← Intentionally Disturbing
Intentionally Disturbing
The Reiner's m*rder teaches us all how to prevent this from happening to us.
00:27:15
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- [00:00]
A
Welcome back to Beyond. Well, I'm Sheila Hamilton, and this is a program for people who want to learn more about our interior lives. And I do want to do a bit of a trigger warning today, because today's conversation sits at the intersection of a lot of people's fear, psychology, and responsibility, especially the responsibility I feel around talking about mental health. The arrest of Nick Reiner, who now stands accused of the murders of both of his parents, Rob and Michelle, has sparked a flood of questions about mental health danger, about whether there were some signs that the family missed, and about how someone becomes capable of such profound harm. And in moments like this, we tend to want to reach for labels. Sociopath, monster, evil, whatever it is that the words that promise some sort of clarity. But the reason that I wanted to bring in Dr. Leslie Dobson today is she's a forensic psychologist who specializes in criminal behavior, sociopathy, and the psychological assessment of race, risk, and responsibility. So Dr. Dobson has spent her career working at the intersection of mental health, the legal system, and people like Nick Reiner. Who better to talk with about this tragic case? Hi, Dr. Dobson. It's so good to see you again.
- [01:14]
B
Hi. Thank you for, for reaching out. This is definitely a case I think we need to talk about, but I think it also, it can educate the public and can lead to preventative measures. And a horrible, horrible thing has happened. But we can also use it to our benefit to prevent future danger. And I don't think we get that a lot when horrible things happen.
- [01:36]
A
Yeah, I agree. I, you know, one of the things that I have been most moved by is the number of people who, on social media, this almost makes me cry thinking about this, are saying for the first time I live in fear of this exact thing happening to me. I. I live in fear of my very mentally ill or disturbed son who I fear could do the same thing. I honestly don't think there's been a case in my journalism career where people have been this honest and forthcoming after such a tragedy.
- [02:09]
B
I was overwhelmed the morning after I made the TikTok video one, because my TikTok is heavily suppressed, as many people are. They're struggling with the app. They're getting a couple hundred views. This got. I think it's at several hundred thousand.
- [02:24]
A
Yeah.
- [02:24]
B
And I was flooded from my email. So people were going to my website and they were emailing me saying, I'm scared my child's going to kill me and I don't know what to do. And I was shocked that so many people, they needed this moment to say, wow, I need to do something. I'm going to listen to my intuition.
- [02:46]
A
And all of the fear that they might have been suppressing out of the label of being a bad parent or an unloving parent or a person who's alarmist or some other designation creates this atmosphere where parents actually can't talk about how difficult it is to live with someone who is really, really disturbed. So I just want to begin and just say, as a forensic psychologist, what are the ethical limits of discussing someone's mental health based on just what we have, the information that we publicly have available?
- [03:22]
B
The cleopsychologist. Well, anyone in the profession of mental health can't diagnose someone they don't know. But what we can do is analyze the behaviors we've seen, the collateral information that we have, and the patterns of behavior, the escalation of aggression, the openness that the family had about talking about their son, the openness that Rob had. I've spoken with friends of the family as well. Where I take this is I know other people who have killed their parents, and I have seen themes and patterns, and every case is unique and individual. But I can draw upon my actual experience in psychiatric hospitals working with people once they've been locked up for the rest of their lives, and they're reflecting back on killing both parents or one parent.
- [04:12]
A
So let's talk about that breadth of experience, Dr. Dobson, because I want to know what similarities you see time after time after time that you want other parents to be aware of.
