Gene Hackman’s death scene videos and pics will stay sealed: judge

Key details around the investigation into the grim deaths of Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa are set to be released, but the most ghastly video and pictures will stay sealed, a New Mexico judge ruled Monday.

On Monday a Santa Fe judge honored the Hackman family’s request for an injunction blocking the release of some of first-responders findings after they discovered the couple had been dead in their house for more than a week.

But, other materials collected in the investigation will be open to the public, including photos showing the inside of Hackman’s home, the carcass of their dog that starved to death, as well as autopsy results and audio from police body cams when officers responded on Feb. 26.

The ruling is a partial victory for the Hackman family.

Kurt Sommer, an attorney representing the estate, argued that releasing the images would create an “unnecessary media frenzy” and that seeing their bodies paraded in news articles and on-screen documentaries would cause “irreparable injury” to family members.

“ Gene and Betsy’s names, likenesses and images are valuable and need to be protected, and it’s clearly proven out by virtue of the press wanting to get his hands on the documents to exploit them for their own personal profit and gain,” Sommer said.

Questions have swirled around Hackman and Arakawa’s tragic and mysterious deaths in the weeks after their bodies were found in their Santa Fe home, along with their dog Zinna, which had been left in a kennel.

New Mexico state law blocks public access to photos of dead bodies and other sensitive images, and certain medical records are not considered public records.

Authorities eventually revealed that the 95-year-old Hackman died of heart failure one week after Arakawa, 62, succumbed to a rare, rodent-borne illness known as “hantavirus pulmonary syndrome.”

Hackman, who suffered from late-stage Alzheimer’s disease, may have been unaware of his wife’s death in his final days.

The late actor’s family had claimed the autopsy report as well as potentially shocking photos and videos from the investigation should be kept out of the hands of the national media, arguing that he and Arakawa “lived an exemplary private life for over 30 years in Santa Fe, New Mexico, and did not showcase their lifestyle.”

They also argued that the 14th Amendment gave family members the right to grieve without Hackman’s post-mortem photos paraded before the public.

Meanwhile, a separate legal battle may be brewing over the actor’s $80 million estate.

The actor’s three children from a previous marriage had a famously rocky relationship with their father and were not directly named in his will.

Instead, his assets went into a living trust with Arakawa the designated executor. But with her dying before Hakcman, the beneficiaries of that trust remain a mystery.

Whether Hackman’s kids were named as beneficiaries is unclear, however his son Christopher Hackman has hired a top Santa Fe probate attorney, signaling a potential courtroom skirmish over the actor’s dough.