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THE slashing deaths of Hollywood star Rob Reiner and his wife have sparked a raft of questions, many of which stem from their alleged killer son, Nick.

Here is a look at five mysteries that leave glaring holes in the murder investigation, from hazy information about Nick’s mental health to debates on his unconfirmed motivation.

Nick, 32, is accused of murdering his parents, filmmaker Rob, 78, and his wife Michele, 68, after a chaotic weekend that spiraled from a celebrity bash to a late-night arrest near the University of Southern California.

The couple was found dead at their Brentwood home on Sunday with their throats slashed.

Nick was arrested later that night and is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, meaning he could face the death penalty if convicted.

However, his fate is still hanging in the balance, as his arrest is complicated by missing hours, unclear motives, and unanswered questions about what he did while his parents lay dead.

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Here is what has been revealed about the case and what remains to be revealed.

WHAT HAPPENED AT CONAN O’BRIEN’S PARTY?

On Saturday night, Rob, Michele, and Nick were all said to have attended a star-studded holiday party hosted by comedian Conan O’Brien.

And according to several insiders, the night reportedly went sideways for the trio.

Guests present at the party claimed that Nick behaved erratically the entire night

According to the Wall Street Journal, there was one awkward moment where Nick interrupted Saturday Night Live alum Bill Hader during a private conversation and was told to butt out.

Nick was said to have asked Hader odd questions like ” What’s your name? What’s your last name? Are you famous?”

One witness told the Daily Mail, “Nick just stood there and stared before storming off.”

Tensions escalated when multiple attendees saw Rob, Michele, and Nick locked in a heated argument.

At one point, a guest suggested calling the police, Daily Mail reported.

“They got into an argument, the father and son. It got so bad and loud someone wanted to call the police to report it,” an insider told the outlet.

Timeline of Rob and Michele Reiner’s death

Rob Reiner and his wife of Michele Singer Reiner were found dead in their Los Angeles home on December 14, 2025.

Timeline:

• December 13, 2025: Reiner and his wife Michele attended a holiday party on the evening of December 13 with their son, Nick.
• Sources conveyed to The U.S. Sun that the couple and their son were engaged in a heated public argument while at the event.
• December 14, 2025: Reiner and Michele were found dead in their Brentwood home in Los Angeles at around 3:30 pm PST.
• The couple’s daughter, Romy, reportedly discovered her parents’ bodies.
• Online police records show Reiner and Michele’s 32-year-old son, Nick, was arrested at 9:15 pm PST on December 14.
• December 15, 2025: Authorities in Los Angeles announce that Nick Reiner was arrested and charged with murder.
• Nick was booked into a Los Angeles jail at 5:04 am and was being held on $4 million bail, which was later revoked.
• December 16, 2025: Los Angeles District Attorney Nathan Hochman formally charged Nick Reiner with two counts of first-degree murder.
• Hochman said his office would consider the death penalty in Nick’s case.
• Nick’s scheduled court appearance on December 16 was postponed due to what his attorney said was a procedural issue.

But O’Brien reportedly intervened before anyone rang 911, the insider claimed.

“But Conan stepped in and said, ‘it’s my house, my party, I’m not calling the police.’ He talked them out of calling the police.”

“When the s**t was hitting the fan, somebody said we need to call the police. The conversation was about getting this kid put into a mental-health hold,” the source told the Mail.

Nick eventually stormed off the party.

Outlets have also reported that Rob confided to friends that he is scared of Nick.

“I’m petrified of him,” Rob told his friends.

“I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but I’m afraid of my own son. I think my own son can hurt me.”

WAS NICK HIGH ON DRUGS?

No official details have been released saying Nick was on drugs or drunk at the time of the alleged killings.

But questions are swirling because he has a documented history of substance abuse, and the hours after the party, and after he is believed to have fled the family home, are still largely unaccounted for.

Nick had a substance abuse problem for years, his parents also tried to help him recover from it.

WAS NICK ON MEDS FOR SCHIZOPHRENIA?

According to a TMZ report, Nick was receiving care from a Los Angeles-based rehab facility that focuses on mental illness and substance abuse, and costs $70,000 a month.

Nick had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, and a report claims his behavior became increasingly “alarming” as doctors worked to fine-tune his treatment.

Things got worse three to four weeks before the murders after doctors changed his medication, leaving him even more unstable.

“Nick was out of his head,” a source told TMZ, with the report also alleging his substance abuse made his condition worse.

COULD HE GET OFF ON MENTAL HEALTH GROUNDS?

Nick’s defense could try to lean on mental health in court, but that doesn’t mean he will walk free.

