March 4, 2025 • 53 mins
Mystery deepens as Gene Hackman and his wife's autopsies are completed and doubts grow over smiling daughter's carbon monoxide theory. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss how authorities investigating the mysterious death of the legendary actor, his wife, and their dog have concluded autopsies on both victims. Amid intense speculation about how Hackman and Betsy Arakawa, aged 95 and 64, tragically died inside their $3.8 million home in Sante Fe, New Mexico, investigators have revealed no external trauma was seen on either body. How did 95-year-old Gene Hackman and his 64-year-old wife die at the same time - in different areas of their home?
Transcribe Highlights
00:00.25 Introduction
05:34.35 Career of Gene Hackman
09:03.74 Father abandoned Gene Hackman when he was 8
13:55.49 Hackman wife is concert pianist
17:13.61 Body Bags now around 350 episodes
20:58.98 Discussion - Hackman is 95, wife is 64 - die at the same time?
24:50.05 Talk about reporting of the case
27:58.09 Why were they found in different areas of house
31:23.12 In public Hackman was leaning on his wife to steady himself
34:56.15 Talk about the search warrant
39:06.13 Discussion of Carbon Monoxide
44:31.40 Looking at the medical history of Hackman
47:35.12 Randy Quaid think Hackman was murdered because of residual money
52:07.40 Discussion of impact open doors could have on remains
Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Body Dams with Joseph scotten More. Probably one of my
earliest memories of when I was a kid of watching
a movie and I probably should not have been allowed
to see it was the original Bonnie and Clyde movie
(00:22):
with Warren Beatty and Fade Done Away. Now we have
done an episode of body Bags on Bonnie and Clyde.
It was done within the last few months. I think,
if you get a chance, go back and check that out.
But it's not Warren Batty that really sticks in my mind,
or certainly Fade done Away. It's probably Gene Hackman, and
(00:47):
one of the reasons I enjoyed it. It was one
of his early roles and he was so genuine. You know,
Fade done Away and Warren Batty are so polished, it's
like they are hermetically sealed and kind of broken out.
But Gene Hackman was great in that movie, and boy
was a bloody because if I remember correctly, I think
(01:08):
it was a Sam Peckinpah movie. I might be wrong
about that. I can't remember. But today we're going to
talk about the death of, in my estimation, one of
two of the greatest actors, the other one being Robert
Doll and Gene Hackman. But Gene Hackman was found deceased
(01:29):
recently in his home along with his wife Betsy, And
of course there was a pet dog he loved, German
shepherds that was found deceased as well. But we're going
to talk about this because there's been a lot rumblings
in the news about his death and all kinds of
(01:50):
things have been thrown about, with people speculating to be
speculating as a death investigator as a very very slippery slope.
And this man, as far as I'm concerned, deserves the
best because he entertained us for so long. He deserves,
(02:12):
as well as his wife, the best investigation that could
possibly be conducted. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
Bodybacks brother Dave Mack joining me as usual. Good to
see you, my friend. Good to hang out with you.
On a sunny afternoon, beautiful blue sky's cobalt blue, as
(02:38):
they say, gentle breeze blowing outside. I had to go
sit down for a wild day because at the time
of this recording, I have been on air. Now I
think I've done fourteen separate hits. Now I've got two
more coming up. On the topic of Gene Hackman. But
(03:01):
before we get into the death investigation, I started out
talking about Bonnie and Clyde, And first off, I hate
anything that happens to show Bonnie and Clyde in good
light because they were cop killers.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
They were mobbers, and they just were murderers.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That's all they were, both of them. They were. They
left a lot of widows and maybe a lot of
orphans too, and as they say, there's a special place
for those kinds of people. But Gene Hackman was part
of that. But that was not my favorite movie. And
I'm going to say something to you right now beforehand,
I can tell you you will probably not guess what
(03:42):
my absolute favorite appearance that Gene Hackman ever had in
a movie. You want to take a guess to go
ahead and play. I love Royal Tannenbaum's a Wes Anderson movie.
And Bill Murray is now going on and saying that
he he made Gene Hackman made life tough for a
(04:05):
young director like Wes Anderson. And he said old, old actors,
particularly really good ones, have very little patient for young
young directors. And those comments were, you know, they they
were not meant in a bad way. They were actually complimentary,
I think, and it goes to the person that Gene
(04:26):
Hackman was. But my favorite of all time because it's
complete surprise is young Frankenstein. Gene Hackman actually appears in
that movie. You get the impression and yeah, he's a
monk living by himself, and he is blind, and of
course the monster shows up. The reason I like that
(04:47):
role so much, and I don't know, Dave, what's your estimation.
He may have been on film maybe four minutes if
that long, and that one in that one little role
and Peter Ball, who's playing Frankenstein's monster, it's the two
of them are absolutely hilarious. He's making he's making stew
for him. Of course I think it gets dumped in
(05:10):
his lap, the monster's lap. He offers drink, and of
course the cigar scene is just absolutely hilarious, and you
know it's the monsters storming out of the house. I
think he says, I'll make you an espresso and it
was so funny. Maybe it's a captina, I can't remember.
But the reason I like that is that, unlike a
(05:32):
lot of actors, gene Hackman was not one dimensional at all.
He could do comedy, he could do hard edge drama.
He is something that only comes around, I think once
in a generation. I don't know that anybody who's as
far as being versatile could compare to him. And finally Dave,
(05:55):
you know, he just he said it was an interview
that he gave him the mid twenty tens where he said,
I had to had to walk away. He said, my
heart couldn't take it anymore.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Well, he started writing too, you know, he's an author
and author at that and he had really started hitting
his stride doing that after he was seventy five. He
just started, you know, twenty years ago. He just decided
time for something different. But I've got a piece of
trivia about Gene Hackman. I bet you don't know, and
don't He was the original choice to play Mike Brady
(06:26):
on The Brady Bunch, and he was beaten out by no.
He was beaten out by Robert Reid because Robert Reid
had a higher TVQ, because he had spent four years
playing the Defenders. Remember where they yes, I do the
father so his son have their anyway, And so Robert
Reid was under contract at the studio and they decided
(06:46):
to go with him as the father of the Brady Bunch,
and of course that was Gene Hackman gets the breakout
role in Bonnie and Clyde, but it still took time
before the French connection rolls around. You know, there's eight
years between one and the other in our seven years. Anyway,
Gene Hackman, we could do an entire show just talking
about his career. He was much more than just an actor,
(07:07):
very an interesting fellow. But he's kind of like that guy.
You know, you see people in movies and you think
you get an idea of what they must be like,
but we have no idea. You know, we only see
them in a part that they're playing that may or
may not have anything to do with them. A good
actor embodies the part. You know. It's like there are
no small parts, only small actors kind of thing. And
he was brilliant, just yeah, brilliant.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
I had I had to go back and watch a clip.
