Nick Reiner Was in a Mental Health Conservatorship in 2020: Report

Nick Reiner, the son of slain Hollywood director Rob Reiner and photographer Michele Reiner, had been placed in a confidential, yearlong mental health conservatorship in 2020, five years before he was charged with murdering his parents, The New York Times reported Thursday.

The newspaper said Steven Baer, a licensed fiduciary, was appointed as Nick’s conservator under what is known as an L.P.S. conservatorship, referring to the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act. Such conservatorships typically arise from an involuntary psychiatric hospitalization and are usually initiated by a doctor and approved by a judge. They differ from the types of public conservatorships that have drawn intense scrutiny in the cases of celebrities including Britney Spears and Amanda Bynes.

Baer declined to discuss the specifics of Nick’s case, but he reportedly told The Times that mental illness “is an epidemic that is widely misunderstood, and this is a horrible tragedy.” A Los Angeles County clerk also confirmed the existence of Nick’s conservatorship, which ended in 2021, The Times reported.

“Lanterman-Petris-Short (LPS) mental health conservatorship case information and proceedings are confidential by law. Therefore, the court is unable to comment on whether or not an LPS case exists as to Nick Reiner,” a court spokesperson said in a statement to Rolling Stone.

One source reportedly told The Times that Nick had been placed on psychiatric medication as part of his treatment. The medication appeared to be working, but side effects led him to switch to something different about a month before his parents were killed, the source said.

It wasn’t immediately clear what prompted Nick’s L.P.S. conservatorship, but police records obtained by Rolling Stone confirm LAPD officers responded to the Reiner’s house twice in 2019. The first call on Feb. 25, 2019, was listed as a welfare check received at 9:51 p.m. It included a notation for the responding officer to check with a woman at the house. The second call was received at 4:39 p.m. on Sept. 27, 2019, and was listed as a “mental” call involving a male. The logs did not list the person who placed the requests or the subjects.

Rob Reiner, who acted in the groundbreaking sitcom All in the Family before directing the beloved movies This Is Spinal Tap, Stand by Me, When Harry Met Sally, and The Princess Bride, was found stabbed to death along with his wife on Dec. 14, officials said. LAPD Assistant Chief Dominic Choi told the city’s police commission that the couple’s bodies were discovered in the master bedroom of their Brentwood home.

Choi said “information developed during the early stages of the investigation” caused officers to arrest Nick hours later near a gas station in the Exposition Park area of downtown Los Angeles. The Medical Examiner later confirmed the couple died from “multiple sharp force injuries.” Reiner was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, with prosecutors identifying the alleged murder weapon as a knife.

Nick, 32, had struggled with drug addiction since he was a teen and had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, Rolling Stone previously reported. A source told The Times that Nick also had been diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, a condition that combines psychotic symptoms, like schizophrenia, with mood issues, such as depression or mania.

Nick has appeared in court twice since his arrest. He has not yet entered a plea and is now being represented by Kimberly Greene, a public defender, after his high-powered lawyer, Alan Jackson, stepped down from the case, citing “circumstances beyond our control” that he declined to explain. A spokesperson with the Los Angeles County Public Defender’s Office declined to comment Thursday.

In Los Angeles County, L.P.S. convervatorships allow a professional conservator or someone close to the subject, possibly a relative, to make treatment decisions such as the use of psychiatric medications. The Times said it wasn’t clear why Nick’s conservatorship wasn’t renewed after the initial year.

Reiner first appeared before a judge on Dec. 17, wearing a sleeveless blue suicide-prevention gown with a shackle around his waist. Jackson said at the time that “there are very, very complex and serious issues that are associated with this case.” Nick was wearing a brown jail uniform at his second court appearance.

Sources previously told Rolling Stone that the night before they were found dead, Rob and Michele Reiner had asked if they could bring Nick as their guest to Conan O’Brien’s holiday party. At the party, Nick was exhibiting “antisocial behavior,” including staring at people, sources said.

In 2016, Nick told People that he was 15 when he first went to rehab. He said more than a dozen stints at recovery centers followed, and he experienced homelessness in Maine, New Jersey, and Texas. He later wrote a film script loosely based on his experience. It became the 2016 movie Being Charlie, directed by his dad.

In a 2015 interview with the Los Angeles Times, the Reiners said they desperately tried to help their son, but navigating his care was challenging. “When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen. We were desperate, and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son,” Rob said.

Speaking with the Dopey podcast in 2018, Nick admitted he was an addict and described an incident where his drug use led to violent behavior. He recalled trashing his parents’ guest house after he was “sequestered” there during a bender.

“I went 10 rounds with my guest house,” he told Dopey host Dave Manheim. “It’s not much of a story. I got totally spun out on uppers. I think it was coke and something else. And I was up for days on end, and I started punching out different things in my guest house. I think I started with a TV and then I went over to a lamp and then, progressively, I just, everything in the guest house got wrecked…. I literally punched the TV.”

Asked if he lacerated his hand, he said, “I don’t even remember at this point.” The incident in 2017 led to another intervention, he said, and he ended up on a plane to Boston. He recalled having a cocaine-induced heart attack during the flight. He said his actions had “no logic.”

The Reiners had three children together. On Dec. 17, their older son Jake, 34, and daughter Romy, 27, broke their silence to share their grief and thank supporters. “Words cannot even begin to describe the unimaginable pain we are experiencing every moment of the day. The horrific and devastating loss of our parents, Rob and Michele Reiner, is something that no one should ever experience,” the siblings said in the statement obtained by Rolling Stone. “They weren’t just our parents; they were our best friends.”