One week on, the deaths of acting legend Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy are still shrouded in mystery, with much speculation about what exactly happened before the couple were both found dead in their Santa Fe home.
Now, one expert has cast doubt on any speculation that the death could have been a “companion suicide”, where a couple dies by suicide together.
James Gill, Chief Medical Examiner, with the Connecticut Office of the Chief Medical Examiner, is not working on the Hackman case but offered his expert opinion in a new interview with People.
Gill said the locations the couple were found made him think it was unlikely they had decided to end their lives together.
“I’ve seen cases like that — usually they’re together in bed,” he says. “The fact that they’re in two separate locations tells me that I think that’s less likely.”
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Retired actor Gene, 95, was found dead in the home’s mudroom, with his cane nearby. His 65-year-old wife of 34 years was found in the bathroom, near an open bottle of prescription pills.
Adding to the mystery, one of the couple’s three dogs was also found dead inside the home.
“From the initial kind of circumstances, it seems like he may have collapsed — he’s got a history of heart disease. He’s got a pacemaker. So that would not be unusual,” Gill told People.
He also pointed out that Gene’s relatively mobile nature would likely rule out another possible scenario for someone his age: That he had died after Betsy because she was not around to care for him.
“Sometimes we’ll see instances where someone is bedridden and maybe they have dementia and then their caregiver dies from a natural event, and then there’s no one there to take care of them, and then they can die from dehydration or what have you. I don’t think that’s the case in this,” he said.
A criminal investigation was launched this week after New Mexico authorities deemed the circumstances around the couple’s deaths “suspicious.”
After preliminary autopsies were completed, Santa Fe Sheriff Adan Mendoza confirmed that the couple had tested negative for carbon monoxide and the Oscar-winning actor had likely died about nine days before the bodies were discovered.
But according to forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden, the couple’s passing could be the result of a tragic accident.
He suggested Hackman’s pacemaker, which last recorded an event on February 17, could provide clues as to what really happened.
“That event would have been a cardiac arrest caused by an abnormal pulse rate,” he said. “The pacemaker keeps track of the pulse, and when it gets down too low, it discharges. And that’s all in the record.”
“So the autopsy showed he didn’t have any injury,” Baden continued. “There was no carbon monoxide. And he had — the most common cause of death in this country — severe heart disease, coronary artery disease and high blood pressure perhaps, from what’s been released. So that would cause him, having cardiac arrest in the mudroom, to collapse right there.”
Baden suggested that Hackman’s wife Betsy could have died while trying to help her husband,
“She may have struck her head on the way down and had some internal injury to the brain that doesn’t show up on the outside or bleeding in the inside of the brain,” he said.
“Or that she may also, at 65, had severe heart disease and excitement can cause a trigger to the cardiac rhythm causing death under those circumstances. I think the first, that striking her head would be more common.”