I have to confess to you, and I hate to
say addiction. That's an insult to people that are addicted
to things, but I I do. I have a tendency
for many years to go back and watch clips from
inside the actor studio and when he's sitting there in
(07:51):
a chair and he's talking to Lipton. Lipton, you know,
he always starts the beginning of these things by saying,
tell us about your childhood, you know, and Gene Hackman
were a story to Lipton at that time, and he
started crying, which is something you don't see Gene Ackman do,
and he had to ask the audience for a pause
(08:13):
and beg forgiveness. At that point in time, he told
the story and he was very young. I hate to
stay I think he was eight and his dad abandoned
him and his mother, and he says, Lipton said, you know,
I have insight into what actually happened. He said, first off,
(08:35):
tell me, how did that affect you? And he said badly?
And he said he said, was life tough? And I'm
thinking that's kind of a ridiculous question. Gene Hackman was like, yeah,
it was very tough. It was just me and my mother.
He said, tell us about the story your dad leaving.
It's kind of an odd story. And Gene Hackman said,
I was playing down the street with a group of
(08:56):
group of guys and he said, just listening to this day,
he says, I looked up. My dad merely drives beh
in the car, lifts his hand and waves, and that
was his dad saying goodbye. And you know, it kind
of set him on a course. And let me tell
you one more thing, if you like that one, it's
(09:18):
set him on a course to where in nineteen forty eight,
I think or forty seven, Gene Hackman a lot about
his age and enlisted in the Marine Corps at sixteen
and spent time in China. This is post war, so
(09:39):
he's part of an occupational force. He did Okinawa. I
think he was in Japan. He did Hawaii too, which
wouldn't be too bad. But can you imagine being in
war torn Japan during that period of time and you're
like seventeen years old. And I know there are a
lot of that generation did that, but he was from
a different cut of the cloth, Dave. He really was.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Well you think about his dad leaving it when he's
only eight. That's nineteen thirty eight, and you're at the
second the second highest round of the worst of times
with regard to the Great Depression, there were three different
peaks where it was really about. Nineteen thirty eight was
really horrible for all millions of Americans. And so anyway,
I think that it informed his work. I think is
why he was so versatile. I think Robert Devaul the
(10:23):
same thing. The reason these actors can embody so many
different things as they experienced so many different things as
young people in growing up in America and losing Gene
Hackman the way we did. He's ninety five years old,
and according to his family, the guy, he was in
good health for a ninety five year old man. That
he was doing yoga a couple of times a week,
(10:43):
he was doing pilates, he was doing things that are
good for the you know, they're not hard work at things.
They're good for moving and stretching and you know, blood
flow stuff. And that's what we're told now. It's so
funny that he was able to walk away from a
very successful career, you know at the not at the height,
but you know, his career once it took off, it
(11:04):
took off, and he was constantly in demand and worked
whenever he wanted, and you know, a masked of fortune.
The house in Santa Fe was worth three point eight
million dollars. Santa Fe is a wonderful place to live.
If you've never been there, I encourage you to take
a trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Santa Fe is fifty
eight miles to the north. You know, it's just an
incredible place to go, and so.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, I would love to see it. And here's this
is why I understand. Cormac McCarthy actually lived there as
well as other artists, and it was kind of a drawl.
I think there was like a there's always been this
kind of artsy you know. You think about Taos or
whatever it's called, and you know, and you have people, yeah,
and a lot of artsy, artsy people up there, but
(11:45):
Santa Fe. He was drawn there, I think obviously for
the writing. Can you imagine being around Cormack McCarthy. And
I'm sure he had some kind of contact with him,
and I think he was also a painter too, But
just to free yourself of how can you and and
that that frenetic pace and everybody's pulling at you, it'd
(12:06):
be kind of hard to you know. And this is
before the days of you know, connectivity. Uh, you got
to make an effort to make contact with him. And
so he's there, He's got his beautiful wife that were
married for a long time. There's a big age gap
between them, which I think plays into into this this
story as well.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Let's put a lot of questions for you about that too,
just but the difference in the way they were found.
This is a story, Joe, that has a lot of
twist and turns. And the fact that you've done fourteen
network television shows about Gene Hackman's story. It is because
he was such a respected actor and artist. You know,
his wife concert pianists, she's a respected artist. And nobody
(12:49):
had anything bad to say about their relationship or their
marriage or anything else. You know, you can't. You don't
hear anybody say anything like that. No, and you know,
lo and behold they both wind up dead and we
don't even know for how long yet, right.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, we don't. And I have to admit my wife,
Kimmy has actually stated to me in the past, you know,
we we've watched everything that that Hackman has done over
the years, and she said, and I didn't know if
I was supposed to be jealous of this or not.
She said, there's a sexiness about him because you and
(13:26):
maybe it's a it's a female thing, you know, thinking
about you felt like that if because he seemed like
a real world guy and you felt like, if there
was a problem, you boy's gonna solve it. You know
what I'm saying. He wasn't He wasn't flighty in any way.
You felt like that even if he stepped off of
the set and he encountered a problem, he's going to
(13:47):
meet it head on. And that's why I think it
was last year we saw that first image of him
where he's leaving he's leaving a store with Betsy, his wife,
or Kawa, and he's got a cup of coffee in
his hand, and it was so, you know, so kind
of regular, real world kind of thing. And Dave, he's
(14:10):
walking with a cane and he's he's actually suffering just
looking at him, from a condition called cayphosis, which is
when you see someone that it's it's more profound than
like a Dowager's hump, you know where you're kind of
slumped over. This is something that develops with age. And
(14:31):
you know, you're he's he's walking along with a cane
and he's you know, he's he's not Gene Hackman like
you remember him. As a matter of fact, we had
to do a double take and say that's Gene Hackman,
and you know, you can see the eyes beyond that,
and look, I'm I'm going to wind up. If I'm
blessed to live long enough, I'm going to wind up
(14:52):
in that state. It's not something different, But you know,
the body can tell you a lot just by presentation
of people walking along. I'm not going to say he's
like infirm, but you know that he would need assistance
because even in that image, he's got his he's holding
the cane his right hand, and he's holding onto the
(15:15):
crook of Betsy's right arm with his left hand, and
he needed to be steadied as he's walking along. And
that was a profound moment because it's a long way
from that image that I've seen of Gene Hackman with
his buzz cut back in the forties as he stares
(15:36):
into the camera a freshly minted marine. But you know what,
there will never be an actor that will measure up
to the legacy that this man has left behind. They
(16:03):
would cover a lot of cases, you and I. You know,
I look back and I think about the road that
you and I have traveled thus far. We're up to
like we're right about three hundred and fifty episodes of bodybacks.
Just let that sink in for a moment. And we
have covered a lot of brutal deaths. We've covered a
lot of brutal perpetrators. That's an understatement. I think where
(16:28):
I don't have a lot of patients with the media
is when they start throwing around terms like questionable, suspicious,
you know, something that is sinister. But I'm going to
admonish the police here for a second. It's not something
I normally do during a presser and press release. There
(16:55):
has been the term suspicious that has been put out there.
Now listen, I'm not saying that these are not odd circumstances,
because they truly are. However, when you say suspicious, you're
implying that something very dark may have happened. And at
this point in time, I don't necessarily know that there
(17:17):
has been. But my god, this has created a frenzy
that I could not have even begun to anticipate along
the way, you know, with just everything that's in the news.
