Gene Hackman and Wife Could Have Been Dead for ‘Couple of Weeks’ Before Being Discovered: Sheriff

A police officer investigating Gene Hackman and wife Betsy Arakawa is sharing more details about the couple’s deaths.

While appearing on the Today show on Friday, February 28, Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said investigators still have some unanswered questions — including how long the couple were deceased before their bodies were located.

“It’s very difficult to put a timeline together even with the help of the office of the medical investigator,” Mendoza told Savannah Guthrie. “Just based on their body and other evidence on the body, it looked — it appears [that they were deceased for] several days, even up to a couple of weeks.”

Mendoza said his team is trying to “put together a timeline” that includes when the deceased were last seen or spoken to. He added it’s been a challenge “because they were very private individuals and a private family.”

When asked if Hackman and Arakawa died around the same time, Mendoza said it was “very difficult to determine.”

“I think it’s going to be very close,” he continued. “There was no indication that anybody was moving about the house or doing anything different, so it’s very hard to determine if they both passed at the same time or how close they passed together.”

Us Weekly confirmed on Thursday, February 27, that Hackman and his spouse were found dead one day earlier inside their shared Santa Fe, New Mexico house. He was 95 while his wife was 64.

Police told TMZ that Arakawa’s body was “in a state of decomposition” with a bloated face and mummification in her hands and feet after a pair of maintenance workers found her and her husband’s bodies on Wednesday, February 26. The workers said they had not seen the couple in approximately two weeks.

An official cause of death has not yet been determined. Mendoza reiterated on Today that there’s no signs of foul play “but of course we are not ruling that out.”

As part of the investigation, Mendoza confirmed that an open prescription bottle was located at the scene. The evidence was collected and passed to the office of the medical examiner.

When asked when a toxicology report could be complete and released to the public, Mendoza warned that it could take “some time.”

“It could take up to three months or even possibly longer,” he shared. “It just depends [on] how busy the laboratory is. But we’re hoping it comes sooner than later so we can answer some of these questions, and hopefully it’ll help us in our investigation to help determine the matter and cause of death.”

“The autopsy is key,” Mendoza added. “That’s going to take some time, so I hope a little bit of patience on the family’s part, on everybody’s part, so we can have some answers into these deaths.”