Hidden True Crime - Nick Reiner UNMASKED...Why Did He Kill His Parents?! | Psychologist Reacts to Rob and Michele Reiner

Episode Date: December 19, 2025

Dr. John is here to analyze the case of Rob and Michele Singer Reiner. Sponsor: Aura Frames: Exclusive $35 off Carver Mat at https://on.auraframes.com/HIDDEN Promo Code HIDDEN About Hidden True Crime What started as a simple conversation at their dinner table became a captivating podcast. Join the dynamic duo of Dr. John Matthias, a criminal psychologist, and Lauren Matthias, an investigative journalist, as they delve into the psychological facets of unthinkable crimes every week. Their unique perspectives and in-depth analysis offer a fresh take on true crime storytelling. Thank you for your support through sponsorships, subscribing, listening, and becoming a Patreon member at⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Patreon.com/HiddenTrueCrime⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And with seven rewards, I'm just $4. Quiet, no. Krispy, saucy, and $4? Very. Only at 711. Valley through 62326, participating stores only while supplies lastly out for full terms. Tonight, we go beyond the headlines to examine the psychology behind one of the most disturbing cases Hollywood has seen. Last Sunday, 27-year-old Romie Reiner got a call from her parents' massage therapist. Her mom, Michelle, had an appointment, but no one was answering the gate. That wasn't like them. Romi decided to check on her parents herself. It wasn't far, just across the street.

That's how close this family was, not just physically, but emotionally. Romy and her older brother Jake didn't just love their parents, Rob and Michelle Riner. They considered them their best friends. Romy entered her parents, Brentwood Mansion, and walked toward the master bedroom. That's where she saw something no one is ever prepared to see. Her beloved father, legendary Rob Reiner was dead. Instinct took over, Fider Fly kicked in, and Romy ran. She bolted out of the house and back across the street where she told a friend to call 911

while she called her father's best friend Billy Crystal. At that moment, she still didn't understand the full scope of what had happened. It wasn't until paramedics arrived that Romy learned the truth. Her mother, Michelle, had also been found dead in the very same room, their own bedroom. When police arrived, Romi told them that her brother Nick, who had a long history of substance abuse and instability, have been living in the guest house on the property. But now, Nick was nowhere to be found. Almost immediately investigators believed that locating Nick could be the key to understanding what happened to Rob and Michelle.

As we now know, Nick has since been arrested and charged with the murders of his parents with a deadly weapon and a multiple victim enhancement. He's being held without bail and is reportedly on suicide watch. So far, he has not entered a guilty or not guilty plea. We've also learned that at the hotel where Nick's, checked in before his arrest staff reportedly discovered, blood in the shower, and blood on the bed. But how did we get here? How does someone from such an influential, privileged, and respected family

end up on a path this dark? In just a moment, my co-host, Princeton-educated criminal psychologist, Dr. John Matthias, will join me to help us understand how this case compares to others we've seen and what the research tells us. For those who are new here, full disclosure, Dr. Matthias is also my husband. And cases centered on relationships and family dynamics, especially within respected, well-known families, are ones we believe help eliminate not just crime itself,

but the human behavior behind it, because a better understanding of crime is ultimately a better understanding of ourselves. I'm Lauren Matthias, and this is hidden true crime. Hello, Hidden Jens. We are back at our, table, the Christmas tree behind us. We have questions. This, this Rob Reiner and Michelle Stinger-Riner tragedy has had us talking actually here at our kitchen table a lot. And of course, I have been reporting on it. And now we're hoping that you, Dr. John Mathias, a criminal psychologist will help us sort of help us understand what we know right now, which no,

isn't a lot. There's going to be a lot coming out. We're going to continue following this case. But I think part of this for me, the saddest part of this is that it is a family tragedy through and through. Not only have they lost both their parents, the children of Rob and Michelle, they've lost their brother, who is now being charged with allegedly killing his parents. It's so complicated and heartbreaking. And we know a little bit about Nick. We know that he suffered with

addiction for years, many since at rehab. They were trying to help him. You know, there's the love of parents too that gets me, you know. They never gave up on him. Yeah. Yeah. True. So I want to start talking about this case in a broad fashion

in terms of talking about parasite and some of the research on parasite. So for those who don't know, for those who have never been with us before, Paraside is when children or a child murder a parent or parents. So a single parasite is the murder of one parent, a double parasite, which is much more uncommon. And that's what this case is. A double parasite is when a child murders both parents.

