Throughout history, it has been sanctioned as the ultimate wickedness – an unforgivable violation of nature’s laws that destroyed the fundamental bond between parent and child.
Parricide – killing a parent – broke not one but two of the Ten Commandments (‘Honor thy father and mother’ and ‘Thou shalt not kill’). And, under Roman law, it incurred the uniquely cruel punishment known as the ‘penalty of the sack’ – Poena cullei – in which the offender was tied up in a large leather bag with a selection of dangerous animals, such as snakes and dogs, then thrown into deep water to drown in a particularly unpleasant way.
Not surprisingly, parricide happens infrequently, but killing both parents, a double parricide, is far rarer still.
But now, according to prosecutors in Los Angeles, it has happened. Nick Reiner, the deeply troubled 32-year-old son of acclaimed movie director Rob Reiner, 78, and his photographer wife Michele, 70, is accused of repeatedly stabbing them to death at their home in Brentwood this month.
Nick, who had a long history of drug addiction, had lamented the pressure of being the son of a very successful filmmaker – Rob’s movies included When Harry Met Sally, The Princess Bride and Misery – and fighting his parents over their determination to get him into rehab.
They were found dead only hours after father and son had reportedly been heard having an argument at the Christmas party of comedian Conan O’Brien.
If the case goes to trial, a priority for prosecutors will likely be to establish a motive for Reiner to kill his parents.
Experts who have studied this most taboo of crimes say there are various reasons for someone to commit parricide.
Nick Reiner is accused of repeatedly stabbing his parents Rob and Michele (pictured) to death at their home in Brentwood this month
Nick is one of three siblings (pictured with parents, Jake, left, and Romy, right)
According to Dr Kathleen Heide, Distinguished Professor of Criminology at the University of South Florida, parricides account for about two percent of US homicides, of which just eight percent involve the murder of both parents.
Heide, America’s foremost expert on parricide, told the Daily Mail that perpetrators can be divided into four categories.
The first are those who have been longstanding victims of serious abuse. They’re often younger, have no criminal record and are still living with their parents.
Next comes the severely mentally ill, who are often schizophrenic or on the schizophrenia spectrum. They could also suffer from depression with ‘psychotic features.’
‘They may have delusions about their parents, or they may be hearing voices, you know, God’s telling them to do this,’ said Heide.
The third category covers what she calls the ‘dangerously anti-social’ who kill their parents for monstrously selfish reasons. ‘They want to get their parents money. Maybe they’re going to be cut out of a will or their parents are setting some financial limits,’ she said.
The motive might alternatively not be about money but about freedom – the parents could be curbing their lifestyle and ‘the offspring is trying to remove an obstacle that’s in their way.’ Offenders in this category would often have a history of being ‘oppositional’ and of criminal behavior, be it theft, drugs or violence.
Finally, there is the ‘enraged’ parricide offender who has an ‘underlying anger which turns into rage.’ Drugs or alcohol could have a ‘disinhibiting effect’ on that rage, removing their natural inhibitions about doing something so dreadful as to murder their parents.
Heide stressed that these categories were not mutually exclusive. She also said it was vital not to rush to judgement on which category applied in any parricide: ‘Sometimes a case will look like one type, and then you really get into it, and you find there’s a lot more to the story.’
Heide, who said that the Reiners appeared to have been ‘very loving, committed parents,’ did not want to comment explicitly on the Reiner case, but noted that the alleged use of a knife rather than a gun was ‘significant.’
It would make Nick – if convicted – an ‘outlier,’ as most parricides are carried out with a firearm. She called the knife a ‘more personal, more expressive’ way of killing a victim ‘that was often fueled by anger or rage… particularly if there were multiple stab wounds.’
Nick is scheduled to be arraigned on January 7
If the case goes to trial, a priority for prosecutors will likely be to establish a motive for Reiner to kill his parents
But in other ways, British criminologist Dr Amanda Holt told the Daily Mail, Nick Reiner is quite typical of those accused of parricide.
According to international parricide statistics researched by Holt, a professor of criminology at the University of Roehampton, London, the perpetrator’s average age is 31 and they are usually men. They tend to be single and live with their parents. (Nick had been staying in the Reiners’ adjoining guest house.)
The parents are usually not divorced or separated, and there has often been prior threats or violence that escalates. (Nick had admitted previously to smashing up the guest house in a drug-fueled fury. And, as one insider told the Daily Mail, Rob allegedly told friends at O’Brien’s party: ‘I’m petrified of him [Nick]. I can’t believe I’m going to say this but I’m afraid of my son. I think my own son can hurt me.’)
