Jake Reiner's Netflix Appearance Takes a Chilling Turn After Real-Life Family Tragedy
Rob Reiner’s eldest son, Jake Reiner, 34, is a former television reporter turned actor — and that particular change in careers is where things get eerie.
In 2024, Jake took a small role in a ripped-from-the-headlines story by Ryan Murphy, Monsters: The Erik and Lyle Menendez Story. The Netflix series took a second look at the 1989 case revolving around two brothers who murdered their parents at their estate in Beverly Hills. Jake appeared as a KTLA reporter in the first episode, questioning Lyle at their parents, Jose and Kitty Menendez’s memorial.
Jake shared a snapshot of the scene on a September 20, 2024, Instagram post. “Don’t talk, text, scroll, or blink! Otherwise, you might just miss the best one-line delivery in the history of television,” he wrote in the caption. The parallels between the Menendez story and the Reiner family tragedy is haunting.
Jake’s younger brother, Nick, 32, is charged with two counts of murder with special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and using a deadly weapon, a knife, per court documents obtained by NBC News. He faces life in prison without the possibility of parole, or the death penalty, per a December 16 press conference held by the Los Angeles District Attorney.
Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele Singer, were stabbed to death on December 14 at their Brentwood, California, home. Nick appeared in court on Wednesday, December 17, shackled and wearing a “blue suicide prevention vest,” per the New York Post. His lawyer, Alan Jackson, was also in attendance. The arraignment was pushed until January 7, 2026.
Even though a trial date has not been set yet, it will likely draw the high-profile attention similar to the Menendez or O.J. Simpson case. Both trials became spectacles in their era, and it’s hard not to draw parallels in the Reiner case. Hopefully, news stations have learned their lesson, but a 2017 Rolling Stone article demonstrated the impact of pop culture on the news cycle.
“[The Menendez trial] led other television networks to devote extensive airtime to live coverage of criminal trials,” Mark Feldstein, professor of broadcast journalism at the Philip Merrill College of Journalism, told the outlet. “Two years after the Menendez trial, when I was working there as a correspondent, CNN turned over its airwaves to O.J. Simpson, covering the case gavel-to-gavel and beyond, even when the court wasn’t in session. I remember how frustrated I felt because it was impossible to get any other news stories on the air then.”
With the wall-to-wall coverage of the Reiner case just days after the tragedy, it feels like history is repeating itself.
More on Rob Reiner & Michele Singer: