Hidden True Crime - The Psychology Behind the Reiner Murders | Dr. John Breaks Down What is Hidden

Episode Date: January 11, 2026

Dr. John is back again to discuss the Reiner family. As more info becomes available, he is taking a closer look at the factors that could have led to the murders and what may not have been so obvious to the public beforehand. Sponsors: ASPCA PET INSURANCE: Explore coverage at https://www.aspcapetinsurance.com/HIDDEN ONESKIN: Get up to 30% off OneSkin with the code HIDDEN at https://www.oneskin.co/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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But we have a really important and requested show today. We are going to talk about the case, the very tragic case of Rob Reiner and Michelle Singer-Riner, two Hollywood legends who were brutally murdered in their own home and the person charged in their murders is their own son, Nick Reiner. Nick Reiner has still yet to actually a plead guilty or not guilty. We are still waiting. This has been delayed twice. And his now very famous defense attorney Alan Jackson has quit, but not before he stood

outside of the courthouse and said, Nick Reiner is not guilty pursuant to California law print that. So very, very AJ. like. But while we're waiting for more information on that, we certainly wanted to do what hidden true crime does best and talk about some hidden, maybe underlying understanding to this case that has actually affected so many people, including us. It's just such a devastating tragedy. Both Michelle and Rob were activists and they loved those close to them. We learned. recently of Christmas cards that they had sent that people received after their death.

And they were very warm and kind. And it just brought home more of the loss. But I see you have an array of papers laid out. You have been thinking of a lot of things. And I'm looking forward to knowing and understanding what you have, your research. So there's a lot of pieces to this puzzle. And I mean, since the last time we talked about it several weeks ago, I've obviously learned a lot. We've learned a lot.

And I think the best way to approach this is to break down the different components. So I kind of mapped out just to kind of lay out where we're going to be going in the next few weeks. We're not going to cover, we're just going to cover a segment of this tonight. Okay. But I kind of mapped out areas that I thought might be important in terms of understanding some of the hidden motives. And I divided those into six categories. And I think these all, like a lot of murders, I think they overlap quite a bit.

They intersect. And so, but let's just, I'm going to lay these out and then we'll, we'll focus on one of them for today. Okay. But so these are the questions I have about Nick Ryan, on what we know. The first question I have is, and I think it's probably related to this case, has to do with personality disorders. So the first question I would have is, does Nick Reiner seem to have or might he have a personality disorder? People have wondered. There is a lot of talk,

for example, about problems Nick Reiner had as a child in terms of violent outbursts, in terms of a temper in terms of impulsivity. And so, right, that type of behavior, although I don't have enough evidence from his childhood, I don't know enough about it. Many people, many sources, neighbors even have talked about how in many ways he carried that behavior forward into adulthood. So it raises issues, certainly, I think, about personality disorders. And we'll be talking more about that a little bit today in terms of how personality disorders

intersect potentially with with schizophrenia the and there is an alleged diagnosis or report of schizophrenia you know we cannot yeah nobody can necessarily confirm that because we haven't seen the medical records but that has certainly been dated by those by insider sources to media and so that that's the second the second area that's going to be relevant to this case as we talk about it more and more is mental illness and one of the components of mental illness is schizophrenia and so that's what i'll focus on today, but I want to kind of lay out the pieces. So also depression. We know from, I know from reading some articles and listening to people talk about some of this past.

And I can't confirm this, by the way. None of this. This is all based on secondhand sources. Insider sources that the media is sharing with us. The Daily Mail. Page six. The New York Times has some pieces that are relevant. The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, like all of these sources have been very helpful, but I can't, we haven't confirmed them. And TMZ is the one that... TMZ.

...is the one that relayed the schizophrenia. Also, a shout out, a shout out to Billy Bush, who did an amazing Access Hollywood interview in 2015 with Nick and Rob when the movie Being Charlie was released, and he actually just played it recently. and that has some really fascinating moments.

We're going to be talking about Fawson Talk. So she had a very helpful insight in terms of potential postpartum depression with Michelle around the time that Nick was born or when he was a baby. So those are all going to be relevant, right? I mean, people throw these pieces out. And now it's our job to try to connect to him or it's my job. to try to connect them. So the mental health issues, the ones that seem the most prominent here,

would be schizophrenia. And so I say schizophrenia because TMZ released a story that was based supposedly on reliable sources, stating essentially that in the weeks leading up to these murders, that I'm going to quote here, that Nick was, quote, out of his head, according to one of the sources, that several people apparently noticed,

changes in Nick's behavior, and this was allegedly related to changes in his medication for schizophrenia. So the presumption is that Nick had a diagnosis of schizophrenia. He was being medicated, presumably he was taking antipsychotics. And then there was some adjustment to those medications in, let's say, two to four weeks prior to the murders. And these, the adjustments weren't working effectively. And then Nick was becoming more aggressive and he was acting out And so the story is that the presumption here is that the medication adjustments had something to do with the violence that was the murders and the violence that was committed. So that's kind of the story that TMZ released.

And, you know, we'll talk about this in a minute. Because it's worth asking who released that information. Yeah. and why they release that information. Yeah. So, but we'll get to that in a minute. But depression, I think, also factors into this in the sense that there's at least several sources that are saying that Nick was taking antidepressants when he was in some of the treatment

facilities, which would seem to point in the direction of possible depression. So I think that makes sense. Given what we know about Nick and given some of the struggles, it makes sense that there's some depression. I mean, he never really worked for years. Yeah. Didn't seem super focused on goals. Lacked focus, right.

I mean, he... Suffered from homelessness. Homelessness. Somebody that was apparently a classmate of Nix told the Daily Mail that he had a lot of shame. That he kind of labored under the weight of the Reiner family and the expectations. We talked about that last time, but I think that's a big part of this puzzle. Makes sense. And so why would depression come into play? Well, shame is closely related to self-esteem.

And if you're struggling with self-esteem, that's one of the possible criteria for depression. Okay. So I think depression comes into play. The next element that I think is really relevant here, and I haven't seen anybody really focus on this, is the Reiner family, culture. It's a bit of a mystery. A lot of people have been talking about it. It is. Yeah. Yeah. A quick message from today's sponsor, the ASPCA health insurance program. Life with a pet is full of surprises, sometimes funny, sometimes stressful, and sometimes expensive. And that's why ASPCA pet health insurance is worth checking out. Their plans are flexible, easy to customize, and help you stay prepared for whatever your dog or cat gets into. And there's even a little perk right now for

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But next week or maybe later, maybe early next week, we'll be talking about other elements of this murder, I think. And of course, we learn more all the time. So that'll help us. But one thing that, and just giving an overview with this family culture, one thing that really comes up a lot is how kind and loving this family was. Yeah, it does. People talk all the time about that. It comes up again and again. And yet, when you throw into the mix, Nick and his dysfunctions and his substance abuse,

that is the sort of thing that really can put a family culture on edge, or they can really disrupt a family culture. In fact, in one of the more interesting interviews that Rob gave to ABC News early on in 2016, when they were released in Bean, Charlie, this is what Rob, this is a quote from Rob. He said, these problems, meaning addiction problems, quote, these problems affect the whole family. It's a living system. It's affected what happened to his mother and me. In other words, Rob is a student enough to recognize that this whole family was shaken by his addiction,

and it really had a tremendous impact on the whole system. And so the family culture, the Reiner family culture, the Reiner family culture, was in many ways disrupted or changed by Nick's addiction. And, you know, again, like, I'm just going to scratch the surface here, but sometimes addicts, they demand that, right? Sometimes addicts are so attention-seeking that one of their goals, one of their implicit goals is to really command or demand, attention from the system so that they become the key player,

that some of it becomes a power struggle, where the addict knowingly or unknowingly, often it's unknowingly, often it's unconscious, they act out so that they're always being validated. They're always being, right, they're always being, they become the focus of attention in the family. And so no matter how, so think about that for a minute, no matter how famous the Reiner's are, that Rob is, that his father was, right?

That in some ways, none of that matters if you have this child with this severe problem that's constantly absorbing all your energy and all your attention and all your focus, then guess who becomes the real center of the family? Yeah, the child. Right. And so I don't think this is conscious, by the way. I think this is something that's happening below, again, this is hidden. We're the Hidden True Crime podcast.

But what's hidden here is that this family system revolves around Nix dysfunction, whether they like it or not. And I think that they're trying, this family really tries to normalize the situation, but I don't think they ever succeed. Clearly that they don't succeed because the end result of this is murder. So you have a really unique situation. And that brings in another component of the family culture. And that is that this is a Hollywood.

culture. So one of the interesting, I have a really interesting quote from, I have a really interesting quote from a yoga instructor who, her name is Alana Zabel, and she used to visit the home all the time to give private yoga lessons to the Reiner's, which, you know, you know you're dealing with a Hollywood family when the yoga instructor comes to your house. Beautiful. If you want to do yoga, you're hitting the road and going to the local gym, right? But with the Reiner's, they get yoga on demand. That's great.

Yeah, respect, exactly. So she made a comment about this to one of the media outlets. And here I'm going to read what she said. she said, quote, there's also the fact that the Reiner's live in Hollywood. I have witnessed the children of Hollywood personalities have a really difficult time because they are living in a fantasy world. The parents are prioritizing many things, including them, but there's often a perception of negligence.

She suggested or implied that she believed that maybe Nick had ADHD. It turns out that Atlanta, Zay, by the way, has a degree in child development, and she's got some familiarity with children and their mental health issues. And so she speculated that she believed he might have ADHD. She also, by the way, I should mention, talked about a moment or several moments when she was teaching yoga to the family and Nick was younger. He was like 11-ish, let's say 11 to 13-ish. And Nick, she would come over and Nick would have these tantrums. Yeah. She's the one that wrote the book.

book? She's the one who wrote the book. Okay. So as a matter of fact, now that we're on this topic, let me, she wrote a book in 2005 called a chair in the air. The book was an attempt for her to process part of her experiences working with the Reiner's in the early 2000s when she would come over their home. She's reported that Nick would regularly interrupt their private yoga classes with screaming outbursts that last upward of 20 minutes. This is a quote from her book. So that was according to the Daily Mail. She said, quote, Nikki. So she names him in the book. Nikki is full of big feelings and even bigger energy, so big in fact that one day his excitement accidentally sends a vase flying across the room. I presume that's an actual

experience for her that Nick threw a vase across. Maybe he didn't, but it's in the book. The book is about him and his big energy and trying to process it. The character's name is Nikki. So what's interesting about that is you have this young child, Nick Reiner, who already is disrupting this family culture. And we'll talk more, again, we'll talk more about this in detail later. But she speculates that this is potentially ADHD. But I think there's other options here. this could be something like oppositional defiant disorder, perhaps. ODD.

