LOS ANGELES — Jake Reiner, the older son of Rob and Michele Reiner, says learning his parents were killed and living in the aftermath has been “too devastating to comprehend.”
In a post on Substack on Friday, Jake Reiner shares his sweetest memories of the beloved Hollywood director and the photographer and philanthropist who was his wife for 36 years. And he describes the horror of losing them when they were stabbed to death on Dec. 14 in the Los Angeles home he grew up in. It is his first detailed public account of his experience. He had previously only issued brief joint statements with his sister.
“Nothing can prepare you for what it feels like to lose both parents instantly at the same time,” Jake Reiner writes. “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.”
The long post makes only two fleeting mentions of his younger brother Nick Reiner, who has been charged with killing their parents, and he does not use Nick’s name.
“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,” Jake Reiner writes toward the end of the post.
He also says, switching to the present tense, that the “love they have for me, my brother, and my sister is truly unconditional.”
Jake Reiner writes that he was at a memorial service for one of his best friends when he got the news.
“I received a call from my sister Romy telling me our father was dead,” he says. “Minutes later, she called back telling me our mother was also dead.”
He says his parents “were robbed of so many things that day” and that it “simultaneously breaks my heart and enrages me.”
He writes that he cannot stop thinking of how frightened they must have been in their final moments.
But much of the piece invokes fond memories.
“The way my dad presented himself in the public eye was exactly the beautiful person he was at home,” Jake Reiner writes. “He was authentic, passionate, and his sense of humor has always been my sense of humor.”
The two especially connected over baseball.
“We loved the Dodgers more than anything,” he writes. “We went to so many damn games.”
He calls his mother “the engine, the backbone, and the heart of our entire family. And not just our immediate family. She was the reason behind why we spent time with our extended family too.”
“My mom was really funny and constantly complained about how nobody in the family thought she was,” he writes.
Rob and Michele Reiner had three children together: Jake, Nick and Romy. Rob Reiner was also father to Tracy, a daughter with his previous wife, Penny Marshall.
Jake Reiner writes that Romy, who was the first family member at the scene of the killings, will tell her own story when the time is right.
Nick Reiner has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder. His next court appearance will be at a pretrial hearing Wednesday. Authorities have said nothing about possible motives and have withheld most details about the deaths.
Rob Reiner was a prolific director whose work included some of the most memorable and endlessly watchable movies of the 1980s and ’90s. Friends and colleagues, including Billy Crystal, paid him an extended tribute at this year’s Oscars.
His credits included “This is Spinal Tap,” “Stand By Me,” “A Few Good Men” and “When Harry Met Sally…,” during the production of which he met photographer Michele Singer. They wed soon after and were married for 36 years.