One avenue his attorney, Alan Jackson, could explore is having him declare mentally unfit for trial, which would pause the proceedings while he is evaluated and treated.

That’s different from an insanity defense, which argues he wasn’t legally responsible at the time of the alleged killings.

Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer Daniel Rubin told Fox News the defense strategy will depend on “the weight and admissibility” of evidence, witness testimony, the events before the deaths, “the defendant’s mental health issues,” and any mitigating factors.

Rubin said if Reiner is found mentally incompetent, a judge can order a formal competency assessment by specialists.

“If he is found ‘incompetent,’ he will need to be medicated or treated to the point where he will be able to assist in his own defense and understand the proceedings,” Rubin added.

This process could take several weeks to several months.

If a judge finds him unfit, the case typically goes on ice while doctors work to restore competency, and it can restart if he stabilizes.

Even if he’s never restored, that doesn’t mean he goes home; he could still be held in a secure hospital setting rather than a prison.

And if he’s found fit and later convicted, prison is still very much on the table.

WILL HE GET HIS PARENTS’ FORTUNE?

If Nick already has cash or there is a trust that allows discretionary payouts, it’s possible funds could be used toward his legal bills while the criminal case is pending – because he’s presumed innocent and the inheritance question isn’t “final” yet. 

Some reports say that, until there’s a conviction or a civil finding, he isn’t automatically treated as disqualified in every setting. 

But any move to use estate or trust cash could trigger an immediate probate war, with other relatives or beneficiaries pushing to freeze payouts while the murder case is pending.

If Nick is convicted, California’s so-called “slayer statute” would likely kick in, a law that blocks someone from inheriting from a person they feloniously and intentionally killed.

In that scenario, he’d be treated as if he died before his parents for inheritance purposes, meaning he wouldn’t collect from their estate.

If he’s barred, the money would typically flow to other heirs or whoever is next in line under the will or trust.

Rob and Michele’s combined estate has been estimated at around $200 million, making the financial stakes enormous as the case heads toward court.

The executive order calls on the US attorney general to expedite federal reclassification, creating fewer barriers for studies.

United States President Donald Trump has signed an executive order to federally reclassify marijuana as less dangerous.

The move on Thursday requires Attorney General Pam Bondi to expedite the process under the Drug Enforcement Administration for reclassifying marijuana.

In the US, drugs and other chemical substances are divided into a five-tier classification system, with Schedule I representing the most restricted tier and Schedule V the least.

Marijuana was previously in the Schedule I category, where it was classed alongside potent narcotics like heroin and LSD. With Thursday’s order, it would be fast-tracked down to Schedule III, in a class with ketamine and anabolic steroids.

Trump said the change “is not the legalisation” of marijuana, and he added that it “in no way sanctions its use as a recreational drug”.

The change, however, will make it easier to conduct research on marijuana, as studies on Schedule III drugs require far less approval than for Schedule I substances.

Speaking earlier in the week, Trump told reporters the change was popular “because it leads to tremendous amounts of research that can’t be done unless you reclassify, so we are looking at that very strongly”.

The change is in line with several states that have moved to legalise marijuana for both medical and recreational use. That has created a patchwork of state-level regulations at odds with federal law, wherein marijuana remains illegal.

Former US President Joe Biden had taken several steps to lessen federal penalties related to marijuana, including a mass pardon for those handed harsh sentences for simple possession.

Such convictions had disproportionately affected minority communities and fuelled mass incarceration in the US.

The Biden administration had also begun the process of reclassifying marijuana to Schedule III, but the effort was not completed before the Democratic president left office in January.

Trump has faced some pushback from within his party about the classification shift. Earlier this year, 20 Republican senators signed a letter urging the president to keep the more severe restrictions.

The group argued that marijuana continues to be dangerous and that a shift would “undermine your strong efforts to Make America Great Again”, a reference to Trump’s campaign slogan.

Meanwhile, public support for legalising marijuana for recreational use has nearly doubled in recent years, increasing from 36 percent support in 2005 to 68 percent in 2024, according to Gallup polls.

Saying the unedited video of a September 2 strike on a boat in the Caribbean is “top secret,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth told reporters that its viewing will be restricted to select lawmakers, not the general public.

The Trump administration has imposed new sanctions on Venezuela, targeting three nephews of President Nicolas Maduro’s wife, Cilia Flores, as well as six crude oil tankers and shipping companies linked to them, as Washington steps up pressure on Caracas.

Two of the sanctioned nephews were previously convicted in the United States on drug trafficking charges before being released as part of a prisoner exchange.