ODD. It could be, again, I don't know. I've wondered that. I was going to ask you that. So, okay, possibility. We don't know. It could even be. So in schizophrenia, there's something called the progeromal phase.

And that is the, in schizophrenia, you have the progenital phase, and then you have the acute phase, which is when symptoms are active. but before symptoms are active, you have this pro-dromal phrase. This could be the beginning of signs of schizophrenia, that you could have a child that's beginning to lose some contact with reality. It would be a little unusual at 11, but I don't have the exact dates here, but that might be more common around, you might see that more around the age of like 14, 15-ish.

So I've worked with some adolescents that at 14 and 15 are starting to show some early signs. Yeah. Of schizophrenia. And it's very hard to recognize, by the way, because you're not anticipating that a 14 or 15 year old is going to have some loss of contact with reality. Right. And by the way, just to define schizophrenia quickly, it's kind of, it's, it's, it's, I would characterize it as severe mental illness that impacts everything we do.

So it impacts the brain in terms of thinking, thoughts, feelings, behaviors. and the biggest characteristic of schizophrenia, but it's simply is that it's the beginning of a loss of contact with reality. Oh, geez. Yeah. That's so sad. Can you put it that way? But that's exactly what it is.

Right. And if you think about you're 15 years old, right, and you're trying to find your way in the world, you're trying to define your identity, and all of a sudden you're waking up and the world is a little bit off. Your thoughts aren't making, you're not, you're losing a little bit of contact with, with what you think is real. And I don't mean you're having like full-blown hallucinations, but you're, you know something,

you're not fitting your thoughts with what you're observing. Your perceptions are slightly skewed. Yeah. And that's very disorienting, right? You can imagine how every adolescent is really trying to find their way and they're trying to define their identity and they're trying to separate from their family and all of a sudden you're 15, 14, 15, 16 and you're having trouble just making sense of basic things in life. You're having, you're having, right, it becomes very, very problematic and very difficult.

And so, so it's not hard to imagine in that scenario that a child or an adolescent that's beginning to lose contact with reality would turn to drugs. And that, by the way, is roughly the time when Nick Reiner starts using drugs as 14, 15 years old. He ends up in his first treatment facility at 15. Yeah. Because he's smoking marijuana, roughly at 14-ish. And his parents find out, and they send him to a treatment facility. So could this be, could this be pro-dromal schizophrenia, that he's medicating, he's self-medicating to solve, right?

Sounds like it. Boy, you just explained it. Yeah. It could be. It's also to cope with shame or anxiety or something as big as schizophrenia. Yeah. And also you, so my point, I'm going to bring this back to the Hollywood family and how Alana basically tells us that Hollywood families are sort of out of time, that they live in a fantasy world, right? And so I think that's part of the problem here too.

This is a family culture that exists in its own. ecosystem of Hollywood. Yeah. Right. Could you imagine like, could you imagine growing up with all these famous Hollywood people coming in and out of your home all the time? Yeah. Conan O'Brien just happens to drop by.

Right. Like, you know, or whoever, right? I mean, I use him because he was the one that at the party. Yeah. Well, it's interesting you actually say that too because I've actually wondered a lot about how Nick allegedly at this party was confronting people saying, are you famous? Are you famous? Are you famous? Yeah.

I actually found that very telling because it would sort of imply this sort of fantasy world of everybody around him being uber successful, famous, a celebrity, which was essentially his entire orbit, his world, you know. I think to me it indicates that, right, I think that's, I agree, that's part of it, but I think it also indicates that he's very concerned about status, that he's asking if people are famous, but he's going in there with kind of this implicit pecking order, right, of the world and of the party. And I think that speaks to, that's exactly the point I want to make, is that when you grow up in this kind of sheltered Hollywood ecosystem that Alana Zabel says

is all based on fantasy, I mean, they're in the business of creating fantasy and selling fantasy, right? What happens is, I think you develop a very distorted view of the world. Yeah. And you develop very distorted expectations. And I think in the Reiner family, when you have two generations of massive success, right, those expectations must be enormous. Yeah. And in fact, some of the, some friends of Nick have talked about them,

that they believe that he was never able to get out from under the weight of all those expectations. And it just absolutely buried him. That he couldn't find his voice. he couldn't find his identity. He was filled with shame because he couldn't meet expectations. And so I think that's a big part of the story as well. But if you think about that, if you think about how distorted, potentially how distorted your perception of the world would be

because you grow up in this Hollywood fantasy world, right? And now... Yeah, that's sort of bubble, maybe. It's bubble. Because it's not a fantasy to them. It's real to them. No, yeah. No, I know.

It's a business. I mean, I'm not saying that everyone... But this sort of bubble that the rest of the world isn't necessarily accustomed to. Right, exactly. You know, you're... Right, it's atypical in the sense that very few people do it. Very few people have the talent and the ability to make movies, right? It's a...

I'm not denigrating it. No. The people who do it are... It's just a very small percentage. It's a small percentage. And so, but here's my point is that if you see this world as being somewhat distorted from the real world. And you're in this world and all of a sudden you're pro-dromal schizophrenic or you're having some symptoms of schizophrenia. Imagine how confusing that must be.

Yes. Right. You're in a distorted world. And now your perceptions of that world are becoming even more distorted. That's true. That makes sense. Right. I see where you're going.

So I think that makes it doubly. hard for him to negotiate this world in a way that's really, that really makes sense or that, you know, I was going to say rational. I don't know if that's quite the right word, but in a way that, that adds up to Nick Reiner. Yeah. And so I think these are, these are all elements that are going to make it harder for Nick to kind of negotiate this world, right? And, and there's another part of the family culture. And again, we'll talk about this in a little more doubt, but I just want to touch on it now is, I think this is a really important point

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this is going to turn out to be i think a really key part of analyzing the rhiner family culture and that is that we hear constantly about the kind this issue of kindness now kind Rob Reiner is enough time to show, right? They, they, over and over again. They send Christmas cards to, to, everyone in their lives.

Everyone in their lives. Including their, their, their trainers and everyone. Yeah. Right. They're very thoughtful. And I want to make it,

so what's important about this is that you can have a family system that has kindness at its foundation. Let's say the foundation of the family system is kindness. And that, that's great. And acceptance and understanding and love and support. Here's the problem. Okay.

Most people will think, most people listening to this think, well, that's great, right? Kindness and love are enough to solve any problem, right? Yeah. But that's not quite true. Because what I want to say is that it's important not to equate kindness with connection. that I think this is a family system that has an inordinate amount of kindness, but I don't know. And again, I'm speculating here.

I don't know if this is a family system that's connected. Okay. And the reason I say that is because if you look at, if you go back and look at these interviews between Rob and Nick, And they did a lot of them for Bean Charlie. So this was a long time ago. This was a decade ago. The movie comes out in 2016.

They're on this tour in 2015-16. And Bean Charlie is the movie that was inspired by Nick's addiction and his relationship with his father. Correct? Yeah, it's semi-autobiographical. And we're not going to have time to get into all that because I'm just touching on this issue. We will get into it later in another. episode. We'll really dig into that and we'll talk about the movie and more about the family culture. But I think the family culture is really probably one of the key pieces to understanding

this murder. Okay. So, but I want to touch on this because I want to throw it out there for people to think about because it's so important that if you look at these interviews, there are most of the time or a lot of the time, Rob and Nick are very disconnected in terms of little things like this. Like you and I, people complain because I don't look at the camera. And then, well, it's okay. They complain that I look at it too much.

Like I'm looking at myself. I'm like, I'm just trying to connect. No, you're trying to get one of us to look at the camera. And that's true. And I'm also trying to be like, lead him over. Yeah. Anyway, but yes, you do not look at the camera. But my point is if for me, as a psychologist,

I'm in the business of connection. So like for me, it would be natural to turn to you like this and look at you, right? I put my hand on you, like, you know, right? It's like if I'm going to connect with someone, I'm going to do it this way, right? And so it's awkward for me to look in the camera and try to feel connected to you because you're here, right? And I want to look at you. And so, but that's, and there's a point here. Okay.

That in some of these interviews, Rob Reiner puts up his leg. like that okay on it he's on a couch but he puts his leg up to like shield himself from nick huh and he goes like this there's one interview where the whole interview he's kind of going like this and turning away from nick i kind of do that too though because yeah but it's but there's an room between doing this and going like this right okay huh so you're watching like the full i'm watching the connection psychologists call this process so when when i when i When I work with my students, what I don't do, what I do, I take it back. What I do some of the time is I listen to what we call content, which is, in other words,

content is the subject of what people are discussing, where content is the topic of schizophrenia or mental illness, right? But process is what goes on between us. Processes the nonverbales and the unspoken elements of what's occurring in the room. Yeah. So process in many ways is more telling. And this, this by the way, is not body language.

It's different. Process is more direct. That like body language is more specular than process. Process is based on evidence. So if I'm trying to connect with you and I'm, I'm shying away from you and I'm doing that. It's uncomfortable. I've already like give back.

I'm like, what are you doing? Right. I'm going to notice in that process that there's something going on, right? Like, I'm going to ask if one of my students is in a room with a client, and the client is really uncomfortable talking about certain topics or is not making eye contact, right? If there appears to be a clear disconnect, then that's something I want to talk about. Okay.

Why is the client feeling that disconnect? Right? What's the process happening in that room? And if you if you pay attention and we'll talk again, we'll talk about this in more depth in our future episodes. But the process between Nick and Rob, not always, but quite often feels strained. It feels like there's a disconnect. And even though Rob is super kind and he's trying to, he's trying to, he's trying to. connect to Nick, it doesn't seem to work. Nick seems to want to resist it. That's the other thing about Nick, by the way. Nick, Nick tends to be pretty shut down. He's he's a little flat.

