A New Mexico medical examiner has revealed the cause of death for both Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa—including the fact that Hackman, who died of complications from heart disease and Alzheimer’s, likely out-lived Arakawa, who died of hantavirus, by as much as a week.
This is per Variety, working from a report from Heather Jarrell, the chief medical examiner for the New Mexico Office of the Medical Investigator, who revealed that both Hackman, 95, and Arakawa, 65, had died from natural causes. (Hantavirus, which can be contracted from contact with rodents, has a 35 percent mortality rate in the United States.) The Sante Fe Sheriff added that Arakawa was last seen alive on February 11th, 2025, when she was observed running errands and then returning to the gated subdivision where she and Hackman lived, in heavy privacy; she sent her last public communication, an email to a massage therapist, on that same day. The Sheriff’s Office had previously reported that Hackman’s pacemaker had last registered activity on February 17, suggesting that that was the date he died. The couples’ bodies were discovered on February 26, alongside the body of one of their dogs. (Two more dogs were discovered alive on the couple’s property.)
In her report, Jarrell also stated that Hackman, 95, had been suffering from “advanced Alzheimer’s disease,” as well as a history of heart attacks. Authorities had previously announced that they’d ruled out carbon monoxide poisoning as a cause for either death.
