Jake Reiner Says His World Collapsed With News Of Parents’ Murders

Jake Reiner, the 34-year-old son of slain filmmaker-actor Rob Reiner and Michele Reiner, recalled his parents and the horrific aftermath of their murders in an emotional Substack post.

“On the afternoon of December 14,” Jake writes, “I was in Union Station at a celebration of life for one of my best friends, Christian Anderson, who died in October. It was at that moment I received a call from my sister Romy telling me our father was dead. Minutes later, she called back telling me our mother was also dead.

“The 45-minute Lyft ride from downtown to the west side was unendurable. My world, as I knew it, had collapsed. I was in a trance. The only thing I could focus on was that I needed to get to my childhood home. I needed to get to my sister. I needed to figure out what the hell just happened.”

Nick Reiner, youngest son of Rob and Michele and brother of Jake and Romy, was subsequently charged in the murders and pleaded not guilty. A preliminary hearing in the case is set for Wednesday in Los Angeles.

Jake does not use Nick’s name in the Substack column, which published Friday, referring to him only as his brother.

“I was robbed of so many things that day,” Jake writes. “My parents won’t be at my wedding, they won’t get to hold their future grandchild, and they won’t get to see me have the successful career I’m still seeking. It simultaneously breaks my heart and enrages me.”

Nothing, he continues, “can prepare you for what it feels like to lose both parents instantly at the same time. It’s too devastating to comprehend. I still wake up every morning having to convince myself that, no, it’s not a dream. This truly is my living nightmare.”

Jake suggests he’s haunted by “how frightened they must have been.”

“They were the last people in the world to deserve what happened to them,” he says. “They deserved to be loved, they deserved to be respected, and above all they deserved to be appreciated for how much they gave to all three of us and to the world….A lot of people don’t have the luxury of having the best parents, the best mom, or the best dad, but I did. The love they have for me, my brother, and my sister is truly unconditional. And the love they have for each other in their marriage is something I always looked up to as the standard of what a successful relationship looks like.”

Jakes says he and his mother were confidants: “Anytime I was going through a tough time or had a complicated issue to hash out, I leaned on her brilliant perspective.” He says Michele Reiner was “the engine, the backbone, and the heart of our entire family.”

As for his father, who of course starred in the landmark sitcom All in the Family and directed such films as When Harry Met Sally…, The Princess Bride and many others, Jake writes, “The way my dad presented himself in the public eye was exactly the beautiful person he was at home. He was authentic, passionate, and his sense of humor has always been my sense of humor.”

Father and son shared a love of baseball, specifically the Dodgers. “He took me on baseball trips every summer beginning when I was like 11 or 12, and eventually we made it to every ballpark around the majors.” He says his dad was his hero, and “I miss him so much.”

Every day since their deaths, Jake says, “has been horrendous.”

“Every meeting we take, every person we talk to, every tear we shed, every movement we make is connected to our parents being murdered. In the middle of trying to process the most devastating moment of your life, the world demands meetings, paperwork, decisions, and explanations; as if documentation must come before mourning.”

In the essay, Jake Reiner explains that his goal in writing “is to offer some insight. Not only to what I lost but also to celebrate what my parents meant to me.”

“We lost more than half of our family that night in the most violent way imaginable,” he says. “Sure, any loss of a parent is devastating, but nothing compares to losing both of them at the same time and, on top of that, having your brother be at the center of it. It’s almost too impossible to process. I understand that people have questions about what happened. Some of those answers will come in time. But some parts of this belong only to our family, and keeping them private is the only way to protect what little remains of something that was taken from us.”

Reiner ends the post with, “I just ask for love and compassion — the same principles my parents lived by.”