That's a term you and I use all the time. Then somebody people that are depressed don't have much affect. And Nick often comes across, you know, he doesn't come across as particularly expressive or particularly emotive, right? He comes across as a bit flat, a bit depressed, a bit disconnected, which, by the way, one of the symptoms or one of the elements of schizophrenia is what we call, it's called the negative symptom of schizophrenia, which is restricted affect. Well, I know what affect is. What does it restricted mean?

Restricted means that there's almost no show of emotion, that your emotion is completely sure. Zero affect. There's no, yeah. flat? It's a little more than flat. Flat affect would be more depression. Schizophrenia would be more extreme. No, I don't know. I mean, I'd have to meet with Nick Reiner in a room and like for some period of time to really determine whether his affect is in fact consistent with the negative symptoms of schizophrenia. So I can't, I can't say that from watching interviews 10 years ago. That wouldn't be accurate. Yeah. But I can say that it may not be flat affect. It might be something more like

oppositionality. In other words, Nick doesn't want to connect with his father. That's what I see. He's resisting connection. Right. And so his father senses that and his father is like, you know, doing this, right? Simply because he connects it, simply because he senses it. Nick senses it. He doesn't want. Rob senses it. Rob senses it, again, probably unconsciously. Rob's been trying to find this connection with his son for years. Nick's not going to give that to him. Yeah.

Nick's not going to allow that because if Nick lets him in fully, then in some ways, if you think about addiction is partly a power struggle between father and son in this case or father and mother. But let's say father and son in particular. The reason I mentioned that, by the way, is because in the act, this Hollywood interview with Billy Bush, there's a point where Nick actually says, quite openly, he says, in front of his father, he says, I feel more connected to my mother because she's more emotional.

Huh. That's, that's interesting. That's not the exact quote. I think I have the exact. Paraphrased. I think I have the exact quote somewhere. Let's see here. Yeah.

Here we go. He says, quote, and this is the Billy Bush interview, quote, it was comforting to talk to her because she was a little more in touch with her emotions and how she felt about it and he rob was trying to follow orders and what he's talking about is their their arguments and their disputes over rehab and he's saying that rob his father was was strictly focused on adhering to the treatment facility's orders and the mother was more concerned about his emotions about being in treatment. Can I keep reading that? Can I read it again? Well, yeah. It says, right here. Oh, right here? Right here. No, here. It was comforting to talk to her

because she was a little more in touch with her emotions and how she felt about it. And he, meaning Rob, was trying to follow orders. And then that, did you read that too, though? No. Oh, sorry. That's okay. That's what caught my eye. Okay. Well, wait. So I'm going to throw that out there because I want to emphasize this point. And also when we're talking about connection, let's go back to this issue about postpartum depression that I watched on Fossum talk. Okay. That's an interesting possibility. Somebody who worked for the Reinhers believed or sad.

told her, a source, told her that Michelle suffered from postpartum depression, and it was quite obvious, and I think she was somewhat open about it. So that raises the issue of, so that's another part of this puzzle, and that's attachment. So something we talk about all the time with criminals is there struggles to develop what we call secure attachments. I was wondering about attachment with Nick. Especially if you say he resisted connecting to his dad. Well, in fact, in one of the interviews that he gives around being Charlie, the movie, he says in front of his dad, he says, I'm going to get the quote a little bit wrong.

I have to go back and get the exact quote. Okay. But he says something like, I never felt like I bond, I bonded or I bonded with my father. To me, that would be, that would be attachment. attachment, but it also gets to this issue of connection. So if you think of attachment and connection as being related, which they are, if you're Nick Reiner and you have a mother who has postpartum depression, not her fault, not her fault, it could be, you know, and there's different levels of postpartum depression, by the way. There's, you and I know that a lot of philocides occur when

there's postpartum psychosis, right? But postpartum oppression would be a lesser version of postpartum problems. And then there's something which is even less problematic than postpartum repression. And that's just the baby blues. So the baby blues are just some hormonal, right, aftershocks from giving birth. Oh, yeah. That like 50%, I forget the exact number now, but a lot of women experience that. And then postpartum repression is roughly 20 to 25.

And then postpartum psychosis, you go down to like 5% or less. But women that experience postpartum oppression, so let's say it's that. Let's say it's more than the baby blues, which it sounds like it was, but not psychotic, not psychosis. They have a much harder time developing secure attachments with their babies. And so it's highly possible that Nick Reiner just by. virtue of the fact that he was unlucky and he was let's presume that romey and jake both attached attached differently because their mother but because michel was not suffering she was in a better place she was in a better place and she was more responsive to those children than she was to

nick right and again i'm not saying that this explains all of it but it's it's interesting it's an interesting it's an interesting element to explore was there an attachment issue because of the circumstances? Right. And then if you look at, if you look at this issue around, if you look at this issue around Rob and Nick feeling that he didn't bond with his father, he says this in front of his father, says, I never felt like I've developed a bond with you. You can go back there, by the way. So let's consider that for a minute. You can go back there to Rob's relationship with his father, Carl.

And Carl is this uber successful comedian and producer and director in Hollywood. And Rob has been, Rob is, he, Rob, three months before the murders. Rob was on a podcast. He was on the Fresh Air podcast with Terry Gross. And he says quite openly to her, this, you know, Fresh Air is, is an NPR podcast. It used to be a top podcast. He tells Terry Gross quite openly, he said, quote, I felt that my father didn't love me or understand me.

He talks about how he doesn't actually, this is amazing to me. Okay. Rob Reiner, he tells Terry Gross that the first time he ever felt validated from his father when he was when he was 19 years old. Wow. He did, he directed a theater. So he graduated from high school. He directed a theater version of Sartre's no exit, which kudos to him for doing that at 19.

Yeah. Impressive. Sorry. Rob's on his way. Rob's directing Jean-Paul Chartra, the famous existentialist, his play no exit at 19 in a local community theater. His father goes backstage. Here's what is what, this is the validation he gets from his father. You ready for this?

So Carl goes backstage. He does this production the first time. You know what his father says to him? He says, that was good. And that was it. That was good. 19 years later. That was good.

I mean, is that validation? I mean, if you've been waiting for that for 19 years, it is. I mean, you know, if his dad is a few words and doesn't validate him, that's got to feel pretty good. So Rob said, Rob says, of that moment. moment, 19, first time he was ever validated and he never felt loved or understood by his father. He says, quote, that was the first time he said anything like that to me. Wow. So in other words, Rob's father, Carl, more or less withheld love.

And when he did praise him for the first time after 19 years, it was conditional. It was conditional on his performance of achievement of this play. So now I approve of you. That was good. You did something. You did something worthy of my attention and my praise. And here it is. That was good. Right. That was good. Like at my bank, I was literally getting pennies using wealthfronts. Cheching. Meet Angela, a wealth front cash account client since 23. He lost my job, not having something else lined up yet. I was pregnant with my second. We had to think about how do we make our money work for us. Every month there's this much that I'm getting an interest and I didn't have to do anything. My money is working hard on its own and I can trust wealth front is taking care of me. With a wealthfront cash account earn up to 4.2% APY on your cash. No account fees, no minimums, and no strings attached. Plus, free instant withdrawals to eligible. At wealthfront.com. Client was paid $1,000 for their testimonial creating a conflict of interest. Outcomes vary. 3.3% base API as of January 30 at 2026 is representative variable and earned on funds

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This, I presume, Rob Reiner, based on that comment, I presume that this is someone who's star for a lot. to some degree. Yeah. And it also raises questions about Rob Reiner's attachments. In other words, I don't know. And again, I want to make a distinction between kindness and loving, being loving and connection. Okay. The question is, if you grow up with a father like Carl Reiner, who's very detached and giving you no praise,

and you say you don't feel loved or understood by him your entire childhood. Right. Can you connect in a meaningful way to your children? It would be harder. I think he tried. He would say, I want to be a better father than my dad ever was to me. The big part of it is how much he tried. But right, is it that easy, in other words.

Does it come that simply? Right. Is it even if you grow up that way, is it even a skill that you can have? I mean, yes, you can cultivate it. Yes, you can work on it. Yes, you can go to therapy. And you can probably develop it, right, by doing the things we're doing right now. Yeah.

You can probably. And talk about it as Rob did. Rob did talk about it. You can learn it. You can talk about it. But like at some deeper level, at some unconscious level, I could argue, and I don't know if this is true, but many people, often because they're not reflecting on it, it seems like Rob reflected on it, but many people will reenact and repeat, Freud called it the repetition compulsion.

They'll repeat that unresolved conflict over and over again throughout their lives in attempt to get that love that they never had. the repetition compulsion is an attempt to master a situation that we weren't able to master as children. And you can't master a situation that you're not in control of because Carl Reiner held the cards. Right. It was in many ways it was really cruel in spite of the fact that Rob has said that he loved his father so much. And he looked up to him and respected him and respected him and admired. him. In many ways, it's very cruel for a father or a parent or anybody to withhold in that position of power for someone to withhold love at that level and to make love so conditional upon performance. That's the type of thing that will really damage a child. And even though

I'm sure Carl doesn't want to do that, right? Like you'd have to say, Carl probably didn't get that from his father. And that's how you get the intergenerational cycle of, let's call it, privation of emotion, right? This is how you get that cycle of shame. Privation of emotion. Well, lack of emotion. I liked privation. I like that. I was, I like that. It was very descriptive. So I've spent a lot of time on family culture. I think family culture is going to be a really key piece of the puzzle. Now you can see some of the elements. So we'll develop a lot of these ideas down the road.

But that's a taste of how family culture fits this puzzle. So we've talked about a possible personality disorder. We've talked about mental illness, the importance of the family culture. We've talked about attachment. Yeah, that's a possibility. The other piece of this puzzle is addiction and substance abuse. Exactly, which we know he suffered with. That seems to be the one certain, certain.

Yeah. So by the time of his arrest, some estimates are upwards of 25 to 30 times in rehab. We know that by the time Nick was, by the time he filmed the movie in 2015, 16 of being Charlie, he had been ready to have 18 times. 18 times. That's incredible. He's 22 years old. So between the age of 15 and 22, we're talking seven years. 18 times.

