The authorities continue to investigate the mysterious death of the legendary actor Gene Hackman His wife, Betsy Arakawa, found a mistake in the case.
Fox News Digital can confirm that the dog that died near Arakawa’s body was misidentified by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department.
The owner of Santa Fe Tail, a pet care facility that attracted two other surviving dogs that Hackman explained that the dead dogs are different from the dogs listed in the Fox News search warrant affidavit.
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Portrait of Gene Hackman, actor at the Park Hyatt Hotel in Chicago on May 10, 1985. (Paul Natkin/Getty Images)
Hackman and his wife’s three dogs were named Zinna, Bear and Nikita.
“Zinna is a hybrid…a hybrid,” said Joey Padilla, owner of Santa Fe Tail, who shared with Fox News Digital. “The bear is a shepherd’s mixture of purebred German Shepherd and Nikita.”
Denise Womack-Avila, spokesman for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office, acknowledged that deputies initially misidentified the breed of the late dog.
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Law enforcement officers talked about it on Thursday, February 27, 2025 at the home of actor Gene Hackman in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, were found dead at home a day ago. (AP Photo/Roberto Rosales)
“Our delegates, they don’t work with canines every day,” she said.
Padilla tells Fox News, the Shepherd’s Mix Mysterious events That was about their now-dead owners.
Padilla added: “Nikita is a mixture of shepherds and she is really scared of what happens when things happen. She’s really hard.”
Gene Hackman in the 1988 film The Mississippi Burning. (David Appleby/Orion/Everett series)
While it is not clear how long the surviving dog has been left unattended, the owner of the pet care facility said the shepherd mixture was “hungry” and their team tried to give her a snack. However, because there were “too many people” around, the dog did not take snacks immediately.
He went on to explain that the animal service “uses traps” as a shepherd’s mixture, and then the pet care facility picked up the dog.
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Authorities have been searching for answers after discovering Hackman and Arakawa’s deaths at their home in Santa Fe, New Mexico on February 26.
The search warrant says authorities did not perform an autopsy on Zinna, who was found in a dog kennel in a bathroom closet near Arakawa. Investigators initially pointed out that the “color of Germany-Sharp’s late brown” was found.
According to the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department, the Academy Award-winning actor and his wife, the classical pianist, tested negative for carbon monoxide. (Jeffrey Mayer/Wireimage)
Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said Hackman and Arakawa may have disappeared two weeks ago.
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Oscar-winning actor and his wife, classical pianist, have denied Carbon monoxideAccording to the Santa Fe Sheriff’s Department. Hackman is likely to die about nine days before authorities discovered his body.
According to a press release obtained on Fox News Digital Tuesday New Mexico Natural Gas Company On February 26, “it confirmed that it conducted an extensive investigation into gas leakage and carbon monoxide” and made “no major discoveries” in the couple’s secluded home.
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Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa got married in 1991. (Donaldson Collection/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images)
The detective has recovered Two phones, two different prescriptions and a 2025 planner when checking the residence, according to a search warrant inventory list obtained by Fox News Digital.
Although the bodies of Hackman and Arakawa were found in the case that detectives called “suspicious”, officials confirmed that no external trauma was seen on either Hackman or Arakawa, and that the case is still under open autopsy and toxicology results.
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Larry Fink, Tracy Wright and Christina Dugan Ramirez of Fox News Digital, and the Associated Press contributed to the report.
