Aug. 18, 2026

Nick Reiner and the Slayer Statute, the Commonwealth Rests Against Lindsay Clancy, Opening Statements for Tupac, Murdaugh Changes Counties

Show Notes
Transcript

A Los Angeles County grand jury has indicted Nick Reiner on two counts of first-degree murder in the December 2025 stabbing deaths of his parents, filmmaker Rob Reiner, 78, and photographer Michele Singer Reiner, 70, adding special circumstance allegations of multiple murder and murder by lying in wait — allegations that make the case death-penalty eligible. Reiner, 32, has pleaded not guilty and is presumed innocent; District Attorney Nathan Hochman's office has not said whether it will seek death. Separately, the fiduciary overseeing a $1.5 million trust his parents opened for him has invoked California's slayer statute to block his access, which he sought in order to rehire private counsel. Also: in Plymouth, Massachusetts, Judge William Sullivan told jurors the Commonwealth would rest its case against Lindsay Clancy after roughly three weeks and some seventy witnesses; the defense case, built on postpartum psychosis, is next. In Las Vegas, opening statements began in the murder trial of Duane Davis in the 1996 killing of Tupac Shakur. And in South Carolina, Judge Debra McCaslin ruled Alex Murdaugh's April 2027 retrial cannot be held anywhere in the 14th Judicial Circuit, with a new venue to be set later.

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Kalaroga Shark Media. Good morning. This is daily Crime Injustice

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from Calaroga Shark Media powered by AI. I'm Garrett Fischer.

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Today is Tuesday, August eighteenth, twenty twenty six. Four cases today,

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and three of them turned a corner in the same

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twenty four hours. Let me set the table. In Los Angeles,

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Nick Reiner is now under a grand jury indictment for

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the stabbing deaths of his parents, and prosecutors have added

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an allegation that changes the entire shape of the case

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that he was lying in wait. At the same time,

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in a completely different courthouse, a professional fiduciary is arguing

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that Reiner should not be allowed to touch a single

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dollar of the trust fund his parents open for him

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when he was a baby, not because he's been convicted

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of anything, because of what he's accused of. In Plymouth

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message Us, the judge told the jury Monday morning that

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the Commonwealth was going to rest its case against Lindsey

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Clancy roughly three weeks around seventy witnesses, and now the

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burden shifts to a defense that has never once denied

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that she killed her three children in Las Vegas thirty

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years late. Opening statements finally began in the murder of

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Tupac Shakur and in South Carolina, a judge listened to

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prosecutors argue that Alex Murdau's retrial shouldn't be moved to

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Charleston because of traffic, parking, flooding, and Masters week. Then

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she moved the trial anyway, just not to Charleston. Yet. Look,

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I'm gonna be honest with you. Two of these stories

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are about people fighting over where a trial happens and

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who pays for it. And I understand why that sounds

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like paperwork, But where a trial happens and who's sitting

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at the defense table are not side issues. They are

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frequently the whole ballgame. So we're going to take them seriously.

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We'll start in Los Angeles The Slayer Statute. On the

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night of December fourteenth, twenty twenty five, Rob Reiner and

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Michelle Singer Reiner were stabbed to death inside their home

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in the Brentwood section of Los Angeles. Rob Reiner was

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seventy eight. Most of you know the work, even if

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you never thought about the name attached to it. He

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played Michael Stavick on All in the Family, the character

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everyone called meadhead. Then he went behind the camera and

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directed this is spinal tap stand by me the Princess Bride.

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When Harry met Sally and a few good men. That

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is not a career. That is a shelf in the

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American living room. Michelle Singer Reiner was seventy a photographer

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and a producer, married to Rob for more than three decades.

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She co founded work that put underprivileged kids into college classrooms.

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She was not a footnote in somebody else's biography. And

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I want to be careful about that, because in a

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case with this much wattage attached to it, the famous

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name tends to eat the room. Their son, Nick was

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a rested within hours. He was thirty two. He has

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pleaded not guilty, and he is presumed innocent. Here's what's new.

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On July twentieth, a Los Angeles County grand jury meeting

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in secret, returned an indictment. It was unsealed on Wednesday

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the twelfth, and Nick Reiner was brought into a thirteenth

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floor courtroom at the Criminal Courts Building downtown to enter

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a plea not guilty. Again. The indictment charges two counts

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of murder. It carries special circumstance allegations of multiple murder

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and of murder by means of lying in wait, plus

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a special allegation that he personally used a deadly and

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dangerous weapon a knife. Lying in wait is the one

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to pay attention to. In California, it means a person

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waited or concealed himself in order to ambush as an allegation.