So if you murder the mother, that's called matriciote. If you murder the father, that's called patricide. If you happen to murder a king, that's called regicide. So it's worth pointing out, like, I think I'll start this by talking about how parasite has kind of gripped the literary imagination for thousands of years. Okay. Because in the history of Western literature, some of the most iconic and foundational text, in Western literature are based on parasite. And when I say that, I'm specifically talking about Oedipus Rex by Sophocles,

which is a story about the young Oedipus murdering his father and the implications of that. Hamlet is a story of parasite to a large degree. And so is the brothers Karamazov by Dosievsky. So Hamlet's by Shakespeare. And I think the reason why. authors of that magnitude that have had such a huge impact on Western literature talk about Paraside is because it's so taboo. Yeah.

And it's so uncommon. And I think there's this desire among these authors to kind of explore the spiritual and the moral ramifications of parasite. And what better way to do that, but then to take something that's so taboo. Yeah. that you can draw out all the implications, all the moral and spiritual and philosophical implications of Paraside, by putting it in literary format, in a literary format. And so Parasite, in that sense, is really nothing new.

It's something that we've, that's been with us for thousands of years. What is unique about Paraside is how uncommon it is. So the research on parasite shows that roughly 2%, actually a little bit less, it's around 1.7% of all homicides involve parasites. So it's very rare. And double parasites, even more so. The number of parasites that involve both parents are less well, well less than 10%.

So this is, I think, when parasites like this, happen, especially when when famous people were involved, wealthy famous people and Rob Reiner and Michelle were Hollywood icons. Rob produced and Michelle, they produced and directed so many memorable movies that have had such an impact on our culture that I think when this type of crime occurs to people like this, then of course, I think it's going to, I think it's going to grip the imagination of this country and probably people all over the world. Yeah. And so, but I do want to point out that there's a precedent for this in terms of great

literature. The Oedipus saga, for example, by Sophocles is like according to Sigmund Freud, who's responsible for my field, for the origins of my field, that that, that, that, Etypice saga really has left the lasting impact on our culture and even the modern imagination to a large degree. And then I won't have time to get into all that. I could spend a couple of shows talking about that. But my point is that it's not new. And it's, I think, so there's a sense in which this murder and this context and this day and age has a deep resonance.

that goes back to thousands of years into Greek culture and Greek history. And so I think that's important. So in thinking about that, by the way, so I mentioned that it's considered taboo. I think one of the reasons it's taboo, if you think about it, why it's taboo is because there's this implicit social agreement. I think in families that parents sacrifice for their children, right?

That's kind of a given. I mean, normal healthy parents make sacrifices for their children and their children's health and mental health and physical health and just in general their health. And so that's part of the agreement. But the flip side to that agreement is that children reciprocate to some degree. I think there's a there's a tacit agreement that if you take care of a child, the child is not going to murder you, right? There's sort of the other side of parental sacrifice that children will, I want to say love, but that's not necessarily that children will at least care for and potentially honor and respect their parents because of because of all the parental sacrifice.

is being made, that I think there's this other part of this, this tacit social contractor agreement, the children, they won't give back to their parents in the same way. They won't meet those sacrifices, but I think there's some tacit agreement that children should or will respect and care for their parents to some degree. Yeah, I think a lot of parents. And so. So if you think about parenting and children, right. So if you think about parenting and you think about parasite,

it's really, parenting in some ways is a version of the golden rule, doing unto others as they would do unto you, right, in the sense. But amplify. Take, it's, you know, if you're kind to your kids, in theory, they should be kind back to you. Yeah, golden rule. Right, exactly. And so parenting is a version of the golden rule.

I think that when I talk about, kind of this implicit social contract. I'm really talking about that. That I think it's a simple, it's a simple idea that if you're kind to your kids and you're loving to your kids, you make a lot of sacrifices, then presumably your kids should be kind human beings that give back to you as a parent. In theory, right? It doesn't always work that way.

And I think... It sounds easy. It sounds easy, right. It's easy in theory. But not practice. I don't know. You can be really kind to kids and sometimes they won't be kind back, right? So weird how that happens sometimes. Yeah. And so that's why it like a lot of the cases we talk about are either philicide, which is a parent murdering a child or to a lesser extent, parasite, which is a child or a parent.

And so you have a fundamental violation of that implicit contractor agreement between a parent and a child and a child and a parent. Both of those. So those are flip sides of the same coin. Those are different sides of the same coin. Both of those clearly disrupt the golden rule to a large degree. And not only that there's something about the golden rule, by the way, that these social agreements are what. keep relationships intact. And I don't mean just legally.

