Photo: Charley Gallay/2017 Getty Images
In December, Rob and Michele Reiner’s son Nick was charged with the murder of his parents, shortly after the couple was found dead in their Los Angeles home. In the wake of their deaths, the Reiners’ other two children, Jake and his sister, Romy, shared a brief statement, saying, “Words cannot even begin to describe the unimaginable pain we are experiencing every moment of the day.” On Friday, Jake shared more in a lengthy essay memorializing his parents, writing that their deaths are “too devastating to comprehend.”
On Substack, Jake said that he was at a celebration of life ceremony for a friend when Romy called to tell him their father had died. “Minutes later, she called back telling me our mother was also dead,” he wrote. “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.”
“Nothing can prepare you for what it feels like to lose both parents instantly at the same time,” Jake wrote. “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 wrote that his parents are still “the center of my life” and “my guiding lights.” “A lot of people don’t have the luxury of having the best parents, the best mom, or the best dad, but I did,” he shared. “The love they have for me, my brother, and my sister is truly unconditional.”
It has been a little more than four months since the Reiners’ murder, and Jake wrote that “every day since then has been horrendous” for him and Romy — filled with “meetings, paperwork, decisions, and explanations” about his parents’ deaths, “as if documentation must come before mourning.”
The loss is uniquely devastating, Jake shared, not just because he lost both of his parents at once but also because his brother is “at the center of it.” “It’s almost too impossible to process,” he 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.”
Jake said that while he is now sharing his story, Romy “will tell hers in her own way and in her time.”
In February, Nick Reiner pleaded “not guilty” to the murder of his parents. His preliminary hearing is scheduled for April 29.
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