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New bodycam footage shows several witnesses outside Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa's Santa Fe home saying something was "weird" and "not right."
The Hollywood star and his wife, a classical pianist, were found dead in their New Mexico home, with their remains partially mummified. Their dog was also found dead in one of the bathrooms. The footage was partially redacted by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office for privacy reasons, though it seems to have been shot from outside the home, and it also includes witness interviews.
At one point in the footage, two witnesses being probed outside the house expressed concern that the couple's cause of death could be something else, and not carbon monoxide poisoning as initially posited by several responding deputies.
Everything we know about the bodycam footage taken outside Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa's home:
As seen in the videos obtained by TMZ, a Santa Fe County Sheriff's deputy can be seen speaking on the phone with Gene Hackman's daughter about what they should do with the remains of the family dog, while in another video, the daughter, Elizabeth, can be heard telling the officer to cremate the dog and bury it alongside Arakawa.
She then asked officials if the dog was one of the "older" ones of the couple's bunch. It has since been revealed that the dog was Zinna, the couple's 12-year-old and oldest. Elizabeth can be heard asking the officials if Zinna had a collar on and if she did, if they could save it for her. Per Fox News, the video is dated February 27, a day after Gene Hackman and his wife's bodies were uncovered.
According to CNN, another interview with the duo's contractor, Jesse Kesler, reveals that he and a few others were concerned about the couple as they hadn't been heard from in weeks, prompting them to go to their home and do a wellness check. In the videos, Kesler can be seen running into the couple’s security guard when he went to their home on February 26.
The second video obtained by TMZ shows one of the groundskeeper in shock over learning of the couple's deaths:
"To see that, both of them … I'm sorry," the man said. "I get attached to all these people. They treat me really well. And I met her [Betsy]. She was a sweetheart and to see them like that …"
Per the outlet, just last week, Hackman's estate moved to block any photos and footage taken inside the home from being released.
The estate is contending that the Hackmans took “vigilant steps to safeguard their privacy” when they were alive, and the petition was filed in the hopes of continuing to “preserve the privacy of the Hackmans following their tragic death and support the family’s constitutional right to remembrance and desire to grieve in peace.”
At the time of writing, investigations into Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa's deaths remain ongoing.
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