The youngest son of Hollywood filmmaker and political activist Rob Reiner has appeared in court for the first time on two murder charges in the death of his parents, who were found murdered in their Los Angeles home this weekend.
The arraignment was postponed until Jan. 7 and Nick Reiner, 32, has not entered a plea.
He just said “yes, your honor” to agree to the date.
Wearing a beard and a blue protective vest, he appeared in court three days after his arrest and a day after he was accused of one of the most shocking celebrity murder cases in the city’s history.
He is accused of fatally stabbing his parents, actor-director Reiner, 78, and photographer-producer Michele Reiner, 70, in the early morning hours of Sunday in L.A.’s affluent western Brentwood neighborhood and then fleeing the scene.
The couple’s bodies were discovered on Sunday afternoon.
Nick Reiner, who has publicly acknowledged his years-long battle with drug addiction, was arrested that evening in a park in downtown Los Angeles, near the campus of the University of Southern California.
Authorities said he was taken into custody without incident and booked into a downtown jail on suspicion of murder, where he remains held on bail.
After the hearing on Wednesday, Nick Reiner’s attorney Alan Jackson called the case “a devastating tragedy that has befallen the Reiner family.”
He said the procedure will be very complex.
“And we ask that during this process you allow the system to move forward in the way it was designed to move forward,” Jackson said outside the courthouse.
“Not with a rush to judgement, not with hasty conclusions.”
Jackson refused to answer shouted questions from dozens of reporters around him.
If convicted as charged, Reiner faces life in prison without the possibility of parole or the death penalty.
District Attorney Nathan Hochman said prosecutors have yet to decide whether to seek the death penalty.
California has had a moratorium on the death penalty since 2019.
Prosecutors said a knife was used in Reiner’s killings, but few other details were given about the circumstances of the killings.
Authorities have not reported a possible motive or whether drug use was a factor.
Autopsies, once completed, will determine the exact cause, manner and time of death, officials said.
Nick Reiner, the younger of the couple’s two sons and their middle child, has spoken about going in and out of rehab since he was 15 and about bouts of homelessness that occurred when he refused to seek treatment for his addictions.
Those experiences inspired the film Being Charlie, co-written by Reiner and his father.
Rob Reiner was best remembered for his prolific Hollywood career as a filmmaker, during which he directed popular films such as This Is Spinal Tap, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, Stand by Me, A Few Good Men, Misery and The American President.
He met his wife Michele while directing When Harry Met Sally and they married in 1989.
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