The US is also targeting Venezuela’s oil sector by sanctioning a Panamanian businessman, Ramon Carretero Napolitano, whom it says facilitates the shipment of petroleum products on behalf of the Venezuelan government, along with several shipping companies.

The US Treasury Department said on Thursday that the measures include sanctions on six crude oil tankers it said have “engaged in deceptive and unsafe shipping practices and continue to provide financial resources that fuel Maduro’s corrupt narco-terrorist regime”.

Four of the tankers, including the 2002-built H Constance and the 2003-built Lattafa, are Panama-flagged, with the other two flagged by the Cook Islands and Hong Kong.

The vessels are supertankers that recently loaded crude in Venezuela, according to internal shipping documents from state oil company PDVSA.

‘An act of piracy’

In comments on Thursday night, Trump also repeated his threat to soon begin strikes on suspected narcotics shipments making their way via land from Venezuela to the US.

His remarks followed the US seizure of an oil tanker off Venezuela’s coast.

White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said the US would take the tanker to a US port.

“The vessel will go to a US port, and the United States does intend to seize the oil,” Leavitt said during a news briefing. “However, there is a legal process for the seizure of that oil, and that legal process will be followed.”

Maduro condemned the seizure, calling it “an act of piracy against a merchant, commercial, civil and private vessel,” adding that “the ship was private, civilian and was carrying 1.9 million barrels of oil that they bought from Venezuela”.

He said the incident had “unmasked” Washington, arguing that the true motive behind the action was the seizure of Venezuelan oil.

“It is the oil they want to steal, and Venezuela will protect its oil,” Maduro added.

Maduro’s condemnation came as US officials emphasised that the latest sanctions also targeted figures close to the Venezuelan leader.

Maduro’s relatives targeted

Franqui Flores and Efrain Antonio Campo Flores, nephews of Venezuelan first lady Cilia Flores, were also sanctioned. The two became known as the “narco nephews” after their arrest in Haiti in 2015 during a US Drug Enforcement Administration sting.

They were convicted in 2016 on charges of attempting to carry out a multimillion-dollar cocaine deal and sentenced to 18 years in prison, before being released in a 2022 prisoner swap with Venezuela.

A third nephew, Carlos Erik Malpica Flores, was also targeted. US authorities allege he was involved in a corruption scheme at the state oil company.

Maduro and his government have denied links to criminal activity, saying the US is seeking regime change to gain control of Venezuela’s vast oil reserves.

Beyond the individuals targeted, the US is also preparing to intercept additional ships transporting Venezuelan oil, the Reuters news agency reported, citing sources.

Asked whether the Trump administration planned further ship seizures, White House spokesperson Leavitt told reporters she would not speak about future actions but said the US would continue executing the president’s sanctions policies.

“We’re not going to stand by and watch sanctioned vessels sail the seas with black market oil, the proceeds of which will fuel narcoterrorism of rogue and illegitimate regimes around the world,” she said on Thursday.

Wednesday’s seizure was the first of a Venezuelan oil cargo amid US sanctions that have been in force since 2019. The move sent oil prices higher and sharply escalated tensions between Washington and Caracas.

For the first time since the termination of the Cold War, a major military crisis is heating up in the Caribbean. Since early September 2025, United States aerial combat drones have been patrolling and targeting the suspected smuggler boats in the international waters of the Caribbean Sea. These strikes were initially portrayed as kinetic measures to choke off the drug trade through the Caribbean Sea. According to US officials, by 04 December, 22 strikes have been conducted and 87 narco-terrorists have been killed. However, it’s worthy to note that the majority of cocaine production is centered in Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and Mexico and enters into the United States through an inland or Pacific route—not through the Caribbean Sea. Out of 22 strikes, only 10 have been conducted in the Pacific waters.

Washington’s political ambitions eventually became evident in October once it forward deployed a naval flotilla at the strike range to Venezuela. Currently, eight US Navy vessels are operating in the Caribbean Sea. The USS Gerald Ford aircraft carrier, with its vast combat aviation wing comprising F-35C Lightning IIs, F/A-18 E/F Super Hornets, and a variety of support fixed- and rotary-wing aircraft, is currently stationed in the US Virgin Islands. Other forward-deployed naval vessels include the MV Ocean Trader command vessel and the USS Iwo Jima amphibious assault ship with over 4,000 marines. These ships are supported by two Ticonderoga-class cruisers, two Arleigh Burke-class destroyers, and the USS Newport News, a Los Angeles-class nuclear attack submarine (SSN), each equipped with Tomahawk cruise missiles. The presence of this naval flotilla suggests that the USN has mustered enough capability to not only launch aerial and cruise missile strikes but also conduct amphibious operations at the Venezuelan coast. In parallel, Venezuelan airspace has been declared ‘closed’ by the Trump administration. Such assertive measures are not meant for anti-narcotic operations but perhaps for regime change either through coercive diplomacy or through direct military action. Whatever the case may be, it’s evident that for the first time in decades, the United States is apparently preparing for a direct military conflict in its own hemisphere.