In and out. Right. So clearly there's like a revolving door of, you know, for these treatment facilities. And he's going to these treatment facilities all over the country. And, you know, clearly it's not working. And we've seen some photos of him on some websites, rehab websites. They look amazing. They're going on hiking.

They're mountaineering. Yeah. They're very high end. They look loving. They look encouraging. And he attended these. Yeah, and so, so obviously addiction is going to be a big part of the story. Let's call it substance abuse.

But the thing about that too, going to rehab at 15, I just want to say that. That's also intense. I wasn't ready to leave home at 15. I wasn't, I mean, for me personally, a late bloomer, I don't know if I was ready to leave home at 18, you know, so think about leaving. You know, it's almost similar, I guess, to like a boarding school experience or just, just kind of leaving and that can't necessarily help connection either. And not only that, I think at 15, it has a stigma, right?

Like there's, there's, you're being branded as a drug addict. Or a troublemaker. A troublemaker and you're 15 years old. Yeah. So substance abuse is, is another one of the key pieces of this puzzle. And then the final piece, I think that is really, really, really important is what I would call aggressive and violent ideation. If you want to know, so you could have all these other pieces.

Yeah. You know, and we're going to talk about the schizophrenia piece in a minute, but you can have the schizophrenia piece. And there's a lot of research on schizophrenia, by the way, that does correlate schizophrenia with violence. So, although that's not clear-com. We'll get to that in a minute. But there is some association.

There's some research that develops an association between schizophrenia and violence. But that's just such a small piece of that issue. You know, in the sense that schizophrenia is not going to, in and of itself, isn't going to get you to murder. Right? There have to be other pieces. Yeah. And I think one of the big pieces that we're going to need to talk about in some depth,

we'll get to it a little bit today, is this idea of aggression and violence and violent ideation, which is we know from, I just talked about the Alana Zabel story, about him throwing a vase across the room. We know from other accounts of Nick that he could be aggressive, apparently, a childhood. We know this story. Most people have heard the story about him, up the guest house. Yeah.

Him having to go on this impulsive rampage where he literally destroyed the entire guest host. He tells this, he tells this, he tells the story on the Dopee podcast back in 2015. The host of the Dopee podcast, by the way, is Dave Mannheim. And so he did a series of interviews with Dave Mannheim over the years. and he recounts some of these these stories. So neighbors have talked about. So neighbors and old friends have talked about him being aggressive.

So you have this potential, you know, you have this potential piece here that I think a lot of people really aren't paying attention to. And that is that there does seem to be some aggression. There does seem to be some oppositionality. that you have, you have, and here's another example, in the movie being Charlie, the story opens with him in this rehab facility, and he wants to leave. So he's leaving on his way out of the facility.

So there's a little part of this facility that has this, this beautiful stained glass window, and it's connected to, it looks like it's connected to a church in a part of the rehab facility. So Charlie exits the building and he's leaving and he takes this big rock and he just shattered. He throws it through the window. It turns out. So let's think about that behavior in and of itself, though. You're knowingly and willfully destroying a window on a church. A church nonetheless.

A church, which is highly symbolic, obviously. Of peace. Love. Peace, sanctuary. Compassion. Right. Love, empathy, right, all the things that he's not demonstrating by his behavior. And he's throwing a rock in the window. Throwing a rock through it.

Turns out that that moment is actually autobiographical. So let's talk about that story. He tells Dave Mannheim, this is in an interview with Dave back in 2015. This is a quote from Nick in this dopey podcast. with Dave Mannheim, quote, they refused to give me meds because they were like, you don't need any meds,

and I was freaking out, he told Dave, explaining that then he set out to, quote, prove he was crazy. The medical staff at Alina Lodge in New Jersey, so that's the rehab facility where he was staying at the moment. They thought that his insistence on needing meds

was an act, and they called his claims fake. Nick's response was, quote, I was like, how do you show these MFers that I'm crazy? So I was like, I throw a rock through the window. Turns out the window was a meeting room of sorts. And he said it was, quote, a beloved meeting room that had, quote, big glass windows. Nick admitted that he, quote, hated how special the room was to the staff.

So this is a quote from Nick again. So quote, I took a rock and I started on the path and I was going up the hill and I went and I threw the rock through the window and some woman saw me and she ratted on me and then they put me on Will Buttrane. He said with the laugh. So in other words, he destroy, he vandalizes the building and he gets rewarded with medication. There's the medication he wanted. And his purpose in doing that is. to essentially malinger. He throws the rock through the window because he's trying to fake having worse mental illness than he has.

That is going to be a big part of this story too. Because if you're schizophrenic, right? Like, let's think about this schizophrenia ruse. No, that's not fair. Let's think about this story about Nick Reiner having schizophrenia. Yeah. and how TMZ gets this information. Yeah.

You'd have to think one of the thoughts I had was, one of the thoughts I had was, is he malingering? Is this story real? Because let's just assume for the sake of argument that the story is leaked to CMZ by his defense attorney. Okay. The defense attorney obviously is trying to set up a narrative

where Nick Reiner has severe mental illness, specifically schizophrenia. And now he's probably angling for something like an insanity defense. Yes. Right. Schizophrenia would put you well on the path towards insanity. Absolutely. And so schizophrenia, if you can prove that there's schizophrenia.

Now, I don't doubt the part of the story that where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia? Yeah. That supposedly that some, obviously some psychiatrists would have to verify this in court, but let's say that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and let's say there were med changes. I'm not saying that that's not accurate or real, but I think you'd have to ask the question, if this gets leaked to the press and they're kind of trying to set up a potential insanity defense, right? Schizophrenia makes a lot of sense. But then you'd have to ask, okay, Well, if he was really diagnosed with schizophrenia, then the schizophrenia part has to be real, right? Right.

Like what would be his goal in trying to malinger with schizophrenia a month or two months ago or a year ago or whatever, right? Right. The answer to that is simple to me. And that is, if he has schizophrenia, he never has to leave the home. Interesting. Yeah. Right? If Nick Reiner is dependent upon his parents for everything, and forever.

Everything. Why not one way, I think one way to solidify that dependency is to have schizophrenia. And again, I'm not, I'm not suggesting he doesn't. I don't know. But you have to look at his motivation, right? Is he, does he have schizophrenia? Let's ask that question. And again, I'm not saying, does he have schizophrenia?

Or is this someone who figured out a way like he did in rehab when he wanted Will Butrin. Did he figure out a way to stay in the Reiner guest home forever? Yeah, that's interesting. It's an interesting idea. So if he doesn't have schizophrenia, there's certainly going to be more pressure on him to leave at some point. Correct. There's going to be more pressure on him to grow up, how we know that Rob and Nick have had massive fights over this issue. they both acknowledge that.

They were fighting on the set of being Charlie. And at one point, like I said, Nick did suffer from homelessness because his parents did the tough love thing. Yeah. You know, which they changed course on that. So did that schizophrenia diagnosis help that? Help them to switch course too.

Or a possible diagnosis. Yeah. Who knows? Right. So I think that's going to lead us. So I don't know. No, by the way. I'm not arguing if he's malingering.

I want to say that I believe that all these treatment facilities and all these psychiatrists that have worked with him and prescribed medications, I believe that they're going to get this right. You're throwing out the possibilities that you look at as a psychologist. Right. I think what's interesting to me here is this story about him malingering around being crazy, him saying, I'm going to show them I'm crazy, so I get Will Butron works. So is it possible that he could have been malingering around schizophrenia to get it to get his way,

which I think would have to do with the fact that it doesn't want to leave home? Yeah. I knew about investing, but I really didn't know how to go about it. Meet Corey, a Walthfront client. With Welfront, it could put money in and it would automatically destroy. distribute it into a diversified portfolio. Then it starts to compound. The compounding compounds on the compounding.

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Let's, let's, so I've covered, I've covered more than I anticipated already. but I want to narrow in now on this. So let's assume, let's say for the sake of argument that Nick does have schizophrenia. I've already kind of defined schizophrenia a little bit. The important thing to know about schizophrenia for our discussion going forward is there are, there are, in schizophrenia, there's positive symptoms and there's negative symptoms. The positive symptoms are what I would call the active symptoms. So the positive symptoms include things like delusions.

hallucinations. So a delusion is basically a false belief. A hallucination is a misperception of reality. It's a skewed. There's auditory hallucinations. There's visual hallucinations. Very rarely, there's olfactory hallucinations which are related to smell. You almost never see those. The most common hallucinations are visual. Those are the ones I think we think of and we think of schizophrenia. So I think, you know, typically delusions and allusionations are the most common active components or positive symptoms. And then the negative symptoms we talked about, which is very restricted affect or like a severe reduction in emotional expression. This is going to be important down the road as we talk a little bit more about schizophrenia.

To get a diagnosis of schizophrenia, typically you need two or more of the five criteria for schizophrenia, which are delusions, hallucinations, disorganized thought or speech, disorganize or kinotic behavior, and one of the negative symptoms. You also need at least one of the three. In other words, you need a delusion, hallucinations, or disorganized thought or speech. So disorganized thought or speech, by the way, would be. something like somebody who's speaking in word sound. So somebody who's,

they're talking to you, but they're making no sense. They're making up words possibly, right? That would be an example of the third criteria, which is disorganized thought or speech. So I think maybe some of us have seen that. I was taking our Sunday McDonald's a couple of weeks ago.

Sadly, parenting for you. Sadly, there was, yeah, sadly, sadly there was this homeless, there was this homeless person.

who was walking through the parking lot and he was talking nonsense of fashion, right? He made no sense. I couldn't tell if he was hallucinating. And our son has never seen that. And he turned to me and he said, dad, what's going on? What's going? He was afraid. Oh, that's right.

