Gene Hackman Autopsy Sheds Delicate on His Bleak Final Days

Two months after two-time Oscar winner Gene Hackman and his wife, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, were found dead in their Santa Fe home on February 26, more upsetting details regarding their last days have emerged.

The final autopsy results determined by the Office of the Medical Investigator in New Mexico and obtained by Fox News Digital on Sunday, reveal that Hackman likely hadn’t eaten for days before his death and may have lived for a week without knowledge that Arakawa had died.

After the 95-year-old actor and his 65-year-old wife’s “partially mummified” bodies were discovered, authorities initially ruled that the couple’s deaths were “suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation,” and a criminal investigation was launched. But no external trauma was found on either body, according to the report. Carbon monoxide poisoning was also ruled out, as testing for the substance found less than 5% saturation, which is in “keeping with a normal range.”

Hackman had a “history of congestive heart failure” as well as “severe chronic hypertensive changes, kidneys” and “neurodegenerative features consistent with Alzheimer’s disease,” per the autopsy. He had been fitted with a “bi-ventricular pacemaker” in April 2019. Activity from the device shows that he most likely died on February 18 from cardiovascular disease, with Alzheimer’s as a contributing factor, approximately a week after his wife.

Arakawa, whose cause of death was hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a sporadic rodent-borne disease, was initially believed to have died on February 11, but it was later found that she likely passed the following day, as Arakawa reportedly called the concierge medical service Cloudberry Health early on February 12. In the days before her death, Arakawa had also researched “COVID” multiple times on her computer and sent a message to her massage therapist, sharing Hackman had taken a “covid test” after experiencing “flu/cold-like symptoms.”

Hackman tested negative for the hantavirus, but a toxicology report found that his system had “trace amounts” of acetone, a product of diabetic and fasting-inducing ketoacidosis, as reported by Fox News Digital. At the time of his death, Hackman’s levels were at 5.3 mg/dl, which is consistent with prolonged fasting.

Given Hackman’s “advanced state of Alzehimer’s,” New Mexico chief medical examiner Heather Jarrell previously said, “it’s quite possible that he was not aware” of his wife Arakawa’s death in the days before his own demise. Hackman won his two Academy Awards for roles in 1971’s The French Connection and 1992’s Unforgiven, and married Arakawa in 1991 before his retirement from acting in 2004. He is survived by three children from his previous marriage to Faye Maltese—Christopher, 65; Elizabeth, 62; and Leslie, 58.