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Its job is to establish premeditation, and if a jury

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finds it true alongside a murder conviction, it opens the

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door to life without the possibility of parole, and it

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makes the case death penalty eligible. District Attorney Nathan Hackman's

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office has not announced whether it will actually seek death.

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Hawkman described the case as a profound betrayal by someone

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who was loved and trusted. There's a second thing the

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indictment does, and it's the part I'd want to explain

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to me if I were following this from the outside.

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In California, prosecutors can take a case to trial through

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a public preliminary hearing, where a judge hears evidence in

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open court and the press writes it all down, or

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they can go to a grand jury behind closed doors.

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Reiner's case had been headed toward a preliminary hearing in

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the fall that's gone now. The indictment replaces the original

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case and skips that step entirely, So a proceeding that

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was going to be public isn't. The autopsy reports are

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under a court order and have not been released. The

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Los Angeles County Chief Medical Examiner has said publicly that

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he'd like to make them public and can't, And the

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unsealed indictment itself does not explain how or why prosecutors

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say Reiner was lying in wait, I'm not accusing anybody

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of hiding the ball. Grand juries are lawful, and they're

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used all the time. Los Angeles did the same thing

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in the Harvey Weinstein prosecution. But you should understand what

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it costs. The public's window into this case just narrowed considerably,

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and the next time most of us see the evidence,

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it will be at a jury trial. Now, the money.

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When Nick Reiner was a baby, his parents opened a

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trust for him. Three decades later, it holds more than

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one and a half million dollars. In June, Reiner filed

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a probate petition asking to unlock some of it. His

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reason was straightforward. He wants to rehire Alan Jackson, the

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private defense attorney who had started on the case and

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withdrew in January when the money didn't come. Reiner has

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been represented by a Los Angeles County Deputy public defender

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ever since. The professional fiduciary now overseeing the trust, Jody

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Pace Montgomery, has said no, and the legal basis she

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is using is one most people have never heard of.

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It's called the slayer statute. In California, it lives in

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Probate Code Section two fifty. The language is blunt. A

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person who feloniously and intentionally kills the decedent cannot inherit

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under that person's will or under a trust created by

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or for that person. You don't get to profit from

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killing the person you'd have inherited from. Most states have

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some version of this. It is not controversial as a principle.

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The complication is timing. Reiner hasn't been convicted of anything.

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Montgomery's attorney argued in the filing that California law contains

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no exception allowing a killer's inheritance to be spent on

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his own criminal defense, that the money would otherwise pass

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to Reiner's siblings Romy and Jake, to whom the fiduciary

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also owes duties, and that while Reiner is presumed in it,

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handing over the funds now would be irreversible. Reiner's civil attorney,

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Anita Wu, put the counter argument about as cleanly as

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it can be put. The slayer statute requires a determination,

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not a mere accusation, and she's right about the text.

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Under Probate Code Section two fifty four, a final murder

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conviction settles it conclusively. But if there's no final conviction,

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a probate court may make its own determination by a

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preponderance of the evidence about whether the killing was felonious

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and intentional. Sit with that for a second preponderance of

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the evidence more likely than not. That is the civil

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standard not beyond a reasonable doubt, which means a probate

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judge could, in theory reach a conclusion about whether Nick

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Reiner killed his parents on a far lower burden than

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the one the criminal jury will be held to and

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do it first. Look, I'm going to be honest with you,

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This one is genuinely hard, and I'm not going to

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pretend otherwise for the sake of a cleaner segment. The

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fiduciary's position is not cruelty. She has obligations to two

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other children who lost both parents that night, and if

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the money is spent, it is gone. But the other

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side of it is that a man facing a death

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eligible charge is asking to pay for the lawyer of

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his choice with his own money, and the answer coming

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back is essentially not until we decide whether you did it.

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That is a real problem and the sixth Amendment does

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not have a lot of patience for it. There is

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also a prior trustee in this story who refused to

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release funds while raising doubts about Reiner's ability to manage money.