He told me about that. I didn't realize the whole. He said, dad, I don't, he's making no sense. He's making no sense, right? That's an example of disorganized speech. Yeah. And maybe hallucinations. He didn't look like he was hallucinating, but, but,

clearly I recognize schizophrenia and my child was with me. I know enough that I know the research on schizophrenia and violence, which by the way, while there is some association between schizophrenia and violence, most, the vast, vast majority of people with schizophrenia are not ever violent, right? That violence is still a rarity among people with schizophrenia. And it's also important to note that schizophrenia occurs along a spectrum. So if you think of a line, right, like if you draw a line, horizontal line, and on one end,

you have completely rational thought, which I don't know if anyone in this country has that at the moment. But if you say that over here, somebody is completely attuned to reality and that their perceptions mirror the real world, and that they make really good rational decisions based on the information and the evidence that they're getting from the environment, that's over here. And then if you go to the other end of that spectrum and you say this is a diagnosis of schizophrenia and someone has lost complete touch with reality, those are the two extremes. Right. And between those extremes, you're going to get, on this end, you're going to get someone who's lost contact with reality a little bit. And then you're going to have something like delusions here. So delusions are actually closer on the spectrum.

Delusions are actually closer to rational thought than the other end of the extreme, which is schizophrenia itself. So if you go to the other end of the screen extreme or to this line, the spectrum, where somebody has lost complete contact with reality, when you come off from that, you're going to get to something like schizoaffective disorder, which basically is schizophrenia with a mood disorder. And then you're going to further and from there, you're going to get to something like brief psychotic disorder would be kind of in the middle because it's brief, right? It could be temporary.

So it's important to note that when we talk about schizophrenia, we're talking about something that has variance. Yeah. It's not one thing. It's not this unitary entity. It's a range. And that's important, too, because. There are differences between delusions, which tend to be more on the rational side. They're not rational, by the way, but they're closer to being rational than someone who's lost complete contact with reality.

Let me, since we're going to dive into this, I want to read a little bit of the statistics on this. This is from an article, Schizophrenia and Criminal Offending. This is by Tangstrom et al. It's schizophrenia and criminal offending. The role of psychopathy and substance use disorders. It's from 2004. The journal is the criminal justice and behavior. I'm just going to, they give some statistics,

and I think these are useful statistics because they have such a large sample size. They happen to be using a Danish cohort. I'm going to quote them here. This is on page 368. Quote, the criminality of a Danish cohort that included more than 358,000 persons was, examined. So that's a lot. That's a really good sample. This is a great sample for a research project. And men with schizophrenia, men with schizophrenia were found to be 4.6 times more likely to be

convicted of violent offenses than men who had never been admitted to psychiatric wards. It's not a huge amount, by the way, but it is significant. women with schizophrenia were 23.2 times more likely to have convictions for violent offenses than women with no psychiatric admissions. However, this is an important point. However, only 11.3% of the men and 2.3% of the women who develop schizophrenia committed violent offenses. In other words, schizophrenia doesn't equate violence. Correct. And not only that, so of the people in the sample that were violent, 90% of men and 98% of women never engaged in any violent behavior. Okay, yeah, that's important.

So it's important to state that although the research can associate schizophrenia with violence, schizophrenia does not cause the violence. There's an association, but there's not. a direct causal path between schizophrenia and violence. Okay, that's interesting. On this issue, I want to do, I want to talk about a few of the bigger research studies that have kind of shaped this dialogue about schizophrenia and violence. Probably one of the most important early articles on this was from 2004.

The title of this article is, you won't be able to see it here, but criminal offending and schizophrenia over a 25-year period marked by de-institutional. and increasing prevalence of comorbid substance use disorders. That's a mouthful. I'm like processing that. That's, that's, it's by Wallace et al. It is in, I'm trying to, the American Journal of Psychiatry 2004. I'm going to summarize their main findings just quickly.

Their findings were essentially that patients with schizophrenia have more criminal convictions than patients without schizophrenia. Patients with schizophrenia have more substance use problems than patients without schizophrenia. However, substance use was not the cause of the violence. Their finding essentially was that although there's an association between schizophrenia and criminal convictions specifically for violence, there's multiple factors that contribute to the violence, including substance abuse,

but substance abuse wasn't definitive. So in other words, schizophrenia, their finding essentially was, I'm going to read this here. This study demonstrated a significant association between having schizophrenia and having a higher frequency of criminal convictions compared to the general population. Their final finding or their final conclusion essentially is that schizophrenia is a risk factor for violence or potential violence. So this was 2004.

A more rigorous study on the same issue was released by Fiselle, Sina Fiselle, at L, from 2009. Okay. The title of the research article is schizophrenia and violence, schizophrenia and violence, systematic review and meta-analysis. They looked at a number of studies and samples between 1970 and 2009, and what they found was the following, quote. Their conclusion was, quote, schizophrenia and other psychoses are associated with violence and violent offending,

particularly homicide. However, most of the excess risk appears to be mediated by substance abuse comorbidity. The risk in these patients with comorbidity is similar to that for substance abuse without psychosis. In other words, this first study I talked about, this is contradicting that. This is saying that, yes, there's a relationship

between schizophrenia and other psychoses and violence. However, I'm going to read this. Quote, this is on page. The page is this. Page seven. Quote, the increased risk of violence and schizophrenia and the psychosis comorbital with substance abuse was not different than the risk of violence

and individuals with diagnoses of substance use disorders. In other words, that's the important point. In other words, quote, schizophrenia and other psychoses did not appear to add any additional risk to that conferred by the substance abuse alone. This is important because their argument is, and they used a much larger sample, by the way, And then the first article I just cited, it's that substance abuse can explain violence as much or more than schizophrenia alone. Yeah. So their argument is actually that schizophrenia may not be a significant risk factor, that the real risk factor is actually substance abuse.

And so we see how this comes into play, obviously, with Nick Reiner. Because even if you argue that he has schizophrenia, you can't argue if you're going to go with this research. Right. You can't argue that the schizophrenia causes the violence. You can't argue that it caused. What you can argue more compellingly is that the substance abuse plays a larger role in the violence. And therefore, if you follow this research, you can't go, you can't, well, you can't, you can't, you can try to, but it would be more difficult to go in the direction of insanity. because it's not the schizophrenia necessarily that's the determinative factor.

It's the substance abuse, especially with the belief and the statements from a number of sources that Nick Reiner appeared to be tweaking. He appeared to be using potentially methamphetamine. We don't know what drugs, but probably some type of stimulants. It could have been more. It could have been alcohol, right? So what was it? Was he, you know, there's a number of ways to argue this.

Was it, was it the substance abuse that let's say that he had schizophrenia and let's say he was using methamphetamines. Did the methamphetamines exacerbate any symptoms of schizophrenia he had? Or was it the other way around? Was he hallucinating because he was doing too much methamphetamine? Right? I don't know. This gets very confusing. Yeah.

Very confusing. Right. But we have some things to think about. It's interesting. Yeah, exactly. So let's take a little deeper into this. So that's a little bit of the research. There's a lot more research on this topic, by the way.

We'll be digging into. But TMZ reported a couple of interesting things. So TMZ reported that there was the diagnosis of schizophrenia, that he had a medication change and that he was, quote, out of his head. and acting more aggressively a few weeks before the murder, right? They reported that. There is, by the way, an interesting story by a cinematographer that was very close to Rob Reiner. His name is Barry Markowitz.

He was one of Rob's closest friends and longtime collaborators. He actually stayed with the Reiner's. Okay. He stayed with the Reiner's for five days. Barry Markowitz. Like within two weeks of the murders, he stays with the Reiner. He's staying in the home, right? He didn't know it was then. Within two weeks of the murder.

Within two weeks. Okay. Okay. He's living with them. He's interacting with them. He's eating meals with them. Here's what he says about Nick. Quote, he, Nick, Nick looked great. This is, by the way, this is from a page six article. Quote, Nick looked great. He was sitting and talking with the family market which shared.

They were eating dinner together old school and there was a lot of love. Always a lot of love. Nick helped out. He took out the garbage. He watched TV. He washed dishes. He'd bring me something to drink. He was just normal in that sense, Markowitz said.

He said he didn't, quote, notice anything strange with the family dynamics. He says, quote, I'm not here to judge anyone. Love is the only thing I saw, and I don't think it was fake. They had a real bond. He said, quote, Rob never gave up. He tried everything. If you know Rob, he was a bundle of love. Rob never had fears for his safety.

I'm not in his head, but we talked. He said Nick wasn't a violent type. Two weeks before the murders. So this friend, Barry Markowitz, I mean, and again, I don't know what's real here, right? But like, for some, for people that are arguing that he's, his meds are changing and he's agitated and he's acting out and he's being more aggressive, that's not. what Barry Markowitz is seen. Right. Yeah. So is the schizophrenia or is this a narrative that the defense is floating?

I mean, it's a great defense. It's a great defense. Well, I think people sometimes get confused about this defense because even if you're acquitted with an insanity defense, even if you get acquitted, that doesn't mean you're not going to spend the rest of your life in a mental health institution. It means that it does, what it does mean is you probably won't get the death penalty, right? You may be in a mental institution the rest of your life, but you won't be put to death. It means that if you're in a mental institution and you seem to be improving and you get to the point where people like forensic evaluators believe that you're low risk in the community, you might get released.

So the insanity defense gives you a chance to get released, whereas a conviction on murder one gives you no chance. Right. It's a big deal. Big deal. It's a big deal. But Markowitz, just... Throwing that out there. Throwing it out there. I don't know. It's another view. It's another view. And Markowitz is presenting a picture of Nick Reiner that's not having all these problems.

Yeah. And not getting... He's not quote out of his head. Before I switched to Wellfront, my APY was probably 0.1. Once I switched to Ching, with a Wellfront cash account, earn up to 4.2% APY on your cash. I can trust Wellfront is taking care of me. Make your money earn more. Get started at Wealthfront.com. Clients were paid $1,000 for their testimonials, creating a conflict of interest.

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Two weeks within the murder, there's talk of new medication. Could he have started the medication after Markowitz was there? He could have. But I think a lot of these talks about, types of medications, antipsychotics, depends on which ones he's taking, but they might take a little bit of time to kick in. So for him to, to him to have an immediate, let's say Markowitz was there roughly 10 days before the murders. I don't know the exact timeline here. I wouldn't be surprised if the prosecution, for example, called someone like Markowitz because he was

in the home for five days, right? He might be able to testify to the fact that Nix seemed perfectly fine. So, yes, it's possible that Nick could have been prescribed the medication and taking the medication after Markowitz left. Yes, that's certainly possible. And again, all the timelines will be examined and perused and right critiqued. And so yeah, but I think even if that's the case, I don't know that he would have had an immediate aggressive response. He might have. I mean, there's certainly some antipsychotics that are a lot of antipsychotics, by the way, like quitaipine, for example, they act more like sediments.

