Family associate details events around discovery of Reiners’ deaths

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 American filmmaker Rob and his wife Michele Singer Reiner.

- Shawn Hubler and Matt Stevens

The couple was scheduled to have dinner with former US president Barack Obama and Mrs Michelle Obama and others.

Getting no answer at the gate, the massage therapist called the couple’s daughter, Ms Romy Reiner, 28, 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 Dec 16 with a person who is close to the Reiner family.

The person spoke to The New York Times on condition of anonymity because the immediate family was not ready to speak publicly yet.

On Dec 16, 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.

In a news conference, 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”.