Billionaire investor found dead in lake on his $2.4M Washington estate

Reiner, 72, was found dead in Trout Lake, near Fertile Valley Road, Pend Oreille County at around 3 p.m. on Aug. 31, following a search that involved divers and cadaver dogs, according to the Independent.

The Pend Oreille County Sheriff’s Office received a report of a missing person at the estate the night before. Due to nightfall, the search had to be halted and resumed the next day when Reiner's body was found.

Sheriff Glenn Blakeslee told The Miner Newspapers that Reiner "went swimming and just didn’t come back."

An autopsy was performed on September 5, but the cause of death has not yet been determined, as reported by the Seattle Times.

A lake house mansion. Illustration by Unsplash

The Reiner family estate spans 1,837 acres (over 7 million square meters) and includes around 30 properties, along with a large mansion on the shore of Trout Lake. Reiner and his wife, Rhonda, purchased the lake house in 1998, according to county property records.

After graduating from Pepperdine University, Reiner became CEO of Optical Devices Inc., which was sold to Marquette Electronics for $300 million in 1993. In 1998, he bought World Wide Packets, a Spokane-based computer hardware company, and sold it to Ciena Corp for $290 million in 2008.

Reiner also co-founded Stemcentrx, a biotech firm focused on cancer treatments, which was acquired by AbbVie Inc. in 2016 for $5.8 billion, plus an additional $4 billion in milestone payments.

Alongside his business pursuits, Reiner was also a co-owner and partner in several golf courses and resorts, such as Granite Bay Golf Club near Sacramento, Pebble Beach Golf Links south of San Jose, Cabo del Sol near Cabo San Lucas, and Club Corp, a Dallas-based company that oversees more than 200 golf courses globally.