How many times I've been contacted, you know, I've had
just since we've been sitting here, I've had two text
messages come across everybody.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Joe Man. Yeah, I explained to you, to people, what
is what is Joe Scott really like. Look, he's a professor,
he is an expert at so many different things. But
he's all you gotta do is watch network television covering crime.
He's on there. He's on every show talking about everything
because he's the guy. So when you think about Joseph
Scott Morgan, when you talk about Gene Hackman, Okay, and
(17:59):
we've got a lot to cover here. Even though we
still don't know what they actually died from, we have
a lot of information about the condition of the bodies
and the reason it is suspicious. Joe and I take
great exception with the media making things salacious. It bothers me.
I know why we do it. It just I'm not
good at it and I don't like it. I know
(18:20):
the reason I'm not good at it is because I
don't like it. I know that you lead with it.
You know, if it bleeds, it leads. I got you.
But in this particular case, you've got a ninety five
year old man and you've got his wife is sixty four, right, yes, yeah,
And I think about this. If they're both ninety five
and they are found dead in the home like this,
(18:42):
there's not going to be a whole lot of they'll
be digging around, but they it won't be suspicious because
they're both in advanced years and they both passed away. However,
you've got an age difference here of thirty one years.
And that's why, Okay, why is it that I get
an ninety five year old man dying in his house.
I get that, but his sixty four year old wife
(19:06):
dies at the same time in a different part of
the house.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, I know when.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Hills all over the cabinet, I mean all have the
countertop and a German Shepherd dog. Of three dogs, you've
got one debt in the house, another one alive in
the house, and one outside the house.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah. The one that was alive in the house was,
according to what I've heard this far, was actually adjacent
to Betsy's remains, like sitting there almost watching over her.
And you know that goes to the heart of a dog.
That's why I love dogs so much, because they love
us unconditionally. Period of story.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Hank is still depressed, Joe, after what we went through
a couple of weeks ago. Joe, right, Hank is not.
He has not gotten over it, and it is watching
a dog grieve is really something, and it is.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
It's real too. It's not something that you just pay
homage to and say, yeah, well that happens. No, it does,
in fact happen. And you sit there and you think
about this, how long had that dog been adjacent to
her and walking around and sniffing and doing all the
things that they do to try to nudge their master
(20:16):
who takes care of them day in and day out
and the other And I will kind of comment on this.
The one dog that was deceased. You know, we've heard
them say, well, the dog was in a closet ten
to fifteen feet away from Betsy. Yeah, the dog may
have been in a closet, but the dog was also,
(20:37):
according to reports, was in a pet carrier or a
pet cage or rather. And so that death is kind
of easily explained because when you and I'll go ahead
and kind of give this away, I'm sure people are
aware of this. They've talked a lot about decomposition and
specifically mummification, which we'll get to.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, keell them, okay, go ahead, go ahead, I'm go
ahead and complete your thought. But I I wanted to
back up to that because I'm really not understanding the
conditions right right, you know. But so the dog was
in the German shepherd in the closet, was in a carrier.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
That's what That's what has been being alleged. And there's
a lot of stuff that's floating around out there at
this point in time, and I'm hoping that we'll get
a firmer handle on that. But I'll go ahead and
throw this little nugget out to you. If that dog
was in a in a carrier or a cage, or
however you want to say it, that animal didn't have
access to water. And you know, dehydration is one of
(21:34):
the quickest ways for whether it's people or dogs to die.
You're absent water for two to three days, and buddy,
let me tell you something, it's all over with the
crime at that point in time. The other dogs were
one was outside and you had the other one that
was still on the indside of the house. So that
(21:56):
little bit to me, if that is accurate, you know,
kind of explain something relative to time. You begin to
think about, you know, how long does it take a human.
I can't necessarily comment on a canine. With these big dogs.
These are German shepherds, apparently Gene had a real affectation
for German shepherds, and he loved them. There's several pictures
(22:17):
of him out there, you know, with a huge grin
on his face and beautiful face, that German shepherd, you know,
just just kind of hanging onto him. And you know,
you think about the status of the remains in the
house and their location, because that's been a big bone
(22:37):
of contention in the last thirty six hours, the position
of the remains and the status of the house. You know,
I'm still amazed right now. When the first reports came out,
they said that there was evidence of forced entry. Well,
(22:58):
that appears to not be true. Let me repeat that
that appears to not be true. It's inaccurate. The front
door was open. Now some have said that it was unlocked.
Other people say that it was open, and there may
have been other open doors, but again we can't validate that.
But it plays an important part here. When you have
(23:22):
the two masters that are essentially deceased, You've got these
other dogs that are wandering about and in these different locations.
Because Betsy's on the floor of the bathroom, from what
we understand, lying on her side, there is an adjacent
pill bottle that has opened and pill scattered about on
(23:46):
the counter. We don't know what the medication was that
might play into this. And then Gene is down the
hall in the mudroom is what they're referring to this as, let.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Me kind as the mudroom.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, mudroom for people that are not familiar with it.
My friends, all my friends up north, they use the
term mudroom. I'd never heard it necessarily down here in South.
But it's a place generally a rear entrance where you
make your way into the house. Manytimes, the laundry room
will be back there and it'll be all contained, and
it's where you can be dirty. You know. You walk
in and you take your galoshes off or your shoes
(24:22):
and you put them in there. You hang your raincoat
up or your other accouterment and you don't track it
into the house. Hence the term mudroom. Well, when they
observed Gene Hackman's remains, he's lying on the floor and
he's clad in a pair of gray sweatpants. He's got
a dark blue long sleeve t shirt on, and again
(24:46):
back to the cane. Cane is lying adjacent to him,
along with his brown leather slippers. They didn't really say
if they were on his feet or not. But here's
another piece to this. He had a sunglasses line there, Dave.
And assuming that there is a door, which you would
imagine there would be in the mud room, you know,
(25:07):
a big question is was he trying to exit house
for some reason that we don't know at this point
in time. You know that the police at the scene
said that they didn't see any overt signs of trauma.
But one of the things you're having to kind of
fight with here is the fact that and I don't
(25:28):
know if there were actual medical legal personnel there. I
hope that there were from the state Medical Examiner. New
Mexico is one of the states that does not have
a corner. As a matter of fact, I've used the
term superlative. They have a superlative State Medical Examiner's office
that is run thankfully by the state Health Department, not
(25:48):
the state police. So they have a real vested interest
in all manners of death. And you know, that's the
way I like to roll. And they're actually affiliated with
the university there with medical school, so they're scientifically, they're
right on the cutting edge, and this is not something new.
They've been that way for a long time. I hope
that one of those individuals were there to assess the
(26:10):
remains because day. One of the biggest problems with this
is going to be something that we've talked about for
a long long time here on body Bags, and that's PMI,
the post mortem interval here, because you're trying to nail
down a time. That's the big question that a lot
of people have. Beyond the suspicious stuff, we have to
kind of try to understand how long they had been dead.
