Inside Gene Hackman and Mrs. Betsy’s last days (exclusive)

• Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy were found both dead in their Santa Fe -home on Wednesday, February 26.
• Since then, the authorities have investigated because of what they have said are suspected circumstances.
• While Hackman’s Hollywood comrades pay tribute to the legend, friends and insider people give a glimpse of how his life was with Betsy before they died.

Years after he became a Hollywood star, Genhackman Glived a taste for renovation project-his 10th house, the successor to show off in Montecito and Carmel, was on 12 separate acres on a piñon-covered hill outside Santa Fe.

He had had the roofs raised to raised heights, helped to demolish the walls himself and created several buildings on the association. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” he told Architectural melt 1990. “I guess I like the process, and when it’s over it’s over.”

But this would be his last home: After he retired in 2004 he lived here with his second wife, betsy, A classically trained pianist he married in 1991.

They also died here, husband and wife, 95 and 65, under circumstances that were shocking and cooling mysterious. Their bodies were discovered on February 26 when, according to Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza, a pest worker came to the house and thought it was strange that no one answered. He contacted a security manager in the neighborhood, who saw the bodies through a window and called 9-1-1.

Officers arrived to find Hackmans and Betsys corpses in separate rooms – his near the kitchen, sunglasses and sugar cane on the floor; Her in a bathroom, where prescription pills were spread on a counter. (The police gathered later blood pressure and thyroid medicines from the home, along with Tylenol.)

One of their dogs, a German shepherd, was discovered 10 to 15 meters from Betsy, in a kenn box in a wardrobe. Two other dogs lived, one close to Betsy, the other outside (one family friend later brought them in). The front door was unlocked and a rear door enough ajar to let the dogs come and go.

In an issue to get a keyword for the property, Santa Fe Sheriff’s Office it. Roy Arndt reported that an officer had described Betsy’s body as “bloated” with “mummification” in her hands and feet; Hackman’s body was in a “similar” state.

His pacemaker details later indicated that he had been dead since February 17 – nine days before the bodies were found. The affidavit stated that there was no indication that either had suffered blunt instruments trauma, or that something had been removed from the house or disturbed. The authorities also found “no obvious signs of a gas leak”, according to the pledge, and Both tested negatively for carbon monoxide poisoning.

Mendoza said on NBC’s Today February 28 that he was “pretty safe” no foul play occurred, but he does not exclude it. He said that the results of the couple’s autopsy would provide more clues to the ongoing investigation, but a full report can take several weeks. “I hope (too) a little patience on the part of the family, from everyone’s side,” said Mendoza, “So we can have some answers.”

The tragedy forward an outflow of tributes To Hackman, including Touching words at the Academy Awards from Morgan Freeman, Hans costs in Unforgivable and Under suspicion. Hackman “was a generous artist,” said Freeman, “and a man whose gifts raised everyone’s work.”

Hackman was a twice Oscar winner and was the rare star who could also be regarded as an actor who delivered indelible performances in a wide range of roles: a tough police officer who busts a heroin smuggling ring in The French connection; A minister captured in a turned cruise ship in Poseidon adventure; The man of Steel’s Nemesis Lex Luthor in three Superman Movies.

“Loved you in everything!” Published Viola Davis. Francis Ford Coppola, who directed Hackman in what the actor considered one of his most challenging performances – a dull, introverted surveillance expert on The conversation – called him “magnificent in his work and complexity.”

To his three children, Although “he was always just Dad and Grandpa,” said Leslie, 58, and Elizabeth, 62, his daughters with ex-wife Faye Maltese, who died in 2017. (He has also survived by a son, Christopher, 64 and grandson Annie.)

A solid built 6’2 “-He called himself” a Lummox “hackman almost always presented himself as a kind of Allman, measured in his speech and gesture, not heart-hole but Viril.

“He was a tough nut,” Bill Murray, his costs in the A-List Ensemble movie Royal Tenenbaumstold the Associated Press after Hackman’s death.

