Gene Hackman death investigation continues: Conflicting details emerge on dogs, health
Gene Hackman death investigation continues: Conflicting details emerge on dogs, health
Show Caption
Hide Caption
Gene Hackman's quiet impact: a legacy beyond the screen
In Santa Fe, Gene Hackman's lesser known legacy of humility, artistry and an undeniable fingerprint on his community.
The deaths of Gene Hackman and wife Betsy Arakawa may still be unsolved, but new details about their pets and health are emerging.
The actor, his pianist wife Arakawa and their dog were found dead by authorities in their Santa Fe, New Mexico, home on Wednesday.
According to a search warrant affidavit, authorities found the actor in a mudroom near his cane, appearing to have fallen, while his wife Arakawa was found in an open bathroom near a space heater, with an open prescription bottle and pills scattered on the nearby countertop. A deputy observed Arakawa with "body decomposition, bloating in her face" and mummification of her hands and feet.
One of the couple's dogs was also found dead less than 15 feet from Arakawa in a crate, while two other dogs were found alive in the bathroom near Arakawa and outside.
Here's what else is new as the investigation continues.
Search for gas leaks and carbon monoxide results in 'no significant findings'
On Tuesday, the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office issued an update based on the New Mexico Gas Company's "extensive investigation for gas leaks and carbon monoxide at Gene Hackman's home," which was conducted the evening of Feb. 26.
"There were no significant findings. NMGC did issue five (5) red tags. One red tag was for a minuscule leak (0.33% gas in air – not a lethal amount) at one of the stove burners," the news release states. "The other four red tags were for code enforcement violations -not involving gas leaks or carbon monoxide – involving a water heater and gas log lighters installed in three fireplaces."
These results "are not believed to be a factor in the deaths of Gene Hackman, Betsy Arakawa or their dog," the sheriff's office noted.
However, the findings were sent to the Office of the Medical Investigator "for consideration."
Gene Hackman cause of death
The exact cause of death still has not been determined. Authorities have called the circumstances "suspicious," though a Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office spokesperson said foul play is not suspected. Police are in the process of putting together a timeline of the couple's deaths, with early reports suggesting the couple could have been dead for over a week.
Gene Hackman, Betsy Arakawa died with Australian Kelpie mix named Zinna: Exclusive
USA TODAY has learned that police, in an affidavit for a search warrant, misidentified the dog that the couple died with, which led media to incorrectly report their German shepherd had perished.
The dog who died in the Hackman home was actually Zinna, a 12-year-old reddish Australian Kelpie mixed-breed who had once trained in agility skills to compete at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show. Her body was found in a closed crate in the home, according to Joey Padilla, who transported the surviving dogs to his facility, Santa Fe Tails. The couple's surviving dogs are Bear, a German shepherd, and Nikita, a 7-year-old Akita-shepherd mix.
Gene Hackman's dog: Sheriff's office makes error in initial death report
USA TODAY visited the Santa Fe Animal Shelter, the county agency responsible for housing animals when they are found with deceased owners. Officials there referred all questions to the Santa Fe County Sheriff's Office, who said deputies may have just misidentified the breed.
Gene Hackman's friends reveal late actor's health was in decline months before death
According to family friends Daniel and Barbara Lenihan, Hackman's condition was "really slipping" in the "last couple of months" before his shocking death, the couple shared with People magazine in an interview published Friday.
Gene Hackman's friends reveal late actor's health was in decline months before death
While the Lenihans did not disclose details on Hackman's failing health, Daniel Lenihan noted that the Oscar-winning actor was "essentially kind of homebound," with Barbara Lenihan adding that the 95-year-old had stopped riding his bike through their Santa Fe, New Mexico, neighborhood.
Gene Hackman, Betsy Arakawa rebuilt New Mexico property
Hackman lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, for four decades, much of that time in the couple's remodeled property.