(26:33):
And the other big mystery that has been pushed forward
is do they die at the same time? And that's
you know, I think that that goes to the heart
of the matter, Dave.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
That's been my question since we started it, and I
pointed it out earlier. If they were both ninety five,
probably would not get the suspicious angle in it. But
it's the fact you have a ninety five year old
man and a sixty four year old woman. Granted, I
mean that's again I hate saying that it's not the
ab difference. It is the age difference. You know, It's
(27:04):
because it is because there is such a big difference
in their ages. A ninety five year old man falling
having a heart attack, something happens and he dies not uncommon.
But to simultaneously have a sixty four year old woman
in a different part of the house, not even in
the same part of the house. And that's again, it
just looks like something happened quickly, because you mentioned his
(27:27):
glasses and cane and sunglasses are right there. He's in
the mudroom probably well, no, either coming in from going
from having been somewhere or getting ready to leave to
go somewhere. She's in a restroom where she is taking
medication at whatever time something befalls her because the pills
are scattered on the countertop. And you also, that's just
(27:50):
a unique situation, two people of such diverse ages having
this situation happen. You have to assume, No, you don't
have to assume anything. I assume since they were in
drastically different parts of the home that whatever hit them
hit them both at the same time.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, that is the assumption here, And there's nothing wrong
with saying that. People make fun of that. But you
know that's why this idea of determining the time since
death both individually and then assessing it and comparing it.
(28:29):
Do the do the two proceeds look like their head
to head are running neck and neck. That's a better analogy.
And if not, then it gives us potentially a bit
of information. Let's say that Betsy is in more of
(28:49):
an advanced state of decomposition. The term mumiflication has been
used relative to her hands and her feet, and I'll
go ahead and be very blunt. Even the search warrant
and anybody can see the search warrants out there, says
that her face was bloated, which is consistent with decompositional changes.
So if she is in a more advanced just follow
(29:13):
my logic.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Care.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
If she is in a more advanced state of decomposition,
then mister Hackman, was the question is this? And this
goes back to what I talked about the cayphosis earlier.
You know, where he's depended upon her, he's having to
use her to steady himself and to walk about. If
that's the case, was she having some type of medical
(29:38):
event Dave where she entered the bathroom trying to get
to her meds? Now, I don't know, I have no
idea what these meds are, but let me throw one
out to you. In particular, Let's say it's n yourachlissering. Okay,
take tab you're having angina, put it beneath your tongue.
The problem here is, at this point in time, we
don't know anything about miss are calls medical history. But
(30:04):
if she's on some type of medication, she is depended
upon day in and day out to help her along,
and she collapses in the bathroom and passes away. One
of the more sinister things about this is that if Jeanne,
who might be totally dependent upon her, remember they haven't
(30:28):
been seen for a while, no one's been checking in
on them. They don't necessarily have a caretaker there if
she's been dead for a while. Dave sadly he could
have wandered about the house for a while, searching for
the spouse who he loved and had been committed to
(30:50):
for over thirty years, that they'd built a life there
in Santa Fe. And in one desperate attempt, he's trying
to go for help. He's got a sunglass, says he's
got caine, he's got his T shirt, he's got sweatpants on,
and then he couldn't take another step and he collapses
(31:10):
in that mudroom. I don't know that that's necessarily the case.
But I do know this right now, at this stage,
at least, we probably have more questions than we do answers.
But as I always say on bodybacks, the truth is
always going to be told, and generally the key to
the truth in our world is science. All Right, brother Dave,
(31:47):
go ahead, hit me. I know what you're gonna come
at me with. Let's talk about mumification, because it keeps
coming up in conversation time and time again, and I
don't mind addressing it. But go ahead.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I'm glad because that is the first thing, you know,
we are going to look at. Okay, you were just
laying out a plan of maybe an explanation of what
happened that she had a medical emergency and he couldn't
help her. My first thing is why didn't he pick
up the phone and call again? Maybe that's not something
he was able to do with his fingers and things
(32:22):
like that. I don't know what his you know, ninety
five years old. You know that's some are better off
than others, you know, in terms of being able to
use their fingers. That's why they got the jitterbug phone,
you know. Oh yeah, I mean there are things that
happen as you get older that make it tough. I
don't know. Maybe he didn't use it. I don't know
what his situation was. So thinking of wondering, how are
(32:43):
they going to determine you're you're the guy and you've
just found out that we've got two people separated in
age by thirty one years, that have been together since
nineteen ninety one. They don't appear to have any signs
of physical violence done to either one of them. But
Joe looking at the search warrant and maybe we need
(33:03):
to come back to this, but I'm kind of curious
about a number of things that there looking at. When
police put together a search warrant, it means they have
to present enough of the case before a judge who says, yes,
you can go in and look for these things. They
have to be specific. Sometimes they have to explain why
in a very gray area here. But the bottom line
(33:25):
is you have two dead individuals. Searching that home is
not going to be that difficult, you know, because they've
got to find answers. But still, because we are a
society that we have a right to the government not
coming in and going on fishing expedition, whether you're dead
or not. And that's what the search warrant is for,
is because they're not allowed to come into your home
unless you say yes.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Well, this is where the utility of the words suspicion
comes in. I'm so glad you talked about the warrant
relative to a judge signing our magistrate signing off on
this thing. Words are very powerful. My wife always says
words are containers of power, and they are. You know,
the things that you speak that come out of your
mouth and they influence people. And when you're writing up
(34:09):
a search warrant, if you throw out that term suspicious,
and particularly when you give given the level of notoriety.
And look, you've been You've been in the media business
a lot longer than I have. Brother, you know that
if a celebrity dies, those lights get a little bit hotter,
(34:30):
it gets white hot. And you know, I can even
remember when Bob Sackett died. My lord calls came in,
you know, relative to that, even back to Philip Seymour Hoffman.
You know, it went on and on and on. Yeah,
it did, it did mine as well. Talked about a
(34:51):
great actor. And you know, I'm not going to go
down that road.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Addiction does not care about your fame, No, it does
anything else.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Addiction does not discriminate at all. But yeah, they had
a couple of things. One of the biggest things I
think that really kind of hit home relative to their
suspicions or what they thought was the thing that raised
its head first was carbon monoxide poisoning. Now, I have
(35:24):
had cases of carbon monoxide poison I think that I've
mentioned it before, but it bears stating again. I have
had cases where where an entire family and I'm talking
about six family members were completely and totally wiped out
in one night from breathing in carbon monoxide. And David's
(35:48):
so lethal that it absolutely how can I say this,
It absolutely kills you. I'm not going to say instantaneously.
But all of those people never woke up. They were
in their beds, Joe.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
When you talk about a family not waking up, a
number of people, you know, we've had issues of carbon
monoxide happening. In stories like that, they're just sad, you know,
especially with portable heaters or generators during times of electrical outages,
it's a fairly normal common occurrence. But in this case,
you know right away they had the fire department chief
(36:25):
saying we didn't find anything. We've got New Mexico Gas
and Light. They're saying we didn't find anything. They've already looked,
they've checked pipes, they've checked for leaks all around the house.
It was the It was Gene Hagman's daughter, Leslie Ann,
who actually brought up the idea of carbon monoxide. And
according to the Daily Mail, she was smiling when she
(36:46):
did it. And I'm going to tell you when you're talking,
when you're trying to make a story, be a bigger story.
That's all you got to do. From the media standpoint
is why is his daughter smiling talking about carbon monoxide?
