Authorities investigating the deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, have proposed a new timeline of events after making a new discovery this week.
On Monday, a Santa Fe doctor claimed that Arakawa called his clinic on February 12 — one day after police say she died.
The claim, made by Dr. Josiah Child of Cloudberry Health in New Mexico, immediately cast doubt on the timeline of events brought forward by officials earlier this month.
“Mrs. Hackman didn’t die on February 11 because she called my clinic on February 12,” Child told the Daily Mail this week. “She’d called me a couple of weeks before her death to ask about getting an echocardiogram [heart scan] for her husband.”
After reviewing Child’s claim, Santa Fe Sheriff Adan Mendoza said the police’s timeline of events has been updated accordingly.
“That would indicate to me that she was seeking medical advice or medical help and may have not been feeling well,” he said on Good Morning America.
GMA contacted Cloudberry Health, who confirmed that Arakawa had called them to schedule an appointment for February 12 for an issue unrelated to respiratory problems.
“We can now confirm that Mrs. Hackman’s phone was utilized on the morning of February 12 to call a medical center in Santa Fe, Cloudberry Health,” the Sheriff’s office told Today in a statement.
“A total of three calls were made that morning, all to the medical center. One incoming call was made to Mrs. Hackman from the same medical center that afternoon that appeared as a missed call on Mrs. Hackman’s cell phone.”
“This information was learned through investigation into the cell phone data contained on her phone,” the statement concluded.
Two days before she was due to see Dr. Child, Arakawa canceled her appointment, saying her husband — two-time Oscar winner Hackman — was feeling unwell.
The medical facility added that they detected no indication of breathing issues or distress during the call, the Daily Mail reports. After calling Arakawa back twice to follow up, their calls went unanswered, they add.
“She called back on the morning of February 12 and spoke to one of our doctors who told her to come in that afternoon,” Dr. Child said this week.
“We made her an appointment but she never showed up. 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.”
The revelation directly contradicts the medical examiner’s conclusion, which stated that Arakawa died on or around Feb. 11 through her activity and communication.
Arakawa had an email conversation on the morning of Feb. 11 before heading out to a local grocery store, a pharmacy and a pet store, according to Chief Medical Investigator Dr. Heather Jarrell.
She returned to the couple’s gated community around 5:15 p.m., garage clicker data showed.
According to the Santa Fe medical examiner, Arakawa died of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome — a rare rat-borne respiratory disease.
Hackman, for his part, died from hypertensive atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease, with Alzheimer’s disease as a significant contributing factor.
One of their three dogs, which was in a crate recovering from surgery, died of starvation and dehydration, a state necropsy report has revealed.