- [04:25]
B
This thing for me is the minimization of the pattern of the escalation of violence and learned helplessness. So what I often see is there's red flags, which everyone would say, whoa, whoa, whoa, that's. That's a red flag. You know, destroying the guest house is a red flag. But we. We have enough time that goes by where, okay, he destroyed the guest house, but he didn't kill anyone, so he's not going to kill anyone. And what happens is these red flags, they get blurred or they become less vibrant, and then we minimize other red flags that might pop up, and we don't see it as a big overall picture. And so for me, working in the field, once I get the person, I get to look back at their entire life, and I say, wow, I could have told you this was going to happen. And so with this case already, I could have told you this was going to happen. And that's why I say it was prevention. Not based individually on this case, but we see a presence of codependency we see a ton of red flags. We see people speaking out about this, and we see what I would call as accidental reinforcement. They've stated he attended, I believe, 18 treatment centers and 18 centers full of doctors. Master level therapists weren't good enough. They weren't the right ones. And those are red flags. Right. So there's a minimization and a justification of the behavior throughout the theme of this story and many other stories. And then you add on the substance use. And the substance use in many cases is that final trigger, that final disinhibition, that final moment that gives the person permission to do something they've been fantasizing about.
- [06:15]
A
You know, when you hear about Nick Reiner as a child, it gives you pause to wonder if diagnoses for autism disorder or early schizophrenia or whatever they're going to end up diagnosing him with. Quite sure his defense attorney is going to come up with something. You wonder if there would have been the ability to get him the kind of treatment that could have helped. If a child is born this way, this oppositional, this antisocial, this, you know, screaming at his parents while they're attempting to take a yoga class, is there anything that the mainstream medical association could do to help?
- [06:56]
B
Definitely. For all of us who aren't loaded and filthy rich, we are heavily reliant on IEPs and school districts to offer us AIDS. But even currently in my daughter's school, there are children that should be moved to special education schools. And the parents object to it because they object to the stigma. They don't want to see their child like that. But at the end of the day, if your child requires certain settings and professionals are telling you your child will actually thrive in those settings by not addressing the mental illness, the opposition, the antisocial traits, whatever it is that we see in these kids, by not addressing it, we're actually accelerating it, we're accepting it, and they're learning to keep acting, to keep behaving this way. That is not learning the tools they need.
- [07:48]
A
That is such a really valid point, Dr. Dobson, that if you listen to the interviews with Rob Reiner, he was talking about wanting to accept his son the way he was. And even throughout his time in the rehabs, he was saying that he. That he began to lose faith in the advice of the mental health professionals and, and thought he should be listening to his son. But it's pretty well documented that addicts do lie and they do manipulate. But there is this protection that parents have that they don't want to make their child feel less than or different. If it's not just unbearingly impossible to do. Right.
- [08:32]
B
Correct. I mean, it's absolutely horrendous to think that you need to file a police report and have your child arrested.
- [08:39]
A
Yeah.
- [08:39]
B
Protect yourself. I mean, it's horrendous. But at the end of the day, we're not talking about children. Children. Right. We're talking about adults. And adults are dangero. And adults show signs and symptoms that tell us danger is possible. I can recall a case where a woman built a gate around her home so that her son could not come in. She let him live in the garage that was outside the gate, but she couldn't get herself to lock the gate, and he murdered her.
- [09:10]
A
Oh, my gosh. I mean, this is incredibly difficult for me because just two weeks ago, a very good friend's son ended up murdering her. The woman's husband, and I've known the kids since he was 6. He struggled like Nick Reiner did. He time in and out of mental health hospitals. Of all the things the family could do, they afforded him every single step you could make. And still this happened. And so I'm wondering, what advice are you giving to these parents when they're saying, I have this fear that my child could do this? What are you telling them?
- [09:45]
B
There's a lot of things I tell them. Some are. Some sound really harsh and some you really couldn't imagine doing. And some are quite minimal. But for me, the biggest thing is that when you have a child you're worried about, you don't treat an escalation of aggression like it's just a family argument. You treat it like it's a medical emergency. You call 91 1. You document everything with the police, as icky as that might seem. And you use appropriate language. The appropriate language that you are a. You are an identified victim. There are weapons in the home. There has been property destruction and violence in the past. There is illicit substance abuse. You turn off what I call my vocal fry in my Southern California presence, and you turn on the seriousness. You are specific. You are extreme, explicit. We already have tons of problems, especially in America, with dispatchers and first responders taking emotional women seriously.
