little remains of something that was taken from us,” he wrote.
Reiner concluded with a call for understanding. “What the hell do you say to someone experiencing this reality?” he wrote. “The truth is, there’s nothing to say. I’m just asking for love and compassion – the same principles my parents lived by.”