The One Week Gene Hackman's Wife Could No Longer Care For Him

Before Gene Hackman, 95, faded from public view in his adopted hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico, the locals would see the aging movie star on the golf course, in his truck, or walking his beloved dogs in the enchanted Western American city.

- Nicholas Bogel-Burroughs, Julia Jacobs and Richard Fausset

SANTA FE, New Mexico — Before Gene Hackman, 95, faded from public view in his adopted hometown of Santa Fe, New Mexico, the locals would see the aging movie star on the golf course, in his truck, or walking his beloved dogs in the enchanted Western American city.

His wife, Betsy Arakawa, was often alongside him. There was much about his life that she managed. She set up the golf games with his friends. She policed his diet, given the heart trouble that had dogged him for decades. She diluted his wine with soda water. She typed and edited the novels he wrote by hand.

She also apparently took on the role of sole caregiver as he endured the devastating effects of Alzheimer's disease. Thirty years his junior, she must have planned to see him to his end, in their home.

And so it was all the more jarring on March 7, when the authorities in New Mexico revealed more dark turns in the mystery of how the couple died in February in their four-bedroom house, hidden by trees at the end of a luxurious cul-de-sac east of the city.

Officials said the couple died of natural causes, he of heart disease and she of a rare viral infection. But it was Arakawa who died first, perhaps on Feb. 11, leaving Hackman, with advanced Alzheimer's, alone in the house for days. He is believed to have died a week later, on Feb. 18.