And I thought that was fascinating that that's how they
were pushing the story forward. But when you've got the
fire department and the New Mexico the officials involved in
(37:08):
a gas leak issue saying no, we couldn't find anything,
do we move on or is there more to check?
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah? There is more to check. I mean it's valid. Now.
I don't know about the daughter's response, but it's a
valid it's a valid ask if you will because when
you I don't know if people appreciate how rare. It
is where you have two individuals inside of a structure.
Not if you count the canine, that's a third that
(37:39):
just spontaneously die. You know, out of all the cases
I've worked of the course of my career, if I
have multiple deaths and one single structure, this is how
it rolls. It's either some kind of trauma related event
that can be shooting, stabbing, beating, fire, any number of things. Okay,
a storm, all right, you have the toxicity in the air.
(38:02):
Are they breathing in something that's going to kill them
or is there something internal that has been ingested at
that point in time. You and I've covered poison cases
where you know, we've got multiple people that die as
a result of it. But they have to explore that
and they will, And at the eme's office, I can
(38:25):
I'll bet you dollars to donuts. They're going to draw
blood on both and they're going to run a test
called a car box of hemoglobin level and it gives
you the measure of first off of carbonoxide. Because the
environment that we live in, you're always around carbonoxide. You
(38:45):
don't see it, but you know if you're walking down
the street, if you live in a big city, for instance,
and you've got a lot of car exhaust, it's going
to be carbonoxide. You know, if you're on farmland somewhere,
unless you're standing next to a tractor, you're not going
to have that much. But it's there, all right. So
there's a given amount, and then you have the toxic amount.
So they will draw the blood if they're able to,
(39:10):
because we're talking about individuals that are they're down the
road a little bit relative to decomposition, and that can
kind of make things more difficult. But there's also things
that we look for physically with carbon monoxide. And I
don't know that they saw this at the scene. Did
you know that with carbon dioxide assoxiation, your skin turns pink.
(39:31):
It's cherry red. I mean it's like imagine the most
brilliant colored popsicle you've ever seen, with artificial coloring and
all that stuff, and it like it's striking when you
see it. And not only that, the eyes, the sclera,
they're no longer white. They turn pink as well. And
even when you open the body, the organs are pink.
(39:54):
When you draw the blood, the blood is pink. Yeah,
it's that striking and a lot of that is deepended
upon how much you uptake. Okay, so there are physical
findings you have in addition to the chemistry that goes
into analyzing sample. If they're absent that then I'm hoping
and I'm sure that they will. They're going to do
like a broad spectrum drug panel that and we do
(40:18):
one anyway. We call it standard panel, and it covers
all the major drugs of abuse. Okay, that's just everybody
gets that. If you go to the morgue, you get
your blood drawn, urine drawn, bile, vitreous, it's all going
to be tested, all right, and then but here's the key.
We do know that there's a vial of medication there
(40:40):
hopefully that was collected and taken into the OCME, and
they're going to analyze the medication. If you have vile,
it has a label on it. One of the big
keys here to unlocking this mystery are the attending physicians.
How long has it been since they were seen in
the office of an attending physician. What did that individual
(41:02):
see when they exam what's the history? Because the ME
will go back to these individuals that have been doing
the treating. I'm assuming that it you know, ninety five
years old. There's a high probability that mister Hackman has
an attending all right. Now. I don't know what they're specting.
Maybe internal, maybe gerontology. I have no idea, but they
(41:23):
will be they'll have a list of medications. They're also
going to know what kind of hard history they've had.
Is there a history of stroke? You know, there's a
lot of stuff that hasn't been revealed, you know, relative
to that. Now, the complexity of this is further exacerbated,
as I've kind of already mentioned, relative to decompositional changes.
(41:46):
If you're looking at the bodies externally. First off, the
examination at the scene doesn't even compare to what you're
going to do it the more because you can't see
you know, you're in a mudroom, the lighting, the clothing
is still in body. You're not going to address a
body at the scene. I don't care what you say.
It's not good practice. You're going to do an initial
(42:07):
observation of the body. You're going to check for decompositional changes,
level of rigor mortis and liver and algor and all
those things that we check for. But you're not going
to disrobe a body that's seen body will go into
the more intact and I can guarantee you, particularly given
the high profile nature of this case, they're going to
(42:28):
do full body X rays, stem distern I mean top
of the head, soles, the feet. They're going to do
an extensive external examination, both clothed and unclothed, and then
when you go to do the internal examination, that'll be
very thorough. As a matter of fact, this case has
(42:50):
such a level of intensity to it. I can almost imagine, Dave,
that there will be more than one pathologist they're observing.
It's not going to be like a standard forensic pathology thing.
And even if they're not physically there, the primary pathologist
(43:12):
or pro sectors refer to, they're going to be consulting.
You know, they're going to say, what do you think
about this? This is what because anything that they say
that issues forth from that font of knowledge, if you will,
is going to be analyzed for years and years to come.
Anybody that's wearing tinfoil had in mom's basement is going
to say, you know, yeah, well what about you know, uh,
(43:34):
there was even an article and I'll go and say
it plainly, it's it's kind of disgusting. An article that
came out today and Randy Quaid, of all people, is
quoted as saying that because Gene Hackman, what was the quote,
is like, because Gene Hackman had the highest residuals in Hollywood,
that something nefarious has happened. And I'm thinking, just defy.
(43:57):
I like Randy Quaid as an actor. He's brilliant, but
he has really gone off the deep end of conspiracies
and government and everything else. And I encourage you to
look at what his life has been like over the
last thirty years exactly, and the frauding the innkeeper comes
to mind, and hiding out in Canada and being anyway.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
But let me get back to something.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
But the problem the one more thing about that, and
I'm going, but the problem with that is that when
someone in that status makes a comment like that, it
just further, you know, exacerbates any existing problems that you
might have. Now You've got everyone in the world that's
holding forth on this and saying that it's it's something,
(44:41):
you know, really really sinister. And I keep using that term,
but I don't know how much you have to take
everything into consideration day, you know, in a case like this,
and cover all of your p's and q's. Please forgive me.
I didn't mean to step on you.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
No, buddy. I think I get so frustrated with Randy
Quaid and other actors like that, because you know, it's
like I think about their career and at the end
you've got to realize that they're people too. And we
all have a crazy uncle that went off the reservation.
You know, We've all got that in our life, and
that's what he became. But to back up, I don't
know him. I don't know Randy Quaid, but I know
(45:16):
that he has comments about conspiracies a lot of the time.
And I don't know what Gene Hackman's residuals. I don't
know what kind of money he has. But you know what,
there's a lot of rich people in Hollywood, you know,
there's a lot of rich actors. And he retired and
for the last twenty years has been his own guy,
writing books, doing and just living his life in Santa Fe,
New Mexico. But here's my question for you, Joe. We
(45:38):
have two people that died in the same house, but
they weren't in a fight. Usually when we have a
married couple that dies there's a fight that broke out,
there's knife wounds, gun wounds and things like that. We
don't have that, But what we do have is an
odd term of what they found on the scene. We're
not talking about back at the Medical Examiner's office. We're
talking about mummification being used as a term by people
(46:01):
who saw them. And all I'm thinking of, sadly, because
I'm an idiot, I think of mummies and that, you know,
I'm thinking, did somebody watch, you know, Young Frankenstein Part two?