Mental illness, Holt said, was six times as common in parricides than in other forms of homicide.
While so many parents have difficult relationships with their children, parricides often involve some sort of ‘trigger point’ like a serious argument. At a trial, she said she expected the defense would argue that Nick suffered ‘some sort of mental breakdown because they are so much more common in the case of parricides.’
The figure for double parricide is so low, she said, because so often the child’s murderous impulse is only directed at one of their parents. And if, in fact, they go on to kill the other, it’s sometimes simply because they were a witness to the crime.
‘It’s quite hard to kill two people in quick succession so there may be more practical rather than emotional reasons,’ she said.
In recent years, the US has witnessed a spate of double parricides in which the victims have often been wealthy, and money has allegedly weighed heavily in the explanation for their brutal deaths.
The Menendez brothers have provided the most celebrated recent case – Erik and Lyle have served nearly 30 years in prison after being given life sentences in 1996 for fatally shooting their father, José, and mother, Kitty, in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989. The brothers were 18 and 21, respectively, at the time.
Their attorneys argued the brothers acted out of self-defense after years of sexual abuse by their father, but prosecutors contended the brothers killed their parents for a multi-million-dollar inheritance.
Although their sentences were reduced in May, four months later a California judge rejected calls for a new trial, ruling that claims they were sexually abused didn’t supersede the ‘premeditation and deliberation’ of the killings.
During his parole hearing, Erik Menendez provided an insight into what made him commit parricide: ‘I was not raised with a moral foundation.’
Erik (right) and Lyle (left) have served nearly 30 years in prison after being given life sentences in 1996 for fatally shooting their father, José, and mother, Kitty, in their Beverly Hills mansion in 1989
In April of this year, Wisconsin high school student Nikita Casap (pictured in May) was charged with fatally shooting his mother and stepfather
22-year-old John Granat was convicted of grooming three friends to murder his parents in Illinois
In April of this year, Wisconsin high school student Nikita Casap was charged with fatally shooting his mother, Tatiana, and stepfather, Donald Mayer, at their home as part of an assassination plot against President Donald Trump.
It was alleged that investigators found material related to a satanic, neo-Nazi group called the Order of Nine Angles on the 17-year-old’s phone and antisemitic writings in which he detailed plans to kill the president and bring down the government.
The alleged double murder – for which Casap has yet to be tried – ‘appeared to be an effort to obtain the financial means and autonomy necessary to carrying out his plan,’ said the FBI.
In October, 34-year-old Camden Burton Nicholson pleaded guilty to stabbing his parents to death in their $6 million home in Newport Beach, California, along with their housekeeper, in 2019.
After stabbing his father repeatedly, he hit his mother over the head with a metal statue before fatally stabbing her, too. He also killed the housekeeper with a knife when she arrived at the house the following morning, before he went out shopping for sex toys and cannabis.
At the end of July, new details emerged about a 15-year-old boy accused of killing his parents and three young siblings at their $2 million lakeside home in Fall City in Washington state. Defense lawyers claimed the family were religious extremists who subjected their children to a strict, isolated existence.
According to court filings, the boy used his father’s handgun to shoot his family members one by one in the middle of the night. He allegedly tried to blame his younger brother, but his 11-year-old sister, who survived the mass shooting after playing dead, told police the teen was responsible. The alleged killer had reportedly been in trouble with his parents for failing tests at school.
The Reiner case, in which the accused has yet to enter a plea, may yet prove equally perverse but, for sheer cold-bloodedness, few double parricides have matched the case of 22-year-old John Granat who in 2017 was convicted of grooming three friends to murder his parents in Illinois.
The trial heard how Granat, an only child, was a 17-year-old high school student when he persuaded two friends to creep upstairs at his home and bludgeon his parents – John and Maria – to death with baseball bats in 2011.
As his mother took her last breaths, Granat – who reportedly never showed any remorse – handed one of them a knife and told him to ‘finish it.’
As for motive, apart from money – according to investigators, Granat divided up $35,000 in cash found in the home and doled it out to the others – he was reportedly angry at his mother and father for throwing away the marijuana plants found in his room.
‘You are not only irredeemably corrupt, you are also evil,’ a judge told Granat.
The ancient Romans with their ‘penalty of the sack’ wouldn’t have hesitated to agree.
