At her Santa Fe clinic in New Mexico, animal chiropractor Dr Sherry Gaber was tenderly treating a four-legged patient with mobility problems when the phone rang. On the end of the line was Oscar-winning actor Gene Hackman’s wife Betsy Arakawa who had recently moved to the area and heard of her reputation for helping animals.
She asked if she could bring in one of the couple’s dogs for a consultation, and so the beginnings of an extraordinary bond were forged.
Over the next 18 years, Gaber would regularly treat the many dogs the Hollywood icon and his wife rescued and brought to live with them in their secluded four-bedroom home set on 12 acres of land looking out on the Santa Fe National Forest, with panoramic mountain views.
What started out as a professional relationship deepened into friendship, so it was doubly shocking for Gaber to learn not only that the Academy Award-winning actor and his wife were found dead at their home on February 26, but that their beloved dog Zinna had also died at the scene.
The couple’s other two dogs Bear and Nikita were found nearby, distressed but alive, but Zinna had been shut in a dog travel crate and apparently died of dehydration and starvation.
And it is this crucial piece of information that Gaber believes holds the key to the tragedy that has shocked film-lovers across the globe.
Speaking exclusively to the Mail, the woman who has cared for Hackman’s dogs for almost 20 years reveals her own theory about what may have precipitated the deaths of the much-loved couple.
Of one thing she is certain: the devoted couple would never have deliberately taken any actions that might have harmed the animals they adored.
Betsy and Gene Hackman with two of the many dogs they rescued over the years
‘Betsy and Gene loved their dogs to the moon and back,’ says Gaber. ‘They always wanted to do the right things for their animals because they loved them so deeply. So whatever happened was an accident.’
Describing Betsy as ‘a strong, vibrant woman’, Gaber says: ‘She would never leave her dogs in jeopardy. Gene and Betsy used to joke with each other about who spoiled their dogs more. Gene would say it was him and Betsy would come right back and say: “No, no, no. It’s me.” They looked after those dogs so well and would never have deliberately hurt them.
‘Everyone I’ve talked to in Santa Fe feels the horror of this tragedy and feels that it’s so painful Zinna had to die in a crate.’
It has been ten days since Hackman and his wife’s partially mummified bodies were discovered at their home and the cause of their deaths remains under investigation.
One of the bodies was glimpsed through a window by workmen who routinely came to the house to do maintenance work. ‘They’re not moving … send someone quick’ the caretaker said in an emotional 911 call to emergency services. Police were quickly on the scene.
According to a search warrant affidavit, the body of 65-year-old Betsy, a classical pianist, was discovered first, in a bathroom to the left of the front door, lying on the floor on her right side, dressed in dark grey sweatpants and a light-colored sweatshirt.
A small heater, probably used to ward off the winter cold in Santa Fe, was near her head, likely dislodged when Betsy fell to the floor. Detectives also observed an orange prescription bottle on the bathroom counter-top, with pills scattered around.
Nearby was the body of Zinna, in a crate in a cupboard in the bathroom.
Animal chiropractor Dr Sherry Gaber, who was both a close friend of the couple for 18 years and cared for their animals in a professional capacity
When detectives searched other parts of the 9,000 sq ft house, they found Hackman’s body on the floor in what Americans call a mud room – a utility area – near the kitchen. The 95-year-old was wearing grey sweatpants, a long-sleeved blue top and slippers. A pair of sunglasses and a cane were discarded nearby, leaving detectives to assume the frail Gene had fallen suddenly.
As for the couple’s two other dogs, Bear was found near Betsy’s body in the bathroom while Nikita was outside in the grounds.
The bodies of both Gene and Betsy showed signs of decomposition, according to the affidavit, along with ‘mummification in both hands and feet’, indicating that they had been dead for days.
Autopsies performed on the couple, who had been married more than 30 years, showed no sign of external trauma, and initial theories that there may have been a gas leak or carbon monoxide poisoning have been ruled out. Toxicology reports are still pending.
A necropsy has also been done on Zinna the dog, the results of which are not yet known.
Investigators at Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office trying to unravel the tragic mystery think it is likely Hackman died on February 17, the date the last activity on his pacemaker was registered.
Still struggling to come to terms with the triple loss, Gaber has shared her own theory about what happened with the Mail.
‘When I first heard they had died, I thought maybe it was a one-can’t-live-without-the-other type of thing, like Romeo and Juliet,’ she says.
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‘But when I learned about Zinna, I knew it had to be something else.
‘The only thing I can think of is that they were taking things out of their car, going in and out of the house and then Gene’s pacemaker stopped. He fell over and then I think Zinna, who was very close to Gene, got agitated.
‘Zinna had a very strong bond with Gene – some dogs respond more to male energy than female energy, so who knows how badly upset Zinna was, pawing him, licking his face and wanting him to get up.
‘And Betsy, doing her best in a frenetic moment, got Zinna and put her in her crate.’
The 12-year-old kelpie mix – whose name is short for the wine Zinfandel – was accustomed to being in her crate for travel, explains Gaber.
‘When they rescued Zinna from a shelter, Betsy arranged for her to be trained for agility competitions, and she used to fly her all around the country for competitions. Zinna was comfortable being in her crate because of all the flying she did.’