I mean that if parents and children fundamentally were at war all the time, our communities and our society would collapse. Right. And so I think that's one of the reasons why Philicide and Paraside are so interesting to our channel and to our analyses of so many cases. and that's why we pick them up so often is because, although I haven't talked about it in these terms, that they are essentially a disruption of that social contract, of that implicit social contract

between parents and children. And that relationship, by the way, and also the relationship between two adults, between two partners in particular, an intimate relationship between two, partners is where the family unit begins. And so the domestic violence or intimate partner violence and thylicide and parasite are all versions of or all variations on a theme in terms of that fundamental agreement about how you should treat people. Yeah. And being kind to people and being loving and showing some measure of unconditional love and support for someone else. that's where it begins

and so domestic violence suicide parasite parasite they're all tied together and they all violate that fundamental assumption and if those fundamental assumptions are violated then obviously

there's a ripple effect from that I had a literature professor I never forgot this who talked a lot about I forget the novel he was discussing now I think it was EM4 But he used to say that all politics are relational and all politics begin with two people in a

relationship, oftentimes an intimate relationship. And how they negotiate that, how they negotiate intimacy, how they negotiate difference, how they tolerate difference, how they tolerate each other. And he would say, and this was years ago, this is when I was an undergraduate, he would say, how much hope is there for the world? If two human beings in friendship or in intimate relationships can't make that work, what if two adults can't negotiate their differences, right, and their similarities? and what if they can't make that work, then what hope is there for the world? What hope is there to extend that to groups

and to other people, to friends, to strangers? Right? What hope is there if we can't do that simple thing if I can't connect to you right now, right here and now? Was that a challenge? No, I'm just saying, no, it's not a challenge. I'm just saying that we are connecting. We are connecting.

I'm not saying we're not. I'm saying that the basis of all this and all our work and a lot of crime and this contract, the social contract, it begins here. And it begins with our relationship and our child and our friendships and our community, right? it all stems from this implicit agreement of how partners should treat each other, how spouses should treat each other, how spouses should treat children, how children should treat their parents, right? All of this is connected. Right.

So why is this so horrific? Because it's a massive violation and disruption of that fundamental agreement. Makes sense. Yeah, it is. It really is. And I think this case, because the victims are so well-known, well-known. And they've had such an impact on our culture that it's more pronounced.

Yeah. And- We're all watching this. And beloved. Beloved, kind, generous, empathic, right? All of those qualities that you would expect a parent to exhibit. Saying they don't believe in tough love, right? Don't believe in tough love, child with addiction.

Having this child with addiction in their home, you know, doing whatever they can to help him. Yeah. There are some gifts that feel thoughtful in the moment. And then there are the gifts that keep showing up long after the holidays are over. And that's why I want to tell you about aura frames. It's a gift for those who don't want stuff, for those who already have everything. And this year, I realize what they really want isn't another thing. It's connection.

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about specifics in a minute in terms of Nick Reiner and this family, although we're going to learn a lot more. So I'm just going to, we're going to introduce this topic tonight. And then over the course of weeks, we're going to start learning more and digging deeper. So, but I want to talk about So since we're talking about parasite, I want to talk about some of the research. I want to dig a little deeper into some of the research on parasite. This is from an article called Paraside, a Forensic Approach. It's by Soraya Dantus et al. There's a number of other authors.

It's from 2013. So it's reasonably, I'm sorry, it's from 2014. It's reasonably current. One of the things about parasite is because there's not a lot of cases of parasite because it is rare. It's hard to really study it. It's hard to get enough of the sample size or enough data points to really make sense of it. That makes sense. The data points we have, though, are pretty consistent, and they have been consistent for many years.

Okay. So I'm going to read some of their summaries, and we can think about how this applies to Nick Reiner, right? Thank you. Dr. John's going to do his thing. So cases of research. We're going to run the research. cases of parasite, number one, cases of parasite are extremely rare. 1.7% of all alleged homicides involve some type of parasite. And I'm not even talking about double parasite.

I'm just talking about single parasite where one parent is murdered. On that issue, by the way, most parasites, most single parasites are committed by males, and most single parasites involve the murder of a father. So most single parasites involve patricide. So most single parasites are exactly like edipus where the son murders the father. Number two, the victims are mostly male and biological parents with an average age of around 59 and a history of substance abuse. Those are the victims. Number three, the perpetrators were mostly male with an average age of 29.

More than half lived with the victim and had a history of mental illness such as sketching. schizophrenia or depression. That is a question we have. We don't know much about his mental health yet, but interesting. Number four, the pattern was that of one perpetrator and one victim, as I said, double parasite is very unusual. One perpetrator and one victim predominantly a son committing parasite. In other words, patricide.

Okay. Number five, most of the assaults happened at home. were both the perpetrator and the victim lived. Number six, the main alleged reasons admitted for the assault were unmedicated psychiatric illness and financial issues and domestic violence in some cases, especially in cases with younger perpetrators. Okay.

