Conan O’Brien has spoken publicly for the first time about the December killings of filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, describing the whiplash of seeing the couple at his home hours before police say their son stabbed them to death. “To have that experience of saying good night to somebody and having them leave and then find out the next day that they’re gone … I think I was in shock for quite a while afterward,” O’Brien said in an interview tied to The New Yorker Radio Hour podcast.
Investigators allege the Reiners were killed at their Brentwood home in the early morning of Dec. 14, 2025. Their bodies were found later that day, and Nick Reiner, 32, was arrested that night by Los Angeles police, according to reporting in the Los Angeles Times.
Two people who attended O’Brien’s Dec. 13 holiday party told the Times they witnessed a loud verbal exchange between Nick Reiner and his parents during the gathering. O’Brien said he and his wife were close with the couple and called them “just such lovely people,” adding that Reiner’s civic involvement made the loss feel sharper: “to have that voice go quiet in an instant is still hard for me to comprehend,” he said.
Prosecutors have charged Nick Reiner with two counts of first-degree murder, with special-circumstance allegations tied to multiple murders, a charging approach that can open the door to life in prison without parole or a death sentence under California law. Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said at a December news conference that the office had not yet decided whether it would seek the death penalty.
The case remains in pretrial proceedings. Reuters reported in January that Nick Reiner’s high-profile defense attorney withdrew, public defenders stepped in temporarily, and the court pushed the arraignment to Feb. 23, keeping him jailed without bail.