Okay. You know, not all. I mean, it depends on the antipsychotic, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, but, the, but, the, though, a lot of psychiatrists will give, uh, antipsychotics to sedate. Right. It calms people down. Right. It calms their thoughts down. It calms their bodies down. Right. They'll give them antipsychotics to sedate them, not to

agitate them. Right. Not to make them more violent. Right. And so I don't know. Like that doesn't fit either. Interesting. But here, so this, for our discussion about schizophrenia and violence, there's another TMZ story, I think, that a lot of of people haven't seen or heard. Okay. And that is the second part of the story. That that according to sources close to the to Nick or close to what's going on, the story they reported. And again, I'm going to I'm going to accept this because they seem to have some inside right sources here. Okay.

Do you think good with their inside sources? I'll give them that. Yeah, especially in Hollywood, right? Like yeah. What they said in the story is that Nick was not able to understand why he was put in jail because he believed there was a conspiracy against him. Yeah. He was aware of the crime. They're saying he was aware of his crime and that he's had some break with reality, right? Which may or may not be consistent with schizophrenia.

But there's the interesting part of this is that he believed, he didn't understand why he was in jail because he believed there was a vast, maybe not vast, that's my term. He believed that there was a conspiracy against him. What does this show? Right. What does this show? If true, what does it show? What does it show?

Right. It shows the possibility of persecutory delusions. He believes he's being persecuted. Now, this is where it gets interesting. So let's remember the spectrum with schizophrenia over here? Yeah. Boom. delusions more closer to the normal side.

Delusions and then. Okay. Well, over here another. There's a couple of, there's, there's research that suggests that the, the positive symptoms of schizophrenia, in other words, what's called them active symptoms of schizophrenia? Because the negative, the negative symptoms aren't, the negative symptoms are essentially the absence of symptoms. Yeah.

Right. Like if you have no affect, you're not actively doing anything. Yeah. You're just, you know, you're just robotic, right? You're just a puppet. You're just sitting there, right? So there's significant research out there showing that the active phase or symptoms or acute phase of schizophrenia with either delusions or hallucinations is more associated with violence. So if this is true, if Nick indeed is having persecutory delusions,

then I think the risk for violence go up. And the reason that is because historically people who believe they're being persecuted and they have delusions about it, they occasionally, not all the time, not often, but they occasionally engage in what would be considered violent preemptive strikes against their perceived enemies or persecutors

because they're afraid all the time. Paranoid. They're paranoid, exactly. So there's some paranoid, paranoia and fear that, you know, they're being followed or that. And so it's not, let's just, let's just follow this where it could lead, right? Or follow this in terms of where it might lead to murders. It's not hard to imagine. And there is a little confusion here, though, because if you're using a lot of math, like, you're going to have paranoia too, right?

Like, trying to separate those things is going to be hard. Yeah. It's not hard to imagine. Let's just imagine that Rob and Michelle, there was some speculation that they asked him to leave the home again. That's been disconfirmed. Or that's been proven false that they didn't ask him to leave the home. However, what if they asked him to go back to treatment? What if they asked him to go back to rehab? It's not hard to imagine that somebody like Nick may have seen them, may have seen his parents

as part of this conspiracy. Interesting. And they may have seen, he may have seen his parents as persecutors. Interesting. That were colluding with everybody. They were colluding with other people in Hollywood, right? And so that's a possible motive. That's interesting, that they were part of the collusion or the conspiracy against him.

Could that also be a victim mindset too, though? Like a, which, you know, tends for me to think of sort of a personality disorder, like this victim mindset or is that something completely different? No, that's different. Okay. So, yeah, that's a little different. You have this possibility here of delusions, right? And I mean, it's an interesting story.

And I think it's a story that's kind of been lost in the shuffle here, that people are mainly focusing on schizophrenia, when maybe they should be focusing on this idea that he was delusional. And I think that might fit this narrative a little better in terms of that Nick doesn't seem to be, you know, according to a lot of people, and maybe this is because of medication, but he doesn't seem to be completely divorced from reality. So maybe he's more towards the middle of the spectrum. Yeah. Maybe this is more about delusions.

This is from a study. by Douglas, Guy, and Hart from 2009. It's in the journal Psychological Bulletin. The title of it is psychosis as a risk factor for violence to others, a meta-analysis. Their basic finding, I'll just read this quickly. Their basic finding is, quote, the findings are our meta-analysis provided strong support for the view that psychosis and violence are associated with one another,

albeit the small, that the effect size was resourable. was small. In other words, there is an association, but it's not a tremendously strong association. But here's one of the things they say. At the level of symptom, positive symptoms, which are what I'm calling the active parts of schizophrenia, so hallucinations and delusions, positive symptoms were significantly more strongly related to violence that were negative symptoms, providing some support for the causal models that emphasize these types of symptoms. Positive? The positive symptoms are delusions and illusions. Okay, okay, okay, got it.

So it's, it's, if you drill down, if you, if you, by the way, psychosis is a broader term. So psychosis would be, psychosis is a, is also considered a break from reality in some sense, but psychosis would be a broader term that encompasses schizophrenia. Yeah. And any type of break with reality. So psychosis would encompass not just schizophrenia, but maybe like a drug-induced, let's say a methamphetamine-induced break from reality. Yeah. That would be part of that larger umbrella of what psychosis would be considered. But the important point here is that when you drill down a little bit and look at schizophrenia,

it turns out that delusions and hallucinations are the components that may be the most responsible for violence. Yeah. And on that note, so we, so one of those would be. be delusions and specifically persecutory delusions. The other part of this would be related to hallucinations. And more specifically, there's a type of hallucination called the command hallucination. This is from a research article by McNeil, Al from 2000.

It's from Psychiatric Services, the journal Psychiatric Services. The title of the article is the relationship between command hallucinations and violence. they looked at a sample of 103 psychiatric inpatients, and they were trying to find out what percentage of these patients had command hallucinations and whether that was associated with violence. They found that 30% of their patients reported they had command hallucinations.

Of the patients that had command hallucinations, the risk of harm to others was twice as likely to involve violent. Violence, even when the analysis controlled for demographic variables, substance abuse, and social desirability. So in other words, the biggest risk factor for violence in their sample

was the command hallucinations. So you're probably asking, what is a command hallucination? That's what I'm wondering. Okay. That would probably would. We should have a list of all the vocabulary words and all the terms we learn each time.

We should have a, right, we should put up a list of terms so that I don't confuse people. A command hallucination is basically a false auditory. So a command hallucination is going to be auditory. I told you that there's visual and auditory hallucinations. Command hallucinations are primarily auditory. A command hallucination is a false auditory perception of being ordered to do something. And so these are the, these are actually, if you,

you think about, these are the types of things you see in movies where somebody hears a voice, right? When you say someone hears voices, what a command hallucination is, is when you hear a voice and that voice orders you to do something, oftentimes it orders you to do something violent. These are the types of, like in movies, you'll see the cliche, like God told me to do it. Yeah. That's a command hallucination. So if you hear a voice that says, for example, God told me to murder this person because he's evil, that would be a command to hallucination. So that's the other part of schizophrenia where there's a higher risk of violence, is when you have a command hallucination and some authority or some person is ordering you to do something,

and you do it, you carry it out. The part that's not talked about as much is that a lot of people have schizophrenics may have command to hallucinations, but they don't obey the command. Yeah. So just because you have the command doesn't mean you're going to do something. I'm going to read a quote from this study on command hallucinations. The COC association between command hallucinations. I'll wait for that.

That's interesting. Quote, a substantial proportion, this is, I'm quote, this is from page 1291. Quote, a substantial proportion of patients in our study reported compliance, with command hallucinations to harm others, and patients who reported command hallucinations reported higher rates of violence than did other patients. The association between command hallucinations and violence held up,

even when the analysis controlled for demographic burials, substance abuse, and social desirability expanse sense. So the association between command hallucinations and violence held up, even in controlled, even in analysis controlled for demographic variables, substance abuse. So in other words, if you, so one of the things,

one of the things you do, one of the things you try to do in a study is you try to figure out what variables are influencing what. And what they're saying is that you want to control certain variables so that those aren't the variables that are making the difference. So in other words, like what they're trying to do is they're trying to roll out when they say demographic variables,

they're trying to rule out age. They're trying to rule out gender. They're trying to rule out substance abuse, right? That's what they did. Yeah. So when you rule out these other factors that play a role in schizophrenia and possible violence, and you're left with the fact that the command of hallucinations are,

we call it, they're accounting for the largest proportion of variance. That's the term of psychologist with you. A simple way to put that is that it's explaining more. It's explaining more of why. the violence occurred. Thank you for the simple term. It's explaining more why the violence occurred. Right.

Thank you. So what they found was that the command hallucinations were explaining more about why the violence occurred than age, gender, substance abuse, social economic status, right? All these different variables. Yeah. This is important because it's consistent with the research showing that perhaps these positive active components or symptoms of schizophrenia are more responsible for violence in schizophrenia than the other elements of schizophrenia. Okay. All right. So we've got, we've talked about schizophrenia and substance abuse and how these studies sort of, one study says substance abuse doesn't matter, the other study

says it does. Let's talk about another component of this research on schizophrenia that's really important that I think is sometimes neglected. Okay. And that has to do with personality disorders, specifically psychopathy. I have a lot of questions there, as do a lot of people online. A lot of people that said they think Nick is a psychopath. Okay. Just so you know. So I read from, I just read from this article,

psychosis is a risk factor for violence to others. Okay. And I read that the main finding of the study was that there was a link between psychosis and violence, but it was small. Yeah. The effect size. So effect size, for those who don't know, let me see if I can summarize simply what effect size is. Effect size is impact. When an effect size is large, that means the association is meaningful and impactful. When the effect size... We got to pay attention. When the effect size is small, it means that, you know, there's some relationship, but it's not necessarily impactful. Maybe, maybe not. Right. Yeah.

