Gene Hackman update with Alex Stone from ABC News

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Let's bring in Alex Stone from ABC News and uh, Alex,
I don't know, you probably heard there. We have a
we have a game coming up on Saturday, the Columbus
Blue Jackets. It's outdoors at the Ohio. It's the Horseshoe
where the where the Buckeyes play.

Speaker 2 (00:14):
It's gonna be a old chili.

Speaker 3 (00:15):
It sounds like, yeah, and it's perfect, right.

Speaker 1 (00:17):
I mean, it's hockey, certainly, it's it's you know, a
controlled atmosphere, went your inside nation Wide Arena, which is
where they play. But yeah, I was at the game.
And I don't know if you go watch the Kings play,
but I was. I was at the game. It was
Star Wars night when the Kings were here, and Stone
and I went that night and we ended up beating
the Kings that night. But but I don't know if

(00:39):
you go and see them at all, you guys you
know els.

Speaker 2 (00:41):
But it's funny because I haven't talked about the Kings
in a very long time. And a coworker of mine
yesterday goes, hey, would you go to a Kings game
with me? And I was like, yeah, I don't know
anything about hockey, but sure I'll go. And so we're
buying tickets and we're gonna go at some point.

Speaker 3 (00:52):
It's so great.

Speaker 1 (00:53):
I I you know, is is Columbus a hockey town?
I mean in two thousand is when the Jackets started.
So you know we're twenty five years well, twenty four about,
you know, about to be twenty five years in and
you know, I didn't really latch onto them, like really
latch on until like the last ten twelve years, and
we certainly have not really been part of the NHL

(01:16):
elite landscape.

Speaker 3 (01:17):
For sure. It's been it's been a struggle.

Speaker 1 (01:21):
And so they're starting to get some footing right now
and there's been you know, a new coach comes in
and you got some different front office people, and it
seems like something's clicking right now with the Jackets. So
we're in Detroit tonight to play the Red Wings and
then they come back down south the Red Wings do,
and they'll be the opponent on Saturday for this it's

(01:44):
called the Stadium Series, and they're like twenty one pilots
is going to play out there, and I think Oar
is going to play and it's just going to be
like kind of a I'm not going, but it's going
to be like, you know, and I'm a season ticket
holder for the Jackets, but I decided I did against
going to this, but I'll probably regret it, like everything
else that I do. I'll be like, it is going

(02:06):
to be a lot of fun, but yeah, it's gonna
be You heard Marshall just now saying that the wind
chills are going to be in the teens.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
It's going to be brutal.

Speaker 2 (02:12):
There I'm sitting here's eighty six degrees here?

Speaker 3 (02:15):
What Yeah, I was so sick of him, Oh my eight.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Going way down into like the low seventies.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Yeah, that's it. You Wow, how.

Speaker 4 (02:26):
Long would it take us to hop on a plane
get out there and smack him around a little bit, because.

Speaker 3 (02:30):
Take a long time and he would be long gone
by the time we got to Trust me, I'm running
away right now.

Speaker 1 (02:37):
So yeah, we opened the show talking about man we lost,
I mean, one of the greatest actors in history, and
now they're ruling this well suspicious enough to require a
search warrant.

Speaker 3 (02:48):
I guess was part of what you're reporting on here.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
And we started talking about, you know, everything that was
current around three o'clock hour, three zero five hour time,
and so I've been looking forward to this to hear
what else could be going on with this. I mean,
let's face it, he's ninety five, pretty good run. But man,
if something dumb happened here, wouldn't that be silly when
you know, why not a few more years? But if

(03:12):
something stupid took him out, that would be even extra awful,
you know.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yeah, And it's not yet clear how he and his
wife and their dog died, and they're calling it suspicious
because in the sense of the front door was open,
it was a jar, it was a little bit open,
and two people and a dog were dead inside, and
they don't know how. The sheriff is saying, no signs
of foul play, no signs of trauma, no signs of
how they died. They were not shot, they were not stabbed,

(03:39):
they were not strangled. But they won't rule out that
there was a crime because they don't know what did
kill them until they can figure that out. And this
is what the sheriff told us a little while ago.

Speaker 5 (03:47):
We're not ruling it out. What I did state was
was there was no obvious sign or indication of, you know,
a foul play. There was no immediate sign of foul play,
haven't ruled out out yet. This is an investigation, so
we're keeping everything on the table now.

Speaker 2 (04:02):
One thing that the multiple people being dead inside of
a home and an animal as well, would typically point
to his gas of some kind of probably carbon monoxide,
that that is the telltale sign of it. And the
sheriff says that that may be what this was. They
don't know. They don't see any sign that it was,
but they don't see any sign that it was.

Speaker 5 (04:20):
On our experience and working on cases like this, that
is a possibility. Because of that, we called in the
fire department. We called in P and M to go
through the house do some testing to figure out if
it was even safe for our officers to go in
and process the scene and execute the warrant.

Speaker 2 (04:36):
But the gas company and the fire department, they found
no signs of a gas leak, No gas in the home,
nothing leaking gas. But it appears that they were dead
for a very long time. That Hackman's wife, Betsy Arakawa,
she was mummified. Not to get too graphic. Wow, he
had decomposed quite a bit. So if there was a
leak of some kind, it could have vented out the

(04:58):
open front door. While ago, many many weeks ago, there
was a space heater next to her that looks like
it fell with her in the bathroom. Maybe that was
a culprit in this. They don't know, but if there
was a leak in the home or something creating gas
weeks ago, it may have already just gone out the

(05:18):
door and be no assignment.

