A contractor who raised the alarm after Gene Hackman and his wife died has revealed how he knew something was seriously wrong with the couple.
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Gene Hackman, 95, and his wife Betsy Arakawa, 65, were both found dead in their Santa Fe, New Mexico, home on February 26, along with one of their pet dogs.
The couple's bodies showed that they had both been dead for several days before they were found.
Chief Medical Investigator Dr. Heather Jarrell confirmed that Arakawa died from hantavirus pulmonary syndrome — a rare and often fatal disease transmitted through infected rodent droppings, per BBC News.
Her death was ruled as natural, with no signs of trauma. She was initially believed to have passed away on February 11, the last day she was known to have communicated via email, but new evidence points to her still being alive on February 12.
Hackman, a two-time Academy Award-winning actor, died roughly a week later, on February 18.
His cause of death was hypertensive cardiovascular disease, with advanced Alzheimer’s disease listed as a contributing factor. Dr. Jarrell noted that his pacemaker ceased recording cardiac activity on February 18, making it the likely date of his passing.
The contractor who found the couple's bodies has now spoken out about how he "knew something was wrong" with the actor and his wife.
Jesse Kesler, who'd worked for the couple for over 16 years, claims he tried to arrange a wellness check for Hackman and Arakawa before finding their bodies.
He told Fox News that he began to worry after he hadn't heard from Arakawa in two weeks, having previously spoken to her "every three days".
"We were getting pretty worried," Kesler said. "We knew something was wrong."
Kesler claimed he's reached out to police to find out how to arrange a wellness check, explaining: "We asked law enforcement for advice on how to do it.
"We started the process of a wellness check. We had to involve a family member to do a wellness check. They had to have an authorization from a family member."
Kesler says he was unable to reach any of the couple's family members, and ended up checking in on them himself.
He explained: "We couldn’t get hold of any family members… We were in the process of getting hold of a family member, and it was taking too long.
"And finally, finally, I saw the security guard, and that’s when me and him went in."
The two-time Oscar winner's daughter Leslie told the outlet that she has never spoken to Kesler and was unaware anyone was trying to perform a wellness check on her father.
She added that authorities did not contact her about her father's wellbeing until he was found dead, revealing: "No one had reached out."
The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office also told the outlet they were not contacted by anyone prior to February 26, the day the bodies were discovered.
While Arakawa was initially slated to have died on February 11, it is now believed she passed away 24 hours later.
Dr Josiah Child, a former emergency care specialist who runs Cloudberry Health near where the couple lived in Santa Fe, New Mexico, told the Daily Mail that she had phoned the clinic on the day of her death: "Mrs Hackman didn't die on February 11 because she called my clinic on February 12."
He added: "She'd called me a couple of weeks before her death to ask about getting an echocardiogram [heart scan] 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."
Dr. Child claimed that Arakawa had cancelled the appointment two days before, due to Hackman feeling unwell, and added: "She called back on the morning of February 12 and spoke to one of our doctors who told her to come in that afternoon.
"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."
It is believed that Hackman, who had advanced Alzheimer's disease, may not have realised his wife had passed away in the days leading up to his own death.