More unsettling details about the deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa are emerging. According to recently released body cam footage featuring Arakawa’s hairdresser, Gene Hackman and his late wife allegedly had two unsettling interactions with a stranger in the weeks leading up to their deaths.
The alleged interactions were described in detail by Arakawa’s hairdresser, Christopher, in body camera footage obtained by Fox News on Monday, March 24. In the interview with New Mexico authorities, Christopher described his deceased client as “frazzled” and said that she had allegedly expressed concern about being followed by the same strange man on two separate occasions while out with her husband in Santa Fe.
“She mentioned to me that there was a man that had parked outside of their gate and followed them,” Christopher told law enforcement. “On two separate occasions. One occasion is when they went to White Rock. They went and had lunch there and the guy followed them from parked [outside of their gated community], followed them all the way to White Rock. She said, ‘Christopher, I’m surprised that security didn’t [know] how he got there … because when we left, I noticed that this car had followed us from the residence to White Rock.’”
Arakawa told Christopher that the man who allegedly followed them “pulled out a folder of photos of her husband and wanted him to sign them.” The hairdresser noted that the alleged behavior was strange, because Santa Fe is “not a place of paparazzi and stuff,” and said that Arakawa confronted the man. “She said… she approached him and said, ‘I told him he needed to have more respect,’” recalled Christopher. He also claimed that the same man followed the deceased couple to a different location on another occasion, offering them a bottle of wine, which Christopher says they declined.
The final days of the two-time Oscar winner and his classical pianist wife have been under scrutiny ever since New Mexico authorities found Hackman and Arakwa’s bodies along with one deceased dog in their $3.8 million dollar Santa Fe home on February 26th. According to activity from his pacemaker, Hackman, 95, most likely died on February 18 from cardiovascular disease, with Alzheimer’s as a contributing factor. The New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator initially determined that Arakawa, 65, most likely died of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rare and potentially fatal disease carried by rodents, a week earlier than her husband on February 11. But Dr. Josiah Child, Hackman’s doctor, recently claimed Arakawa that called him on February 12 regarding an “echocardiogram for her husband,” a full day after her estimated time of death.
“Mrs. Hackman didn’t die on February 11 because she called my clinic on February 12,” Dr. Josiah Child told the Daily Mail on Sunday, March 16th. Child claims that Arakawa also canceled an appointment on February 10, saying that Hackman was sick. Her appointment was allegedly rescheduled for February 12, but, per Child, she never showed up. “She did not show any symptoms of respiratory distress,” he told the tabloid. “The appointment wasn’t for anything related to hantavirus. We tried calling her a couple of times with no reply.”
Hackman was one of Hollywood’s most celebrated actors, winning Academy Awards for The French Connection (1971) and Unforgiven (1992). He married Arakawa, a classical pianist, in 1991, and retired from acting in 2004. Hackman moved to Santa Fe in the 1980s and lived there with Arakawa full time. He reportedly left behind an $80 million fortune.