The atmosphere in the neighborhood around the Reiners’ home in Brentwood on Wednesday was somber. Christmas ornaments swung gently from the boughs of an enormous evergreen just behind the house’s main gate.
Several small bouquets of flowers, two candles and a small box of white hydrangeas had been left by well-wishers below Christmas wreaths decorating the gates, next to newly added “No trespassing” signs. Two private security guards stood watch in front of them.
Ken Nolan, a screenwriter who had worked on a film with Rob Reiner and his wife Michele Singer Reiner in 2018, stopped to lay flowers at the gates.
“It’s really horrible,” Mr. Nolan said, getting choked up. “It’s a Greek tragedy.”
Mr. Nolan recalled the Reiners’ warmth and generosity. He said Michele Reiner had a “funny, acerbic” personality and was “also incredibly kind.”
“I was just a tiny sliver of their lives, and they touched so many people,” he said.
Neighbors out for exercise or to walk dogs passed by quietly. No one agreed to give their names to a reporter, but over the three days since the Reiners were found stabbed to death in their bedroom and their younger son was arrested, several neighbors spoke of a pervasive sadness hanging over the community, mixed with a sense of shock and horror.
Homes here are surrounded by hedges, gates, cameras and security systems that include round-the-clock patrols. For many residents, the thought that a deadly threat might come from inside one’s own family was sobering. The couple’s younger son, Nick Reiner, 32, who has spoken publicly about his struggles with addiction, has been charged with two counts of murder.
Neighbors recalled the Reiners as polite, respectful people, though they kept to themselves and few could say they knew them well. Still, the events of the last few days, some neighbors said, had brought home the idea that this sort of tragedy could happen in any family.
Libby Motika, who grew up in the neighborhood in the 1950s and lives about six blocks from the Reiners’ home, said an influx of famous people in recent decades had changed the place’s sense of community, turning what had been an upper-middle-class neighborhood into a wealthy enclave where “no one normal lives anymore.” Rob and Michele Reiner were private but not aloof, neighbors said.
John Fawcett, who owns the Sinclair gas station a few blocks from the Reiners’ home and makes it a practice to address all of his customers by name, said the Reiners were friendly, engaging people who came in the station frequently.
“They were great — it’s so sad,” Mr. Fawcett said.
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