This wouldn't be younger necessarily, right? Nick Reiner kind of fits the profile. Nick Reiner was 32, so he fits the profile of a young adult male, which is consistent. If an average age is just 29, then he's well within the range of that average. Continuing, over half the aggressions were committed using sharp instruments, such as a knife. That was true here. Wow. Fatal injuries occurred mostly to the head and the neck.

And most of the victims had defensive injuries on their arms. I don't know if there were defensive injuries, but clearly the, injuries here were to the head and neck. They were specifically the neck as far as we know based on preliminary reports. So those are some of the, those are some of the elements of parasite in general. And you can see that, I mean, obviously this, this was from 2014. You can see that this is very similar to the research here is very similar to the pattern that we see with Nick Reiner. Right.

I want to now pick up on some of the research dealing with double parasite, which is a more, which is, as I said, it's much less common than parasite. So again, there's not a huge number of data points on this, but I'm going to read from probably one of the best known research articles on double parasite. It's by Wiseman et al from the Journal of Forensic Sciences, Volume 47, 2000. So I think it's without knowing all the details of the Nick Reiner case, it does seem like very much of this is descriptive of this particular murder. This is from the first page, page 313 of this research article, quote, mental illness and antisocial behavior have been the only two primary explanations for adults who carry out double parasites.

So mental illness and antisocial behavior. So it's fair to say based on the research that this is probably some mental illness, right? Or antisocial behavior or both. Or both. An antisocial, again, meaning like a psychopath or a sociopath, right? When you say antisocial? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, let's think of it in terms of, so not necessarily the diagnosis, but antisocial behavior, meaning behavior that's clearly against typical norms and values and, right?

It's it's a disregard for normative social values. Yeah, okay. And rules, right? I mean, obviously murdering someone is a disruption of legal, right, of any legal norms or expectations. Yeah. I'm going to continue here. Double parasite studies involve psychotic individuals harboring delusions or hallucinations about their parents that inevitably lead to the act, as well as individuals with an antisocial motive. This is interesting.

In contrast, media reports dwell on a history of childhood abuse as the central ingredient leading to the crime. Oh, that's really interesting. To date, and again, this is 2002, but this has been consistent over the years. Quote, to date, there's been no published data indicating that childhood abuse is an explanation for double parasite. Oh, wow. So in other words, I'm going to talk in a little bit of. bit about how there is a type of parasite called reactive parasite. Yeah.

Which is a reaction to childhood abuse, especially adolescents. Right. So adolescents are more likely to engage in reactive parasites. So adolescents who are or have been abused sexually or physically abused are more likely to murder a parent in a reactive way. So reactive parasite is more applicable to adolescents. However, in this particular case, like this particular case with a double parasite, because I think people are going to be asking this question, were the Reiner's abusive?

Well, this is the Menendez brothers, the fact. Right. This is where you're going. Yeah, exactly. And the Menendez brothers, it's true. The remendez, well, first of all, there were two. Right, there were two. The brothers.

The brothers. Right. Right. There were two perpetrators in that case. Here there's only one. So this is more typical. Okay. This is more typical. This is called a single offender double parasite. So the literature identifies this as S-O-D-P as opposed to an M-O-D-P, which is a multiple-offender double parasite. So in a double parasite, like this, the research, and that's not to say that there can't be a first where there is some type of abuse, childhood abuse, but the research in these cases to date has been consistent and showing that this type of crime is not driven by childhood abuse. It is not, in other words, it is not a reactive parasite, which,

would be consistent. And again, who knows what happens behind closed doors? Sure. None of us do. We don't know. But it would be consistent with the public view, I think, that the Reiner's were very kind human beings and that they probably weren't abusive to Nick. Right. I don't know. You know, maybe their other kids will speak out. We don't know. We don't know. It could be. Tracy is right now the only child that has spoken out and she said she simply can't believe this, but that she had the best family. Yeah.

And there's been many people. There was someone who visited, who stayed with the family the week before and said that they saw a very loving atmosphere. They even described it was a, it was a videographer that had done work with Rob over the years. and he was visiting and he stayed with them. And he was quite explicit in saying that this is one of the most loving families he knows. That even Nick, when he was with them the week before, was quite content.

So again, but it's a little window of time. It's a few days, right? There are other people that have said something quite different. So we don't know. We don't know. We don't know. We don't know, and I'm just citing the research. But, however, in double parricide, which is what this is,

most of the research shows that it's either mental health related or antisocial-based. Let me continue here. Again, this is from the research article, double parasite by Weissman at Al 2002. Quote, the developmental themes posited to explain parasites. And we're talking about double parasite. The developmental themes, so obviously that's upbringing, right, childhood stuff. The developmental themes positive to explain parasite include progressive deterioration and mental functioning coupled with a hostile dependent relationship with a parent or parents. Okay.

