When Do You Finally Walk Away From Someone You Love?

Nick Reiner pleaded not guilty to two counts of first-degree murder with special circumstances in the stabbing deaths of his parents. He's held without bail, the harshest penalty remains on the table — and his siblings, Jake and Romy, are done. Sources close to the family put it bluntly: Nick's defense is Nick's defense, and they're not part of it.

This look back examines where the case stood at the time of our reporting, then turns to the harder human question underneath it. The high-profile attorney the family initially funded withdrew early on, leaving Nick with a public defender. Reports indicate his siblings won't attend the trial, and that in months of incarceration his only visitor has been his lawyer. After years of treatment programs, a conservatorship, repeated crises, and a lifetime of absorbing the fallout, two siblings reached the point where holding on was no longer possible.

To understand that moment, this segment looks at three other families who arrived there before them: Peter Lanza, who stepped away from his son and later said he wished he'd never been born; the family who largely withdrew from public view after the Charleston church murders; and Kerri Rawson, who had to grieve her father, the man known as BTK, as two separate people — the dad she loved and the killer he hid.

The question this segment asks isn't whether the Reiner siblings made the right call. It's what it cost them to stay as long as they did — and what the families who finally let go can teach the rest of us.

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