Gene Hackman's refuge – and mysterious death – at his Santa Fe home with wife Betsy Arakawa
The "French Connection" actor turned to the city – and a two-story green stucco estate – after retreating from Hollywood. The home blended pueblo, colonial and Spanish baroque styles and was rebuilt from the studs, according to Architectural Digest, with Hackman involved intimately with the design of the home.
Contributing: Anna Kaufman and KiMi Robinson, USA TODAY
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Alleged Spy Was Also 22-Year-Old Ex-Grocery Store Clerk Hired by Trump
A U.S. intelligence worker charged with trying to leak state secrets to a foreign spy agency was hired as a 22-year-old with little professional experience outside the cash register at a local grocery store, The Daily Beast can reveal. His professional experience prior to joining a U.S. national security agency was remarkably similar to that of Thomas Fugate, who has just been appointed to lead terror prevention at the Department of Homeland Security. A cybersecurity graduate of Florida Polytechnic University, Nathan Vilas Laatsch is the second national security official in two days whom The Daily Beast has revealed to have virtually no professional experience other than working at a grocery store before being hired by a U.S national security agency at the age of 22. Laatsch, now 28, a computer scientist with 'top secret' clearance at the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) in Virginia, was hired under the last Trump administration. He was arrested last week, accused of attempting to pass sensitive information to Germany's Federal Intelligence Service (BND). When Laatsch was hired for the role with a Top Secret security clearance at the age of 22 in August 2019, he had just stopped working as a cashier at Publix supermarket in Plant City, Florida, according to his LinkedIn account. His skills included 'providing customer service,' 'handling moderate amounts of money,' and 'operating a cash register.' It allegedly proved to be a terrible appointment. Laatsch was arrested last week after an FBI counterintelligence operation. Thomas Fugate, who graduated from college just 12 months ago, has been tasked by Trump with tackling U.S. extremism while leading the Center for Prevention Programs and Partnerships at the Department of Homeland Security, having been employed as a 'Cross Functional Team Member' at a grocery store less than two years ago. Fugate had also been working as a neighborhood gardener just five years ago. There is no suggestion he has done anything illegal. In March 2025, the FBI commenced an operation after receiving a tip that Laatsch had contacted the BND, stating that he 'did not agree or align with the values of this [Trump] administration.' He allegedly stated he was prepared to share 'completed intelligence products, some unprocessed intelligence, and other assorted classified documentation,' according to court documents quoted by the Department of Justice. He stated that he was interested in German 'citizenship' because he did not 'expect things here to improve in the long term,' and was not seeking 'material compensation.' On May 14, an undercover FBI agent allegedly advised Laatsch that they were prepared to receive additional classified information. Between May 15 and May 27, Laatsch is accused of transcribing multiple pages of notes while logged into his classified workstation, folding the notes, and exfiltrating the classified information in his clothing. On May 29, Laatsch arrived at a prearranged location in northern Virginia, where he was arrested. He made his initial court appearance in the Eastern District of Virginia the following day. The DIA has been approached for comment but has not yet responded.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
Hopes of closure fade as police wrap up Madeleine McCann search
From the moment I arrived in Praia da Luz on Monday the word on everyone's lips was "closure". All the long-term residents of the sleepy Atlantic resort told me closure was what they were hoping for. From the English woman who lived at the time above the apartment from which Madeleine McCann disappeared in 2007, to the former neighbour of the main suspect in the case. They all said: "We hope her family get closure". Of course, any chance of a really positive outcome disappeared years ago. Closure now would mean either finding Madeleine McCann's body, or finding her living with another family, unable to remember her parents or her younger twin siblings. But, frustrated as residents are when the world's media return to Praia da Luz - year after year at the same time that purple flowers appear on the