Understanding how this crisis escalated requires looking back at the recent history of bilateral tensions. The fractures began to appear in US-Venezuela relations from 1999, when Hugo Chávez came to rule on a wave of anti-American populism and nationalized the country’s oil industry. Within three years, mutual relations collapsed so abruptly that first Washington imposed sanctions and then briefly removed Chávez from power through a CIA-backed coup. Chávez regained the rule in a matter of a few days. This move, however, further intensified anti-American sentiments in the Venezuelan public. Chávez made subversion of Washington a political identity; his successor Nicolás Maduro turned it into state doctrine. In 2019, Washington even declared Juan Guaidó, the opposition leader of Venezuela, as the country’s ‘legitimate president.’ Besides the open political signaling of the White House, the CIA also attempted another coup to topple the Maduro regime but again failed to achieve the requisite results.

Maduro successfully exploited continuous intervention by the United States to augment its political narrative at the public level and managed to earn a third consecutive term in 2025. However, the results of elections were regarded as dubious and were generally dismissed as fraudulent, further degrading relations with the West.

For Venezuela, oil has attracted more trouble than prosperity. The country has more than 300 billion barrels of proven oil reserves—more than Saudi Arabia (267 billion barrels)—yet it produces less than 10 percent of its 1990s highest productivity rate. The Venezuelan crude oil is ultra-heavy (8-12° API) and has very high sulfur content. Such dense oil is not only very challenging to refine—both economically and technologically—but also very hard to transfer and cannot be pumped through pipelines without imported diluents. In a nutshell, despite possessing the largest proven oil reserves, Venezuela cannot refine and export its black gold without significant foreign assistance. The current oil infrastructure, developed during the Cold War, is gradually crumbling. Pipelines are either blocked or leaking, and refineries are now operating below 15 percent capacity. Approximately 58 billion USD worth of investment is required to repair and revive the current infrastructure. Being a struggling economy, Venezuela simply does not have the financial capacity to do so. Meanwhile, the majority of technical expertise has been eroded due to brain drain. For example, PDVSA once employed more than 40,000 engineers but now has a total strength of only 12,000 with a large portion of untrained manpower. Currently, while Gulf nations are earning huge revenue from oil exports, Venezuela stands isolated as an oil superpower that cannot even power itself.

The aforementioned factors have imparted grave consequences on the Venezuelan economy. Its national GDP has shrunk from about 300 billion USD to a mere 110 billion USD approximately. More than half of the population is living in poverty, and unemployment has crippled public development. Roughly 28 percent of the total population is in need of humanitarian assistance. These financial woes have compelled common Venezuelan citizens to seek refuge outside the country. Currently, nearly 8 million locals have left the country and are living as refugees in neighboring countries, including Columbia, Peru, Brazil, and even the United States.

To survive internal implosion, Caracas has sought external assistance from Washington’s strategic competitors, including Russia, China, and even Iran. Both Russia and Venezuela are signatories of the 10-year Strategic Partnership Treaty, which was ratified in Oct-Nov 2025 with the overarching objective of combating unilateral coercive measures. Russia has provided military assistance and technical support for the training of troops and maintenance of military equipment, which is predominantly of Soviet origin. China has repeatedly provided diplomatic support and financial loans to support Venezuela’s energy infrastructure. Both Russia and China have vetoed resolutions at the UN Security Council for imposing stringent sanctions against Venezuela. With Iran, Venezuela also shares a strong relation, which was formalized by a 20-year agreement in 2022. Their domains of cooperation include trade, repairing of energy infrastructure, modernization of the defense force, and technology sharing for refinement of crude oil. For the United States, these collaborations are meant to develop a foothold in Latin America by Russia, China, and Iran—something Washington considers intolerable.

When the Trump administration returned in 2025, within weeks, it scrapped Chevron’s license, eliminating Venezuela’s last stable revenue stream. The most significant escalation came on July 25, 2025, when the US Treasury designated Venezuela’s military leadership—the Cartel de los Soles—as a global terrorist organization. No foreign military in American history had ever received such a label. Simultaneously, the reward for the arrest of President Nicolás Maduro has been doubled to 50 million USD by the Trump administration on federal charges of narcoterrorism and conspiracy to import cocaine. And now, with a fully equipped US naval strike force sailing in the Caribbean Sea, the situation is getting increasingly volatile. The Venezuelan military simply does not possess the capability to defend against such a strike force.