That we all miss about the mummy? Because why are
they talking about mummification if the hands and uh, you know,
you got a bloating of the of the head. They
talked about that with regard to Betsy Rakhala, but they
(46:23):
don't mention that about Gene Hackman. They do mention the
mummification of the hands. And they talked about being in
high desert, the altitude, the dry, lack of humidity, and
I get it. Those things do come into play, I guess.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
And you're right on You're right on target with that
day because here's the thing is in Santa Fe, even
though we we're not so familiar with it down here
in the South because we're so humid down here out there,
you are in hot desert. It's very arid, and there's
you know, uh, there is very little moisture in there. Plusure.
(46:58):
We're still at this point, we're in the winter months, okay,
and that even makes it drier. Now. I know people
are going to say, well, there's no storm blew through there. Yeah,
there's no storm that blew through there, but doesn't mean
that it's not dry. And it is dry. And so
when this happens, this idea of mummification, I don't necessarily
I've never really liked that term because it will and
(47:21):
I've had newspeople that have said, does this mean like
ancient Egypt. It's like, no, those are mummies that have
been prepared and wrapped in cloth and everything that the
ancients did, and they did it down and you know,
you know, Central America and South America. It's nothing new
under the sun. I like the term desiccation more, and
(47:45):
you generally hear that with dehydrated food, and that's precisely
what this means, is that it's absent any kind of water,
and so that water that has contained that moisture in
our human remains. That's there in a climate like this
is going to be drawn off pretty quickly. And so
you'll get the way I like to describe it is
(48:05):
hands and feet, the most distal areas. That means, the
most distant anatomical points away from the core of the body,
they go first, Okay. And so to give you an
idea as to what it looks like, imagine if you will,
(48:26):
newspaper that you find up in a closet that you've
not had your hands on for years and years, maybe
it's forty years old. It looks brittle, it's desiccated, it's
a dry. Matter of fact, it's no longer brilliant white.
It's gone from yellow to brown. And you'll see that
(48:46):
manifested on human remains that are in fact dried out.
And you can take you can go out there, and
it's kind of kind of interesting. You can go out
there out in the open, if you have not had
problems with animal scavenging. You can see bodies that are
(49:08):
truly desiccated out there, many times where there will still
be visible tissue. Whereas if those same people had died,
like in the Deep South, you wouldn't see that, you know,
you'd have this massive bloating that goes on the skin
is going to change and marble and do all those things,
and the soft tissue is going to be gone, you know,
after a period of time. It's just it's a different
(49:29):
Like you stated earlier, Santa Fe is very beautiful. I
would love to go there. I've seen images of it. However,
I do know what Arizona is like, what Colorado and
Utah are like. I would love to go and see it.
But there's also a change in the environment when you
get in West Texas and you get into New Mexico.
It's a different world out there relative to the environmental
(49:51):
influences that are with a body. Here's another thing too.
If these doors, and I've heard the plural, I've heard
them say doors as well that were open, Well, does
open mean unlocked or does open mean open? Okay, so
now you're you're not necessarily dealing with a climate controlled
(50:12):
and artificially climate controlled. So that's going to be an
influence as well. But they haven't really come forward with
more data at this point in time. I do know
that the Guardian right now is reporting that first autopsy
has been completed and they haven't seen any kind of
external trauma or anything that's really you know, giving them
(50:33):
pause at that point. So I can tell you what's
going to happen at this point, brother day, We're gonna
be waiting. We're going to be waiting. You know. It's
the old line about appending further testing and it probably yet,
Yeah you're not, and it would take some and I
can't imagine them releasing a definitive cause of death unless
(50:55):
there's some kind of obvious trauma, which the guardian's saying
there's not. But that's the already, and I have no idea.
You're going to have to wait until the drug chemistries
come back, you know what's going on, you know with
is there anything that toxicological sample that is giving you pause?
Is there are there any medications on board that are
(51:17):
in a toxic level? Okay, so that's what we're going
to be waiting on. The other thing that we're probably
going to be waiting on as well. Let's just say
either one of them had a heart attack or a stroke.
Well you can observe that what we refer to grossly
that is looking at the organ itself, whether it's the heart,
(51:38):
of the brain, the lungs as well. You know, it
might have pulmonary embelists or something like that. But they're
going to wait for histology, which means they're going to
take little bits of the tissue and then fix it,
which they have to fix it and stain it, and
they're going to put it on a slide and then
they're going to take a look at it microscopically. Because
(52:00):
I can tell you this, I know this as sure
as the sun is going to rise in the east
in the morning. There is not a single forensic pathologist
out there that is going to move forward without being very,
very cautious, because it's the world is very unforgiving with
(52:21):
the medical legal community. If you say something, you're the scientist,
they expect it to be you know from the burning
bush that is rooted in truth, it's rooted in science.
And of course for us relative to the passing of again,
one of the greatest actors of all time and his
(52:41):
precious wife Betsy and their dog, you want to make
sure that you're accurate because you get one shot at it,
and we have to be patient. We can't run off
and make wild suppositions and time will tell as well
as a science, I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybacks.
Body Dams with Joseph scotten More. Probably one of my
earliest memories of when I was a kid of watching
a movie and I probably should not have been allowed
to see it was the original Bonnie and Clyde movie
(00:22):
with Warren Beatty and Fade Done Away. Now we have
done an episode of body Bags on Bonnie and Clyde.
It was done within the last few months. I think,
if you get a chance, go back and check that out.
But it's not Warren Batty that really sticks in my mind,
or certainly Fade done Away. It's probably Gene Hackman, and
(00:47):
one of the reasons I enjoyed it. It was one
of his early roles and he was so genuine. You know,
Fade done Away and Warren Batty are so polished, it's
like they are hermetically sealed and kind of broken out.
But Gene Hackman was great in that movie, and boy
was a bloody because if I remember correctly, I think
(01:08):
it was a Sam Peckinpah movie. I might be wrong
about that. I can't remember. But today we're going to
talk about the death of, in my estimation, one of
two of the greatest actors, the other one being Robert
Doll and Gene Hackman. But Gene Hackman was found deceased
(01:29):
recently in his home along with his wife Betsy, And
of course there was a pet dog he loved, German
shepherds that was found deceased as well. But we're going
to talk about this because there's been a lot rumblings
in the news about his death and all kinds of
(01:50):
things have been thrown about, with people speculating to be
speculating as a death investigator as a very very slippery slope.
And this man, as far as I'm concerned, deserves the
best because he entertained us for so long. He deserves,
(02:12):
as well as his wife, the best investigation that could
possibly be conducted. I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is
Bodybacks brother Dave Mack joining me as usual. Good to
see you, my friend. Good to hang out with you.