- [10:50]
A
Yeah, right.
- [10:51]
B
And you have to escalate the way you speak and portray the danger so that the documentation is there and so that they show up to help you. But in addition to that, I think, you know, a lot of these incidences occur because the child feels abandoned and that they're stuck. The parents are finally saying, this is it. I think you do need to manipulate your child, your adult child, in a sense. Right. You need to make them feel like this is really a timeout. You know, we're coming back, we're going to bookmark this because in that sense you are then going to hold their emotions rather than those emotions being placed onto you, which are full of rage and vengeance and a desire to hurt you.
- [11:36]
A
So one of the most common questions that I hear my friends ask about this was, is he a sociopath or a psychopath? I mean, I don't want you to armchair diagnose, but you've seen, you've read the histories, you've talked to neighbors. What are you calling this?
- [11:52]
B
Use the word sociopath because it's not an objective word. Anyone can look up the Psychopathy Inventory for psychopaths and anybody can look at the things you need to qualify. Right. That doesn't mean you're trained. Right. I trained for years and years in diagnosing and we trained on inter rater reliability where we were all working on the same case to see if our scores were the same. I wouldn't diagnose anyone without really thoroughly being trained and knowing. And that's what a psychologist does. But there are definitely behaviors that are concerning and that would load on that test. And just from watching video clips, there's a glibness, there's a superficial charm, there's a lack of empathy, there's a lack of grandiosity.
- [12:36]
A
Grandiosity.
- [12:37]
B
Definitely the grandiosity. There's a. There's an element of, you know, my shit don't stink. And we find that a lot in Hollywood as well. So it doesn't mean that it's gonna make a killer. There's so much to this picture that is gonna play out. I think there's. There are so many secrets and so much darkness that no one knows. Even the people that were in Rob's house and considered him a friend.
- [13:02]
A
You know, one thing that I keep thinking about though, is I keep coming back to what a kind, loving person this parent attempted to be. How they attempted to sort of give more, do more, let him move in, continue to, even when he was being rageful and wrecking things, saying, I love you, I love you, I love you. At what point does that become the harmful gasoline that ends up making the person think like, well, I can get away with anything because I've gotten away with this.
- [13:38]
B
I think that's a huge piece of it is access. Not just physical access, but emotional and psychological access. We hurt people more when we Know we can, when we know we can manipulate them and especially when they have a big heart. That's where our dark sides go to take advantage of people. And maybe there was a darkness that people significant. Well, if he did this, there was a darkness that people significantly minimized totally.
- [14:07]
A
You would be the type of psychologist that would be called in to determine whether or not someone like Nick Reiner knew what he was doing at the time of the crime. What are the evaluation pinpoints that you're going to be looking for to determine this?
- [14:23]
B
You know, I think they are going to try for not guilty by reason of insanity. That's what we call it in California. I don't think they'll get it. But substance use is, is not insanity. You can't have that as your excuse. Right. We also have that he had the hotel room. He had behaviors before in preparation, he had behaviors after to cover up. He didn't want the blood all over him, so he cleaned himself and it was all in the hotel room. He didn't resist the arrest. He wasn't surprised. So there are a lot of factors that tell me that he was in some way aware of the consequences of what he chose to do. And that's where insanity comes in. You can be legally insane if you really didn't know what you were doing at the time of the crime. It looks at this point, if he did this, he did know a bit of what he was doing. And so if we have to take that to beyond a reasonable doubt for a jury, that's a pretty high bar that they're going to have to and get past.
- [15:22]
A
Wow. I want to talk about a lot of people trying to look back at Rob Reiner was so successful and his grandfather was so successful. How does a young man even make his way into a family like this? How do you talk about childhood and the impact of family dynamics on a case like this without just going into the risk of like, why are we even going there? You know, I, I, I get really confused about people who want to try to over explain as if there's some sort of reasoning for this. Right. That there was some sort of logical explanation why he had this rage against his father. I want your two cents about that because I hear people talking and I'm just like, it doesn't matter Rob Reiner was successful. It doesn't.
