Movie star Gene Hackman, his wife, Betsy Arakawa, and their dog were all found dead on February 26, per the New York Times. Hackman was 95 and Arakawa was 64. The Santa Fe County Police said there were no immediately apparent signs of foul play, but details surrounding the circumstances of their deaths remain under open investigation.
Hackman will be remembered as one of the great actors of his time. He was one of just 45 performers in cinema history to win two acting Oscars, one for Best Actor and one for Best Supporting Actor, and he received three other nominations. He additionally won four Golden Globe Awards, including the Lifetime Achievement Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2003.
Hackman was born in San Bernardino, California, in 1930, and enlisted in the U.S. Marine Corps at 16, lying about his age. While in the military, Hackman worked as a broadcast journalist, before being discharged in 1951. He began his acting career at the Pasadena Playhouse in 1956, which went poorly. “I had the all-time lowest score of students from the Playhouse,” he told the Chicago Tribune in 1986. “I was given so little encouragement that I kind of, even in my insensitive state at that time, understood that at least the academic side of acting was not for me.” He then moved to New York, where he, along with his friends Dustin Hoffman and Robert Duvall, slowly began their part of the revolutionary new cinematic world of the 1960s and ’70s.
Hackman’s breakout role was as Buck Barrow in 1967’s Bonnie and Clyde, a controversial movie at the time, but which garnered him an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He was nominated again, in the same category, for 1970’s I Never Sang for My Father, before finally winning Best Actor the next year for his work as Jimmy “Popeye” Doyle in William Friedkin’s The French Connection. “As Popeye Doyle, he generated an almost frightening single-mindedness, a cold determination to win at all costs, which elevated the stakes in the story from a simple police cat-and-mouse chase into the acting-out of Popeye’s pathology,” Roger Ebert wrote of his performance. He was nominated for Best Actor again in 1988, for Mississippi Burning, and won Best Supporting Actor for Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven in 1991, which also won Best Picture. Hackman’s last great role was as the patriarch in Wes Anderson’s 2001 classic The Royal Tenenbaums. He retired soon after. “The straw that broke the camel’s back was actually a stress test that I took in New York,” Hackman told Empire in 2009. “The doctor advised me that my heart wasn’t in the kind of shape that I should be putting it under any stress.”
Below, what investigators know so far about the deaths of Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa, including the latest information about their causes of death.
Gene Hackman, wife, and dog found dead
February 27, 2025, 10:30 a.m.: Hackman, Arakawa, and a dog were all found dead in their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, on February 26 by the Santa Fe County Police Department, according to a New York Times report. The cause of death is under investigation, though foul play is not suspected.
“He was loved and admired by millions around the world for his brilliant acting career, but to us he was always just Dad and Grandpa. We will miss him sorely and are devastated by the loss,” Hackman’s children from a previous marriage, Elizabeth and Leslie, and granddaughter Annie said in a statement to the BBC.
“Suspicious” circumstances prompt investigation
February 27, 2025, 5 p.m.: Police are officially investigating the deaths of Hackman and Arakawa. Hackman was found dead by the police in the mudroom of their home, per a search warrant, published by the New York Times, from Santa Fe County Police detective Roy Arndt. Arakawa was found on the bathroom floor, with pills scattered on the counter near her, alongside an open prescription bottle. One of their dogs, a German shepherd, was found dead in the bathroom closet. Their other two other dogs were found alive on the property. Police say there’s no sign of a gas leak or carbon monoxide poisoning at this time. While the day Hackman and Arakawa died is unknown, their bodies showed similar signs of decomposition.
“It sounds like they had been deceased for quite a while, and I don’t want to guess in reference to how long that was,” sheriff Adan Mendoza said at a press conference that afternoon, per the BBC. Mendoza also confirmed the bodies were found in the afternoon on February 26. While “there was no immediate sign of foul play,” the police “haven’t ruled that out yet.”
Hackman and wife test negative for carbon monoxide, likely date of death identified
February 28, 2025, 7:20 p.m.: Initial carbon monoxide tests of both Hackman and Arakawa’s bodies have come back negative, Santa Fe County Sheriff Adam Mendoza said in a press conference. According to Mendoza, Hackman likely died on February 17, given that his pacemaker recorded “his last event” on that date, more than a week before his body was discovered on February 26. The carbon monoxide tests and initial examination of Hackman’s pacemaker were expedited; Mendoza said it could take “a month or three months or longer” for final toxicology and autopsy reports to be completed.
Hackman died of heart disease one week after Arakawa died of hantavirus
March 7, 4:50 p.m.: Gene Hackman died of heart disease around a week after his wife, Besty Arakawa, died of hantavirus, New Mexico investigators confirmed. Police said at a press conference that Arakawa was seen shopping on February 11, but had not opened any emails since that date. An autopsy found that Arakawa died of hantavirus, with no signs of trauma, carbon-monoxide poisoning, or other diseases. Hantavirus is an infection with flu-like symptoms contracted one to eight weeks after exposure to excrement from a certain mouse; it is not transmissible person-to-person, per medical examiners, and the strain in the southwestern U.S. has a 38 to 50 percent mortality rate. The pills found near Arakawa were prescription thyroid medication.
An autopsy found that Hackman died of hypertensive, atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, with Alzheimer’s disease as “a significant contributory factor,” said chief medical examiner Dr. Heather Jarrell. Hackman also showed no signs of trauma or carbon-monoxide poisoning. In addition to cardiac activity on February 17, Hackman’s pacemaker data showed an “abnormal rhythm of atrial fibrillation” on February 18. That is the last data from his pacemaker. “It is reasonable to conclude that Mr. Hackman probably died around February 18,” Jarrell said. “Based on the circumstances, it is reasonable to conclude that Ms. Hackman passed away first with February 11 being the last time that she was known to be alive.”
Police also said Arakawa had taken the couple’s dog, who also died, to the vet on February 9. “There was a procedure that was done with the dog which may explain why the dog was in a crate at the residence,” said Santa Fe County sheriff Adan Mendoza.