jacaranda trees - they do understand the unbearable pain that Kate and Gerry McCann must feel. How that shock of realisation that Madeleine was not in her bed turned into minutes, then hours, and then days of panic. Then tortuous, unending months and years of uncertainty. For 13 years there was no single theory as to what happened to Madeleine McCann. Did she wake up in the middle of an opportunistic burglary and have to be silenced? Was she abducted on behalf of a couple desperate for a child of their own? Had her own parents covered up her accidental death? (A theory given sufficient weight by Portuguese prosecutors that for a while Kate and Gerry McCann were officially under suspicion.) The initial Portuguese investigation failed to preserve the scene adequately, so the opportunity to gather forensic evidence from Madeline McCann's room at the Ocean Club was lost. Long-term residents remember joining in uncoordinated and ad-hoc searches of the town. The Metropolitan Police investigation that began in 2011 built to a peak in 2014, with substantial searches near Praia da Luz - but they did not appear to have any identifiable suspects. They had 60 people of interest, 38 of whom they were investigating. Portuguese prosecutors had allowed them to search only one of three sites they had asked for access to. Everything changed in June 2020 when, out of the blue, the head prosecutor in Braunschweig in Germany, Hans Christian Wolters, said he had evidence that Madeleine McCann was dead. Working with the Bundeskriminalamt (BKA), the German equivalent of the FBI, he said he had identified a suspect, later identified as Christian Brückner. "The evidence is strong enough to say that the girl is dead, and to accuse a specific individual of murder," Hans Christian Wolter said. Brückner, who spent many years of his life in the Algarve, was a drifter, a petty criminal and a convicted sex offender. It all fitted neatly into place and it seemed that the mystery might finally be solved. Brückner's long list of previous convictions includes ones for sexually abusing children in 1994 and 2016. The Braunschweig prosecution team have never disclosed the extent of any evidence they have, but we do know their suspicions are partly based on a conversation an old acquaintance of Brückner's claims they had at a festival in 2008. Helge Busching says the topic of Madeleine McCann's disappearance came up, and Brückner said she "didn't scream". Mr Busching says it was clear to him what Brückner meant. Since 2019, Brückner has been in prison in Germany for raping a 72-year-old American woman in Praia da Luz in 2005. But he is due for release in September, or in January if he does not pay an outstanding fine. Brückner told an RTL reporter earlier this year that he was looking forward to a "decent steak and a beer". The concern is that he will leave the country and head somewhere with no extradition treaty with Germany, though he appears to have no money. The Braunschweig prosecutors' confidence was dealt a severe blow last year when they put Brückner on trial for rape and unconnected attempted child abductions. Mr Busching gave evidence, but the court in Braunschweig acquitted Brückner and suddenly time was very short. Mr Wolters has made no secret of the fact that he wants more evidence to charge Brückner. That is why the BKA footed the bill for the search this week in ruined farm buildings on merciless, shadeless scrubland in the rising heat of an Algarve summer. The buildings are frequented at night by the kind of drifters and petty criminals that Brückner once was. Nearby residents told us they sometimes find looted suitcases among the ruins that have been stolen from holidaymakers. But this week's searches were not targeted on one specific building, so any intelligence they were based on was clearly quite vague. It all felt a bit like a last desperate attempt to back Mr Busching's statements with concrete, physical evidence. In some ways this search was similar to those I have seen on previous trips. The use of shovels in the heat, digging up stone-hard ground. But the German team were mostly targeting old farm buildings. This meant they needed a large, yellow mechanical digger to break up the concrete floors and sift through the resulting rubble. They also made extensive use of a ground-penetrating radar, slowly pushing the device across the buildings' floors, looking for anomalies and cavities underneath. The Portuguese fire brigade helped on the first day, pumping out an old well so it could be safely searched. The officers were looking for traces of Madeleine McCann, or some of her clothing. Every time I travel to Portugal for a new search it always