So here, there's a part of this study that if you don't read it carefully, you'll miss this, but this is so important. Okay. And here it is. Quote, the effect size for psychosis appears meaningfully smaller than that for psychopathy. Oh. Yeah. In other words, it's more likely psychopathy.

Correct. And not only that, so I'm going to go back to an article I talked about earlier, which is schizophrenia and criminal offending. And the subtitle of this article is the role of psychopathy and substance use disorders. Oh, wow. Okay. Their main finding. That title, let me just look at that. That title just has everything in it.

Schizophrenia and criminal offending, the role of psychopathy and substance abuse or use disorder. So that's like almost like is like every speculation on. on Nick Reiner rolled into one title. Right. Okay. So I'm listening. Their main finding is simple. And I'll just,

I'll summarize it here. These findings suggest that among offenders with psychopathic traits, the traits, not substance abuse, are associated with criminal offending. And that includes members of this study, which were 202 men with schizophrenia and 78 of those men with primary diagnoses of psychopathy

that they looked at all these various configurations of substance abuse, schizophrenia, psychopathy, and criminal offending. And what they found was the biggest determinant of criminal offending was psychopathy and not schizophrenia. There you go.

And not substance. abuse. There you go. That's interesting. And so most likely. Among offenders, among offenders with schizophrenia, those with high psychopathy scores committed more crimes than those with low psychopathy scores. Okay. Among non-mentally ill offenders, normal patients, among non-mentally ill offenders with psychopathy and schizophrenic offenders with high psychopathy scores, those with and with, and without substance use disorders committed on average similar numbers of offenses. So in other words, it's the psychopathy that's leading to the crime, to the crimes. Okay. Yeah, a lot of people bringing that up online, so you just bladed out as likelihood.

I'm going to read from another study here quickly on this topic. I've done a lot of research tonight. Neurobiological correlates of violent behavior among persons with schizophrenia. This is by Nodz and Hodgkins from 2005. It's from a journal called Schizophrenia Voluntin. This is on page 562. Quote, persons with schizophrenia, who engage in violent behavior, constitute a very heterogeneous population.

Some display a history of antisocial behavior from a very early age. Others begin engaging in antisocial behavior around the time schizophrenia onsets. Others commit only one violent attack in their lives, while others behave aggressively only when acutely psychotic. In other words, what they're saying is similar to what I just said, that a lot of violent behavior involves or tends to involve, and the research supports the idea that there's some antisocial component involved

in schizophrenia and violence, right? So it's not the schizophrenia, it's not the substance abuse, it's this antisocial or perhaps psychopathic component or psychopathic traits that's really driving the violence. Okay. Now, does Nick Reiner is Nick Reiner a psychopath?

I cannot answer that. We don't know. And, you know, I don't know enough about him. Not diagnosed. I haven't interviewed him, right? But they're just looking at research. Right. We're looking at research.

And it certainly seems that it's possible to imagine that some of the descriptions from some of the sources about his behavior, even going back to, let's go back to Alana Zay. right, the throwing the vase. Yeah. Like the yoga teacher, in other words. The yoga teacher slash author who talked about Little Nikki throwing a vase. Little Nicky throwing a vase isn't necessarily psychopathic. No. If he's throwing the vase to try to harm someone.

We don't know. And he doesn't have anything or something. And he doesn't have any empathy for the person he's trying to harm. Well, you know, now that's getting a little more interesting. terms of thinking about psychopathy. But, but, but I think it's interesting that a lot of this research that specifically looking at schizophrenia and violence is trying to tie in these components. Yeah.

That it does seem like, and again, it depends on the study, right? But it does seem like these three elements have some correlation and that some of these components seem to matter more than others. On a counter note, I will say this, that I'm going to read, I'm going to read a quote, this is from Heilbrun. This is an article, or this is a chapter that Hyalbrun wrote in a book called Psychological

Science in the courtroom. His chapter title is called Violence, Risk Assessment, which is something I do. Here's what Hyalbram said about this whole thing. Quote, this is page 348. The book was from 2009. Quote, despite the presence of literally hundreds of studies that address this question, it remains unclear whether mental illness is related to violence.

So in other words, I just cited a bunch of research that shows a lot of different things. And guess what? There's no consensus, right? There's really no, at the end of the day, there's no absolute consensus about what causes violence, whether it's schizophrenia, whether it's mental illness, right? Whether it's... So you're saying all this time, we spent all this time and you're like, I don't know. I don't know.

No, I'm not saying that. I'm just throwing out a bit of a disclaimer here. I'm saying that it's complicated. Okay. And I'm saying that although this research is interesting and it certainly is, it has some interesting conclusions that I think are valid. There are many studies that contradict each other in this area. And there's a lot of research in this area.

And there's no definitive answer. Yeah, that's fair. Introducing Taco Bell's new jalapino citrus salsa with bright citrus, real red jalapinos, guahillo chilis. Usually, you add sauce to the food, but when the sauce is this good, the food is just there to get the sauce to your mouth. That rolled cassidia, not a rolled cassidia anymore. Now it's a sauce shovel.

Taco Bell's jalapeno citrus salsa. Get it with any item on the canteen of chicken menu while it's here. The participating U.S. Taco Bell locations for a limited time only while supplies last. Contact store for availability. So there's a researcher by the name of Eric Elbegin who has done a, who's made this argument strongly, by the way. He has an article here. This is more recent. This is 2016.

This is from the journal Psychological Sciences. Clinical Psychological Science is the journal. Title of the article is Beyond Mental Illness. targeting stronger and more direct pathways to violence. I'm not going to have the time here to break down this whole argument, but what I will say is this, just to quickly summarize some of his findings. He's doing this research to try to support a model of aggression,

which is called the I-Cubed model. I don't want to open that door because that'll be 20 minutes. But the I-Cube model or the I-Cube theory is actually fascinating and I think it has a lot, it's very compelling. He finds evidence in his research to support this model, but when he's looking at, when he's looking at those components of mental illness that have an impact on violence, he's narrowing it down to components that he fills are the most important. And some of the most important variables that he's finding, guess what? They're not psychosis.

They're not schizophrenia. What they are, the number one risk factor he's finding is age. And you and I have talked about this a lot, right? I've talked about that one of the, there's in risk assessment, there are what are called dynamic risk factors and static risk factors. Static risk factors are risk factors that do not change. Right. Age doesn't change.

Yeah. Or if it does, I guess it changes slowly. Or if you ask me, it changes too much, too fast. right? Yeah, I think for me too. I wish I could slow it down. Me too. Happy birthday to be next week.

Yeah, right. I know. Yeah, your next Saturday. Yeah, again. Yeah, happy birthday. Thank you. You know, I don't know if I should say that to you because I feel like you're, we celebrate your birthday all months.

So, which is good, which is good. Yeah, exactly. That age is a risk factor in the sense that there's a ton of research showing that younger people commit more crimes, older people don't. That could be sex offenses, that could be violent offenses. It's all the same, right? And his research shows the same thing. The second risk factor, guess what?

Alcohol abuse and dependence. So substance abuse. That's the second, right? Obviously that applies to Nick Reiner. Another one, the third one is gender. Males consistently and significantly commit more violence than females. That's a well-established fact. Empirical fact.

And this, so this is one of the more interesting ones, by the way. And this is one he emphasizes a lot. You ready for this? It's really simple. Ready. But he believes, and he's shown through a lot of his research, he just recently wrote a book called Mental Illness and Violence, by the way, where he really amplifies this argument.

He believes that one of the biggest, most significant risk factors for violence is, you ready for this? Anger. Well. Anger. Here we are. Anger has a more significant influence on, according to him, on violent behavior than schizophrenia. Yeah. Or psychosis or any of them.

And what do we know about the night that they were murdered? that he was allegedly angry, and that is dad. And there was an angry Nick Reiner at Conan O'Brien's Christmas Party. This is what Elbegon says. I'm going to quote him here because I think this is interesting. This is page 753. He says, quote, although in any one individual case,

serious mental illness may be of greater or lesser importance with the population of violent individual study, it played a much less significant, and less direct role than society has been led to believe. So in other words, schizophrenia, right? Psychosis plays a much less direct role. I'm going to continue to quote. It is understandable that society would hope for a straightforward answer to the problem of violence

to be able to focus on a subpopulation, i.e. schizophrenics, that can be fairly consistently identified that is already stigmatized within the population as a whole, and who may have fewer resources to counter such characterizations, either as individuals or group members, might help to contain our anxiety around the potential of being violently victimized. So what he's saying essentially is that people with schizophrenia

are given a bad, a bum rap, and that this research isn't accurately reflecting the fact that schizophrenia does not have the significant correlation with violence, especially when you apply it to models of aggression like the I-cubed model. Which just anger has even more. Anger, right. Anger is, in his mind, anger is, he calls it, it's a dispositional factor, dispositional force because anger is more of a function of one's personality.

anger is one of the key elements of... So what I'm getting at is schizophrenia isn't like that powerful of a defense. Is this where... I mean, this... I've been waiting for this. This access, Hollywood. I was actually going to cover that in a future

show. But you brought it up at the beginning. You said this Billy Bush interview. And I haven't stared at that. I did. I read a part of the Billy Bush interview. You're going to say that for next time? Yeah, we're going to say that. I mean, you're talking about anchor though.

Let's give a tease. We'll talk about it in the next one too. Access Hollywood, 2016 interview with Billy Bush. No, let's wait. That's, we got to hold back some material. We can't like, we got to have some. People are going to forget.

We can rinse and repeat. We can like bring it up again. Just give it, give a little teaser. We're going to go into it. We're going to dig deep. But you're talking about anger here. That is anger right there. Okay.

Well, okay, fine. You want to read it? Yeah. Okay. So, yeah, this read it. Access Hollywood 2016 interview with Billy Bush. We all remember when Billy Bush was on Access Hollywood, don't we? I was an emotional kid who had problems and I was not so fond of myself.

That's what Nick Reiner says, I assume. Yes. Okay. Because that wasn't quote. And then Billy Bush, he was fiery. The dad in the movie is this. Is that, are you saying? Let me read it.

