Santa Fe police said Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa had been “long dead” when their bodies, along with that of one of their three dogs, were discovered in separate rooms of the Santa Fe mansion where the legendary actor had lived for years.
"I don't dare say how long ago," said Sheriff Adan Mendoza, adding that "there are no immediate signs of a criminal act" but that this "has not yet been ruled out." Everything is mysterious in the scene that presented itself to the officers who arrived after one of the villa's caretakers, between sobs and curses, had given the emergency number 911. Hackman, in overalls and slippers, was lying on the floor in a small entrance "as if he had fallen hard," next to him sunglasses and a cane, his wife in a bathroom, was lying on the floor among pills that had fallen from an open bottle of medicine on the counter.
In a search warrant, Santa Fe police say the death of the French Connection and Mississippi Burning superstar is deemed "suspicious enough" to warrant further investigation. One of the family's three German shepherds was found dead in a bathroom closet with Hackman and his wife. Another dog was running around the yard, and the third was guarding the body of Betsy, a classical pianist the same age as the actor's two daughters who met him at the gym and married him in 1991.
“The autopsy will tell us more,” Sheriff Adan Mendoza told the New York Times, speaking of an “untypical” situation. Roland Lowe Begay and Jesse Kesler, the family’s two aides, who hadn’t seen the Hackmans for two weeks, found the front door open with no signs that it had been forced open. Betsy, 63, “had been dead for some time because her body was already decomposing, her hands and feet mummified and her face swollen,” the police report reads.
Hackman, 95, was found in a similar condition in the “mud room” where people change shoes near the kitchen. Police said there were no obvious signs of a gas leak as alleged by Elizabeth Hackman, one of Gene’s three children with his first wife Fay Maltese, but the local gas company is assisting the investigation . No trauma was found on the bodies, nor was there a note that would suggest a double suicide.
Two Oscars (for The French Connection and Unforgiven), four Golden Globes, two Baftas, but also five adventure novels, four of which after he stopped acting in 2004 for health reasons, Hackman was considered by many to be Spencer Tracy's heir for having given a voice and face to the man on the street but also for having been an actor par excellence, gruff and reluctant to accept fame.
After 40 years of starring in films beloved by millions, including Bonnie and Clyde, The French Connection, The Poseidon Adventure, Mississippi Burning, Unforgiven, Superman, Hoosiers and The Royal Tenenbaums, Gene had lived a reclusive life for the past two decades, his last, very rare public appearance, a year ago, being on the arm of Betsy, a cane in the other hand, outside a popular Santa Fe seafood restaurant.
(Online Union)
