Rob Reiner brought his troubled son Nick to Conan O’Brien’s holiday party to ‘keep an eye on him’ less than a day before he allegedly killed the famed director and his mother.
Guests at the A-list packed holiday party said Nick displayed ‘antisocial behavior’ including staring at attendees, and he and Reiner reportedly had a loud argument at the bash.
Insiders told Rolling Stone that Reiner and his wife Michele Singer asked if they could bring Nick to the party out of concern for him, and said they wanted to ‘keep an eye on him.’
At the party, sources also told People that Nick was ‘acting crazy’, and ‘kept asking people if they were famous.’
Among the stars he approached was comedian Bill Hader, a witness told NBC News. Nick reportedly interrupted the former SNL comic, who then told him he was in a ‘private conversation’.
The director’s troubled son then stood there and stared, the source said, before ‘storming off’, leaving partygoers unnerved.
TMZ first reported that Nick attended Conan’s star-studded party with his parents hours before Reiner and Singer were found dead in their $13 million California mansion.
The outlet said that in recent months Reiner and Singer had struggled to handle Nick’s mental health issues and alleged drug abuse.
Prosecutors said Tuesday that Nick is set to be charged with murder following the horror attack on Sunday night, where Reiner and Singer reportedly had their throats slit in the mansion.
Nick currently remains in jail without bail and is being held on suicide watch in administrative segregation at Twin Towers Correctional Facility in Los Angeles.
At the time of Nick’s arrest, his sister Romy, 28, who discovered their parents bodies, told investigators her brother ‘should be a suspect’ because he was ‘dangerous.’
The Daily Mail exclusively revealed following the alleged murders that those around Nick saw him as a ‘ticking time bomb.’
Sources said that Nick’s drug use spiraled out of control after his parents threatened to kick him out of their home.
The troubled 32-year-old had been living in his parents’ guesthouse in Los Angeles for the past five years – where his behavior had become increasingly erratic and frightening, insiders claimed.
‘Nick had been living in their guesthouse, the same one he destroyed more than once, but it had been like a revolving door all his adult life,’ a source close to Reiner told the Daily Mail on Monday.
‘He would do meth and not sleep for days and then have outbursts, breaking things, punching walls.
‘He was a ticking time bomb. His drug use was getting worse and his parents wanted him out,’ claimed the friend.
According to the source, Nick, who was one of three children, frequently laughed off the destruction he caused during drug-fueled episodes.
‘He used to brag how he could get away with anything and took money from his parents for drugs and prostitutes.
‘He would talk about this stuff in meetings, but then stopped going because he said it was too cultish,’ the source claimed. ‘He laughed about destroying his parents’ guesthouse more than once. He was so nonchalant about it.’
As Reiner and Singer asked to bring Nick to the fateful holiday party on Saturday night, insiders said that the parents were ‘scared’ of their son’s erratic behavior.
Nick was said to be ‘acting crazy’ and ‘running around’ Conan O’Brien’s Christmas bash.
He reportedly ended up in a ‘very loud argument’ with his worried parents in front of guests, apparently over his refusal to go back into rehab, with one onlooker claiming he had ‘seemed high on something’.
‘Nick was supposedly off drugs,’ but it appeared on Saturday night ‘not so much off them’, an old friend of the Reiners said, adding that Nick was ‘badly addicted to a combo of opiates and heroin’ and had spent long periods homeless.
Another friend of the family told the New York Post: ‘I know [Rob and Michele] wanted him to get help, go to rehab, but he wanted to get help while at home – he did not want to get treatment at a facility’.
Following the alleged murders, Nick was arrested at a Los Angeles subway station around 15 miles from his parents’ mansion.
Nick had earlier checked in to The Pierside Santa Monica, where staff later discovered a shower ‘full of blood’ and a trail leading off of his bed, as well as a window covered up by bedsheets.
The suspect is known to have struggled with substance abuse in his life, and spoke publicly about beginning his first rehab stint around his 15th birthday, followed by 17 more visits over the next four years.
During that time, he later told People Magazine in 2016, he also experienced intermittent periods of homelessness.
‘I was homeless in Maine. I was homeless in New Jersey. I was homeless in Texas,’ he said. ‘I spent nights on the street. I spent weeks on the street. It was not fun.’
Photos from the Portland, Maine, men’s substance abuse rehab Foundation House show he was attending rehab over the course of two months in the fall of 2017.
Friends and family insiders say the warning signs had been present for years.
Earlier on Monday, the Daily Mail revealed that Nick was known within the family’s circle as an ‘intense kid’ who struggled with emotional regulation from an early age – prompting his parents to seek professional help long before his substance abuse took hold.
Celebrity yoga teacher Alanna Zabel, who worked with the Reiner family for nearly a decade, said Nick’s behavior as a child was so extreme it inspired her to write a children’s book about a boy with severe emotional outbursts.
‘Nicky would barge in like the world was on fire, screaming, into our yoga sessions,’ Zabel recalled. ‘It was disruptive.
‘He was really screaming, I have never seen a child like it.’
Zabel said she even held private classes with Nick for a year in a bid to ‘regulate him and calm him down.’
‘His emotions were not being met on some level. He really needed attention, and needed it immediately when he needed it.
‘He was just an intense kid.’
Zabel said the Reiners had hired a family therapist to help tackle the problems they faced with Nick.
‘The fact that they were seeing a family therapist shows how much they cared. They were trying to figure it out,’ said Zabel, who has a degree in child development.
Zabel described the Reiner parents as ‘passionate,’ ‘hands-on parents’ and ‘loving.’
‘I love Rob and Michele, so much. They were just so passionate. Both of them were very intensely passionate about their family, life, justice and creativity,’ she said.
‘Michele was a New Yorker living in California. She was really mindful, trying to raise her kids out of the pressures of Los Angeles and Hollywood. It was challenging and full-time.’
