Gene Hackman’s neighbors admitted they barely ever saw the reclusive Hollywood legend in the decades before he was found mummified with his wife in their New Mexico home.
Hackman, 95, was found dead on his mud room floor Wednesday; his wife Betsy Arakawa, 65, lifeless in a bathroom by the front door, with prescription pills scattered around. One of their three dogs died near her.
Two days after the shocking discovery, police announced that they believe Hackman died on February 17, after finding that was the day his pacemaker stopped recording his heartbeat.
Police saw no signs of foul play but are also investigating the deaths as potentially suspicious.
The case is shrouded in the kind of intrigue reserved for Hackman’s detective thriller novels and has garnered international attention – with many wondering how their deaths went unnoticed for so long.
Neighbors in their gated private community off a winding canyon road five miles outside of Santa Fe told The New York Times that despite living with the celebrity couple for years, most of them never even caught a glimpse of them.
‘They have a gate, and we have a gate, and we just have never even seen each other,’ said James Everett, who has lived part-time in a house next door for about five years.
Bud Hamilton lived next door to the couple for about two decades, but said he and his wife had dinner with them only once in 20 years.
Longtime resident and former president of the homeowner’s association, Harvey Chalker, said Arakawa handled their business and met Hackman once when he bought a pair of hiking shoes from his shop.
‘He wanted to be quiet, he didn’t want to be bothered, and I don’t blame him,’ Chalker said.
Fernando Miranda, a neurologist who has owned a house near the couple since 2018, recalling visiting the neighborhood on February 17 and said it is saddening to know the couple may have died then.
‘We all sort of cherish the fact that we are isolated,’ he said.
Beau Theriot, visits his house in the neighborhood a few times a year, said he saw Hackman using a cane as he walked along the road with his wife a few years ago.
‘I know there’s some nice people up there, I just don’t know them,’ Theriot said.
Morgan Freeman paid an emotional tribute to Hackman during the 2025 Oscars In Memoriam segment on Sunday.
Freeman, 87, who starred alongside double Oscar winner Hackman in Under Suspicion and Unforgiven, lauded his friend and co-star as he took to the stage.
Hackman famously played Lex Luthor opposite Christopher Reeve’s Superman, but he was known for being a man of steel himself.
As a 16-year-old boy, he lied about his age to join the Marines in 1946.
Filming a heart-pounding car chase for 1971 classic The French Connection, he drove the car himself up to 90mph down busy Brooklyn streets and got in a real-life smash with a student driver who strayed onto the set.
And some time after he moved to Santa Fe in the late 1980s, an unverified local legend tells of students at St. John’s College hopping his gate and getting in his pool, splashing around until they heard a shotgun being cocked and Hackman saying ‘Get out of my goddamn pool, you goddamn Johnnies’.
Both he and his wife could pilot an airplane – and did so, even into their advanced years.
Investigators probing their deaths soon found a prescription bottle, surrounded by pills on the countertop in the actor’s home.
Three medications were removed from the home, including Diltiazem, a blood pressure medication; a thyroid medication, and Tylenol, according to a search warrant.
Santa Fe Sheriff Adam Mendoza told the Today Show on Friday that the prescription bottle ‘is something of concern.’
Mendoza said the medication has been passed onto the medical examiner’s office to help them make a cause of death determination. It could be months before the toxicology results come back.
‘We’re looking at that specifically and other medications, of course, that were possibly in the residence,’ he told Today.
‘But we’re hoping [the report] comes sooner than later so we can answer some of these questions and hopefully it’ll help us in our investigation to help determine… the matter and cause of death.’