The probe into what the fuck happened to Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa is still a goddamn puzzle, but one official’s cracking the case open a bit.
Almost two weeks after cops found the 95-year-old Oscar legend, his 65-year-old wife Betsy, and one of their three dogs stiff as boards in their Santa Fe pad on Feb. 26, Fire Chief Brian Moya dished to Fox News on March 5. “Both bodies looked about the same,” he said, “so they might’ve clocked out around the same damn time.”
Moya added that in his three years running Santa Fe’s fire gig, his crew never got a single SOS from the Hackman place. Shit was quiet—too quiet.
Hackman was sprawled out dead in the mudroom, per a Feb. 26 search warrant affidavit NBC snagged. A deputy reckons the Superman badass took a sudden tumble. Betsy? She was face-down in the bathroom, a space heater by her head, a pill bottle and scattered meds on the counter—like some fucked-up scene. Both bodies screamed “dead as hell,” with Betsy’s starting to rot.
Theories are swirling—check what Hackman’s nephew said about the wild guesses—but cops are digging into the actor’s pacemaker for a lifeline. Sheriff Adam Mendoza said the gadget’s last blip was Feb. 17, nine days before the gruesome find. “Good fucking bet that’s when he checked out,” Mendoza grunted at a Feb. 28 presser.
Still, pinning down when these two bit it is a bitch. “Bodies and evidence say days, maybe weeks,” Mendoza told Today on Feb. 28. “No signs anyone was stirring shit up in the house—could’ve dropped together or close as fuck, but it’s a mess to sort.”
The why’s just as murky. Carbon monoxide? Nope—tests came back clean. “They weren’t gassed out at the end,” Mendoza said. “That’s off the table—no clue what did it yet.”
