We never could have foreseen Gene Hackman‘s passing being such a horrifying mystery. But ever since we learned Thursday morning the Oscar winning actor and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their Santa Fe home, it’s been more questions raised than answered.
Now a venerated forensic pathologist is giving his theory putting all the disparate pieces together. Is it what happened? It would explain everything…
Dr. Michael Baden isn’t working on the case, but as former chief medical examiner of New York City he’s seen his share of death scenarios. And in an interview on Fox News, he reconstructed a version of events based on all the evidence that’s been made public.
The first domino in his timeline? Gene Hackman suffers a cardiac arrest. Dr. Baden began:
“So the autopsy showed he didn’t have any injury. There was no carbon monoxide. And he had — the most common cause of death in this country — severe heart disease, coronary artery disease and high blood pressure perhaps, from what’s been released.”
This makes perfect sense. We know the 95-year-old had a pacemaker, it’s how we know the exact date he died. And his family have now said his health started “really slipping” over the past few months.
Here’s where it gets strange. How would his wife have died at the same time if it wasn’t an environmental cause like a gas leak? Baden’s theory is based on the pills surrounding Betsy’s body. He thinks the fact her husband was experiencing a medical emergency may have caused the classical pianist to rush to the bathroom to desperately grab his medication!
The pills scattered around her were later identified as thyroid medication, Tylenol, and diltiazem — a blood pressure medication. Many wondered if she had taken something… but Baden thought she might have been getting the pills for her husband. If he was having a cardiac event, it would make sense she was getting his blood pressure meds! Sadly, his thinking is in her rush perhaps she fell:
“She may have struck her head on the way down and had some internal injury to the brain that doesn’t show up on the outside or bleeding in the inside of the brain.”
And sadly she was in the home all alone. No one to find her and treat her injury.
OK, so what about the dog? One of the couple’s dogs, a German Shepherd, was found dead in the home as well. Baden theorizes the pup may have been waiting on his owners for water… and, horribly, died of slowly dehydrating over the course of those days alone, before they were found. Just awful.
What do YOU think of Baden’s theory?
[Image via DJDM/WENN.]
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