Nick Reiner indicted on charges alleging he murdered parents Rob and Michele Reiner
Nick Reiner appears during his arraignment in Los Angeles County Superior Court on Feb. 23, 2026, in Los Angeles. (Chris Torres/Pool/Getty Images)
(NEW YORK) — Nick Reiner has been indicted on charges alleging he murdered his parents, renowned director Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Reiner, by means of lying in wait, prosecutors announced Wednesday.
The indictment, which was returned on July 20 and unsealed Wednesday, charges Reiner with two counts of murder with the special circumstance allegations of multiple murders and murder by means of lying in wait, according to the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office. Reiner also faces a special allegation that he used a dangerous and deadly weapon, a knife, the office said.
Nick Reiner, 32, pleaded not guilty to the indictment on Wednesday. He remains held on no bond and is next scheduled to appear in court for a pretrial hearing on Sept. 15.
Rob Reiner and Michele Reiner were found stabbed to death in their Brentwood home on Dec. 14, 2025. The night before their deaths, Nick Reiner — who had been living on his parents’ property at the time — got into an argument with Rob Reiner at a holiday party and was seen acting strangely, sources told ABC News in December.
Nick Reiner was arrested and initially charged with two counts of murder with the special circumstance allegation of multiple murders, as well as faced a special allegation that he used a dangerous and deadly weapon.
The indictment, which added a special allegation of lying in wait, means the case will no longer have a preliminary hearing that had been scheduled to occur in the coming weeks.
“This was a profound betrayal by someone who was loved and trusted by the very people he is accused of killing,” Los Angeles County District Attorney Nathan Hochman said in a statement. “The indictment unsealed today also adds a special circumstance allegation that the defendant committed the murders by means of lying in wait. We hope that by having a grand jury return an indictment in this case it will bring us one step closer to a trial and achieving justice.”
If convicted as charged, Reiner faces death or life in state prison without the possibility of parole. The district attorney’s office said it has not yet made a decision on whether to seek the death penalty.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.
Severe weather outlook for Friday, June 12, 2026. (ABC News)
(NEW YORK) — More than 40 million people from Kansas City to Chicago are in the path of severe weather on Wednesday, a day after a tornado tore through a Michigan town, damaging numerous homes.
Destructive winds in excess of 70 mph, tennis ball-sized hail, and strong tornadoes are all possible across the Midwest on Wednesday afternoon and into Thursday.
Some areas of the Midwest are at risk of multiple rounds of storms that could produce flash flooding.
Minneapolis; Omaha, Nebraska; and Wichita, Kansas, are also under a level 2 out of 5 threat for severe weather on Wednesday afternoon.
On Thursday, the threat for severe weather will be at a 3 out of 5 for parts of Missouri, Michigan, Wisconsin, Indiana and Illinois — including the cities of Chicago, Milwaukee, Grand Rapids, Michigan; Madison, Wisconsin and Springfield, Illinois. The areas are at risk of destructive winds of up to 80 mph, large hail and strong tornadoes.
On Thursday morning, Iowa is expected to see a destructive storm complex roll through the state and into Wisconsin.
‘It literally sounded like a freight train’
The blustery weather comes on the heels of an EF-1 tornado that ripped through the town of Freeland, Michigan, about 13 miles north of Saginaw, on Tuesday afternoon. The twister damaged 40 homes and businesses in the community, local officials said.
The tornado ripped the roof off an auto shop as workers hunkered down inside.
“I was in my shop, and then it was like all of a sudden, my brother came running out. He said, ‘We got to take cover.’ When somebody says, ‘We gotta take cover,’ it’s too late,” Al Wisniewski, owner of AW Racecars, told ABC affiliate station WJRT in Flint, Michigan.
Wisniewski said he sheltered in place in his automotive shop as the twister hit.
“It literally sounded like a freight train coming through here,” said Wisniewski, adding that neither he nor other workers in the shop were injured. “The whole building was shaking and everything, and there’s no place to go.”
Also on Tuesday, the town of Lanesville, Indiana, about 17 miles west of Louisville, Kentucky, was hit with flash flooding after more than a half-foot of rain fell in two hours, officials said.
Storm threat moving East amid summer-like heat in New York City
On Thursday, New York City, Philadelphia, Detroit, Indianapolis, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Richmond, Virginia, are forecast to be at a level 2 out of 5 threat for severe weather.
Meanwhile, temperatures across the Mid-Atlantic and Northeast are expected to rise along with the humidity.
New York City and Washington, D.C., are forecast to reach the 90s on Thursday and possibly on Friday and Saturday.
Meanwhile, Raleigh, North Carolina, is forecast to hit the century mark on Thursday and Friday.
Heat indices, or what the temperature feels like, are expected to be in the mid-90s to near 100 degrees from New York to the Vermont border.
But the summer-like weather in the Northeast is also expected to come with severe weather. Storms are expected to reach cities along the I-95 corridor in the Northeast on Thursday evening.
The mix of hot and severe weather in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic is expected to continue into Friday.
More than a dozen thieves stole more than 250 cars and a million dollars’ worth of auto parts throughout the Bronx, according to the NYPD and the Bronx district attorney’s office. (Bronx DA/NYPD)
(NEW YORK) — An alleged group of car thieves who worked fast and furious at night to steal over 250 cars and auto parts in the Bronx were arrested and charged Friday, investigators said.
The Bronx District Attorney’s office indicted 16 alleged members of the Trinitarios street gang in a nearly 1,000-count indictment with grand larceny, auto stripping, and other offenses. Nine of the 16 were arrested as of Friday morning, according to the DA’s office.
The suspects would allegedly lift the target car and use power tools to remove all four tires and rims off within minutes, according to the NYPD and DA.
