When the bodies of Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa were discovered in their Santa Fe home along with one of their three German Shepherd dogs, the initial belief was that they were the victims of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Yet officials investigating the deaths blew that theory out of the water Friday when they announced no signs of carbon monoxide were found in their systems and revealed that Hackman, at least, had been dead for nine days when the bodies were discovered by maintenance workers on Wednesday.
The last registered activity on the 95-year-old actor’s pacemaker was February 17, though sheriff department deputies have not confirmed whether 64-year-old Arakawa died the same day.
Hackman was dead in the mud room, his cane and sunglasses at his side, according to police. Arakawa was found on the bathroom floor; prescription pills were strewn on the countertop nearby. Both bodies were decomposed and partially mummified.
A dog, one of three German Shepherds owned by the couple, was also deceased – shut inside a kennel.
But with carbon monoxide ruled out the mystery over what befell the couple has only deepened.
Now, Daily Mail has spoken to three world renowned experts in crime scene reconstruction and forensic pathology about what they believe happened inside that home.
When the bodies of Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa (pictured) were discovered in their Santa Fe home along with one of their three German Shepherd dogs, the initial belief was that they were the victims of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Officials investigating the deaths blew that theory out of the water when they announced no signs of carbon monoxide were found in their systems and revealed that Hackman, at least, had been dead for nine days.
Dr Michael Baden
Dr Michael Baden is the former Chief Medical Examiner for New York City. He has testified at numerous high-profile trials including that of OJ Simpson and Phil Spector and was hired by the family of Jeffrey Epstein to oversee the autopsy of the disgraced financier.
Here, you have two deceased adults and a dog, with no signs of trauma. Until the police confirmed on Friday evening that there was no carbon monoxide in their systems that would have been where I put my money.
Instead, I think we have a situation where he had a pre-existing heart condition and possibly a mal-functioning pacemaker. You can have a fatal heart attack of course even if your pacemaker is working perfectly fine.
He had a heart attack in the mud room, and I suspect she found him. She couldn’t lift him, she ran to the bathroom to get his medication and she either fell and sustained a subdural hematoma – a brain bleed – that killed her or she had her own pre-existing condition such as heart issues or hypertension and that caused her to have her own fatal event.
Knowing as we now do that they had lain undiscovered for nine days, and knowing that the dog was locked in a crate or closet of some description I think it died from lack of care. It couldn’t survive that long without water and the other two dogs were loose with a door open so they could come and go and fend for themselves in a way he couldn’t.
A dog, one of three German Shepherds owned by the couple, was also deceased – shut inside a kennel. (Pictured: Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa with there German Shepherds).
Dr Michael Baden (pictured) is the former Chief Medical Examiner for New York City. He has testified at numerous high-profile trials including that of OJ Simpson and Phil Spector and was hired by the family of Jeffrey Epstein to oversee the autopsy of the disgraced financier.
Mike Sutton
Mike Sutton is a Forensic Engineer and qualified Crime Scene Reconstructionist based in North Carolina. He was an expert witness at the trial of Alex Murdaugh who was convicted of murdering his wife and son in 2023.
I understand they had been dead for some time but forensics should still be able to determine by the state of decomposition of the bodies respectively whether they have lain for the same amount of time.
They were both in the same environment – one wasn’t out in the yard for example -so it should be possible to say if they died within the same small window of time or if their deaths were separated by days.
But because I work in this world an alternative scenario occurred to me – that something caused Mr Hackman’s wife to die and that, as she was the primary care-giver, led to his death and that of the dog who was clearly dependent on them both.
I understand pills were strewn around where Betsy Arakawa was found which makes me wonder if she had some sort of medical event and was trying to take medication but couldn’t or maybe she grabbed a handful of pills to overdose.
Perhaps Mr Hackman was dependent on her to administer medication to him, perhaps he found her and went to find his phone to call for help but fell.
The key thing will be preserving the scene until they establish what happened.
If you can solve the mystery with autopsy and toxicology, you don’t have to go in and tear the house apart. But if you run into a dead end there then you go back to the house, and you look for other pieces of evidence that might tell you what they were doing in the moments before they died.
The last registered activity on the 95-year-old actor’s pacemaker was February 17, though sheriff department deputies have not confirmed whether 64-year-old Arakawa died the same day. (Pictured: Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa in 2003).
Mike Sutton (pictured) is a Forensic Engineer and qualified Crime Scene Reconstructionist based in North Carolina. He was an expert witness at the trial of Alex Murdaugh who was convicted of murdering his wife and son in 2023.
Paul Mauro
Paul Mauro is a regular contributor to Fox News as a legal and criminal analyst. An NYPD veteran with 26 years’ experience he practices law with DeMarco law and is the host of Fox Nation special, ‘Blood in America: The Tren De Aragua Invasion.’
Investigators need to narrow down the time of death and right now, getting as much digital data as possible is vital. You can get a very penetrative view of people’s lives by going into that world.
There will be computers and they also recovered phones from the house.
Getting into these isn’t easy but they’ll be looking at who they were calling and messaging, and what they were searching. In suicides people very often search for painless ways to die for example.
Was somebody threatening them? Were there any ongoing disputes? When was the last ATM withdrawal?
It’s a $3million home so there’s going to be some sort of alarm system and possibly motion sensors or ring cameras. They’ll want to rip all that information too.
Some of these ring cameras have audio – did they pick up a disturbance? Did the dogs go crazy? Did somebody scream? Was there the registered shock of one of the partners finding the other on the ground? If they have an Alexa device in the home that can pick up a lot of information.
Usage patterns – when was the last time the computer was powered up or powered down, did the car register any trips – can also help narrow the window for exactly when they both died.
You’re not going to be able to get it down to minutes but did one fall and the other not discover them until a while later? The police are theorizing he fell because he had his cane with him. If that happened and his wife didn’t find him until too late maybe she was upset and took an overdose.
There was some discrepancy over the maintenance worker saying the door was locked and secure and the police saying it was open and ajar. The thinking is that the police were talking about the back door and the worker about the front, but those discrepancies need to be addressed.
Paul Mauro (pictured) is a regular contributor to Fox News as a legal and criminal analyst. An NYPD veteran with 26 years’ experience he practices law with DeMarco law and is the host of Fox Nation special, ‘Blood in America: The Tren De Aragua Invasion.’
If it was suicide maybe they left the door open for the other dogs and forgot that one was locked in its cage.
The police have said this is suspicious for the very good reason that it means they can go to the court and get the search warrants they need. Still, you have two people dead, one dog dead and two others alive, the back door is open – it is suspicious.
If I were running this investigation I’d be doing all the traditional things – looking for tire-marks and foot prints that shouldn’t be there, talking to the neighbors, the maintenance workers, relatives – as well as digging into the digital footprint.
Information comes out in stages. With the autopsy, the Medical Examiner or Coroner can tell some things pretty quickly – if there’s blunt force trauma or ligature marks, a broken hyoid bone in the neck or petechiae (burst blood vessels) in the eyes that suggest strangulation for example. Then there’s toxicology which can take weeks to come back with results.
The drugs they found in the bathroom next to Ms Arakawa were Tylenol, a blood pressure medicine and a thyroid medicine. These are not suicide drugs but in high enough doses all three could have been lethal. The pills that were scattered in the bathroom could also have been entirely different from these.
As a former police officer who’s investigated a lot of pill suicides, I’d be looking for a bottle of booze because suicidal people often consume pills with alcohol.