On a sunny afternoon, beautiful blue sky's cobalt blue, as
(02:38):
they say, gentle breeze blowing outside. I had to go
sit down for a wild day because at the time
of this recording, I have been on air. Now I
think I've done fourteen separate hits. Now I've got two
more coming up. On the topic of Gene Hackman. But
(03:01):
before we get into the death investigation, I started out
talking about Bonnie and Clyde, And first off, I hate
anything that happens to show Bonnie and Clyde in good
light because they were cop killers.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
They were mobbers, and they just were murderers.
Speaker 1 (03:21):
That's all they were, both of them. They were. They
left a lot of widows and maybe a lot of
orphans too, and as they say, there's a special place
for those kinds of people. But Gene Hackman was part
of that. But that was not my favorite movie. And
I'm going to say something to you right now beforehand,
I can tell you you will probably not guess what
(03:42):
my absolute favorite appearance that Gene Hackman ever had in
a movie. You want to take a guess to go
ahead and play. I love Royal Tannenbaum's a Wes Anderson movie.
And Bill Murray is now going on and saying that
he he made Gene Hackman made life tough for a
(04:05):
young director like Wes Anderson. And he said old, old actors,
particularly really good ones, have very little patient for young
young directors. And those comments were, you know, they they
were not meant in a bad way. They were actually complimentary,
I think, and it goes to the person that Gene
(04:26):
Hackman was. But my favorite of all time because it's
complete surprise is young Frankenstein. Gene Hackman actually appears in
that movie. You get the impression and yeah, he's a
monk living by himself, and he is blind, and of
course the monster shows up. The reason I like that
(04:47):
role so much, and I don't know, Dave, what's your estimation.
He may have been on film maybe four minutes if
that long, and that one in that one little role
and Peter Ball, who's playing Frankenstein's monster, it's the two
of them are absolutely hilarious. He's making he's making stew
for him. Of course I think it gets dumped in
(05:10):
his lap, the monster's lap. He offers drink, and of
course the cigar scene is just absolutely hilarious, and you
know it's the monsters storming out of the house. I
think he says, I'll make you an espresso and it
was so funny. Maybe it's a captina, I can't remember.
But the reason I like that is that, unlike a
(05:32):
lot of actors, gene Hackman was not one dimensional at all.
He could do comedy, he could do hard edge drama.
He is something that only comes around, I think once
in a generation. I don't know that anybody who's as
far as being versatile could compare to him. And finally Dave,
(05:55):
you know, he just he said it was an interview
that he gave him the mid twenty tens where he said,
I had to had to walk away. He said, my
heart couldn't take it anymore.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Well, he started writing too, you know, he's an author
and author at that and he had really started hitting
his stride doing that after he was seventy five. He
just started, you know, twenty years ago. He just decided
time for something different. But I've got a piece of
trivia about Gene Hackman. I bet you don't know, and
don't He was the original choice to play Mike Brady
(06:26):
on The Brady Bunch, and he was beaten out by no.
He was beaten out by Robert Reid because Robert Reid
had a higher TVQ, because he had spent four years
playing the Defenders. Remember where they yes, I do the
father so his son have their anyway, And so Robert
Reid was under contract at the studio and they decided
(06:46):
to go with him as the father of the Brady Bunch,
and of course that was Gene Hackman gets the breakout
role in Bonnie and Clyde, but it still took time
before the French connection rolls around. You know, there's eight
years between one and the other in our seven years. Anyway,
Gene Hackman, we could do an entire show just talking
about his career. He was much more than just an actor,
(07:07):
very an interesting fellow. But he's kind of like that guy.
You know, you see people in movies and you think
you get an idea of what they must be like,
but we have no idea. You know, we only see
them in a part that they're playing that may or
may not have anything to do with them. A good
actor embodies the part. You know. It's like there are
no small parts, only small actors kind of thing. And
he was brilliant, just yeah, brilliant.
Speaker 1 (07:29):
I had I had to go back and watch a clip.
I have to confess to you, and I hate to
say addiction. That's an insult to people that are addicted
to things, but I I do. I have a tendency
for many years to go back and watch clips from
inside the actor studio and when he's sitting there in
(07:51):
a chair and he's talking to Lipton. Lipton, you know,
he always starts the beginning of these things by saying,
tell us about your childhood, you know, and Gene Hackman
were a story to Lipton at that time, and he
started crying, which is something you don't see Gene Ackman do,
and he had to ask the audience for a pause
(08:13):
and beg forgiveness. At that point in time, he told
the story and he was very young. I hate to
stay I think he was eight and his dad abandoned
him and his mother, and he says, Lipton said, you know,
I have insight into what actually happened. He said, first off,
(08:35):
tell me, how did that affect you? And he said badly?
And he said he said, was life tough? And I'm
thinking that's kind of a ridiculous question. Gene Hackman was like, yeah,
it was very tough. It was just me and my mother.
He said, tell us about the story your dad leaving.
It's kind of an odd story. And Gene Hackman said,
I was playing down the street with a group of
(08:56):
group of guys and he said, just listening to this day,
he says, I looked up. My dad merely drives beh
in the car, lifts his hand and waves, and that
was his dad saying goodbye. And you know, it kind
of set him on a course. And let me tell
you one more thing, if you like that one, it's
(09:18):
set him on a course to where in nineteen forty eight,
I think or forty seven, Gene Hackman a lot about
his age and enlisted in the Marine Corps at sixteen
and spent time in China. This is post war, so
(09:39):
he's part of an occupational force. He did Okinawa. I
think he was in Japan. He did Hawaii too, which
wouldn't be too bad. But can you imagine being in
war torn Japan during that period of time and you're
like seventeen years old. And I know there are a
lot of that generation did that, but he was from
a different cut of the cloth, Dave. He really was.
Speaker 2 (10:02):
Well you think about his dad leaving it when he's
only eight. That's nineteen thirty eight, and you're at the
second the second highest round of the worst of times
with regard to the Great Depression, there were three different
peaks where it was really about. Nineteen thirty eight was
really horrible for all millions of Americans. And so anyway,
I think that it informed his work. I think is
why he was so versatile. I think Robert Devaul the
(10:23):
same thing. The reason these actors can embody so many
different things as they experienced so many different things as
young people in growing up in America and losing Gene
Hackman the way we did. He's ninety five years old,
and according to his family, the guy, he was in
good health for a ninety five year old man. That
he was doing yoga a couple of times a week,
(10:43):
he was doing pilates, he was doing things that are
good for the you know, they're not hard work at things.
They're good for moving and stretching and you know, blood
flow stuff. And that's what we're told now. It's so
funny that he was able to walk away from a
very successful career, you know at the not at the height,
but you know, his career once it took off, it
(11:04):
took off, and he was constantly in demand and worked
whenever he wanted, and you know, a masked of fortune.
The house in Santa Fe was worth three point eight
million dollars. Santa Fe is a wonderful place to live.
If you've never been there, I encourage you to take
a trip to Albuquerque, New Mexico. Santa Fe is fifty
eight miles to the north. You know, it's just an
incredible place to go, and so.
Speaker 1 (11:23):
Yeah, I would love to see it. And here's this
is why I understand. Cormac McCarthy actually lived there as
well as other artists, and it was kind of a drawl.