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His lawyers pointed out that no court and no doctor

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had ever found him incompetent. A hearing on the trust

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was set for Monday in Los Angeles. As of this recording,

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we do not have a ruling, and when we do,

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you'll hear it here. He is due back in criminal

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court in September. Rob Reiner, Michelle Singer Reiner. Someone has

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to say their names, and it shouldn't only be in

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a sentence about money. We'll be right back with where

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two of the biggest murder trials in the country stand

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as of Monday. Welcome back two trials are running right

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now that a lot of you are following day to day,

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and both of them moved Monday. I want to give

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you an honest picture of where each one stands with

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the caveat that we record before the gavel comes down

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at the end of the day. So what you're getting

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is the state of play as of Monday morning and

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midday start. In Plymouth, Massachusetts, Core Clancy was five, Dawson

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Clancy was three, Callan Clancy was eight months old. On

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January twenty fourth, twenty twenty three, in the family's home

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in Duxbury, they were strangled. Their mother, Lindsey Clancy, then

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went out a second story window and survived with injuries

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that left her paralyzed from the waist down. She is

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charged with three counts of first degree murder and has

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pleaded not guilty. Her defense has never disputed that she

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killed her children. What the defense disputes is whether she

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can be held criminally responsible, arguing she was over medicated

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and in the grip of postpartum psychosis. Prosecutors Jennifer Sprague

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and Shane and Buckingham argue she knew exactly what she

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was doing, planned it, and staged what followed. On Monday morning,

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Judge William Sullivan told the jury the Commonwealth would rest

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its case later that day. That is the hinge of

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this trial. Roughly three weeks, somewhere around seventy witnesses, doctors

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and nurses who treated her, dozens of law enforcement officers,

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first responders, psychiatrists, family members, including her former husband and

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her former father in law. Monday's witness was a digital

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forensics expert named Ian Wiffin from the company Celebrate. Some

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of you will recognize that name because he testified in

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both Karen Reid trials. He walked jurors through an extraction

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from Clancy's iPhone, the health data on the phone and

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watch her heart rate, flights of stairs climbed at three

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minutes past five and again at thirty three minutes past five,

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the last time the phone was unlocked at thirteen minutes

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past five, an incoming call from Patrick Clancy at thirty

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three minutes past five that went unanswered, an outgoing call

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about a minute later that lasted fourteen seconds, and another

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unanswered call after six Web history stretching back two weeks

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more than thirteen hundred records, including searches about how quickly

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an antidepressant takes effect, about ketamine for suicidal thoughts, and

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five days before about the symptoms of postpartum psychosis. Then

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the defense got up. Kevin Reddington's cross examination went straight

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at reliability. He pointed out that Wwiffin himself had written

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publicly about accuracy problems with that health data. He noted

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the watch stop recording at twenty three minutes past five,

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and both devices stopped at thirty eight minutes past. As

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Reddington put it, after that point, it's pretty much blackout.

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And he made the obvious point that devices also stop

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recording when somebody takes them off or puts them down.

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That exchanges the whole trial. In miniature, the prosecution builds

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a timeline out of data. The defense asks what the

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data can actually prove about a mind? So what happens now?

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The defense case is expected to lean heavily on psychiatric experts,

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and the fight will be over postpartum psychosis, what it is,

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how rare it is, whether the people treating her should

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have seen it, and whether she was capable of appreciating

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the wrongfulness of what she did. Prosecutors have already asked

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the defense to disclose how often one of its likely

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experts has been visiting Clancy in the courtroom, which tells

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you how sharp elbowed this phase is going to get.

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Legal analysts watching this have not agreed on much. One

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has said the Commonwealth spent a lot of its case

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going after the jury's emotions without assembling a coherent theory

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of first degree murder. Another has said prosecutors made their

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most important point effectively, which is that not one clinician

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who saw Lindsay Clancy in those months came away thinking

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she was psychotic. Both things can be true. That's what

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makes this trial genuinely difficult, rather than merely upsetting one thing.

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I want to make sure you understand because it gets

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misreported constantly. If this jury returns a verdict of not

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guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility, Lindsey Clancy

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does not walk out of that courthouse. She would be

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committed to a state psychiatric hospital, subject to periodic review

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to determine whether she could ever safely live in the community.

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She has been held at Tewkesbury State Hospital this entire time.

