[Image: here]
Jarring footage has yanked back the velvet curtain on the grim final act of Gene Hackman’s life – the day New Mexico authorities stumbled on the partially mummified remains of the legendary actor and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, inside their Santa Fe mansion.
Some rooms looked like a bomb had gone off, while others sat weirdly frozen in time, untouched and eerily composed, like the set of a forgotten play.
The photos paint a brutal, unscripted portrait of Hackman – the two-time Oscar winner and eternal tough guy – and his 65-year-old wife, living out their last days in a sprawling, cluttered estate that looked equal parts Hollywood memorabilia museum and hoarder’s lair.
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office dropped a series of photos and videos, peeling back the mystique of the famously private – and apparently, deeply reclusive – Golden Globe winner.
Deputies were seen combing through the couple’s property, walking into the separate rooms where the bodies of Hackman and Arakawa lay. One of the couple’s three dogs, clearly the most loyal of the bunch, stayed camped out right next to Arakawa’s blurred-out body when cops first walked in.
Hackman’s own body, also blurred for decency, was found posted up in another wing of the mansion – the kind of wing you’d only reach after a trek through multiple rooms, including one dishevelled bedroom and an impromptu house tour no one signed up for.
“They say they’re very private people, like very,” one deputy can be heard saying — dry understatement of the year.
The place looked like a crash site for the rich and famous. Clothes were tossed across chairs like a teenager’s bedroom, dry cleaning still bagged and crammed into a closet that probably hadn’t seen daylight in months, and paper bags lined the kitchen floor. The pièce de résistance? Rotting fruit and vegetables left to die a slow, stinky death on the counter.
One unmade bed sported a pillowcase that looked like it had front-row tickets to something bloody, while a stack of random papers had set up camp on top of one of the couple’s dog kennels.
Prescription bottles were scattered across the scene – Hackman’s included thyroid meds, diltiazem, and ursodiol, while Arakawa’s own bottle of thyroid meds sat nearby. A few pills had even made a break for it, spilt from a small container.
Adding to the haunting domestic still-life: an unfinished puzzle, a National Parks puzzle book, and a connect-the-dots activity book – the latter possibly Hackman’s way of giving Alzheimer’s the middle finger, one dot at a time.
But the house wasn’t all chaos. Some corners of the property looked like time had stopped – neat, untouched, as if waiting for the owners to wander back in.
One haunting snapshot included an open COVID-19 test and an email from Arakawa that spelt out the couple’s growing health worries:
“So, G woke up today with flu/cold-like symptoms, did a covid test, negative,” she wrote. “But out of an abundance of caution, I should cancel my appt. tomorrow and rebook, say in a couple weeks, last week of Feb if something is available … Thank you!”
TMZ also got its hands on the investigation report, which revealed Arakawa had been Googling COVID symptoms and was weighing whether to drag her frail husband to a doctor before things took their final nosedive.
Her search history also shows that she bought several Boost Oxygen canisters on Feb. 11. Her final search on the morning of Feb. 12 was for a Santa Fe healthcare provider.
Earlier Tuesday, the New Mexico Department of Public Health reported rodent excrement in the pair’s mansion. The Hantavirus spreads through rat droppings and pee and usually starts with flu-like symptoms.
In the end, the French Connection star outlived his wife by only a few days, his final curtain pulled by complications from hypertensive and atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease paired with advanced Alzheimer’s. Arakawa’s death, in a bleak twist, came courtesy of the hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.
And the gut punch? One of the couple’s three dogs, Zinna, was found dead too, locked inside a crate near Arakawa’s body, a heartbreaking final chapter to a story already soaked in tragedy.
[Source: NY Post]
