If you were to stick a pin into a map of Los Angeles at the precise location where one might least expect a heinous act of murderous violence, it would likely land right here, on South Chadbourne Avenue. This narrow lane in Brentwood, tucked discreetly a few blocks south of Sunset, lined with palm trees and gated multi-million-dollar mansions, is usually as calm and idyllic as a David Hockney landscape.

But not right now. On this day, Dec. 14, it looks like something out of a James Ellroy fever dream. Police tape blocks off the road at both ends while TV news vans crowd the curbs and swarms of podcasters and online influencers jostle each other with their vlogging sticks for better views of the grisly scene up the street.

At one point, a resident wanders out of her home, glances at the mob milling in front of her driveway, breaks into sobs, then rushes back inside.

Police hadn’t yet officially confirmed it, but everybody here knows what’s just happened. Rob Reiner and his wife, Michele, have been brutally murdered. The sickening details will trickle out over the coming hours: how earlier in the day one of the Reiners’ daughters discovered her parents dead in their home, their throats viciously slashed; that the LA Fire Department arrived first, followed by LAPD homicide detectives; that the prime suspect in the slayings, now in custody, was another of the Reiners’ children, Nick, 32, who has suffered a long history of drug and mental health challenges.

There have been some hard Hollywood passings this past year — Gene Hackman, Robert Redford, Diane Keaton — but it’s fair to say this one hit the town particularly hard, and not just because of the shocking circumstances. Reiner, 78, had been a fixture in the industry his whole life, starting when his father, Carl Reiner, a legendary Hollywood figure in his own right, would bring him to the set of The Dick Van Dyke Show, the classic sitcom he was creating for CBS. 

As a teenager, Reiner occasionally popped up elsewhere on the dial — there was a non-speaking part in Wagon Train — and when he was 20 his dad gave him a role in 1967’s Enter Laughing, his semi-autobiographical movie about growing up in Depression Era New York. But, of course, it was the part Reiner landed just a few years later, at the age of 23, that would set the course for a career that would one day rival and even surpass his father’s.

For a generation of TV viewers, Reiner will always be “Meathead,” Archie Bunker’s long-suffering liberal son-in-law on Norman Lear’s seminal 1970s sitcom All in the Family. The show, which gleefully pushed political and social hot button issues — racism, sexism, homophobia, they all were treated as punchlines — was such a cultural phenomenon it could easily have defined Reiner’s legacy on its own. That was danger Reiner was all too aware of. “I could win the Nobel Prize and they’d write, ‘Meathead wins the Nobel Prize,’” he lamented more than once.

Turns out he was wrong about that — he ended up growing out of Michael Stivic remarkably quickly. In fact, through his 30s and 40s, Reiner would evolve into one of the most successful filmmakers of his generation, shooting an astonishing string of what can reasonably be called instant classics. For starters, there was This Is Spinal Tap, his 1984 directorial debut that pretty much invented the mockumentary (poignantly, last September, it was bookended by its long-in-the-works sequel, Spinal Tap II: The End Continues, Reiner’s final film).

Over the next incredibly productive eight years, he’d make Stand by Me (River Phoenix’s breakout film); The Princess Bride (still a cable-TV holiday staple); When Harry Met Sally… (the Nora Ephron-scripted romcom that made Meg Ryan a star — and also the film on which Reiner met his wife, who was a photographer on the set); Misery (which won Kathy Bates an Oscar); and A Few Good Men (noms for Best Picture and best supporting actor for Jack Nicholson).

Offscreen, Reiner was just as active, an outspoken champion of civil rights and an unapologetically progressive activist. He was a founding board member of AFER, the organization that, in 2013, helped overturn California’s ban on same-sex marriage. His opinions sometimes drew fire from the right — especially recently, with President Trump not even letting Reiner’s death get in the way of attacking him for being “deranged” and “very bad for our country” — but most reasonable people, even when they disagreed with him, could find something to respect in his humanity and dignity.

Of course, no career is without its low points, and Reiner certainly had his share of dips. His 1994 high-concept family comedy North — with future Frodo Elijah Wood playing a hyper-articulate 11-year-old who sues his parents for not being appreciative enough — was the flop that finally cracked his winning streak, not only tanking at the box office but also famously earning zero stars from Roger Ebert. Still, despite such later-career setbacks, Reiner’s track record at his peak, in the 1980s and early 1990s, puts him right up there with Ron Howard, Robert Zemeckis, and maybe even Steven Spielberg, planting him squarely in the A-list echelon of late 20th century auteurs, part of Hollywood’s most elite cadre.

Except for one other — the one Reiner and his 67-year-old wife of 35 years joined this past weekend, after the horrific events at their Brentwood home. It’s a much sadder pantheon, but equally famous and even more enduring — the icons of Hollywood most infamous crimes and catastrophes.

That house on Chadbourne Avenue? The Reiners lived there for more than 30 years — since buying the 10,000 square foot estate from Lear in 1991. It’s not too far from another famous Brentwood address: 875 Bundy Drive, where Nicole Brown Simpson was murdered. And that house, it turns out, is only a short distance from Fifth Helena Drive, where Marilyn Monroe overdosed. There are scores of other equally grim landmarks strewn all over the city. Sharon Tate’s Benedict Canyon estate, Phil Hartman’s suburban home in Encino, Sal Mineo’s apartment in West Hollywood — they have all become landmarks in this town’s topography of tragedy.

It will likely be the same with the Reiners’ Brentwood mansion, once the news vans and influencers eventually clear out. Hollywood is a town built on storytelling and myth-building. Regrettably, Rob Reiner’s story, however huge its imprint on the culture, is now part of that mournful, terrible tradition.

This story appeared in the Dec. 17 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.