Confused-looking Nick Reiner casts a haunting figure as he appears in court charged with parents’ murders

Movie icon Rob Reiner’s son Nick appeared in court again on Wednesday as he faces charges in the brutal fatal stabbings of his parents.

Looking pale and anxious, the man sat in handcuffs before L.A. Superior Court Judge Sam Ohta; He was wearing a yellow prison T-shirt and blue pants, and had short hair with patches.

Reiner, 32, has pleaded not guilty to six felony charges, including two counts of first-degree murder, two special circumstances involving multiple homicides and two special circumstances involving a deadly weapon, a knife.

Prosecutors say Nick killed his father and mother, Michele, in their $13.5 million luxury home in upscale Brentwood, La., last Dec. 14, fatally wounding them with multiple stab wounds before fleeing the scene.

On Wednesday, Reiner, visibly weakened, looked confused when Judge Ohta asked him if he agreed to postpone his case until another hearing in September.

Following the whispered advice of his attorney, public defender Kimberly Greene, he looked up and softly said ‘yes,’ accepting the judge’s request that he appear in court again on Sept. 15, when a date would be set for a full preliminary hearing on the evidence prosecutors have.

Greene told the court Wednesday he was still waiting for prosecutors to turn over some discovery evidence to him.

Deputy District Attorney Jonathan Chong responded: ‘We are still awaiting autopsy reports on both victims.’

Prosecutors say Nick killed his father and mother, Michele, last December 14 at their $13.5 million home in upscale Brentwood, Los Angeles.

Reiner, who has been in custody since his arrest, will remain in prison until the hearing on September 15.

Nick, who has a long history of mental health issues, was reportedly seen arguing loudly with his father at a holiday party thrown by TV’s Conan O’Brien just hours before his parents’ bodies were found by his younger sister Romy.

Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said the death penalty is on the table if Reiner is convicted.

‘This case is suitable for the death penalty.’ he announced after an earlier hearing. ‘Accordingly, we take the process of deciding whether to seek the death penalty extremely seriously. This is a very difficult process.

‘We will examine all mitigating and aggravating circumstances and have invited the defense council to submit to us, both in writing and in defence, any arguments they wish to make as to whether or not to pursue the death penalty. So it’s an ongoing process.’

Earlier this week, Nick’s older brother Jake shared his horror at learning that his beloved parents, who had been married for 36 years, had been murdered and that his younger brother Nick had been charged with the murders.

In a heartbreaking post on the Substack website, the 34-year-old actress described the moment her sister Romy, 28, broke the nightmare news to her.

Jake described it as “unfathomably devastating.” ‘The only thing I could focus on was that I needed to go to my childhood home. I had to go to my sister. I had to figure out what had just happened.

In a blog post this week, Nick’s middle brother, Jake, shared the horror of learning his beloved parents had been murdered.

Reiner was seen at a previous hearing in Los Angeles Superior Court in February of this year.

‘I was deprived of many things that day. My parents won’t be at my wedding, they won’t be able to hold their future grandchildren, and they won’t be able to see that I still have the successful career I’m looking for. It breaks my heart and makes me angry at the same time.’

Although Jake was stunned to learn his parents were dead, he said he was horrified to learn that his brother Nick was the alleged killer.

‘We lost more than half of our family that night in the most violent way imaginable,’ he wrote.

‘Of course, the loss of a parent is devastating, but nothing compares to losing them both at the same time and, on top of that, having your sibling at the center of it. It’s almost impossible to process.’

Almost six months after the murders, Jake said he was still stunned by the claim that someone in his own family killed his parents.

‘Every day since then has been terrible,’ he wrote. ‘Every meeting we have, every person we talk to, every tear we shed, every action we make is connected to the murder of our parents.’

Jake wrote about the pain he and his sister Romy had endured since their parents’ murder, but did not mention Nick’s name, referring to him only as ‘brother’.

He said he and his sister continued to suffer even though their parents’ high-profile deaths had gone unnoticed, writing: ‘Unless you’ve lived through the tragedy like Romy and I, it’s hard to understand how terrible this is.’

‘Since they are not your parents, it may be easier to move on and even forget for a moment what happened that day,’ he wrote. ‘But for us it’s every day.’

Jake paid a touching tribute to his parents, saying they were ‘the center of my life’.

‘They are my guiding lights, the foundation of who I am as a person, and the most giving people I have ever known,’ she wrote.

‘Not many people have the luxury of having the best parents, the best mother or the best father, but I did. Their love for me, my brother, and my sister is truly unconditional.

‘And the love they have for each other in their marriage is something I’ve always looked up to as the standard of what a successful relationship looks like.’

While his famous father is a Hollywood legend, Jake described his mother Michele as ‘the engine, the backbone and the heart of our entire family’.

‘He had a passion for life that most people wish they could achieve.’

He wrote that he watched musicals with his mother and went to baseball games with his father, and acknowledged that he had a privileged upbringing as the son of celebrities.

‘I realized that because of who my parents were, I was able to have these incredible experiences that most people wouldn’t get to have,’ she wrote.

‘But if I could talk to them for another hour and say goodbye, I’d trade every Dodger game, every Broadway show, every holiday.’