Let that sink in for a second. So a deterioration and mental functioning, meaning worse than you mental functioning, meaning worse than you mental? health, coupled with a hostile dependent relationship with a parent or parents. And again, if you think about this in terms of Nick, clearly, I think there's some dependency there in the sense that Nick is, we know that the Reiner's paying all his bills, they're helping him. They're basically, he's 32 years old. They're basically taking care of all his needs at the age of 32.

He appears to be very, he appears to have very little independence at that. stage of his life. Is it a hostile dependent relationship? I don't know for sure. It does seem like it is. It does seem like there's some history of conflict there, right? Sure, we know he was homeless, so they didn't always invite him into their home. I'll continue. So deterioration and mental functioning coupled with a hostile dependent relationship. Most cases suggest a criminal motivation for killing their parents, which includes robbery, revenge, interpersonal discord, or fiduciary abuse. The psychiatric literature weighs heavily on similar developmental themes, but the resulting motivation to kill is based upon a severe mental illness.

So it seems to me that a lot of this, if you look, just look at the research, a lot of this has a mental health component. Yeah. And that could be depression, it could be anxiety, it could be some type of psychosis or schizophrenia. Pss, it's mushrooms with Maddie Matheson. Let me tell you the secret of how to look like. You know what you're doing.

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BJ's Home of the Save. With the substance abuse, it's not hard to imagine. It's not hard to develop a scenario. here where perhaps there's a drug-induced psychosis? Exactly. Or there's a drug-induced, raged-based psychosis? That's where my mind goes. If I'm going to speculate on what I think happened and we don't know yet,

so this is speculation and we'll find out whether I could be wrong. That's where my mind goes through this rage, drug-induced psychosis. Right. So does Nick have? does Nick have a history of schizophrenia or psychosis or severe mental illness? Who knows? It's hard to know, right? But consistent with the literature and the research, it's not difficult to imagine that math, it seems like he was just based on, somebody said it, that based on his presentation at the party

and his conversation to party that he seemed to be tweaking. I think that term was used. That would imply meth. That's not to say, and again, I don't know. That's speculation, right? I don't know for sure.

Right. There's contradicting. Contradicting things being said even about the party, the said party. Some people say there wasn't a fight. Other people say there was, depending on the source. I'm going to continue with a few thoughts here.

So in this particular study, they did an end-depth analysis of 11 adult males who committed double parasite. And again, there's not a lot of data points here. But that's for this, for double parasite, this happens to be a fairly large sample, believe it or not. Okay. Some of their findings here were consistent with the previous studies. there was a marked absence of childhood abuse. So again, no childhood abuse among this group that engaged in double parasite. There was also another thing they found is there was their lack of stable employment among the perpetrators,

which, again, that seems to apply to Nick. They say, quote, the absence of stable employment may have been a function of mental illness, substance abuse, or a meshed family dynamics. Huh. It seems like you could check all of those boxes with Nick. The substance abuse, by the way, could very well be an attempt to self-medicate and underline more severe mental illness. Right.

So I've worked with a lot of offenders over the years who are alcoholics, or they're using a lot of marijuana, or they're using meth or cocaine. to self-medicate because of their experiences with depression or anxiety or underlying mental health issues that they struggle with. Bipolar disorder is a big one where there's a lot of self-medication. So there could be that. But again, we know this is consistent. This seems to be consistent with what we're seeing here. The lack of stable employment, potential mental health issues, substance abuse for sure. We know that.

And Amesh Family Dynamics, the Amish Family Dynamics seems to be a theme that many people are talking about, that the Reiner's coddled him to some degree, that they showed him unconditional love, even though he was acting out, and even though they sent him to rehab a number of times, and they kind of engaged in this tough love,

in the end, they seemed not to have gone in that direction. They took him back, And they were paying all his bills. They were. Right. And to critics, we can see that as coddling or emmeshment as the research is. And of course, none of us know. You know, nothing to know what this is like.

The relationship is like. Right. And so there are a lot of outside opinions, but nobody really knows. And that was actually like one of Rob's big things, too, was that nobody knew his son, like he did, you know, all the different rehab stance. In the end, he felt like he knew sort of what to do. And I will say none of us do know, none of us, what they went through with Nick, although we might learn more.

I think we'll definitely learn more. 54% of the double parasites occurred because of a longstanding relationship, discord or quarrel. That seems to be applicable here. The long-term discord was about drug use. And it was about him growing up, right, and him being responsible, right? I'm sure that they had a constant quarrel, the quarrels and conflicts around that issue. Yeah. The remaining four double parasites involved delusions, or that were primarily delusional. So that's interesting too in the sense that could he have been delusional from using again?