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An acquittal here is not a door opening, It is

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a different door. Cora Dawson callan three children who should

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be eight six and three years old. This year someone

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has to say their names, and it should be more

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often than once. A segment Las Vegas thirty years late

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now to Nevada where something happened Monday that a lot

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of people had stopped believing would ever happen. At half

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past nine in the morning, in a courtroom at the

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Regional Justice Center in Las Vegas, opening statements began in

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the murder trial of Dwayne Keith Davis. Tupacamar Shakur was

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twenty five years old. He was born in Harlem in

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June of nineteen seventy one, raised by his mother, af

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Fenni Shakour, a former Black panther, and moved as a

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kid to Baltimore, where he enrolled at the Baltimore School

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for the Arts, then to Marin City, California. He considered

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Oakland home. His recording career lasted about five years and

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produced eleven platinum albums, four while he was alive and

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seven after he acted in films. He was inducted into

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the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in twenty seventeen.

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This past June, he received a star on the Hollywood

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Walk of Fame. The twenty seven hundred and fifty eighth.

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On the night of September seventh, nineteen ninety six, he

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was in a car near the Las Vegas Strip with

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Marion Knight, the head of death Row records the man

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everyone calls Sooge. A white Cadillac pulled up alongside them

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at a light. Shots were fired into the passenger side.

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Shakur died six days later on September thirteenth. September marks

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thirty years. For twenty seven of those years, nobody was charged. Nobody.

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Dwayne Davis, who is sixty three and goes by Keffi

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d was indicted in twenty twenty three. He faces one

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count of murder with a deadly weapon with intent to promote,

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further or assist a criminal gang. He is pleaded not guilty.

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If he is convicted, he faces up to life in prison.

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He is presumed innocent, and I want that stated plainly

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because in a case this loaded, the presumption is the

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first thing people throw overboard. Prosecutors are not claiming Davis

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fired the shots. Chief Deputy District attorneys Mark Didjiacomo and

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Binupalal argue he was the shot caller, that he obtained

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the gun, handed it over and gave the order in

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retaliation for a beating his nephew, Orlando Anderson, took inside

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the MGM Grand hours earlier. That same night. Defense attorney

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Michael Samft has the option of giving his opening now

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or waiting until the state rests. Judge Carly Kearney is presiding.

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The jury is twelve people plus four alternates, ten women

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and six men, pulled from a pool of more than

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one hundred Clark County residents who were questioned about gangs, guns,

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rap music, and how memory works. Davis waived his right

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to be sentenced by a jury, so if he's convicted,

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the judge decides the sentence. Here's what makes this trial unusual,

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and I mean genuinely unusual, not marketing unusual. The strongest

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evidence against Dwayne Davis appears to be Dwayne Davis. Twenty nineteen,

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he published a memoir called Compton Street Legend, which opens

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in Las Vegas on the night of the shooting and

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walks the reader through the plan he gave interviews he

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talked to police under a profer. Judge Kearney has ruled

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that jurors can hear the book and the media interviews,

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finding that the profer agreement did not cover public statements,

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and she also allowed the police proffer statements while noting

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concerns about them. Davis now says he did not write

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the book. In a jailhouse interview last year, he said,

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I'm innocent. I ain't kill nobody. The three other men

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said to have been in that cadillac, Orlando Anderson, Terrence Brown,

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and DeAndre Smith, were all named as co conspirators in

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the indictment. All three are dead. Souge Knight is alive,

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serving time in California on an unrelated conviction, and he

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is on the witness list. He has said he has

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no intention of testifying and has made clear he regards

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cooperating as beneath him. So a jury is being asked

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to resolve a thirty year old homicide in which which

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the only surviving participants are the defendant and a man

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who says he won't talk. There's a playbook for this,

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and you've seen it before. A case goes cold, the

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witnesses die or scatter, and the thing that finally cracks

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it open is somebody's mouth. Whether that's enough is exactly

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what these next weeks are for. And I'm not gonna

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prejudge it. What I will say is this Tupac Shakur's

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family sat in that courtroom Monday. His stepbrother was there.

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Thirty years is a long time to wait for a

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room to be called to order. Whatever this jury decides,

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they were owed this a very long time ago. When

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we come back, a South Carolina judge decides where Alex

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Murdock gets tried, and it will not be Colleton County.

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Colleton County is poison. Welcome back. On June seventh, twenty

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twenty one, Maggie Murdaw and her son Paul Murdall were

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shot to death at the family's property in rural South Carolina.

