Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, allegedly had multiple interactions with a stranger in the weeks before their deaths.
Body camera footage obtained by Fox News on Monday, March 24, showed the late Arakawa’s hairstylist, Christopher, speaking with authorities about a man who allegedly “followed” her and Hackman “on two separate occasions.”
“One occasion is when they went to White Rock. They went and had lunch there and the guy followed them from parked [outside of their gated community], followed them all the way to White Rock,” Christopher claimed in the video. “She said, ‘Christopher, I’m surprised that security didn’t [know] how he got there … because when we left, I noticed that this car had followed us from the residence to White Rock.’”
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Christopher recalled Arakawa telling him that the man came up to her and Hackman with a “folder of photos” for the late actor to sign.
“She approached him and said, ‘I told him he needed to have more respect,’” he alleged, noting that the same man approached them a second time with a bottle of wine, which Arakawa and Hackman declined.
The bodycam footage was released nearly one month after Us Weekly confirmed on February 27 that Hackman, 95, and Arakawa, 64, were found dead in their Santa Fe home.
Questions surrounding the couple’s deaths emerged when authorities confirmed the causes days after the bodies were found.
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Arakawa died first from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome. It was initially believed that her death took place on February 11, as reported by New Mexico medical examiner Dr. Heather Jarrell. However, that date has since been called into question. Dr. Josiah Child recently claimed Arakawa called him on February 12 regarding an “echocardiogram for her husband.”
“We made her an appointment, but she never showed up,” he told the Daily Mail earlier this month. “She did not show any symptoms of respiratory distress. The appointment wasn’t for anything related to hantavirus. We tried calling her a couple of times with no reply.”
Hackman, meanwhile, reportedly died on February 18. His cause of death was ruled as hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease with Alzheimer’s disease as a significant contributing factor.
