The Santa Fe sheriff’s office declared Friday actor Gene Hackman, 95, was suffering from severe Alzheimer’s and passed away from heart disease at his home, while his wife Betsy Arakawa, 65, died of a rat-borne illness in the same home a week earlier.
The husband and wife ultimately died from “natural causes,” according to chief medical examiner Dr. Heather Jarrell, but Hackman lived for about a week in their mansion after Betsy’s death on Feb. 11 before he succumbed to heart failure.
“Mr. Hackman showed evidence of advanced Alzheimer’s disease,” Jarrell said. “He was in a very poor state of health. He had significant heart disease, and I think ultimately that’s what resulted in his death.”
Watch Friday’s press conference:
As for Arakawa, her death was said to be caused by “hantavirus pulmonary syndrome,” a lung disease primarily spread by rats and deer-mice which can be triggered by breathing dust particles from infected animals’ excrement.
“Clinically, hantavirus infection is characterized by flu-like symptoms consisting of fever, muscle aches, cough, sometimes vomiting and diarrhea that can progress to shortness of breath, cardiac or heart failure, and lung failure,” Dr. Jarrell stated. “This occurs after a 1 to 8-week exposure to excrement from a primarily particular mouse species that carries hantavirus.”
“The mortality rate of the hantavirus strain in the Southwest is about 38 to 50%. The hantavirus strains in the United States are not transmissible from person to person.”
The update came Friday after police last week located Hackman and Arakawa’s partially mummified remains inside their New Mexico home up to nine days after they had died, stating they suspected no foul play, despite a few odd things noted at the scene.
For instance, Betsy’s body was found on a bathroom floor beside an open prescription bottle, with pills strewn on the counter, while a dog also lay dead in a crate in a nearby bathroom closet.
Hackman, meanwhile, was located by a security guard at the front door of their gated community home, his pacemaker last showing activity nine days before he was found.
The circumstances behind the deaths were so bizarre they prompted fellow Hollywood actor Randy Quaid to suspect the pair had been assassinated by “star-whackers,” who he’d previously accused of coming after him and killing actors Heath Ledger and David Carradine.
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