- [16:14]
B
We can be consistently inconsistent. And I think that's what this case is, is the instability and the lack of consistency led people to really not know where to put their finger or place their finger. On how serious things were. And yeah, wealth can bring you everything. It also brings you an authoritative personality. It also brings you a lot of pressure, a lot of comparison and a lot of failure. And when you fall from such a high pedestal, when you can't compare yourself to your father or to Rob's father or to your siblings, yes, that's going to grow. That's going to grow a vengeance and a darkness and a grievance within you. It can play in, but sure, it'll play in. In any family, because every family, especially in different cultures, hold their children to these extremely high standards, even if they don't know they're doing it. It's very cultural at times, too.
- [17:14]
A
Yeah. I'm just very curious, Leslie, if you looked at the photographs of. Of Nick recently and saw such a marked change in both his weight and his sort of blank stare, and there was something different about either the way he was medicating himself or the way he was being medicated. Do you agree?
- [17:32]
B
Definitely. I think there that he appeared much more disheveled.
- [17:36]
A
Yes.
- [17:36]
B
He wasn't. He didn't appear like he had been taking care of himself, but more so he didn't appear that he cared a lot about how he impressed upon other people.
- [17:45]
A
Right.
- [17:46]
B
And the statements we've heard from the night at Conan's party, they're disturbing. So it tells me that there was a period of time from that picture, from the. I think it was the movie premiere to the night of the alleged murder, where there was a decline. And it could be substance, but it's likely not entirely substance because of the longevity and the 18 treatments centers. And people who have problems with substance abuse do not correlate to parricide to killing their parents. 60 to 75% of people who have mental illness. Those are the ones that are in our parasite studies.
- [18:27]
A
Yeah. Wow. Very interesting. You know, because the people with mental illness are going to say the vast majority of people with mental illness do not kill their parents. Of course that's true, but you're talking about within the subset of people who do kill their parents, 70% of them do have some sort of mental illness. Well, that's a valid, valid statistic.
- [18:48]
B
There's, you know, there's a book called why Kids Kill Parents. So we have statistics, but we're looking at normative samples of like 140 people. This is so rare. You know, we're trying to understand it. And that's why I'm grateful that Nick is alive. He's going to be forced to be sober and forced to be in treatment now. And he's also going to help us understand, research wise, how to prevent something like this from happening.
- [19:17]
A
I wanted to ask you because you said in your TikTok that there is a kind of evaluation tool that forensic psychologists like yourself use, and that is the method by which they kill the parent matters. Why does it matter and what does it tell you?
- [19:34]
B
You know, one thing that's great about Canada is they keep all of the crimes. They have a giant database of the crimes. You know, what was the person like with what was their mental health like? Was it a gun, was it a knife? Was it close proximity? Was it planned? And that dataset has led to extremely incredible research like the hair psychopathy checklist. A lot of this has come from Canada, but looking upon research there and studying a lot from Canadian research, and granted, they don't have a lot of guns in Canada, so it is a bit skewed. But this crime with a knife, with two victims, tells me, with stabbing and slitting throats, tells me that there was a dark grievance. He was also, if he did this, he was also very okay. With that close proximity to the cutting of the flesh and the skin. He was okay taking his time. He had the sustained force to do it. That takes a lot of strength and endurance. And he emotionally never took. Turned away. He continued.
- [20:41]
A
Yeah. You know, because if it had been a person who actually began to be conscientious of what he was doing, he would have only killed one person and then he would have fled. He was damned and determined to do it to both parents, which I find so harrowing. I find it completely. Completely.
- [21:01]
B
And that's where this information, the autopsies, all of this information will be very important because if he killed his father first, then it gives us a lot of insight into his motives.
- [21:12]
A
Yeah.
- [21:12]
B
Why would he kill his mother if he did that? Why was she complicit? Was she in a delusion of his? You know, we need to understand how it was justified.