begins optimistically. Could police find something this time? But on every occasion it quickly becomes apparent the searches are not tightly targeted. The police work always clearly based on quite vague intelligence - or just an investigator's hunch. Luis Neves, the National Director of the Polícia Judiciária, the Portuguese equivalent of the FBI, said at the end of the week that, "nothing is in vain, not least because doors are being closed". As we watched the German detectives packing away it felt like the spring of hope of a resolution that had bubbled up in June 2020 was evaporating in the thankless heat. Diggers brought in to help latest Madeleine McCann search in Portugal Madeleine McCann search goes on but is it 18 years too late? Madeleine McCann disappearance: A timeline
Buzz Feed
3 hours ago
- Buzz Feed
22 Wild Facts About Old Hollywood Celebrities
Shirley Temple was so popular and talented that there was a conspiracy theory she was not a child at all, but an adult with dwarfism. In fact, she was investigated by the Vatican, who sent a priest to confirm she was in fact a child — which they were, apparently, able to do. Many celebrities from the '40s were actually spies during World War II, including Josephine Baker. She lived in Nazi-occupied France and would flirt with Nazi officials and get them tispy until they divulged military secrets, then write the secrets down on invisible ink and stash them in her underwear. MLB Baseball player Moe Berg worked for the predecessor to the CIA (the Office of Strategic Services), and once traveled to Switzerland with orders to assasinate German scientiest Werner Heisenberg if he discovered the Germans might soon be able to develop an atomic bomb. Famous chef Julia Child worked for the same organization before becoming famous, with her most notable job being to create "cakes" that were used as shark repellant. And Cary Grant reportedly spied on people in Hollywood to find Nazi sympathizers, including the German-born Count Kurt von Haugwitz-Hardenberg-Reventlow, who had married heiress Barbara Woolworth Hutton. Grant actually ended up marrying the heiress after she separated from her husband. Also during WWII, Audrey Hepburn (as a child) used to perform at secret concerts in the Netherlands to raise money for the Dutch resistance, risking discovery and punishment from Germans. Oh, and BTW, guess who was allegedly a Nazi informant? Coco Chanel. During World War II, Coco Chanel was named as a Nazi informant by friend Vera Bate (who herself confessed to being a German agent). The French government arrested Chanel, who had several ties with Nazi intelligence organization Abwehr and its members. Chanel was eventually released due to a lack of evidence and possible help from friend Winston Churchill. Chanel's Nazi ties remained hidden for decades, though her "fear and hatred for Jews" was allegedly "notorious." Lucille Ball once claimed that she picked up Morse code during WWII through her lead teeth fillings. While driving home (and having previously experienced picking up music through her teeth), she began to hear a "de-de-de-de" sound. "As soon as it started fading, I stopped the car and then started backing up until it was coming in full strength. DE-DE-DE-DE-DE-DE DE-DE-DE-DE! I tell you, I got the hell out of there real quick. The next day I told the MGM Security Office about it, and they called the FBI or something, and sure enough, they found an underground Japanese radio station. It was somebody's gardener, but sure enough, they were spies," Ball recounted. The story sounds completely ridiculous, but it's possible it was true. There is no record of Ball talking to the FBI, or Japanese spies being found in that area at that time, but there is evidence shrapnel in someone's body, at least, can pick up AM radio waves, which suggests lead tooth fillings could work the same way. Cary Grant tried LSD over a hundred times in the 1950s as a form of psychotherapy to deal with his childhood trauma. 'After weeks of treatment came a day when I saw the light,' Grant said. 