Right. That's when I think of delusional, that's where I go. Did drugs cause delusion? There was no, I'm going to read again here, quote, this is from page 316 of the same research study. quote, there was no single motive for the double parasites, indicating that double parasite is committed because of a combination of mental illness, criminality, that's the antisocial part, mental illness, criminality, and intrafamilial conflict. What we can confidently conclude is that there was no archival evidence of prior child abuse

prompting the violent crime. Regarding principal weapons used in the double parasites, 55% of the offenders used handguns, the others used stabbing, strangulation or a combination thereof. We obviously know or seem to know what was used here. This is interesting. Individuals, quote,

individuals who use knives or physical force appear to be more impulsive. in the commission of the offenses. And generally in crime, that's true too. That if you have a gun, it's more premeditated. If you use a knife, it seems to be more reactive in the sense that maybe they're having a massive argument about going back to rehab. I don't know.

I'm trying to imagine what they're arguing about, right? It seems like they both, they all left that party angry and distraught. And it seems there are some reports that seem to indicate that some of that may have had to do with Nick using again. His parents being upset and having some confrontation about what to do about it, about maybe perhaps going back to rehab, right? And so I can imagine that the argument starts at the party at Conan O'Brien's party, which I wonder how Conan O'Brien feels about it, by the way.

Yeah. And I will say, again, one source is telling the New York Times right now that, that this fight is overblown. So we don't know. I think it would be very interesting to have a trial where we have Conan O'Brien, you know, as a witness as well as Bill Heter. But keep going. Yeah.

So different accounts of the party, to be fair. Right. But let's, you know, go ahead from initial accounts. So it's not hard to imagine bringing that conflict back to their home. Correct. and Nick becoming more distraught and maybe Nick comes home. He uses more and more drugs. Right.

So he's becoming more agitated. He's becoming more restless. He's becoming angrier. He's becoming more enraged. A knife would be consistent as a murder weapon in that situation because a gun typically involves a fair amount of premeditation. Not always, if you had a gun. right by his bat or whatever, he could grab a gun, but a knife is something that he might

just grab impulsively and use. Like from the kitchen or... Right. Especially in double parasites. So the time of the murders was pretty early in the morning. It seems like it was around three, do you know, the exact time? No, we don't know. Right now, initial...

So we don't know the time. That was part of what we didn't learn at the pet press conference. But New York Times is reporting that when Romi found her father so heartbreaking, according to their source, that they believe he might have been dead for 12 hours. And she found him after a massage therapist couldn't get into the house for their appointment. she was then alerted and found her father. And according to this source to the New York Times, 12 hours. So I guess your timing could be accurate, but we don't know yet.

That's what we know. So that's a summary of some of the research. Another interesting component of this is, I'm going to quote this, here. What what surfaced from case examples presented in this study was that insanity was the only legal trial defense that

successfully led to acquittal or mitigation and legal dispositions. So in other words, it'll be interesting since Nick now has a high-powered attorney, it'll be interesting to see if they go in the direction of...

And when you say that, we're talking Alan Jackson. Yeah. Karen Reed's attorney. Right. It'll be interesting to see if they go in the direction of denial, denying the crime and saying that he didn't do it, or if the evidence is so overwhelming and overpowering that they have to acknowledge he did it.

But perhaps they'll bring in this insanity plea or defense to try to get him. I mean, by the way, getting acquitted on insanity, is not necessarily what people think it is. Just because you're acquitted on insanity, it doesn't mean that you're not going to spend time in a mental institution. Right. Getting treatment for it.

Right. Most often, you can get acquitted for that, but you're still going to be institutionalized. Yeah. This episode is brought to by Palm Olive. Family time isn't just the big moments. It's weeknight dinners, Sitting around the table, everyone talking all at once.

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Direct deposit $1,000 a month and fund an investing account for a 0.25% increase. Cash account offered by Wealthfront Brokerage LLC, member FINRA, SIPC, not a bank. So it appears in these cases that, that, And insanity defense is very common. And if there is success and double parasites, it's from that and not from the other defense, which would be to say he didn't commit this crime. Yes. The other types.

So I mentioned the reactive parasite. Let's talk a little bit about what the research says on the types of parasite. I mentioned the reactive parasite, which seems to apply mainly to adolescents, but not always. voice. Where it doesn't apply is double parasites. So the murder of both parents does not seem to involve this issue of severe abuse in childhood. Okay. Only a single parent typically. Yeah, typically. The abusive parent, I assume. Yeah, presumably. The this, there's, as we talked about, there's this mental health, this mental illness issue. It could be psychosis.