With Zinna safely contained in her crate, Gaber thinks it is plausible that a distraught Betsy then had her own health crisis in the bathroom.
‘In the panic of what was happening, maybe she was getting pills for Gene or for herself and then something happened, and she couldn’t get back to Zinna. Betsy’s dogs were her life, and she’d never have left Zinna.
A photo of Betsy and Gene late last year in Los Angeles was the first captured in almost two decades, after Hackman retired from acting
Elizabeth and Leslie, Hackman’s daughters, in Sante Fe shortly after their father’s body and that of his second wife were discovered
‘She took the dogs everywhere, she’d take them hiking, she made sure they ate the best food.’
Still grappling to make sense of the deaths of her friends and the dog they all loved, Gaber explains: ‘If Betsy and I went out together to go shopping or have lunch, she always felt that she had to get back home to be with the dogs and with Gene.’
She was first approached by Betsy more than 20 years ago when the actor and his wife attended a book reading, one of many low-key appearances the couple made in their adopted home town.
‘In 2002 I treated a 1400lb buffalo called Charlie, who had run into a fence post,’ Gaber recalls. ‘Basically, he had whiplash and couldn’t walk straight until I adjusted him.’
The story was captured in the 2006 Richard Rosen memoir A Buffalo In The House, and it was at a reading of this book in a local bookshop in Sante Fe, that Betsy learned of Gaber’s work and got in touch.
‘She said words to the effect: “If you can adjust a buffalo and make him walk better, I want you to have a look at our dogs”,’ laughs Gaber. ‘So I took care of the first dog, then another and then another.
‘There were three dogs in the house – I’ve looked after them their whole lives.
‘When dogs play hard with each other the first vertebrae can misalign and get stuck and pinch the long nerve from the rear legs, so the rear legs don’t work 100 per cent.
The actor won his first Oscar for Best Actor as Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle in the 1971 thriller The French Connection
‘Betsy wanted her dogs to have proper balance and movement because that can prevent arthritis. She would have me check Zinna before any agility trial and then have her checked again after a competition.
‘Once in a while one of their dogs would lose its appetite – an upper cervical misalignment could cause that – so I would clear it and the dog’s appetite came back.’
Zinna, who later developed mild arthritis, continued to have regular adjustments with Gaber even after the animal retired from competition.
The last time Gaber saw Betsy was in October last year when she brought Bear into the clinic for an adjustment.
The German Shepherd, whom Betsy had rescued from the side of a motorway, seemed to enjoy the treatment.
‘We joked about that and then promised we’d meet up soon and go out for lunch or dinner – but that never happened,’ Gaber says sadly.
Still processing her shock, it is clear Gaber will miss the couple hugely, as will many in the tight-knit community.
Despite being described as fiercely private since retiring from Hollywood – a sighting of them late last year was the first in almost two decades in Los Angeles – Hackman and his wife were popular local figures.
The actor was on the board of the Georgia O‘Keeffe Museum from 1997 to 2004 and was involved with the Cancer Foundation for New Mexico.
‘Gene was a very humble man who never boasted about being a big-shot actor,’ says Gaber. ‘He and Betsy invested quietly in Santa Fe businesses and Gene would keep very active. He used to go by himself on a bike trail in Albuquerque that would go on for miles. He played golf for a long time.
‘Once we were in a local restaurant and I came out to find him on his hands and knees looking under my car because he’d seen a 7ft snake go under it. We looked and looked but never found it and assumed it must have slithered away.’
Gaber laughs at the memory, but concedes that in recent months Hackman was undoubtedly slowing down.
‘He got old in a short time. Just about two years ago he was standing up straight. Then he became very frail.’
The actor was nominated for five Academy Awards and won two during his illustrious 43-year career. The first was for Best Actor for his role as Jimmy ‘Popeye’ Doyle in the 1971 thriller The French Connection and he went on to scoop a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for his role as a villainous sheriff in Clint Eastwood’s 1992 western Unforgiven.
In retirement he spent many hours painting and sculpting and also wrote two novels.
His two daughters Elizabeth and Leslie and son Christopher from his first marriage to the late Faye Maltese, whom he divorced in 1986, were close to their father and his second wife. It is not thought any had seen the pair in recent months however.
Together with close friends the three Hackman adult children are now deciding what will happen to the devoted pair’s two remaining dogs.
For locals and Gaber, their sadness at the loss of Zinna along with the Hackmans is tempered by the relief that Nikita and Bear somehow survived.
‘I’m greatly pleased that they made it – I don’t know if they scrounged food in the house and had access to water – who knows how they survived for more than a week,’ says Gaber, explaining that a trap had to be set up in the grounds of the Hackmans’ home to catch the distressed Nikita when emergency services arrived.
‘Nikita is very shy but now they are both being looked after. They will be kept together most likely, but for now we all have to wait until we know what the family wants.
‘I think they will be relinquished to a loving person who already knows them and who will love them for ever, as Betsy and Gene would have wanted.’
While little else appears certain in the mystery that has transfixed Hollywood watchers for more than a week, of the Hackmans’ love for their dogs there can be no doubt.