It was Sunday afternoon when a massage therapist arrived at the white-gated home in the affluent enclave of Brentwood for a scheduled appointment with Rob and Michele Singer Reiner. The couple was scheduled to have dinner with Barack and Michelle Obama and others in just a few hours.
Getting no answer at the gate, the massage therapist called the couple’s daughter, Romy Reiner, who quickly came by with a roommate. She walked in and found her father’s body and the gruesome scene of his death.
The account of what transpired is based on an interview on Tuesday with a person who is close to the Reiner family. The person, who provided one of the first detailed descriptions of the tragedy from the family’s perspective, spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the immediate family was not yet ready to speak publicly.
On Tuesday, prosecutors in Los Angeles charged Nick Reiner, the couple’s younger son, with two counts of first-degree murder in connection with the death of his parents, who were luminaries in show business and Democratic Party politics. The second of three grown children the couple had together, he had been living with his parents in a guesthouse on the property.
A spokesman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s office declined to comment Tuesday on the details of the investigation.
In a news conference, however, the district attorney, Nathan Hochman, said that “prosecuting these cases involving family members are some of the most challenging and heart-wrenching cases that this office faces because of the intimate and often brutal nature of the crimes involved.”
The person close to the family said that nothing in recent weeks suggested that Nick Reiner, 32, would be capable of such violence.
The person disputed accounts that suggested the family had been especially apprehensive in recent weeks about Nick Reiner’s behavior. Nick Reiner had struggled for more than half of his life with drug addiction, but the person close to the family said they were accustomed to working through his problems together.
In 2016, the father and son had made and released a film together that was loosely based on their experience with the son’s battles with cocaine and heroin.
In fact, the person pointed out, just the night before, the family had attended a Christmas party together. The gathering, at the home of the comedian Conan O’Brien, had been crowded with people in show business and neighborhood friends.
The New York Times reported on Monday that Nick Reiner had behaved erratically that evening and had alarmed guests with his behavior, according to two people who attended the party. One of those two guests, who spoke on condition of anonymity to preserve relationships, said Rob Reiner had rebuked his son, telling him that his behavior was inappropriate for a guest in someone else’s home.
The person close to the family was not in a position to dispute that account, but said that Rob and Nick Reiner did not have a heated argument and that the episode was being overblown. The intensity of any conversation that might have taken place between father and son may have been misinterpreted, the person said.
He took issue with news accounts that suggested the family might have left the party early because of the son’s behavior. Nick Reiner’s behavior at the party, the person said, was not unusual to the Reiners, who had grown used to it over the years.
The day after the party on Sunday afternoon, Romy Reiner, 28, fled the house in anguish upon encountering her father’s body inside the house. Her roommate, waiting outside, called 911, the person said.
When the paramedics arrived, the person said, Romy Reiner told them that her brother lived on the property also, but she did not suggest to the authorities that her brother might be a suspect, as some news outlets have reported.
Romy Reiner did not see her mother’s body in the house and learned from the paramedics outside that she was dead, too, the person said.
Investigators did not find the son in the guest house. He was arrested without incident later that evening around 9:30 p.m. by officers from the Los Angeles Police Department Gang and Narcotics Unit who had located him about 15 miles away near the neighborhood of Exposition Park southwest of downtown. It was not clear how the police found him.
On Tuesday, the Los Angeles police chief, Jim McDonnell, said the coroner had not yet determined whether the Reiners had died on Saturday night or Sunday.
The Los Angeles County district attorney, Mr. Hochman, said that the son would be formally arraigned soon. Nick Reiner had been expected to appear in court for the first time on Tuesday morning, but he was not present and his lawyer, Alan Jackson, said that his client had not been medically cleared to be transferred from jail.
Shawn Hubler is The Times’s Los Angeles bureau chief, reporting on the news, trends and personalities of Southern California.
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