Contradictory Accounts of Gene Hackman’s Health in His Final Months Emerge
As the investigation into the mysterious death of Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Hackman, enters its second phase, following last week’s revelations from an autopsy performed after the couple’s bodies were found in their Santa Fe home, more details are emerging around their health and shifting habits in the final month of their lives from family and close friends of the couple.
Hackman, the two-time Academy Award winner whose Hollywood career spanned four decades, and classical pianist Betsy did not die from carbon monoxide poisoning, Santa Fe’s sheriff concluded on Friday, ending speculation that a gas leak killed the couple, who were found Wednesday in separate rooms of their home during a wellness check; both showed no signs of external trauma, police said, but Hackman’s pacemaker had sent its last record on Feb. 17, suggesting he had been dead for at least one week before his body was discovered slumped over in a mud room off the kitchen. Over the weekend, Santa Fe 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 together in the house on Old Sunset Trail Road.
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Over the weekend, friends and family of the Hackmans spoke with members of the press from a handful of publications about his declining health at age 95 and some changes in their communication with family. Daniel and Barbara Lenihan, a married couple who were friends with Gene and Betsy for years, and their son, Aaron, spoke with People about their impression of the couple ahead of their unexpected deaths, explaining that over the “last couple of months, [Hackman] was really slipping there.”
“In recent times, [Hackman was] essentially kind of homebound,” Daniel Lenihan told the news outlet. Barbara Lenihan added while speaking to People that around a year ago, the retired actor “quit riding his bike through the neighborhood.”
Aaron explained how Betsy, who at 64 was more than 30 years Hackman’s junior, took extra good care of him in his twilight years.
“Betsy tried to keep him kind of active and engaged,” he said, sharing that Hackman kept his mind active by working on puzzles and doing yoga via Zoom. “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 COVID-19, so she’d always wear a mask when we’d see her out.”
This was corroborated by Hackman’s good friend, Doug Lanham, who told TMZ that the actor’s wife was sure he maintained a strict, healthy diet that saw him “order either the halibut or rice-paper salmon rather than a big steak” at the bistro he owned for years.
“They were one of the tightest couples I’ve seen,” he concluded. “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.”
While Gene’s health appeared to be declining, according to the Lenihans, Betsy seemed to be the picture of health ahead of her death.
“Betsy was in perfect health,“ Barbara Lenihan told People. “She was so fit.”
All of the Lenihans’ claims about their famous friend’s health decline, however, stand in sharp contrast to what one of Hackman’s daughters told the press after his body was discovered last week. Leslie Ann Hackman told the Daily Mail last week that “there was no indication that there was any problem” with her dad’s health before his death.
“Despite his age, he was in very good physical condition,” she told the outlet.
Leslie Ann, one of the actor’s three children from a prior marriage to Faye Maltese, and her siblings were convinced that a gas leak had caused the death of her dad; that was ruled out by authorities last week. While speaking with the Daily Mail, Leslie Ann admitted that she had not spoken with her father in the months before his death.
This is strikingly similar to the situation with Betsy Hackman and her mother, Yoshie Feaster. According to a housekeeper who tends to Betsy’s 91-year-old mother, who has dementia, regular calls placed to her in Hawaii stopped in October — 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 Daily Mail. “She usually called every one or two months. Last time she called was in October. We were thinking, what happened?”
Sheriff Mendoza on Friday repeated that investigators are still putting together a timeline of the past few months. A personal calendar found in the house was listed as one of the items removed from the property when a search warrant was executed last week. The full toxicology reports on Hackman and his wife are expected in a few months.
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