The Reiner Murders: Years of Warning Signs, Police Calls, and a System That Couldn't Stop It
True Crime Today | Daily True Crime News & Interviews
Tony Brueski
4.2 • 612 Ratings
🗓️ 7 January 2026
⏱️ 14 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This is the fifth alleged patricide case in Southern California in recent weeks. Five sons accused of killing their fathers — or both parents — in a matter of months. The Reiners. The Cordes family. Jubilant Sykes' son. Juan Gonzalez in Perris. Joshua Bonilla in Lake Balboa.
Something is happening. And the Reiner case exposes exactly why the system keeps failing.
Nick Reiner didn't snap out of nowhere. Police had been to his parents' Brentwood home multiple times over the years. A neighbor said he'd been violent before. He'd cycled through seventeen rehab programs by age 22 — and admitted on podcasts to gaming every one of them. The night before the killings, his own father reportedly told friends he was "petrified" of him.
Rob and Michele Reiner saw it coming. So did the people around them. But California's mental health laws made intervention nearly impossible. You can't commit an adult unless they're an imminent threat. A 72-hour hold ends with the patient walking out the door. Families are left to manage severe mental illness in their own homes — untrained, unsupported, and terrified.
Bob Motta joins True Crime Today to examine the pattern before the crime. What does law enforcement typically see in the years leading up to a family tragedy? When police respond to a home repeatedly, what options do they have? And for the millions of families living this nightmare right now — what can actually be done before it's too late?
The warning signs were everywhere. The system still couldn't stop it.
#NickReiner #RobReiner #MicheleReiner #TrueCrimeToday #Patricide #MentalHealthCrisis #WarningSigns #California #SystemFailure #TrueCrime2025
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is Hidden Killers Live with Tony Bruske, Stacey Cole and Todd Michaels. |
| 0:08.2 | What we're learning about in the Rob Reiner situation right now is that Nick Reiner, |
| 0:14.7 | there was, it was in a, it was a medication transition period, if you will, |
| 0:20.5 | transferring from one medication to another, |
| 0:23.2 | which can be a risky time. It's always a scary thing, especially when you're dealing with any |
| 0:29.2 | sort of antipsychotic drugs. We don't know exactly what he was taking, so we can't really |
| 0:33.8 | say there for sure. But whatever it was, whatever medication you're getting on or off of, |
| 0:38.4 | it can be a dangerous point in time. |
| 0:40.7 | One of the big questions that's being asked is it's $70,000 a month. |
| 0:45.2 | Why is this being handled in the backyard guesthouse of a 78-year-old man? |
| 0:52.0 | As if this is like the appropriate setting for this to be taking place. |
| 0:56.7 | At the end of the day, will this trial do a whole lot in terms of correcting the system? |
| 1:03.5 | No, it's going to decide whether Nick Reiner ends up getting the death penalty, |
| 1:07.1 | going to prison for the rest of his life, or in some sort of a psychiatric hold for the rest of his life. One of three options will take place. But it does bring awareness to the whole |
| 1:16.8 | problem that exists, where Rob and Michelle should have never been in the situation to begin with, |
| 1:23.3 | of managing this moment in Nick's life, what I'm sure of many, where he's switching medications |
| 1:29.0 | and hoping to God he's going to be in a good place. The option that was presented to them in their |
| 1:34.2 | minds, the best solution at that night was to take him to a formal party where he had no business |
| 1:41.2 | being because they were afraid of what he could do to himself. |
| 1:44.7 | So let's go put him around people. |
| 1:46.3 | Maybe that'll be better. |
| 1:47.3 | They knew, I'm sure, in their hearts that this could turn out to be a complete train wreck, which it did. |
... |
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