'When I broke through, I felt an immeasurably beneficial cleansing of so many needless fears and guilts. I lost all the tension that I'd been crippling myself with. First I thought of all those wasted years. Second, I said, 'Oh my God, the humanity. Please come in.'' Eartha Kitt reportedly once had a threesome with James Dean and Paul Newman. She's been quoted as having said, 'Those two beauties transported me to heaven. I never knew that lovemaking could be so beautiful," though this quote is extremely difficult to confirm. In fact, there are quite a lot of scandalous sexual secrets from Old Hollywood that can't be 100% confirmed but are still fun to hear. For instance, there's speculation that Marlon Brando and James Dean had an S&M-based relationship. Ernest Hemingway once inspected F. Scott Fitzgerald's dick in the bathroom because Fitzgerald was worried it was too small after his wife Zelda complained about it. Hemingway assured him he was "perfectly fine,' telling Fitzgerald, "You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened. Go over to the Louvre and look at the people in the statues and then go home and look at yourself in the mirror in profile." In another example featuring a famous writer, James Joyce wrote some truly scandalous love letters to his wife Nora Barnacle, many of which extolled her farts. 'You had an arse full of farts that night, darling, and I fucked them out of you, big fat fellows, long windy ones, quick little merry cracks and a lot of tiny little naughty farties ending in a long gush from your hole. It is wonderful to fuck a farting woman when every fuck drives one out of her. I think I would know Nora's fart anywhere. I think I could pick hers out in a roomful of farting women. It is a rather girlish noise not like the wet windy fart which I imagine fat wives have. It is sudden and dry and dirty like what a bold girl would let off in fun in a school dormitory at night. I hope Nora will let off no end of her farts in my face so that I may know their smell also.' Agatha Christie, possibly the most famous writer in the mystery genre, once created her own mystery when she disappeared in 1926 for 11 days — and the reason is still contested. After putting her daughter to bed, Christie (who was aware her husband was having an affair), drove off and her car was later found abandoned, hanging over the edge of a pit. She had left three letters behind, one to her brother-in-law claiming she had gone to a spa, another to her secretary with "scheduling details," and a third to her husband, who never revealed what the letter said. To find her, the police dredged a lake, brought in dogs, enlisted the help of over 10,000 people, and even looked to her novels for clues. She was eventually found at a spa, like she had told her brother-in-law — except according to her husband, she no longer remembered who she was or recognized him. She had checked in under his mistress' name. In the only time Christie ever spoke of it, she admitted to considering driving into the pit her car was found by, and hitting her head — this, accompanied by the trauma of her husband cheating and her mother dying, led to memory loss. Still, people have continued to speculate it was all a publicity stunt. Steve McQueen came very close to being killed by the Manson family along with Sharon Tate, Jay Sebring, Wojciech Frykowski, Abigail Folger, and Steven Parent. He had been invited to Tate's house that night, and the only reason he didn't go, according to his then-wife Neile Adams, was that he 'ran into a chickie and decided to go off with her instead." According to a biography of McQueen, he had been having an affair with a blonde woman at the time, and even invited her to come to Tate's with him. However, she said "she had a better idea for just the two of them." McQueen, unlike Tate,* was on a list of targets for the Manson family. His death was planned to look like a suicide. Tate and her friends weren't specifically targeted, according to prosecutors — she just happened to live in the house once owned by music producer Terry Melcher, who had rejected proposals to make a record with Manson. Speaking of serial killer Charles Manson — he was friendly with a number of big players in Hollywood, including Dennis Wilson and Mike Love, the co-founders of the Beach Boys. In fact, Manson and his friends actually moved into Wilson's house. Wilson later allegedly told Love that he'd seen Manson murder a Black man (though this is contested), causing Wilson to break off the friendship. Marilyn Monroe's last known words were to actor Peter Lawford, who was a brother-in-law to Robert and John F. Kennedy, as he had married their sister, Pat Kennedy. He stated she ended the call with, "Say goodbye to Pat, say goodbye to Jack, and say goodbye to yourself, because you're a nice guy." The Jack in reference was then-President JFK. This is noteworthy because there were longstanding rumors of an affair between JFK and Monroe, as well as Robert F. Kennedy and Monroe. There are also rumors that Robert F. Kennedy visited her that night, though this was denied by the Kennedys. Her housekeeper, Eunice Murray, who was there all day and night and was the one to find her dead, later claimed Robert had visited and they'd fought. When Murray found Marilyn dead around 3:30 a.m., she