Speaker 5 (05:20):
He added, they have been deceased for quite a while.

Speaker 2 (05:23):
So we're also now hearing the nine to one one call.
It's incredible. In New Mexico, we've got the search WARRN documents.
The the nine one one calls already things that in
most states we would never get. And it was made
by a caretaker of the gated community. He was alerted
by an ex terminator that something wasn't right. He called
nine to one one, pleading for help to somebody to
cut He could see people down inside of the home

(05:46):
and they weren't moving.

Speaker 5 (05:47):
A female and the male probably, I don't know, I
don't know if hers just send somebody up here real quick, Just.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
Send somebody up here real quick. And then they got there.
They made entry with the front door open. She was
found in a bathroom. He was found in a mudroom,
investigators say it looks like he he fell very suddenly,
that his sunglasses were tossed away from him, and it
looked like he was walking and fell. And but it's
kind of taken autopsy to know what went on. If
they do, and they probably will, toxicology, that could take

(06:14):
weeks to get an answer of what was in their blood,
where it was, their carbon monoxide, where they drugged, whatever
it was, that's going to take a while.

Speaker 1 (06:21):
How long does it take to mummify. And I'm not
trying to be graphic or insensitive, I say.

Speaker 3 (06:27):
No, but it's yeah, it's quite a while.

Speaker 4 (06:30):
And it's in New Mexico, so it's going to be
a dry Uh, that's a good point. You know, that
kind of aeros is going to come into play.

Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, so you know, what was a heater leaking was
a fireplace leaking. There have been theories what if she
died and at ninety five he had some kind of
dementia and didn't know what to do and then he
ended up having tripping and following.

Speaker 3 (06:51):
You said he decomposed. He was found, Yeah, but he
pretty decomposed.

Speaker 4 (06:55):
So yeah, that very well could be maybe she she
died in the bathroom and he was just capable of
dealing with what was going on.

Speaker 2 (07:02):
Yeah, and the dog was in a kennel and couldn't
get out. There were two other dogs that could run
around and they were fine. They ran out and then
they could go in and out of the house and
then and they didn't die, but the one in the
kennel did so a lot that they don't know, but
but they're they're looking to figure it out if it
was criminal or not. But they don't see any.

Speaker 3 (07:19):
Signs a wall.

Speaker 1 (07:20):
And they also said he was in the mud room. Correct,
that's that's the room they identified as where he was last.

Speaker 2 (07:26):
Yeah, right off the kitchen, according to the search warrant,
and they found him down in there.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
So you know what, this makes more sense that and
they'll know a toxicology. I would think there would be
traces or maybe even more than traces in their blood
if you know, there was carbon monoxide or anything like that.
But that makes more sense that it would dissipate and
and then not be present while you know, when they
went when they tested to go in to see if

(07:54):
it was safe for you know, fire to enter in
all of that, so that makes kind of sense that
it could have happened, especially given that it sounds like
weeks ago is when they actually passed.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Yeah, quite a while ago.

Speaker 2 (08:04):
Apparently his ninety fifth birthday was at the end of January.
Now you wonder did he even make it to his
ninety fifth birthday and we don't know.

Speaker 1 (08:11):
Yeah, wow, absolutely fascinating and man, we went on for
the whole segment Alex when we started about all his
different movie what a body of work and just some interesting,
interesting thing.

Speaker 3 (08:23):
He turned down the roll of Jaws. I don't know
if you knew that.

Speaker 2 (08:26):
Oh, I didn't know that.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Yeah, Raiders of the Lost Ark. What was the other one, Chuck.

Speaker 4 (08:31):
I Mike Brady on the Brady Bus.

Speaker 3 (08:33):
Yeah he was. I didn't know that. And by the way,
the French connection.

Speaker 1 (08:37):
He was the sixth choice for that movie, not the first, second,
the third of the sixth, I know that's.

Speaker 2 (08:44):
What Anyway, we were just give a Crimson Tide, Yeah,
essentially Hunt for Red October, but it those two movies
coming out at the same time.

Speaker 3 (08:52):
Yeah, just fascinating.

Speaker 1 (08:54):
His h his body of work, and we talked about
all that. But yeah, one of the greatest actors ever
in history. And this is really sad for sure man.

Speaker 3 (09:02):
All right, Alex Stone, ABC News, Alex, thank you so much.
Thank you guys, to your brother.

Speaker 4 (09:07):
That's you know, I understand the want of privacy, especially
if you're declining. But I'm sitting here thinking, you know,
if if you're getting to that sort of situation, you
need to probably you know, have have some kind of
letter akin to a will or whatever, so there's something
happens people know. Okay, I was I was falling quickly

(09:29):
to dementia and this this could have been. I mean,
you need to plan for stuff like that, right right,
and if people to know. I understand that too, especially
with all of the money that he's worth. You know
that's going to get tied up. What in a state
right now too.

Speaker 3 (09:44):
You haven't heard any mention of kids or anything. Three
kids from the previous marriage.

Speaker 4 (09:48):
He had kids, but haven't heard anything, you know, contacted now,
Yeah

Speaker 1 (09:53):
But he must have not been in contact if he's
been gone for weeks and his kids were exactly