Gene Hackman was found dead at his home in New Mexico (Image: Getty)
icon Gene Hackman, his wife Betsy Arakawa and their dog on Wednesday, February 26. An investigation looking into the cause of their death continues after an autopsy revealed they did , as suggested .
In the wake of their deaths, friends and family of Hackman and Arakawa have opened up about the 95-year-old’s declining health. Daniel and Barbara Lenihan, a married couple who were friends with Hackman and Arakawa, spoke with People and disclosed that over the “last couple of months, [Hackman] was really slipping there.”
“In recent times, [Hackman was] essentially kind of homebound,” Daniel told the news outlet as Barbara added that around a year ago, the retired actor “quit riding his bike through the neighborhood.”
As for Arakawa, who was 64 years old, she took good care of Hackman during his Twilight years, Aaron stated: “Betsy tried to keep him kind of active and engaged. “She was still trying to keep him as active and engaged and healthy as possible,” Aaron said. “She was very protective of him in terms of -19, so she’d always wear a mask when we’d see her out.”
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Gene and Betsy were both found dead last month (Image: Getty)
Another pal Doug Lanham told TMZ: “They were one of the tightest couples I’ve seen, they seemed like real life partners, really, really close to each other, and they were both incredibly kind. And they were reserved, but they were real, [and] a lot of fun.”
However, this is a sharp contrast to what Hackman’s daughter Leslie Ann told the MailOnline, as she maintained that “there was no indication that there was any problem” with her dad’s health before his death.
Adding: “Despite his age, he was in very good physical condition.”
Over the weekend, County Sheriff Adan Mendoza repeated that he does not believe there was foul play in the deaths of the couple, who had spent more than 30 years married.
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Leslie Ann is one of three children from Hackman’s previous marriage to Faye Maltese. While speaking with MailOnline, the 58-year-old admitted that she had not spoken with her father in the months before his death. This is a strikingly similar story for Arakawa and her mother, Yoshie Feaster.
According to a housekeeper who tends to the 91-year-old, living with dementia, Arakawa’s regular calls to her in Hawaii stopped in October, which was a similar timeframe to the “couple of months” in which Leslie Ann Hackman had not spoken with her father.
“Betsy hadn’t called her mother in months,” Keiko, the housekeeper, told the “She usually called every one or two months. The last time she called was in October. We were thinking, what happened?”