“These defendants allegedly worked as fast as a racetrack pit crew in the dead of night, stealing cars, tires and rims and catalytic converters worth more than $1 million on the black market,” Bronx DA Darcel Clark said.
Many of the thefts, as many as six per night, were caught on video showing a three-person crew exiting a stolen car, fully masked, with gloves, a car jack and milk crates, investigators said.
“All across the Bronx, people heading to work or school in the morning found their cars propped on crates, or an empty parking space, leaving them stranded and financially strained, the DA said.
The suspects allegedly used public parking garages throughout the Bronx to store the stolen vehicles before and after the thefts, which occurred between midnight and 5 a.m., according to the police.
Other defendants bought the stolen catalytic converters and then sold them on the black market, the indictment said. In one defendant’s home, police said they found a suitcase with $116,000 in cash.
Attorney information for the suspects was not immediately available.
Jeffrey Epstein is seen in a photo released by the New York State Division of Criminal Justice. (New York State Sex Offender Registry)
(NEW YORK) — The House Oversight Committee on Tuesday will conduct a closed-door interview with a woman so ubiquitous in Jeffrey Epstein’s life that a search for her name in the Justice Department’s Epstein files returns more than 160,000 results.
Lesley Groff worked as an executive secretary to Epstein in New York for more than 18 years, and was once described by her boss as an “extension of my brain.”
Among her job requirements were scheduling Epstein’s frequent meetings with celebrities, scientists and politicians, booking Epstein’s daily massage appointments when he was in New York, and arranging travel for women linked to Epstein. She was one of four women listed as potential co-conspirators in Epstein’s controversial non-prosecution agreement in 2007.
According to federal prosecutors, “numerous victims [of Epstein] had indicated that she was responsible for scheduling massages during which they were sexually abused.”
Groff will appear as part of the committee’s ongoing inquiry into the federal government’s handling of investigations into Epstein and his alleged co-conspirators, which to date has included interviews with former Attorney General Pam Bondi, Epstein’s longtime personal assistant Sarah Kellen, and a prison guard who was on duty the night Epstein died in his jail cell.
Last September at a press conference in front of the U.S. Capitol, Epstein survivor Marina Lacerda specifically called out Groff, alleging that Groff had called her so many times to go to Epstein’s place for a massage that she dropped out of high school before the ninth grade.
Lacerda — who was one of the key witnesses that led to Epstein’s 2019 indictment for child sex trafficking — told ABC News in an interview this week that Groff was the conduit to Epstein.
“Anything that had to do with Jeffrey Epstein, ” Lacerda told ABC News in an interview, “had to go through Lesley Groff.”
Through her attorneys, Groff has denied any knowledge of, or participation in, Epstein’s crimes.
Michael Bachner, a lawyer for Groff, declined comment in advance of her appearance on Capitol Hill. He previously told ABC News that Groff “never knowingly booked travel for anyone under the age of 18, and had no knowledge of the alleged illegal activity whatsoever.”
“Ms. Groff, a parent herself, is incredibly shocked and deeply upset about the alleged wrongdoings of Mr. Epstein,” Bachner said.
After Epstein’s arrest in July 2019, federal prosecutors included Groff in a list of potential co-conspirators and sent her a subpoena. Bachner informed the government, just four days after Epstein’s arrest, that his client “would invoke her Fifth Amendment privilege against compelled self-incrimination” if called to appear before a grand jury.
Groff, now 59, eventually interviewed with the investigators two years later, telling prosecutors that “making massage appointments was just another appointment she had to make” for Epstein, and said that scheduling massages was “around 1%” of her job.
Groff, who was hired by Epstein in 2001, told the FBI she was immediately struck by Epstein’s lifestyle and the company he kept, describing it as “pretty incredible to see all the people Epstein dealt with in politics, television, et cetera.”
“Groff felt, ‘Wow,'” according to an FBI account of her interview.
Groff was initially paid a salary of $60,000 a year, but saw it doubled to $120,000 by Epstein four years later, DOJ records show.
The New York Times reported in 2005 that Epstein bought Groff a new Mercedes and paid for a nanny to ensure she would keep working for him.
“There is no way that I could lose Lesley to motherhood,” Epstein said of Groff, according to the newspaper’s account.
Banking records included in the DOJ’s Epstein files indicate that Groff also received three payments of $100,000 and one for $110,000 from Epstein companies between 2016 and 2018, though the records do not indicate the reasons for the payments.
Bachner told the government that Groff stayed with Epstein after his first arrest in Florida in 2006 because she believed him when he said that “someone was trying to blackmail him.”
When he was again arrested in 2019, she resigned, her lawyer told prosecutors.
“She felt betrayed and disgusted once the indictment came out,” Bachner wrote.
According to documents released by the Justice Department in response to the passage of the Epstein Files Transparency Act, one victim — who was a minor at the time of her alleged abuse — told the FBI that she felt Groff “knew that the massage appointments were sexual” and “felt it was pretty obvious Lesley knew what was going on,” according to the DOJ records.
Federal prosecutors in 2021 informed Groff that she would not be charged, according to a statement from her attorneys.
“After a more than two-year investigation by the Department of Justice into Jeffrey Epstein’s conduct, which included lengthy interviews of witnesses and a thorough review of relevant communications, we have been informed that no criminal charges will be brought against Lesley Groff,” the statement said.
Lacerda said she hopes the congressional investigators press Groff for answers.
“I just think that she should be honest about it so that we can have some accountability here,” she said.
Oversight Committee member Rep. Suhas Subramanyam (D-Va.) said he’s heading into the interview with Groff already skeptical of her denials.
“She will argue that she didn’t know anything, but I find that to be hard to believe,” he said. “I think at best she was blissfully trying to be ignorant, but probably wasn’t.”
