Gene Hackman & his wife Betsy had likely died nine days before they were found

We still don’t know what happened to Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa. They passed away in February, but it’s likely they were only discovered days after their deaths. Reportedly, the last time Hackman’s pacemaker recorded any activity was on Feb. 17 (his body was found nine days later). Initially, the local New Mexico authorities were ready to say that their deaths were from natural causes, but there’s a full investigation, autopsies and toxicology screenings being done. Which is how we know that the cause of death was not carbon monoxide poisoning, which was what people first suspected. People Mag put Hackman on their second cover this week, and the piece is partly a tribute to one of the greatest actors ever, and partly about the mystery around Hackman and Arakawa’s deaths.

In the years after he became a Hollywood star, Gene Hackman indulged a taste for renovation projects — his 10th house, the successor to showcases in Montecito and Carmel, was on 12 secluded acres on a piñon-covered hilltop outside Santa Fe. He’d had the ceilings raised to soaring heights, helped demolish walls himself and created multiple buildings on the compound. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he told Architectural Digest in 1990. “I guess I like the process, and when it’s over, it’s over.” But this would be his final home: After he retired in 2004, he lived here with his second wife, Betsy, a classically trained pianist whom he’d married in 1991.

They also died here, husband and wife, aged 95 and 65, under circumstances that were shocking and chillingly mysterious. Their bodies were discovered Feb. 26 when, according to Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza, a pest-control worker came to the house and found it strange that no one answered. He contacted a neighborhood security officer, who saw the bodies through a window and called 9-1-1.

Officers arrived to find Hackman’s and Betsy’s corpses in separate rooms — his near the kitchen, sunglasses and cane on the floor; hers in a bathroom, where prescription pills were scattered on a counter. (Police later collected blood-pressure and thyroid medications from the home, along with Tylenol.) One of their dogs, a German shepherd, was discovered dead 10 to 15 feet from Betsy, in a kennel crate in a closet. Two other dogs were alive, one near Betsy, the other outside (a family friend later took them in). The front door was unlocked and a back door sufficiently ajar to let the dogs come and go.

In an affidavit to obtain a search warrant of the property, Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office Det. Roy Arndt reported that one officer had described Betsy’s body as “bloated,” with “mummification” in her hands and feet; Hackman’s body was in a “similar” state. His pacemaker data later indicated that he had been dead since Feb. 17 — nine days before the bodies were found. The affidavit stated that there was no indication that either had suffered blunt-instrument trauma, or that anything had been removed from the house or disturbed. Authorities also found “no obvious signs of a gas leak,” according to the affidavit, and both tested negative for carbon monoxide poisoning.

Mendoza said on NBC’s Today Feb. 28 that he was “pretty confident” no foul play occurred, but he wasn’t ruling it out. He said the results of the couple’s autopsies would provide more clues to the ongoing investigation, but a full report could take several weeks. “I hope [for] a little bit of patience on the family’s part, on everybody’s part,” Mendoza said, “so we can have some answers.”

[From People]

That information about the dogs was new to me, as was the fact that the doors were unlocked and one door was ajar to let the dogs come and go. What the hell happened? And why weren’t Hackman’s kids calling him to check on him, in general? Why weren’t family members the ones to raise the alarm? A forensic pathologist also had a theory: that Hackman collapsed, likely from a heart attack, and that Arakawa found him and rushed to get her husband’s medication, and she fell or slipped and banged her head. It could be the opposite – Arakawa collapsed first or she banged her head, and Hackman’s heart gave out in a panic? But these are just theories. The whole thing is just so completely odd.

Photos courtesy of Backgrid, Cover Images. Cover courtesy of People.