Nick Reiner has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, for which he faces life in prison without parole or the death penalty. Photo: AP
Nearly a decade before he was charged in the grisly murders of Rob and Michele Reiner, the couple’s son Nick Reiner told a podcast he’d concocted a plan in which he faked being “crazy” to get access to medication.
In a resurfaced 2016 clip from the Dopey: On The Dark Comedy Of Drug Addiction podcast, the now-32-year-old recalled manufacturing a mentally unstable state in order to get Wellbutrin (antidepressant medication) while checked into the Alina Lodge addiction treatment centre in New Jersey.
“The way I got Wellbutrin is actually really (expletive) up,” said Nick, who was 14 when he first started battling substance abuse.
“They refused to give me meds, so to prove I was crazy – ’cause they were like, ‘You don’t need any meds’ and I was freaking out – I was like, ‘You don’t think I need meds?’ And they’re like, ‘Yeah, we think … this is all just fake.'”
Nick, who has been in and out of rehab over a dozen times, recalled thinking, “How do I show these (expletive) that I’m ‘crazy?’ So I was like, I’ll throw a rock through a window.”
He said he then took a rock and threw it “through the window” of a “meeting room that has these big glass windows.”
“Some woman saw me and she ratted on me and then they put me on Wellbutrin,” he explained.
Earlier in the podcast, Nick said that while he doesn’t believe in regrets, he did “regret blaming (his parents)” for his addiction.
Alina Lodge did not immediately respond to the Daily News’ request for comment.
Nick was arrested on the night of Dec 14, hours after his sister Romy discovered the remains of their 78-year-old father, the beloved director of hits like The Princess Bride and When Harry Met Sally. Romy later learned that their photographer mother, 70, had also been slain.
Two days later, Nick was charged with two counts of first-degree murder, for which he faces life in prison without parole or the death penalty.
Sources told TMZ he suffers from schizophrenia and that recent weeks of his already “alarming” behaviour had become more “erratic and dangerous” with new medication.
A police source confirmed to People last week that Nick is in solitary confinement and will “remain on suicide watch until a doctor clears him, which could take a long time depending on his mental health.”
His arraignment is currently scheduled for Jan 7. – New York Daily News/Tribune News Service
