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.
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
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.
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