It could be depression, right? Those seem to be schizophrenia and depression seem to be potentially related to parasite in particular. In single parasites, there seems to be some issue with persecutory delusions or maybe even auditory hallucinations, which could be related to schizophrenia. And again, I think there's some issue here about whether those could be drug. drug-induced. Methamphetamine is notoriously known for inducing psychosis, if taken in vast quantities, cocaine can do the same thing.

So his behavior that evening seems to be, may be consistent with some type of stimulant that might induce some type of drug-induced psychosis. another type, there's another type of parasite. So you have reactive parasites, you have mentally ill parasites, you have another category of parasites that are referred to as antisocial parasites. We mentioned that. Most antisocials or parasites are driven by monetary gain, which obviously if you're like the Menendez brothers, if you're murdering your parents for their estate or for their money, that's incredibly antisocial. If you go back to this idea that there's a social contract between parent and child.

Part of that contract is you don't kill your parents for their money. That if they care for you, you care for them in return. And part of that equation is if you're stealing your parents' money, you're not particularly showing a lot of care. It might be part of the contract, but we do have a lot of children. You know what? As someone who thinks about crime way too much, I mean, there's a reason. we have our podcast.

I have often wondered how many elderly people perhaps are murdered rather than just pass away and we don't know because of children who might do that to their parents, wanting their inheritance early. But I digress. Go ahead. And so that fits this category of antisocial parasites. And the final category is, or what are called opportunistic parasites. typically the goal here is personal gain that would include money,

inheritance or inheritance. Again, that would involve an antisocial component too. Interestingly enough, in the opportunistic category, a lot of the, a lot of the young adult males committing parasite in this category, they grow up in turbulent environments with very little opportunity to, according to one of the research articles, to relieve the pressure that they feel from growing up in turbulent environments. So in other words, if the family environment is chaotic and there's a great deal of conflict, a lot of these kids in this opportunistic category, they feel like there's no way out.

They feel like the only way out is, and again, this isn't reactive necessarily. This is just that they feel a tremendous amount of stress and pressure and anxiety over this conflict that they feel like they can't resolve. And so they resort to murder to resolve it. You know, it's interesting to think about Nick Reiner here in this category in terms of there is some reporting. There does seem to be reporting that he felt a lot of pressure. to be successful. Yes. That he had this grandfather, obviously, that was

Carl Reiner. Carl Reiner, very, very wealthy, very famous, very successful. And that his father. Right. And his mother. And his mother. Both successful in their own right. Both uber successful, wealthy, famous, known internationally.

And this is a Hollywood legacy. This seems to have. haunted Nick to some degree. I don't know how much, but it seems to have haunted him to some degree. And so you have all these expectations. You have this weight of this massive weight of being successful, this massive weight of expectations and achievement in this highly successful family across generations.

And it seems like it, from what I can tell, and again, I don't. no, we're going to have to learn more here about how severe this was. But I think this is another potentially interesting component of this case in the sense that Nick really feels like he couldn't get out from under that weight. And that could explain potentially some of the issues around mental health, some of the issues around addiction and substance abuse, and some of the issues around feeling trapped. in this family and feeling incapable of meeting those expectations and perhaps in a particular

moment or a particular fight that one way he felt, perhaps the only way he felt he could resolve that was through murder. And I know that to a lot of us, that sounds completely irrational because it is. But for him, living in this family and Being under the burden of those expectations for years and feeling like he wasn't living up to them, that really could have taken a toll. And that could have something to do with a mode.

That could be a potential motive here too. Yeah. I agree. So those are kind of my main, those are my main talking points in terms of introducing parasite and kind of introducing a frame. to think about this case and I think we're going to have to Paraside.

Right, we're going to have to fill in the gaps as we learn more. And we will do that. As we learn more every day, we are filling in gaps. The, you know, there's some other interesting components here that we can think about that Nick did some interviews, you know, when he did his movie, when he, when his father, when Rob and Nick created this movie. 2013, I believe. I don't remember the exact date.

Yeah. I don't either. But Nick, Rob and Nick did an interview and for promoting the movie. And one of the things Nick talked about was that when he was using a lot of drugs, that he trashed the guest house. And he basically just upended it. And there was certainly some element of aggression. I'm not sure I would call it violence. I guess you could call it violence.

but he was certainly displaying a fair amount of aggression by throwing things and breaking things and trashing the room. Some people have said, well, look, you know, doesn't that, couldn't that translate into murder? And the answer is maybe, I mean, it's not going to be a direct relationship, clearly, but I think what it does show is potentially a high degree of impulsivity. it does show some aggression, which would carry over into murder. In terms of a direct translation, I don't think so necessarily, because he's breaking stuff.