Thank you. Take it back. See what happens when you take over the show? I know. It doesn't work. So I want to talk about this. Okay. This is from the 216 interview with Rob Reiner, Billy Bush, with Access Hollywood,

interviewing Rob and Nick Reiner. They're sitting across from him. Nick says, I was an emotional kid, quote, I was an emotional kid who had problems and I was not so fond of myself. Billy Bush says he was fiery talking about Rob in the movie. Nick says talking about himself, not the character in the movie. Nick says, quote, I get crazy. You don't want to set me off.

Rob laughs when Nick says that. For everyone, it's different. For me, the noise was basically, you know, living in the family that I live in and catching heat for that sort of stuff. And also just- For being a Reiner? I guess. I mean, that's, people would like to think that's a real bigger deal than it actually is. But it's really like, I was an emotional kid who had problems and I just was not so fond of myself. So I kind of, you know, had problems in that way. But in terms of the thing you were saying before, it's like, I think that our relationship was not as it was portrayed in the film. Like there were this sort of like holding the line and being tough. But like, we didn't ever argue like quite like that. I mean, we did, I guess, to a degree, but it was never...

He was fiery. You don't seem very fiery to me. You seem like you might just... I get crazy. I get crazy. Yeah. You don't want to set me off. You're both... No, we're both... We both can get pretty... You don't roll easily either, so... No, we can both get pretty hot, and there were times when we did get hot, but... But you weren't cold like that. He was very loving and compassion. I just think that he didn't really know what to do. Rob actually laughs. Like, is that a nervous laugh? like, why is he laughing, right?

I mean, and also, by the way, that moment, so when your son says, I get crazy, you don't want to set me off, and you laugh, like, and you laugh. In a way, that's a moment. That's an emotional bid for connection. I agree. And so by his father laughing it off and being like,

ah, right? That goes back to this issue of connection. Here's what Rob says in response. Quote, we both can get pretty hot, and there were times when we did get hot. So in other words, he sort of dismisses what Nick said, excuses it, and says that's both of us. Nick says later or around this time in the interview, quote, I was a real nutcase.

I was crazy. It was more than drugs. Right. So that speaks to, right, that speaks to this issue of anger. See, we need to bring that up. You can start with it next time, but that's important to what you're saying, anger. And if you, if you drill down a little bit, let's, let's, let's, let's, stroll down a little bit more even, right?

Let's drill down more than schizophrenia, substance abuse, psychopathy, and we can relate it to this quote to some degree. There's some research out there showing, surprise, surprise, there's some research showing. So this is from Lazalo and Hockinen from 2006.

They say in their study that the strongest predictor of excessive violence among their sample of patients with schizophrenia was a past history of violence. Right? Like anger and it's not just anger, right? It's anger and violent ideation. This is the key. Yeah.

This is the key. The key is, so you can have schizophrenia, but if you don't have, have any violent ideation or violent fantasies or right or or unconscious repressed anger that that that that some violent component you're probably not going to become violent yeah this this page here nick riner show part four miscellaneous this is the page i've been looking for looking forward to this whole show probably because i like miscellaneous i'm you know but uh so you're saying though

next next time yeah things to look forward to next time but thank you for reading that that that that Access Hollywood 2016 interview with Bully Bush. We'll save the rest for later to be next time. Next time. This is interesting. What I do want to say is as long as we're talking about this point is that one of the biggest cliches and truisms in forensic work and forensic science and forensic evaluations is really simple, which is that past violence begets future violence.

So that's what we're talking about here. And let's talk about, I want to read. So one of the first studies I talked about tonight was the Wallace study, which is the 25-year analysis of schizophrenia and violence. Let's go back to that for a minute. And I want to quote Wallace, too. I don't think Wallace understands kind of, well, I take it back. That Wallace kind of points to this issue indirectly. And here's what he says.

a persons with pre-existing predispositions to violent and criminal behavior become even more prone to offending when they develop schizophrenia. In other words, he says it right here. It takes a violent person. It's not the predisposition. It's not schizophrenia. It's the predisposition to violence. To violence.

Right. Grow in schizophrenia. And so you could argue on this point, you could argue that, for example, that psychopaths are more predisposed to violence as well because they have no remorse, they have no conscience, they have

no empathy, right? The qualities or traits of a psychopath lead to violence for a lot of reasons, but that's why psychopathy potentially is a more influential element in violence than schizophrenia. Schizophrenia may exacerbate

An already violent person with an already violent psychopath. But it's not the symptoms of schizophrenia that necessarily, unless maybe it's command to hallucinations or persecutory delusions, right? Like, I mean, again, it gets somewhat complicated in terms of all these elements all weave together. I think, so if I were to end kind of with my final thought, on this. The way I would describe this is, so it's good, for me, it's going to come back to this idea, that this idea that there's this pre-disposition to violence, right? But how do you, if you take these

components, right, and you put them all together, how do you go from this predisposition to violence to murder in this case, right? And I think, I think that what happened would potentially, this would be my theoretical elaboration. I think you, with Nick Reiner, I can see, we've talked about

all these elements, right? I talked about the six components early on. I think this begins with developmental failure.

This begins with maybe a failure of attachment. Or maybe some failures in the family culture. Maybe there's a lack of connection.

Maybe it's part of it's Michelle's postpartum depression. Sure. maybe there's some elements of depression when makes a kid maybe depression is starting to

crop up when he's an adolescent, right? When you have those types of developmental failures, I think it leads to a lot of frustrations that are not able to be resolved by, let's call it the ego, let's call it the developing ego. So as we develop and grow up and develop our identities, the more mature and the more complex our egos are, the more resilient

we become. And the more we're able to adapt to the world and the more we're able to kind of to expand our thinking. So again, if we go back to the schizophrenia spectrum on the far end of healthy thinking, part of that is the capacity to adapt to the world and to get feedback from the world and to adjust accordingly. Yeah. Rather than to make the world fit our perceptions. Yes. Right.

That's mental health. Right. It's having the resilience to adapt and cope and let the world change you rather than trying to change the world to fit your ego. Wow. Yeah. And so part of developmental failure or developmental rest is this overwhelming frustration because you can't make the world become what you want it to be.

become. And you can't resolve that frustration because you're too wrapped up in this notion that the world should conform to your desires, right? It won't. It never will. But part of the problem here is that when you can't resolve those frustrations, when you can't resolve those frustrations, oftentimes children or adolescents will want their parents to do it for them. And when their parents can't do it for them, they become angry. And that anger, when parents aren't meeting their needs in their view, their perception, that unresolved anger becomes rage. And that rage, particularly towards a parent that you want to resolve problems that can't resolve problems, that frustration towards a parent, oftentimes that rage becomes so overpowering that you push it out of conscious awareness.

You repress it. right and from that repressed rage I think a lot of kids and adolescents even young adults adults they develop these fantasies about destroying the frustrated parent or the parent that they blame for the frustrations that they've caused right there's this fantasy of destruction because the parent isn't meeting your needs yeah and you don't know what to do with this this anger, you blame the parent and you have this fantasy of harming them. And here's the important point here in this story, right? All this repressed rage that you're trying to keep suppressed or repressed so that you don't

have to deal with it and you don't act out on it, all that repressed rage potentially comes to the surface and it starts to come out. it starts to become unrepressed through psychosis, like schizophrenia, or through drugs, because drugs are a disinhibitor. So if you're doing math or you're doing alcohol or you're doing a lot of drugs, that's when that rage is going to be acted out. And if you throw in issues around personality disorders like psychopathy, now you have a really combustible combination.

you have a really dangerous combination because you have all this repressed rage and you're angry at your parents because they haven't been able to resolve this problem for you blaming them even though it's on you part of maturity right part of this story is about the failure to grow up yeah part of growing up is understanding that your parents aren't to blame for everything your your rage is shouldn't be at your parents it should be at yourself and so what happens is this rage becomes unrepressed through either a break from reality or drugs or potentially from this violent ideation that's predisposition to violence that you have because perhaps you have some elements of psychopathy. And so what happens is exactly what happened here. When that anger and frustration

reaches a boiling point for whatever reasons, maybe they had a fight, maybe they had a fight about going back to rehab and Nick didn't want that. I don't know what the trigger was. There probably was a trigger or triggers. And this is years, by the way. So the idea that I'm articulating here is years of this repressed rage. That you see element, it comes out in different places, right? You can see it bubble out.

You can see it kind of come to the surface. But this is where this is the point where it's completely. completely unleashed. And that's how you get this murder. Okay. Thank you. To AJ. Print that.

Good luck with it too. AJ. AJ? A.J. Alan Jackson. Oh. Okay. I got AJ.

He's off the case. He's off the case. I know. But before he jumped off the case, he had to say print that. Oh, he said print that. Print that. I got you. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So to Alan Jackson, print that.

Print that, baby. And good luck. Yeah, he's not guilty. I mean, maybe he's not. Let's see their case. Well, if by reasons of insanity. Right. They can pull that off.

We'll see. All right. Thank you, everyone for joining us. And hopefully next time, our Christmas tree will be down, but no promises. Love it. So we'll just keep it up through my birthday. Well, our little guy loves it. And that's one of the reasons we have it up because he says it makes him feel happy. He was very sad when Christmas ended, that whole anticlimactic feeling when all of a sudden it's all over.

So we went to the Nutcracker after Christmas before New Year and we did some Christmas festivities and left Christmas tree up still. Thank you, everyone. All right. Thank you guys. Have a good night. We'll see ya. Before I switched to Wealthfront, my APY was probably 0.1. Once I switched to chiching, with a wealthfront cash account, earn up to 4.2% APY on your cash. I can trust. Wellfront is taking care of me. Make your money earn more. Get started at Wealthfront.com. Clients were paid $1,000 for their testimonials, creating a conflict of interest. Howcomes vary. 3.3%.3% base API as of January 30th, as of January 30th,000 as of January 30th,000. outcomes vary. 3.3% base API Y as of January 30th, 2026 is representative variable and earned on funds swept to program banks. 0.65% new client boost for three months on up to $150,000. Direct deposit $1,000 a month and fund an

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