In a heartbreaking Substack essay published on Friday, Jake Reiner, whose parents Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner were murdered by his brother, Nick, on December 14, shared his thoughts on coping with this tragedy.
Jake opened up about how much he misses his father, the director of such classic films as The Princess Bride, This is Spinal Tap, and When Harry Met Sally, and his mother, a photographer, activist, and producer. He also wrote candidly how the horror of losing them was compounded by the fact that they were killed by his younger brother, who struggled with drug addiction and mental health issues since his early teens.
Nick is currently being held in Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles and has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder. Rob’s body was found by Jake’s sister, Romy, and she learned moments later that Michele was at home and had also been killed.
“We lost more than half of our family that night in the most violent way imaginable. 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,” Jake, an aspiring actor, producer, and writer, and former news reporter, wrote. “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.”
On Jake’s Instagram, he shared excerpts from the essay and family photos, writing, “A week from today I will be approaching my first birthday without my parents. I consider myself lucky to have had them by my side for the past 34 years. In the last four months, I’ve learned a lot about grief.”
Writing on his Substack, he said, “I was robbed of so many things that day. 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.”
The essay is titled, “Mom and Dad” and subtitled, “The Center of My Life.” It opens with Jake detailing how he was at a memorial ceremony for a friend when he got a call from Romy saying that Rob was dead and a moment later that their mother had also been killed. “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.”
He admitted that he was haunted by thoughts of how much they suffered: “I can’t even begin to put myself in my parents’ shoes, but one thing I keep coming back to is how frightened they must have been. They were the last people in the world to deserve what happened to them. 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.”
It has been a struggle for him to keep going. “Every day since then 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.”
'A lot of people don’t have the luxury of having the best parents'
Jake mixed the past and present tense as he eulogized his parents, indicative of how hard it is for him to accept their loss, writing, “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.”
In the essay, he painted loving portraits of both of his parents. “My mom was really funny and constantly complained about how nobody in the family thought she was,” he said. He described their closeness, saying that they spent hours on the phone. “To fully understand what we lost, my mother was the engine, the backbone, and the heart of our entire family.”
About his father, he wrote, “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. My connection with him was first built on baseball. It was my grandfather’s favorite sport, passed down to my dad and then to me.” His grandfather was legendary comedy writer and director Carl Reiner.
“It’s not lost on me that I was able to have these incredible experiences, that most people don’t get to have, because of who my parents were. But I would trade every Dodger game, every Broadway show, every vacation, if I could just spend just one more hour talking to them and to say goodbye,” he wrote.
Since the tragedy, he said, many people want to express their sympathy but have trouble finding the right words.
“The truth is, there is nothing to say. I just ask for love and compassion - the same principles my parents lived by,” he concluded.