Yeah. Right? He's not harming another person. He's not harming an animal. There's no direct violence occurring in terms of... It's hurting stuff. Right. He's breaking stuff.

Right. Items. Which is certainly aggressive. And aggression is. Aggression clearly plays a role in... It's a warning sign. It's not ideal, but... Or a red flag.

Right. Yeah. It's not ideal. And it does show, right? It does show that if he's angry and he's impulsive, that he can become aggressive and potentially violence. But does it map directly onto murder? I mean, not necessarily.

Right. I have seen reports, however, that he does have some history of violence. I don't know what that is, as far as we know right now. Now I don't see a criminal record or we haven't heard about a criminal record. Maybe there is something. I think doing drugs and being homeless certainly can create some desire or need to obtain money illegally. And so I don't know if there's any arrests out there for that or. We're going to learn a lot more.

Yeah. Yeah. This is speculation, but some people suggesting where he was when he was arrested might be a place that he could find. Yeah. Illegal drugs. Or the area. So those are my initial thoughts based on what we know.

That's kind of what the research shows. And I think the research on parasite and especially double parasite is very consistent with this particular crime. Yeah. So I think that's a good place. to stop for now. That's a good place to start and a good place to stop. But unless you have some questions or you want to further the discussion. No, I'm grateful for what you shared.

I think that those are my initial questions. Of course, we don't know enough about the specific crime, the specific crime or about Nick to be able to give any more right now. But I think in general, what I think has affected so many people including me is this again coming full circle this family tragedy that this is his parents and now Nick's siblings are dealing

with the loss of their parents both of them at the same time while realizing the person who may have done this the person charged with the crimes right now is their brother Yeah. You know, it was very interesting to me watching the press conference today that the DA was bringing up the idea of the death penalty because of the fact that, you know, how that I don't even know how the family would feel about that, you know. Yeah. I can't imagine the complexities they're dealing with.

And so I think just to understand the type of crime this is and why it occurs in the statistics is helpful for me as I continue reporting on it as we continue learning more. Because this is just so. And I wouldn't feel comfortable going any further right now because there's so much rumors, so much speculation, so much to still be confirmed that I think that's all we can do right now. And I'm not even, I want to learn more before I delve into these areas, but I'm not even getting into the impact of addiction on families and on the family system. You mentioned, I think this is really important, you mentioned the impact on the family system, the family as a whole, right? And I think that's a big part of the story. We don't know at this point some of the relationships between siblings. We don't know how the other siblings feel, how they feel and how they, how they perceive their parents.

Or Nick. Or the relationship between their parents and Nick. We don't know. There's intergenerational issues. We don't know their relationships with their famous grandfather. Yeah. We don't know necessarily. It seems like Rob Reiner and Rob was very close to his father.

It seems like they had a very close relationship. But it also, though, seems like Nick had a lot of resentment towards his father, too. Right, right. So there's intergenerational issues here, too. I think there's a lot in this family system to really think about and unpack, and especially how addiction can impact a family system. Right. And how addiction can upend a family system.

All of them. Right. All the relationships. And so I think those will be future episodes. But I think this issue of addiction in and of itself is probably worthy of an entire episode and we'll get into it. I think I want to learn a little more about this family and do a little more research into this family if we can. If it's available, I know a lot of this information will be hard to get. Only what's publicly available.

If anyone wants to reach out to us, please do with if you know this family. Yeah, if anyone has information, you can always email us at Hidden True Crime Info at Gmail. And we will keep sources private. So, I mean, one interesting question around the family system, I think, has to do with the nature of addiction. And so one of the things that, in my opinion, one of the things that addiction, I believe that addiction has to do with is self-medic. that a lot of times addiction is about trying to blunt or reduce negative emotions, negative affect. It's an attempt to really avoid or negate negative emotions. And so what does that mean about the family system?

Is this a family that doesn't seem like it on the surface, but is this a family that struggled? with emotions? Is this a family that struggled to express negative emotions, like anger, like sadness? Right? I don't know. I'm not saying it is. It doesn't seem that way. It doesn't seem that way.

I would say probably not, just looking, but we don't know. Right. We don't know. But the point is that, I mean, again, it could be that the self-medicating here is self-medicating his severe mental illness. which could have a genetic component or it could be more systemic. It could be a function of this family system. Maybe Nick felt like he was neglected to some degree in this family.

I don't know, but these are questions that I want to consider and explore. Thank you. Thank you, everyone, for joining us at our kitchen table. We appreciate that, truly. So until next time, we'll see you. All right. Good night. Thank you guys. Before I switched to wealth front, my APY was probably 0.1. Like, it was a joke. I was literally getting pennies. Once I switched, chit-ching.

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