A family tragedy shocked Hollywood on Sunday when beloved director Rob Reiner and his wife, photographer Michele Singer Reiner, were found dead, allegedly murdered by their son Nick. Northeastern University criminal justice and psychology experts said the incident was shocking not just because of the victims’ wealth and fame, but because a child allegedly killing not just one, but two parents is extremely uncommon.
“We’re talking about something that is—because of all the different pieces to it—very rare,” said Carlos Cuevas, professor of criminology and criminal justice and co-director of the Violence and Justice Research Lab at Northeastern University. “That it is allegedly a child who perpetrated the violence, and the fact that they were killed, are two things that make it an infrequently occurring event.” James Alan Fox, a research professor of criminology at Northeastern who has studied family violence, said that only 8% of parricides—or killings of a parent—have multiple victims and 30% involve a knife as the primary weapon.
