Nick Reiner Wants $1.5M From the Trust to Fight His Parents' Murder Charge, a New Child-Actor Lawsuit Against Diddy, and Boat Crash Trial

0:03 Caalarogu Shark Media. Good morning. This is Daily Crime and Justice. I'm Garrett Fisher. Today is Thursday, June eleventh, twenty twenty six. Three cases today and money runs through all of them. In Los Angeles, Nick Reiner, the thirty two year old charge with stabbing his own parents to death. The filmmaker Rob Reiner and his wife Michelle, has gone to court asking a judge to hand him more than a million and a half dollars from a trust fund so he can pay for the lawyer he wants to defend him against the charge that he killed the people who set that trust up for him. Also back in the news from behind bars, Sean Combs, the rapper known as Diddy, hit this week with a brand new lawsuit from a man who says Comb sexually assaulted him in two thousand and seven when he was a working child actor, even as prosecutors in Los Angeles decide whether to charge Comps in a separate case. And in Miami, a father named George Pino goes on trial accused of being drunk at the wheel of his boat when it crashed in Biscayne Bay and killed a teenage girl who was only there to celebrate his own daughter's birthday. Look, I'm going to be honest with you. The first one is going to test how you feel about a principle you probably say you believe in. So let's start there. If you've been with us since the winter, you know this case. Rob Reiner, seventy eight years old, one of the most beloved filmmakers

1:33 America has produced. This is the man who made the Princess Bride stand by me when Harry met Sally. A few good men misery. This is spinal tap, A man a lot of you grew up on. His wife, Michelle Singer Reiner, a photographer and philanthropist married to Rob for thirty six years, a co founder of a fund that helped first generation kids get to college. On December fourteenth of last year, the two of them were found stabbed to death inside their Brentwood home. The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner ruled they died of multiple sharp force injuries. Their son, Nick, thirty two, was arrested within hours. He's been charged with two counts of first degree murder with special circumstances. And those special circumstance allegations matter because they mean that if he's convicted, the table is set for either life without parole or the death penalty. He has pleaded not guilty, And I'm going to say the thing this show always says and means, Nick Reiner is presumed innocent.

2:31 He has not been tried. He has battled addiction and mental health struggles for years, and reporting has indicated there was an argument with his father at a holiday party the night before the killings. But an argument is not a conviction, and none of what I'm about to tell you changes the fact that twelve people have not yet heard this case. Here's the new development, the reason we're leading with him today. On Monday, Nick Reiner's lawyers filed one hundred and thirty six page petition in Los Angeles asking a judge to unlock his trust fund more than one and a half million dollars so he can pay for his defense. And this is where it gets complicated in a way I find genuinely interesting. That trust was set up for Nick back in nineteen ninety three when he was born. His parents, the people he's accused of killing, are the ones who created it. The petition says half of that money was supposed to be released to him when he turned thirty. He turned thirty back in twenty twenty three, while his parents were still alive, and for reasons nobody has fully explained. He says he never got it.

3:35 Now he wants it, all of it, or at least half, and he wants it fast because right after his arrest, his family hired one of the most sought after criminal defense attorneys in the country, a man named Alan Jackson, and in January, Jackson abruptly withdrew. At the time, he said only that it was for reasons beyond his control and beyond Nick's control. I don't know what that meant. The money wasn't there. Nick siblings, Jake and Romey, had initially agreed to fund Jackson's representation, and then they stopped. So Nick has been with a public defender ever since. Jackson has now filed a declaration of his own, saying his firm is ready, willing and able to come back the moment the money appears. The petition's argument is on the law actually clean. It says, this is not my dead parents estate. I'm not trying to inherit from the people I'm accused of killing. California law would block that this is my own money, money that legally became mine years ago. And like anyone accused of a crime, I'm presumed innocent, and I'm entitled to mount my defense with my own resources. And honestly, on paper, that's hard to argue with. We don't means test the constitution. A person facing the death penalty gets to hire the best lawyer he can afford with his own money. That's the system working the way it's supposed to. And yet I'd be lying to you if I pretended they're there wasn't something that sits heavy in the chest about it. A son is asking a court to give him the money his

5:05 parents lovingly set aside for him as a baby, so that he can fight the accusation that he put a knife into both of them. There's a trustee in the middle of this, a man named Paul Caanan, who's been slow walking the release citing concerns and who's now on his way out the door. And the person lined up to take over as trustee. Here's a name some of you will recognize is Jody Montgomery, the same conservator who once managed Britney Spears' affairs during the conservatorship Small Strange World, The next hearing in the criminal case is set for September fifteenth. The fight over the money will move faster than that because every week of delay, the petition argues, is a week Nick can't prepare the defense. He wants a content warning before this one. We're going to talk about allegations of sexual assault, including an allegation involving a child.

6:10 I'm going to keep it factual and I'm not going to describe anything graphically. If that's not something you want in your ears right now, skip ahead about six minutes. Sean Combs Diddy is a name we've covered a lot, so I'll keep the background tight. Last July, a federal jury in New York convicted him on two counts of transporting people for prostitution. That same jury acquitted him of the most serious charges against him, racketeering and sex trafficking. In October, he was sentenced to four years minus the time he'd already served, and he's currently at a federal prison in New Jersey, appealing the conviction and currently set to be released sometime in twenty twenty eight. That's where we left him. He is now back in the news on two separate fronts, both of them knew this month.