Hackman admitted that he tended to be moody and “introspective to the disturbing point.” Much of it, he suggested, was rooted in an unfortunate childhood.

He grew up in Danville, ill., He dreamed of being an actor and found encouragement from his motherAnna Lyda, a waitress. But his father, Eugene, a pressman for the local newspaper, abandoned the family when Hackman was 13.

When he looked at him, Hackman told People in 1975, “I knew how he waved to me that it was a real adios.” Decades later, Anna Lyda, an alcoholic, was drunk in bed when a cigarette ignited the mattress and burned her to death.

Hackman often pulled on these painful memories when roles required a darker shading. “Dysfunctional families,” he told New York Times, “Have searched many pretty good actors.”

But as a child, Hackman was too shy to even audition for high school. Instead, he dropped and spent almost five years in the navy. He finally began to persecute his dream when he was 26 and already married to Faye, a banking secretary. He studied acting at Pasadena Playhouse and became friends with co -student Dustin Hoffman.

They are bound as outsiders (and would later cost themselves in the legal thriller Runaway jury)But Hackman was asked to leave after a year. “The director rated us,” Hoffman told People 1975. “The lowest someone ever got before was 3 and the gene was discontinued by 1.4.”

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Hackman moved to New York City and scraped past as he was looking for stage roles. The low point came when he worked as a doorman, and a navy that he had known BRIS of him. “He never looked at me,” Hackman told PeopleThe “But he said from the side of his mouth,” Hackman, you are a sad son of a bitch. ”

That humiliation was the track he needed to push himself harder, and within a few years he was on Broadway and showed up in small TV roles. Then he went on to film: He was in the mid-30s when he landed his Oscar-nominated Breakout role as Buck, brother of Warren Beatty’s Clyde Barrow, in the country mark 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde.

He became a genuine leading man four years later with his Oscar-winning performance such as Popeye Doyle, a hard-boiled police officer with a pigpie hat, in The French connection. He then worked at a feverish pace while breeding his family in a mansion in Beverly Hills and commanded huge wages.

Often disappointed by distractions from spectacle that came with major film roles, He still preferred characters like the troubled private eye he played in the 1975 The night’s move (a flop) – and thought he had ruined his career by agreeing to play Lex Luthor opposite Christopher Reeves Superman. To his surprise, the rare comic tour was loved by both critics and audiences.

His last credit was for 2004 -comedy Welcome to Mooseport. After showing up in more than 70 films, he was worn and ready to quit, especially after a doctor warned him to emphasize his heart. That advice, he said in 2009, was “the straw that broke the camel’s back. ”

Then he was married to the former Betsy Arakawa, which he met in LA when she worked at a fitness center. They seemed happy to live out their lives in Santa Fe. “Gen was as proud of Betsy as she was of him,” Says Barbara Lenihan, a neighbor and friend of the couple. Their property had a building that included both a painting studio for Hackman and a Pianostudio for Betsy, says Barbara: “He would request that she play a couple of songs for us, and she was excellent.”

Lenihan’s son Aaron calls them “one of the tightest couples I’ve ever seen – really, really close to each other. They were both incredibly friendly. ”

The couple were active in society, eaten out and shopped at Whole Foods. Betsy was founder of pandoras, a local home decor shop and helped Hackman shaping his manuscripts for Popular historical novels He cowrote with Barbara’s husband, Daniel Lenihan. To relax, Hackman and Betsy would “drive super far out in the middle of nowhere,” says photographer Mark Kreusch“And have small picnics.”

Over the past year, Hackman had stayed more to his homeAnd his health had slipped, says Lenihans. He gave up cycling, but his wife had encouraged him to stay active with yoga and puzzles. Betsy himself, says Barbara, seemed “in perfect health.”

Regardless of how this tragic case is officially terminated, Hackman’s legacy will endure. He made it long ago that he was happy to remember simply as “a decent actor.” When decent actors go, he was the biggest.