- [21:23]
A
I do wonder, Dr. Dobson, how we hold someone accountable without fully dehumanizing them. It is. It's impossible. Because even I want to just say, what a monster. What a monster. You know, and whatever. Whatever is in him that could cause that. Right. So how do we do that? How do we keep our humanity when someone has done something so horrendous?
- [21:49]
B
You know, I. People ask me that all the time, how do I work with these psychopaths, pedophiles, killers. I detach myself from their crime. And what I do is I initially try to just get to know them. I try to build that rapport with them. And I want them to trust me as an objective person who can hear their story because in large part, most people who commit crimes have felt invalidated and have struggled and have a darkness in them for a long time. So if we can put that aside for a moment and try to learn about the person. This isn't somebody who's murdered people throughout his entire life. Right. This isn't a serial killer who I would say is a waste of skin. Jeffrey Dahmer, utter monster, no empathy. This is somebody. If this is Nick, this is somebody who I can see empathy can be applied in this case and it will probably be used largely to manipulate the jury in this trial because he made attempts to get treatment so many times. He showed up for it. He just didn't stay or stick with it. So I think we can't run to judge quite yet because there is so much information to come.
- [23:07]
A
I want to return to my initial concern, and that was the hundreds of messages that I read from parents of kids like this. And I did an interview with Dr. John Polz, who treats a lot of highly agitated, potentially explosive young men with mental illnesses. And he was saying to me, and I quote, the level of aggression that we're seeing in these young men isn't explained by their background, their trauma or their mental illness. So what is going on? And I'm so curious how you would answer that question, Leslie.
- [23:42]
B
You know, I, I run the risk of being political, but it's not just political. It's. Even prior to Trump, we started to platform misogyny. We started to let our kids be on video that have, they don't. They think they're talking to a friend, but oftentimes the friend is a part of a dark web group that is just trying to bring chaos and disruption. We've lent way more into using iPads as babysitters. You can set your YouTube kids to age 4, but the commercials still have erect penises in them. And I think we have had this downfall of society with protecting the over access. And then we bring in a president who is openly rude and horrible to women, is misogynistic and does not care, and he is lending to further permission for these uneducated bigotry, racist remarks and behavior. So we were already on a downhill slope. And I think this, I think Trump has significantly exacerbated it there.
- [24:51]
A
Well, there's no question. I mean, you, you talk to some of the people who have been imprisoned by it. And they will say, well, I got my cue from the political tenor of the day. That is how you're supposed to act. It's what you're supposed to do. And some of them now have deep regrets about being involved in that kind of aggression. I do want to provide some sort of hopefulness for parents who are concerned about their kids. Do you have any last minute? Rather than treating each of those incremental notches up in aggression with real, very concerted responses, police responses, drawing boundaries with no contact with all the things that you need to do to stay safe, anything else that you can offer these families?
- [25:39]
B
I think the national alliance of Mental Illness, NAMI is an incredible organization. And no matter what you're dealing with, somebody else is dealing with it too. So group therapy online, being validated that you, you're scared of your kid, there are groups for you and if there isn't a group specific, they will find it and make it. They will find people to help you. So I think building a community around your own fears and suspicions to either validate or invalidate you, Maybe you are too dramatic, maybe it's not actually that severe, but it's not just you, it's the community that needs to step up and be there with you. And I think also just, you know, putting in informative reports to the police, building a case file on individuals, letting local mental health resources be aware of any potential. You want to build out your community and talk about, okay, if I set these rules and I set these boundaries and he doesn't or she doesn't, there are very rarely parasite cases. So I say he. But if they don't follow the rules, what do I do? What does it look like? What is my plan? And reassure yourself that even if you're scared to set the boundary, you're scared to set the rule, it feels horrible. You feel like a horrible parent. I don't care if it doesn't work, what are you going to do after?
- [27:09]
A
That's really great advice. Dr. Leslie Dobson, thank you for being with us and we'll continue to have you back throughout the trial.
- [27:15]
B
Definitely.