It is possible that Gene Hackman and his spouse Betsy Arakawa were deceased for “days or weeks” before they were discovered dead in their Santa Fe residence earlier this week.
This is what Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza says.
This morning, he stated on the Today show: “Even with the assistance of the medical investigator’s office, creating a timeline is really challenging.
Based only on their body and further bodily evidence, it appeared as though they had been dead for a few days or maybe a few weeks.
This information follows the revelation of a search warrant to the media yesterday, which verified that the two had been discovered “mummified.”
The case’s dynamic has caused the terrible death of the couple and their German Shepard to rock the entertainment business.
As of this writing, authorities have addressed the widely held belief that they may have died from carbon monoxide poisoning, even though there is no publicly stated cause of death.
According to Santa Fe Fire Chief Brian Moya’s statement on Today, they have not yet ruled this out as a cause of death. Hackman’s daughter told TMZ that she thought this might have contributed to their murder.
But a search warrant issued yesterday found “no signs of a gas leak” and said the situation was “suspicious enough” to justify a search.
Both Hackman and Arakawa were discovered in separate rooms, “partially mummified,” and in comparable degrees of decay.
Despite the death of one of their dogs, their other two pets lived, and the front door had been left open.
Additionally, the sheriff of Santa Fe declared that the tablets discovered in the toilet where Arakawa was discovered, adjacent to her body, were “significant evidence.”
He stated on the program: “I am pretty confident that there is no foul play just based on the lack of evidence of foul play, but of course, we’re not ruling anything out.”
He continued by saying, “That information was collected, that information was passed to the office of the medical investigator to help them make a determination,” in reference to the “important evidence” of the pills discovered close to her body.
That in particular, along with any other pharmaceuticals that might have been in the house, is what we’re looking into. Thus, that is cause for alarm.
Before their deaths, two maintenance workers said that they had not seen the pair for two weeks.
Hackman, who had been out of acting since 2004, said in one of his last interviews with Empire Magazine: “A stress test I took in New York was actually the straw that broke the camel’s back.”
My heart wasn’t in a condition where I should be putting it under any stress, according to the doctor’s advice.
