Rob Reiner had booked a massage on the day he and his wife died but did not answer the door, prompting the couple’s daughter to go into their home where she discovered that they had been knifed to death, sources have told the Daily Mail.
The couple’s son, Nick, reportedly had an explosive row with his parents at Conan O’Brien’s holiday party hours before, and the 32-year-old has now been arrested and booked for felony murder.
A source has told the Mail that a masseuse came to Reiner’s $13.5million home at 2pm Sunday to help him and his wife de-stress. She rang the bell, knocked a number of times, and left when no one answered.
This prompted the couple’s daughter Romy, who lives across the road, to go over to her parents’ home, where she made the horrifying discovery that they had been slain.
Reiner, Michele and Nick attended Conan O’Brien’s holiday party together on Saturday night, where they got into a ‘very loud argument’ which other guests could hear, TMZ reports.
Reiner and Michele left the party, which was attended by some of Hollywood’s biggest stars, shortly after, sources told the outlet. It is not known if Nick left with his parents.
Then on Sunday, the couple allegedly had their throats slit after a heated argument with a relative, understood to be Nick, turned deadly at their LA mansion. Romy, Reiner’s youngest child, reportedly told police that a family member ‘should be a suspect’ because they are ‘dangerous’.
Detectives have been questioning Nick, who was arrested Sunday night before being booked for felony murder Monday morning. LA Sheriff’s records earlier showed he was being held on $4million bail, but this has since been rescinded and he is now being held without bail.
In the months leading up to her death, Michele is said to have been anguished over her son’s spiraling mental illness and drug issues, reportedly telling friends ‘we’ve tried everything’, according to TMZ.
Nick has previously spoken about his struggles with drug addiction, which saw him first attend rehab around his 15th birthday and experience periods of homelessness.
In 2016, when Nick was aged 22, he said he had gone to rehab 17 times, adding that he had been left homeless after refusing to get help on multiple occasions.
‘If I wanted to do it my way and not go to the programs they were suggesting, then I had to be homeless,’ he told People, seemingly referring to his family.
‘I was homeless in Maine. I was homeless in New Jersey. I was homeless in Texas. I spent nights on the street. I spent weeks on the street. It was not fun.’
The screenwriter co-wrote the semi-autobiographical movie Being Charlie about his struggles with drug addiction and the impact it can have on a family.
He worked on the film from rehab and collaborated with his director father on the project, which depicts the strained relationship between an actor father and his addict son. It tracks closely with the Reiner family’s own experience, they said at the time.
It ends with an apology from the father about the occasionally harsh way he treats his son, including enforced stints in rehab, something Reiner said he gave his son in real life.
In a 2016 interview with the BUILD series while promoting their film, Nick said that he ‘didn’t bond’ well with his father when he was younger, and that working on Being Charlie ‘made me feel closer to him.’
He said at the time of the film’s release that he hoped to stay off drugs so that he would never be homeless again: ‘When I was out there, I could’ve died. It’s all luck. You roll the dice and you hope you make it.’
His parents expressed regret at how they had dealt with their son’s addiction during a 2015 interview with the LA Times alongside Nick and their other children.
‘When Nick would tell us that it wasn’t working for him, we wouldn’t listen. We were desperate and because the people had diplomas on their wall, we listened to them when we should have been listening to our son,’ Reiner said of his son, who the family said had achieved sobriety at the time.
Michele added: ‘We were so influenced by these people. They would tell us he’s a liar, that he was trying to manipulate us. And we believed them.’
Referring to his drug addiction, Nick added: ‘I got sick of it. I got sick of doing that shit. I come from a nice family. I’m not supposed to be out there on the streets and in homeless shelters doing all these f*****-up things.’
In September this year, Reiner and Michele posed for their final full family photo with Nick, Romy and their eldest son Jake and his wife Maria Gilfillan at the premiere for Spinal Tap 2, which he directed and wrote. Jake is a news reporter in Houston, Texas.
The Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) confirmed it was called to the couple’s Brentwood home at about 3.30pm on Sunday and found a man, 78, and a woman, 68, dead in the property.
A Reiner family spokesman confirmed the death of the director and his wife, saying: ‘It is with profound sorrow that we announce the tragic passing of Michele and Rob Reiner,’ they said.
‘We are heartbroken by this sudden loss, and we ask for privacy during this unbelievably difficult time.’
Earlier this month, Romy revealed she was thankful for ‘family and health’ and recently shared pictures of her swimming in the sea with her father.
Reiner also adopted another daughter, Tracy Reiner, with his first wife Penny Marshall.
Los Angeles Police Department detectives say the deaths are being investigated as homicides, and a heavy police presence was at the home on Sunday evening.
A neighbor told ABC7 that Larry David and Billy Crystal, who starred in Reiner’s rom-com classic When Harry Met Sally, visited the crime scene separately. Crystal allegedly ‘looked like he was about to cry’ before he left.
Reiner and his wife are understood to have lived in the home, and property records obtained by the Daily Mail indicate that they are the owners.
The Daily Mail has reached out to representatives for Reiner and the LAPD for comment.
In a press conference, LAPD Deputy Chief Alan Hamilton said a suspect in the murders had not yet been identified. He added that no one had yet been interviewed as a suspect and that no one was in custody.
‘We’re going to try to speak to every family member that we can to get to the facts of this investigation,’ Hamilton continued.
He noted that the bodies were still in the home, as police were waiting on a warrant to reenter the home and begin their investigation after determining that there was no further threat.
He said there were no signs of forced entry into the residence.
Hamilton added that the home was in the exact same state that it had been after police first arrived to find the bodies.
The LAPD declined to identify the bodies, as that information will be officially announced by the LA County Coroner.
Los Angeles mayor Karen Bass said she was ‘heartbroken’ by the Reiners’ deaths, calling them ‘a devastating loss for our city and our country.’
‘Rob Reiner’s contributions reverberate throughout American culture and society, and he has improved countless lives through his creative work and advocacy fighting for social and economic justice,’ Bass said in a statement.
Reiner followed in the footsteps of his father, the comic actor and filmmaker Carl Reiner, who died in 2020 aged 98.
He became known as an actor, director and a tireless champion of liberal politics, with California Governor Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris and Barack Obama among the Democrats to pay tribute to Reiner on Sunday night.
Reiner first emerged as an actor and is best known for his role as Michael ‘Meathead’ Stivic on All In The Family.
He won two Emmy Awards and was nominated for five Golden Globes during his stint on the series from 1971 to 1978.
Reiner helped reinvent his career in the 1980s with his forward-looking comedy This Is Spinal Tap, which would go on to inspire countless mockumentaries.
