Accounts of Gene Hackman’s final months add to mystery surrounding his death
'They seemed like real life partners, really, really close to each other, and they were both incredibly kind,' family friend says
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Friends and family are shedding light on the final months leading up to the mysterious death of Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa.
Hackman, 95, and Arakawa, 65 — who were married since 1991 — were found dead inside their sprawling home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, last month. According to investigators, the two-time Oscar winner, who was known for roles in Unforgiven, Hoosiers, The French Connection, Superman, Enemy of the State, Crimson Tide and numerous other films, was found dead Wednesday, Feb. 26, alongside his classical pianist wife and one of their dogs.
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According to a search warrant affidavit, Hackman’s body was found in what was “believed to be a mud room … wearing gray sweat pants, a blue in colour long-sleeve T-shirt, brown slippers, and walking cane.”
Based on his positioning, police determined that Hackman had suffered a sudden fall.
His wife was discovered in a bathroom. An opened orange prescription bottle was observed on the countertop, and pills were strewn around it. A deceased German Shepherd was found “in a closet” nearby, with two other dogs found alive on the property.
No foul play was suspected, but according to the search warrant, their deaths were considered “suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation because the reporting party found the front door of the residence unsecured and opened.”
In its report, police said Arakawa’s body showed “obvious signs of death, body decomposition, bloating in her face and mumification in both hands and feet.”
Hackman’s body was “similar and consistent with the female decedent.”
There were no “signs or indications of blunt force trauma.”
USA Today later reported that the deceased dog, which was in fact a kelpie mix, was located inside a “closed crate.”
In a Friday afternoon press conference, Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said Hackman’s pacemaker revealed his “last event” took place on Feb. 17 — more than a week before his body was found — and “both individuals tested negative for carbon monoxide.”
“According to the pathologist, I think that is a very good assumption that that was his last day of life,” Mendoza told reporters.
With a cause of death still pending, some of the couple’s family and friends have spoken about Hackman’s declining health.
Neighbours Daniel and Barbara Lenihan and their son, Aaron, said Hackman was “essentially kind of homebound.”
“Betsy tried to keep him kind of active and engaged,” Aaron told PEOPLE, adding that the actor liked doing puzzles and yoga via Zoom. “She was still trying to keep him as active and engaged and healthy as possible,” Aaron added.
But Daniel and Barbara said that in the “last couple of months,” Hackman “was really slipping,” and the actor had stopped riding his bike around town.
Aaron told PEOPLE that the pair “were one of the tightest couples I’ve seen.”
“They seemed like real life partners, really, really close to each other, and they were both incredibly kind. And they were reserved, but they were real, [and] a lot of fun,” he said.
“Betsy was in perfect health,“ Barbara added. “She was so fit.”
“People loved to be around them,” Barbara said in a separate interview with the New York Post. “We used to spend a lot of time at their house, but it’d been a while since they were comfortable having others over. They were a little insula,r and that was fine, it just got tougher for them to have people over.”
Doug Lanham, a close friend and former business partner, told TMZ that Arakawa kept Hackman on a “strict diet years ago” and he was only able to “sneak a cheat meal when they were out golfing.”
In an interview with the Daily Mail, one of Hackman’s three children, daughter Leslie Anne, said her father was “in good health.”
“Despite his age, he was in very good physical condition,” she told the outlet. “He liked to do Pilates and yoga, and he was continuing to do that several times a week.”
Hackman’s daughter Elizabeth Jean Hackman speculated to TMZ that the pair may have died as a result of carbon monoxide poisoning. But that theory was discounted early this week when the New Mexico Gas Company confirmed there were “no significant findings” after it conducted tests at the home.
Tim Hackman, the son of Gene’s brother Richard, said the family is now waiting on toxicology reports.
“That will tell us everything. It’s hard to theorize,” Gene’s nephew told Us Weekly. “There are lots of theories out there and I don’t want to speculate. It’s easy to speculate negative theories.”
According to the search warrant inventory list obtained by Fox News, detectives recovered two cellphones, an orange prescription bottle and a 2025 planner while inspecting the residence.
The couple hadn’t been seen in public since March 2024, but former FBI investigator Bill Daly explained to Fox that police will explore all “possibilities” as they try to piece together the couple’s final weeks.
“They’ll take a look at the surrounding community,” Daly said. “They could tell if there was movement in and out of the property after they passed away. There could be some cameras in and around their house to look at just to piece it together.”
Authorities descended on the property after receiving a 911 call from a maintenance worker who described seeing a body on the floor and urged emergency services to send help quickly.
“I think we just found two, one deceased person inside the house,” the caller said on the recording first obtained by TMZ. “I’m the caretaker for the subdivision.”
The worker could be heard saying, “Damn, damn, damn,” as he became emotional over the phone.
Peter Valentin, a certified senior crime scene analyst, told Fox News that it will be some time before police have a definitive answer as to how the two died.
“If the suggestion is that she fell and had some kind of accident, there would have been some kind of evidence of an injury relative to that fall, a perimortem injury. So she would have had head trauma. She would have had a hemorrhage, you know, a brain hemorrhage. She would have had contusions. There would have been evidence of an injury. And the pathologist would have seen that. So the absence of injury is noteworthy,” he told the website.
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The open container of pills also raises questions.
“The thinking is the pills were consumed intentionally, and this is an overdose or something like that,” Valentin said. “If those are intentional acts, a person doesn’t really fall on the floor in a living space. They tend to lay down, sit down, you know, they know what they’re doing. They know what’s going to happen, and they prepare for that.”
James Gill, Chief Medical Examiner with the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, also weighed in with comments to PEOPLE sharing his opinion that the deaths were not a result of “companion suicide.”
“I’ve seen cases like that — usually they’re together in bed,” he says. “The fact that they’re in two separate locations tells me that I think that’s less likely.”
In an email to Postmedia, Chris Ramirez, a spokesperson for the New Mexico medical investigator’s office, said medical reports “generally take anywhere from 4-6 weeks to generate, which will include the cause of death.”
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