Gene Hackman could only be contacted through his protective wife Betsy Arakawa during his final years – and she also saved him from annoying fans via a secret hand signal.
The couple, were was found dead in their Santa Fe home on Wednesday, had spent the last decades living a quiet life in New Mexico.
After his retirement from Hollywood, Hackman, 95, did not even have a phone or email address, and his friends had to go through Arakawa to get in touch with him.
Hackman would also use a secret hand signal to let Arakawa, 64, know he wanted out of a conversation with a fan, as reported by The New York Times.
Further details of the fascinating signal were not shared.
When Hackman was hit by a car as he rode his bike, Arakawa reportedly dressed up as a nurse so paparazzi would not follow her in and out of the hospital
Arakawa was also ‘intent on keeping him eating healthy,’ and he would sneak the occasional muffin or cinnamon when she was not present, his friends told the Times.
‘He said many times that he would have been dead without Betsy,’ Tom Allin said.
Details of Hackman’s last years come after one of his daughters told DailyMail.com the actor was in great physical health despite his age. However, she admitted she had not talked to him for months before he was found dead at home.
A 911 call revealed that a worker sobbed as he discovered the mummified remains of the Hollywood legend Gene Hackman and his wife.
‘Damn, damn!’ the man, who identified himself as the caretaker, told 911 on Wednesday after he found their remains in their $3.3 million home in Santa Fe.
‘I think we just found a deceased person inside the house,’ he continued, sniffing and crying, while the late couple’s two surviving dogs barked in the background.
Hackman and his wife are believed to have lay dead for up to two weeks and were found partially-mummified. The skin and tissue of their bodies had been preserved, likely by the cool dry winter climate that Santa Fe enjoys.
A dead German shepherd was found in a bathroom closet near Arakawa, police said.
‘There was no indication of a struggle,’ Mendoza said. ‘There was no indication of anything that was missing from the home or disturbed, you know, that would be indication that there was a crime that had occurred.’
Cops arriving at the scene deemed it suspicious enough to warrant a thorough investigation but later ruled there was no indication of foul play, with no wounds found on the bodies of Hackman or Arakawa.
Results of autopsies conducted on both bodies are not available yet, sheriff’s officials said, noting that carbon monoxide and toxicology test results are pending.
The 911 caller and another worker later told authorities that they rarely saw the homeowners and their last contact with them had been about two weeks ago.
Hackman, 95, was in a mud room off the kitchen. His sunglasses and cane were on the floor and it has been suggested the actor had suffered a fall.
Meanwhile Arakawa was found dead on the bathroom floor. A prescription bottle of pills was open and its contents were strewn across a bathroom counter.
Its unclear what those meds were or who they’d been prescribed for. A space heater was on the floor next to Arakawa and investigators believe it may have fallen around the time of her death.
Officials have refused to speculate further on what may have killed the couple or who died first. Autopsy results are set to take four to six weeks to be published.
The New Mexico Gas Co. tested the gas lines in and around the home after the bodies were discovered, according to the warrant.
At the time, it didn’t find any signs of problems and the Fire Department found no signs of a carbon monoxide leak or poisoning.
A detective wrote that there were no obvious signs of a gas leak, but he noted that people exposed to gas leaks or carbon monoxide might not show signs of poisoning.
The search warrant affidavit suggests that police appear to have a working theory that ‘some kind of gas poisoning’ happened, but that they don’t know yet and aren’t ruling anything out, Loyola Marymount University law professor Laurie Levenson said.
It is unclear how any gas leak could have dissipated by the time the bodies were found.
‘They don’t have clear evidence that it’s any type of homicide, but they’re asking for blunt instruments or other weapons that could be used,’ said Levenson, who has no connection to the investigation. ‘It doesn’t also look like some kind of planned double-suicide.’
Hackman, a two-time Oscar winner with an estimated net worth of $80million, just turned 95 in late January. He became a recluse in the last 20 years of his life, after retiring from acting in 2004. He packed up his things, left Los Angeles for a quiet life in New Mexico – and he never looked back.
Friends occasionally shared glimpses of his post-acting life, including social media shots of fishing expeditions – while paying tribute to his silver screen triumphs. He would also occasionally be spotted pedaling around Santa Fe on a bicycle.
The gruff-but-beloved Hackman was among the finest actors of his generation, appearing as villains, heroes and antiheroes in dozens of dramas, comedies and action films from the 1960s until his retirement in the early 2000s.
He was a five-time Oscar nominee who won for The French Connection in 1972 and Unforgiven two decades later. His death comes just four days before this year’s ceremony.
Hackman met Arakawa, a classically trained pianist who grew up in Hawaii, when she was working part-time at a California gym in the mid-1980s, the New York Times reported in 1989. They soon moved in together, and by the end of the decade had decamped to Santa Fe.
