[netsharc]

Speaking of media, I found it really useless that before the names were published, the majority of news articles just said "78 and 68 year old persons found dead [RIP] at Rob Reiner's home", but I had to search for his and his wife's age to correlate that it's him and his wife. I think only 1 news article said, "authorities have not said the names, but those are the ages of Rob Reiner and his wife".

[philistine]

It's because they don't want to be wrong, while at the same time having to rush to publish because if they want clicks they need to be first. So they publish only what the cops initially tell them, even before they had time to inquire that the couple killed were indeed the residents.

That's a telltale sign of a news organization that doesn't have access to backroom sources.

[oneeyedpigeon]

I've always found it weird that the police cannot name them, but they can give out clues, even clues that are, to all intents and purposes, naming them.

[byronic]

In the interest of preserving anonymity, let's call him Rob R. No, er, wait, let's do R Reiner. There, that should do it

[harambae]

Lol reminds me of that partially redacted document about the Titan submarine that imploded.

There was like "submarine expert number 2, name redacted" and in expert 2's testimony he said something like "you may recall from my film, Titanic, that..." and I mean it could be anyone or maybe is definitely James Cameron

[KingMob]

Lots of people worked on that film, and no doubt Cameron likes to hire fellow deep sea enthusiasts. It could be anybody! /s

[philistine]

That's not what was happening there. They weren't hiding the identity, it's that they had not positively identified the victims. The cops talked to journalists very fast.

[rafram]

They hadn't positively identified them, but they knew exactly how old they were?

It seems much more likely that they had identified them, but they hadn't gone through the full set of procedures (notifying family members, etc.) that are required before officially releasing names.

[netsharc]

If that's the case, that's really just dumb side-skirting of compliance rules, how much difference does it make for a yet-notified family member to read "Persons aged [dad's age] and [mom's age] found dead at residence of [their last name]" compared to "Mr. and Mrs. [their last name] found dead."?

In any case, tragically, their daughter lived across the street and found them.