6:56 The first is a brand new civil lawsuit filed this week by a man identified in the court papers only as John Doe. He says that in two thousand and seven, when he was a working child actor a minor, he was invited to what was described as a networking party in the Hollywood Hills, that Combs offered to speak with him privately about his career, and that once they were alone, Combs sexually assaulted him. The suit also names other parties the plaintiff says had a responsibility to protect him when he was a child. He's seeking unspecified damages. Combs's representative has denied it completely and forcefully, calling the allegations false and ridiculous, calling the man a hater chasing money, and saying flatly that mister Combs has never sexually assaulted anyone, including any child, and that these claims will be disproved like the rest. I want to be clear with you, this is a civil lawsuit. It is an allegation. It has not been tested in any court, and Combs denies it.

7:55 And I want to be careful and fair here because the fairness cuts in more than one direction. Combs was acquitted of the very worst charges he faced in that federal trial. A jury said noe to trafficking, noe to racketeering. He is entitled to that acquittal. At the same time, he is now one of the most sued men in America. There are well over one hundred civil claimants represented by various attorneys, and some of those suits, like this one, allege abuse of miners. A lot of allegations is not the same thing as proof, but it is also not nothing, and it's why the courts are going to be busy with his name for years. Which brings us to the second front, and this one is criminal. On the West Coast, the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office has confirmed that it is reviewing a case against Comb's and weighing whether to file new charges. This one stems from a music producer and publicist named Jonathan Hay, who has publicly identified himself and who alleges Comb sexually battered him during a project back in twenty twenty and twenty twenty one, a project connected to the family of the late notorious Big The Los Angeles Police and the County sheriff each investigated and handed their findings to the DA whose office says simply, we are reviewing the case. No charge is yet. A decision could go either way. I'll note that a man named in Hayes related civil suit has denied any wrongdoing and has actually countersuit Hey for defamation, so even this piece is contested. Here's the through line. Sean Combs is

9:27 a convicted federal felon who was also acquitted of the gravest accusations against him, who is now facing a wave of civil suits and a live criminal review on the other side of the country. There's a playbook for a powerful man to outlast all of this outspend it outweigh it, appeal it. Whether that playbook works this time is going to be decided in a lot of courtrooms over a lot of years. We'll keep telling you which way it breaks. Last story takes us to Miami and to a brand new trial you should be following. September fourth, twenty twenty two, a man named George Pino, who is now fifty five, takes his boat out into Biscayne Bay to celebrate his daughter's birthday. On board, his wife, his daughter, and eleven of his daughter's teenage friends, eleven teenage girls out on the water for a birthday, the kind of day that's supposed to live in a photo album. Prosecutors say that out on the sandbar where the group spent the day, Pino was drinking, and that he didn't stop at drinking himself, that he handed alcohol to the underage girls at the party.

10:39 I'll be careful because Pino has pleaded not guilty, and that's the state's allegation, not a proven fact, but that's the picture they're painting. The one adult responsible for a boat full of other people's kids drinking before he had to drive everyone home, and on the way home is where it went wrong. According to prosecutors, Pino accelerated through a stretch of water called the Cutter Bank Channel from forty three miles an hour up to forty seven and drove straight into a channel marker, not a hidden one. The state says that marker was painted a bright day glow green so it could be seen that GPS data shows Pino had cruised passed it many times before, and that he was on the wrong side of the channel when he hit it. The crash threw some of the kids into the water, and one of them, a teenage girl named Lucy Fernandez didn't come back up in time.

11:30 Prosecutors say Pino was slow to help her. Lucy drowned, she wasn't the only one hurt. The family of another passenger, a girl named Katerina Puig, has sued Pino, saying their daughter was left with what their filing calls permanent total disability. That case is civil, it's separate, and it's still pending, but it tells you how many young lives were on that boat. Pino is charged with manslaughter and vessel homicide. Jury selection in front of Judge Marisa Tinkler Mendez ran for days because half of South Florida already had an opinion. At one point, a prospective juror flagged that another person in the pool was openly watching news coverage of the case on her phone in the jury room. The trial is now getting underway. A jury is going to decide whether the most ordinary act of trust, handing your kid to the adult with the boat, was betrayed that day.

12:24 So that's the docket. A son in Los Angeles asking for the money his parents left him to fight the case that says he killed them. A jailed mogul facing a new accuser and a possible new prosecution, and a father in Miami waiting on twelve people to decide what he owes for a day on the water that ended with a child in the bay. Before we go the names, Rob Reiner gave a lot of people a lot of joy and Michelle Singer Reiner spent her life trying to open doors for kids who didn't have them, and whatever a jury eventually concludes about how they died. They were people first, not a headline about their son. And Lucy Fernandez was a teenage girl who went to a birthday party and drowned on the ride home. Someone has to say their names, so I will. If this episode was worth your time today, share it. Send it to one person, the friend who's going to have an opinion about whether Nick Reiner should get that money, the friend who's been following Diddy since the start. Hand it to one person.

13:24 That's how this show grows. And if you're listening on Spotify, drop a comment. I've got a real question for you today. Should a person accused of murdering his parents be allowed to use the money those parents left him to pay for his defense? Yes? Or no? And why I read them Wherever else you're watching or listening, leave a note and let me know you're there until tomorrow. Do better.