was reportedly holding her phone, and then-LA chief of detectives Thad Brown reportedly claimed she was found with a crumpled-up piece of paper with the number for the White House on it. Besides her connections to the Kennedys, there were other suspicious details around Monroe's death. Murray initially called Monroe's psychiatrist, Dr. Greenson, who called the doctor who had prescribed the pills, Dr. Engelberg, before calling the police. The police did not arrive for close to an hour after Murray first saw Monroe's body. Lawford later claimed that he'd heard about her death at 1:30 a.m. The wife of Monroe's press relations manager Arthur Jacobs also later claimed that her husband had received the call that Marilyn was dead at 10:30. Natalie Wood, who starred in a number of films including West Side Story, Rebel Without a Cause, and Gypsy, also died under extremely mysterious circumstances. The 43-year-old was with her husband Robert Wagner on his boat on a weekend vacation from filming Brainstorm when she drowned. According to Wagner himself (though he initially denied this), he and Wood argued, and then he went to bed without her. The next morning, her body was found a mile away. Wood had been drinking, and it's possible her death was an accident, but she was found with bruises that could mean she was attacked. Nearby witnesses had heard a woman scream. The captain of the boat, Dennis Davern, allegedly drunkenly confessed to Wood's sister years later that he'd seen Wagner push Wood, who then fell overboard, and that Wagner refused to rescue this is unconfirmed. Wagner has denied he had anything to do with Wood's death. But I mention this one specifically for a wild Hollywood fact that not many people seem to know — Christopher Walken, Wood's Brainstorm costar, had also been on the boat that night. He had reportedly also argued with Wagner, and Wagner was (according to Davern) angry Natalie had invited him. Walken has not said much about the night beyond affirming it was an accident and that he had nothing to do with it. "I don't know what happened. She slipped and fell in the water. I was in bed then. It was a terrible thing." He also said, "The people who are convinced that there was something more to it than what came out in the investigation will never be satisfied with the truth. Because the truth is, there is nothing more to it." One of the wildest Hollywood secrets involves Loretta Young and Clark Gable. For years, there were rumors Young's adopted daughter Judy was actually her biological daughter, conceived with Clake Gable. The rumors wouldn't be proven true until Young admitted to them in her posthumous memoirs. It turned out Young had conducted an elaborate cover-up to make it seem like she had adopted the child. Loretta even reportedly had Judy's ears pinned back in an operation because they so resembled Gable's. Gable never had any role in her daughter Judy's life. Young refused to tell Judy the truth, and according to Judy's memoir, when Judy confronted her about the rumors, Young ran into the house and Young never spoke publicly about the circumstances of Judy's conception, according to her daughter-in-law, Linda Lewis, in the '90s, Young had asked her what date rape meant after hearing the term on Larry King Live. After Lewis explained, Young replied, "That's what happened between me and Clark.' On the train ride back from shooting Call of the Wild on location, Gable had allegedly snuck into Young's compartment. According to Lewis, Young didn't want Judy to know, so Lewis kept quiet until both Young and Judy were dead. Finally, we'll end with a few last examples featuring Errol Flynn, because the man had a wild life and allegedly did some wild things. First of all, he wrote in his autobiography that he once had a job castrating young sheep with his teeth. Second, Flynn once apparently showed up on the doorstep of Hollywood gossip columnist Hedda Hopper, angry about something she had written about him, and began masturbating. "I began laughing, and continued laughing until he finished with a dramatic flourish all over my doorstep," Hopper reportedly told Paul Newman. "I'll say one thing for Errol. He's the only man I know who can ejaculate in front of a fully dressed woman who's laughing derisively during the entire process." And finally, David Niven claims that Flynn once brought him along to view 'the best-looking girls in L.A.'...which, as it turned out, meant parking by Hollywood High to watch the girls get out of school. He then allegedly told a police officer who questioned why they were there that he was "enjoying the scenery." What shocking old Hollywood facts do you know? Let us know in the comments!