If hostilities break out, then instead of placing boots on the ground, the United States is likely to conduct targeted strikes at key assets, impose and sustain a naval blockade, and eventually undermine the Venezuelan military’s and nation’s loyalty to Maduro through coercive diplomacy. The current crisis illustrates that although the Trump administration claims to have taken numerous initiatives to end conflicts and promote trade & collaboration in the Eastern Hemisphere, it will show little to no tolerance for the growing influence of Moscow and Beijing in the Western Hemisphere. Under the Monroe Doctrine, the United States seeks to sustain its control in the Western Hemisphere, including Latin America. For Trump, an example can be crafted out of Venezuela to demonstrate the potential consequences of deepening collaboration with Moscow and Beijing in Washington’s backyard.

Lawmakers in the United States have urged the release of a video of a controversial double-tap strike on a vessel in the Caribbean amid growing scrutiny of the legality of Washington’s militarised anti-drug trafficking campaign.

The bipartisan calls on Sunday came amid mounting controversy over revelations that military officials ordered a follow-up strike in the September 2 operation targeting a suspected drug-smuggling vessel, killing two survivors of the initial attack.

Democratic and Republican lawmakers watched footage of the strikes last week in a closed-door briefing with military officials, but emerged from the screening with substantially different accounts of what happened.

Reactions to the footage split along partisan lines, with Democrats expressing deep concerns about the legality of the strikes and Republicans insisting they were justified.

Adam Smith, the top Democrat on the House of Representatives’s armed services committee, said the targeted vessel had been “clearly incapacitated” in the initial strike, and the survivors were unarmed and without any means of communication.

“They ought to release the video. If they release the video, then everything that the Republicans are saying will clearly be portrayed to be completely false, and people will get a look at it, and they will see,” Smith said in an interview with the ABC News programme This Week with George Stephanopoulos.

“It seems pretty clear they don’t want to release this video because they don’t want people to see it because it’s very, very difficult to justify,” Smith added.

Jim Himes, who leads the Democrats on the House’s intelligence committee, said the American public should have the chance to judge the video for themselves.

“Look, there’s a certain amount of sympathy out there for going after drug runners, but I think it’s really important that people see what it looks like when the full force the United States military is turned on two guys who are clinging to a piece of wood and about to go under just so that they have sort of a visceral feel for what it is that we’re doing,” Himes told CBS News’s Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan.

Several Republicans said they would support the release of the video, even as they defended the strikes.

Senator Tom Cotton, whose account of the survivors trying to “flip” the boat and continue their voyage has been disputed by Democrats, said he would not object to the video’s release, but would defer to the judgement of Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon.

“I didn’t find it distressing or disturbing. It looks like any number of dozens of strikes we’ve seen on Jeeps and pickup trucks in the Middle East over the years,” Cotton, who chairs the intelligence committee in the Senate, told NBC News’s Meet the Press.

John Curtis, a Republican senator from Utah, also suggested that he would support the video’s release, saying officials should “err on the side of transparency”.

“The American people, they like to make decisions too based on facts, not just on what we tell them,” Curtis told CNN’s State of the Union.

President Donald Trump, whose administration has carried out at least 22 strikes against alleged drug traffickers in the Caribbean Sea and Eastern Pacific, said last week he would have “no problem” with releasing the footage.

Hegseth on Saturday struck a more cautious note during an appearance at a defence forum in California, telling a Q&A that officials were reviewing the possibility, but needed to make a “responsible” decision.

Scrutiny of the strikes has mounted since The Washington Post reported last month that US military officials carried out a second attack on two people clinging to the vessel’s wreckage after Hegseth directed commanders to leave no survivors.

Hegseth has repeatedly denied the report, which cited two unnamed sources, labelling it “fake news”, “fabricated” and “inflammatory”.

Legal scholars have argued that both the double-tap strike and the Trump administration’s military campaign against suspected drug traffickers more generally are illegal.

“The United States is not currently operating in a context of armed conflict in its strikes in the Caribbean. For that reason, this is not a context in which war crimes apply,” Tom Dannenbaum, an expert in the laws of war at Stanford University, told Al Jazeera.

“Instead, all of the strikes qualify as murder in violation of domestic criminal law, and extrajudicial killings in violation of international human rights law.”

At least 87 people have been killed in the strikes, which the Trump administration began in September.

The Trump administration has yet to make public any evidence to back its claims that the boats were carrying narcotics, were headed to the US, or that they were being commandeered by members of proscribed cartels.