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Maggie was fifty two, Paul was twenty two. Alex Murdall

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was convicted of both murders in twenty twenty three and

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sentenced to two life terms. Earlier this year, the South

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Carolina Supreme Court threw that conviction out, finding that the

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clerk of court at his trial made improper comments to

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the jury. So he gets a new trial, currently scheduled

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for April of twenty twenty seven, and he is again

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presumed innocent. I want to be blunt about that because

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I know how it lands The reason there's a retrial

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is not new evidence and not some clever appellate maneuver.

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It's that a court official talked to a jury in

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a way she wasn't supposed to. A family lost a

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mother and a son. A state spent six weeks proving

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a case, and the whole thing was undone by conduct

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inside the courthouse. That's not a mistake. That's a choice

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somebody made. Do better. On Friday, Murda appeared in a

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Lexington County courtroom in a suit and tie in front

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of Judge Deborah McCaslin for the first pre trial hearing

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since the reversal. Three things happened Worth your time. First venue,

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The defense wants Charleston. Their argument, and it's a decent one,

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is that coll Itton County doesn't just know about this case,

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it lives inside it. The murdaf family produced the chief

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prosecuting officer for that area from nineteen twenty until two

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thousand and six. During the first trial, they had to

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take a portrait of his grandfather down off the courthouse wall.

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Prosecutors initially signaled they agreed the trial should move, then

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they reversed and opposed it, and their filing is something

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to behold. They wrote about downtown Charleston, traffic, parking, heavy

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spring storms, and king tides that flood the historic district,

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and the fact that the trial would begin during Masters

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week when people head to Charleston to vake. I read

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that filing twice to make sure I wasn't being unfair

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to it, and look, logistics are real. Housing. A trial

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of this size is a genuine burden on a county.

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But when a double homicide retrial is in front of you,

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and your written objection leads with golf, tourism and parking availability,

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you should expect people to notice. Solicitor creighton Waters actual

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argument underneath all that is narrower and stronger, that the

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defense refused to consider any county but Charleston, which he

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called the most expensive and most difficult option in the state,

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and that Charleston may not even be a lawful destination

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since it adjoins Collington County and is its media market.

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Dick Carputlian answered for the defense with four words, Colleton

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County is poison. Mccaslyn ruled from the bench the trial

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moves out of the fourteenth Judicial Circuit entirely, which takes

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Coleton off the table along with Allendale, Beaufort, Hampton, and

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jas for counties where it lands. She'll decide later. Second DNA.

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The defense won access to untested DNA in the case

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over the state's objection. The state wanted its own lab

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to quantify the sample. First, Harpootlean said he doesn't trust

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that lab, citing how a bloody T shirt was handled

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before the first trial, and argued it was consumed in

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processing and that the results came late. The judge ordered

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the material turned over for the defense to test and

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told them they'd be paying for it. Third, and this

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is the one I'd watch. Defense attorney Jim Griffin accused

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prosecutors of having secret agreements with Curtis Smith, a man

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he described as a distant cousin of Murdaw's, and the

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man Murdaw was accused of hiring to shoot him in

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a botched suicide for higher scheme. Griffin's point was arithmetic.

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Smith was indicted in twenty twenty one and twenty twenty

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two on charges including money laundering, and years later those

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cases still haven't been resolve while everything else has. Waters

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answered flatly, there are no secret agreements, he said. A

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proffer is not a cooperation agreement, and that no deal

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with Smith has ever existed. Whether Griffin is right or not,

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that's the kind of thread appellate lawyers pull on for

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a decade, and this case has already been undone. Once

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the parties are back in court in November, trial is

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set for April twenty twenty seven, which will be nearly

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six years after Maggie and Paul Murdall were killed. Maggie Murdall,

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Paul Murdall. Six years, two trials and still no settled answer.

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They deserved better from the system that was supposed to

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deliver one. That's the show. Four cases, and if there's

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a thread running through them, it's this. The machinery around

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a criminal case is not neutral. Who pays for your lawyer,

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which county you're tried in, whether the evidence gets aired

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in public or behind a grand jury door, whether a

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courthouse official keeps her mouth shut. None of that is

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the crime. All of it shapes the outcome. Accountability doesn't

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have a legal department, but it sure has a lot

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of procedure in front of it. If today's episode was

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useful to you, do me a favor. Don't share it

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with everybody. Share it with one person, somebody specific who

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you know follows one of these cases, or who would

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want to understand why a trial gets moved, or why

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