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Dr. Josiah Child says Gene Hackman’s wife called his office, sounding healthy, 24 hours after police claim that she died. The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office reported that Betsy Arakawa, 63, died on Feb. 11. Child claims she called his office on Feb. 12, so something is not adding up.
Arakawa, according to the chief medical investigator for the state of New Mexico, died from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome on Feb. 11, and Gene Hackman died one week later on February 18. The 95-year-old actor’s cause of death was stated as being a combination of Alzheimer’s disease and heart disease.
However, Dr. Josiah Child, a former emergency care specialist who now runs Cloudberry Health in Santa Fe, New Mexico, told DailyMail.com on Sunday, “Mrs. Hackman didn’t die on February 11 because she called my clinic on February 12. She’d called me a couple of weeks before her death to ask about getting an echocardiogram for her husband. She was not a patient of mine, but one of my patients recommended Cloudberry to her. She made an appointment for herself for February 12. It was for something unrelated to anything respiratory.
“She called back on the morning of February 12 and spoke to one of our doctors who told her to come in that afternoon,” Child continued. “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.”
Dr. Child also cast doubt on the medical examiner’s diagnosis of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome for Betsy Arakawa’s cause of death.
“I am not a hantavirus expert but most patients who have that diagnosis die in hospital,” he said. “It is surprising that Mrs. Hackman spoke to my office on the phone on February 10 and again on February 12 and didn’t appear in respiratory distress.”
Another doctor based out of Los Angeles, told DailyMail.com, “Medical professionals are all scratching their heads over hantavirus as the cause of death. Respiratory failure is not sudden – it is something that worsens over several days.
“Most people get admitted to the ER [emergency room] because they are having trouble breathing. It’s exceedingly rare for a seemingly healthy 65-year-old to drop dead of it. In fact, no one’s heard of such a thing.”
Following the couple’s deaths, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office obtained a search warrant for Gene Hackman’s home because they felt his and his wife’s deaths were “suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation.”
According to police documents, the search of the home led to the seizure of several items, including a thyroid medication, Tylenol, Diltiazem, records from healthcare website MyQuest, a 2025 calendar and two cell phones. When Arakawa was found by police, they reported a “pill bottle being opened and pills scattered next” to her body. No explanation has been made public as to what they pills were or why they were scattered around near Arakawa.