For weeks after Gene Hackman and Betsy Arakawa were found dead in their Santa Fe home, the public only had fragments of the story. Then the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office released body-camera footage and photos from inside the couple’s compound, and the images told a story that was sadder and stranger than anyone expected.
The Footage the Public Waited Weeks to See
On April 15, 2025, nearly two months after the couple’s deaths, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office released several minutes of body-camera video along with a batch of still photos taken inside the property. The footage follows officers as they move through the kitchen, private bedrooms and a series of smaller rooms, cataloguing what they find as they go. It is a rare, unfiltered look inside the home of a movie star who spent his final decades avoiding cameras entirely. Hackman, a two-time Oscar winner, had retired from acting in 2004 and retreated into a quiet life in New Mexico with Arakawa, a classical pianist. The video shows the couple’s world exactly as they left it, down to the groceries still sitting out.