Deadly Break-In ‘American Idol’ Executive & Husband Killed in Their L.A. Home

POLICE SAY A COUPLE WALKED IN ON A BURGLARY IN PROGRESS AT THEIR HOME. A COMMUNITY QUESTIONS WHY THEIR BODIES WEREN’T FOUND UNTIL FOUR DAYS LATER

- DANIELLE BACHER

On July 10, a sun-drenched morning in Los Angeles, Robin Kaye, a longtime music supervisor for American Idol, and her husband, rock guitarist and singer Thomas Deluca, both 70, began their day like any other. They likely chatted over lattes in the airy kitchen of their house in Encino, Calif., and fed their beloved pets—Jojo, a Chihuahua-greyhound rescue; Bogey, an African gray parrot; and TurtleJoe, a large tortoise that spends its days wandering in the garden of the couple’s $4.5 million hillside home.

TRAGIC DISCOVERY LAPD investigators were outside the couple's fenced-in home in Encino, Calif., on July 15, the day after the pair were found shot to death.

Later that afternoon, though, after Kaye and Deluca made a grocery run, the couple’s quiet routine was shattered forever. When the couple returned to their house, they encountered a stranger who police say had entered through an unlocked door while they were out. Within the hour Kaye and Deluca were dead—shot in the head and killed by the alleged intruder, who used the couple’s own gun, police say. Yet despite two 911 calls that day and multiple police visits to the home, it took another four days and a welfare-check request made by a friend of Kaye’s for authorities to find the couple’s bodies on July 14—and to launch an investigation into their violent deaths.