I think there was like a there's always been this
kind of artsy you know. You think about Taos or
whatever it's called, and you know, and you have people, yeah,
and a lot of artsy, artsy people up there, but
(11:45):
Santa Fe. He was drawn there, I think obviously for
the writing. Can you imagine being around Cormack McCarthy. And
I'm sure he had some kind of contact with him,
and I think he was also a painter too, But
just to free yourself of how can you and and
that that frenetic pace and everybody's pulling at you, it'd
(12:06):
be kind of hard to you know. And this is
before the days of you know, connectivity. Uh, you got
to make an effort to make contact with him. And
so he's there, He's got his beautiful wife that were
married for a long time. There's a big age gap
between them, which I think plays into into this this
story as well.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
Let's put a lot of questions for you about that too,
just but the difference in the way they were found.
This is a story, Joe, that has a lot of
twist and turns. And the fact that you've done fourteen
network television shows about Gene Hackman's story. It is because
he was such a respected actor and artist. You know,
his wife concert pianists, she's a respected artist. And nobody
(12:49):
had anything bad to say about their relationship or their
marriage or anything else. You know, you can't. You don't
hear anybody say anything like that. No, and you know,
lo and behold they both wind up dead and we
don't even know for how long yet, right.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yeah, we don't. And I have to admit my wife,
Kimmy has actually stated to me in the past, you know,
we we've watched everything that that Hackman has done over
the years, and she said, and I didn't know if
I was supposed to be jealous of this or not.
She said, there's a sexiness about him because you and
(13:26):
maybe it's a it's a female thing, you know, thinking
about you felt like that if because he seemed like
a real world guy and you felt like, if there
was a problem, you boy's gonna solve it. You know
what I'm saying. He wasn't He wasn't flighty in any way.
You felt like that even if he stepped off of
the set and he encountered a problem, he's going to
(13:47):
meet it head on. And that's why I think it
was last year we saw that first image of him
where he's leaving he's leaving a store with Betsy, his wife,
or Kawa, and he's got a cup of coffee in
his hand, and it was so, you know, so kind
of regular, real world kind of thing. And Dave, he's
(14:10):
walking with a cane and he's he's actually suffering just
looking at him, from a condition called cayphosis, which is
when you see someone that it's it's more profound than
like a Dowager's hump, you know where you're kind of
slumped over. This is something that develops with age. And
(14:31):
you know, you're he's he's walking along with a cane
and he's you know, he's he's not Gene Hackman like
you remember him. As a matter of fact, we had
to do a double take and say that's Gene Hackman,
and you know, you can see the eyes beyond that,
and look, I'm I'm going to wind up. If I'm
blessed to live long enough, I'm going to wind up
(14:52):
in that state. It's not something different, But you know,
the body can tell you a lot just by presentation
of people walking along. I'm not going to say he's
like infirm, but you know that he would need assistance
because even in that image, he's got his he's holding
the cane his right hand, and he's holding onto the
(15:15):
crook of Betsy's right arm with his left hand, and
he needed to be steadied as he's walking along. And
that was a profound moment because it's a long way
from that image that I've seen of Gene Hackman with
his buzz cut back in the forties as he stares
(15:36):
into the camera a freshly minted marine. But you know what,
there will never be an actor that will measure up
to the legacy that this man has left behind. They
(16:03):
would cover a lot of cases, you and I. You know,
I look back and I think about the road that
you and I have traveled thus far. We're up to
like we're right about three hundred and fifty episodes of bodybacks.
Just let that sink in for a moment. And we
have covered a lot of brutal deaths. We've covered a
lot of brutal perpetrators. That's an understatement. I think where
(16:28):
I don't have a lot of patients with the media
is when they start throwing around terms like questionable, suspicious,
you know, something that is sinister. But I'm going to
admonish the police here for a second. It's not something
I normally do during a presser and press release. There
(16:55):
has been the term suspicious that has been put out there.
Now listen, I'm not saying that these are not odd circumstances,
because they truly are. However, when you say suspicious, you're
implying that something very dark may have happened. And at
this point in time, I don't necessarily know that there
(17:17):
has been. But my god, this has created a frenzy
that I could not have even begun to anticipate along
the way, you know, with just everything that's in the news.
How many times I've been contacted, you know, I've had
just since we've been sitting here, I've had two text
messages come across everybody.
Speaker 2 (17:38):
Joe Man. Yeah, I explained to you, to people, what
is what is Joe Scott really like. Look, he's a professor,
he is an expert at so many different things. But
he's all you gotta do is watch network television covering crime.
He's on there. He's on every show talking about everything
because he's the guy. So when you think about Joseph
Scott Morgan, when you talk about Gene Hackman, Okay, and
(17:59):
we've got a lot to cover here. Even though we
still don't know what they actually died from, we have
a lot of information about the condition of the bodies
and the reason it is suspicious. Joe and I take
great exception with the media making things salacious. It bothers me.
I know why we do it. It just I'm not
good at it and I don't like it. I know
(18:20):
the reason I'm not good at it is because I
don't like it. I know that you lead with it.
You know, if it bleeds, it leads. I got you.
But in this particular case, you've got a ninety five
year old man and you've got his wife is sixty four, right, yes, yeah,
And I think about this. If they're both ninety five
and they are found dead in the home like this,
(18:42):
there's not going to be a whole lot of they'll
be digging around, but they it won't be suspicious because
they're both in advanced years and they both passed away. However,
you've got an age difference here of thirty one years.
And that's why, Okay, why is it that I get
an ninety five year old man dying in his house.
I get that, but his sixty four year old wife
(19:06):
dies at the same time in a different part of
the house.
Speaker 1 (19:09):
Yeah, I know when.
Speaker 2 (19:09):
Hills all over the cabinet, I mean all have the
countertop and a German Shepherd dog. Of three dogs, you've
got one debt in the house, another one alive in
the house, and one outside the house.
Speaker 1 (19:21):
Yeah. The one that was alive in the house was,
according to what I've heard this far, was actually adjacent
to Betsy's remains, like sitting there almost watching over her.
And you know that goes to the heart of a dog.
That's why I love dogs so much, because they love
us unconditionally. Period of story.
Speaker 2 (19:41):
Hank is still depressed, Joe, after what we went through
a couple of weeks ago. Joe, right, Hank is not.
He has not gotten over it, and it is watching
a dog grieve is really something, and it is.
Speaker 1 (19:56):
It's real too. It's not something that you just pay
homage to and say, yeah, well that happens. No, it does,
in fact happen. And you sit there and you think
about this, how long had that dog been adjacent to
her and walking around and sniffing and doing all the
things that they do to try to nudge their master
(20:16):
who takes care of them day in and day out
and the other And I will kind of comment on this.
The one dog that was deceased. You know, we've heard
them say, well, the dog was in a closet ten
to fifteen feet away from Betsy. Yeah, the dog may
have been in a closet, but the dog was also,
(20:37):
according to reports, was in a pet carrier or a
pet cage or rather. And so that death is kind
of easily explained because when you and I'll go ahead
and kind of give this away, I'm sure people are
aware of this. They've talked a lot about decomposition and
specifically mummification, which we'll get to.
Speaker 2 (20:56):
Yeah, keell them, okay, go ahead, go ahead, I'm go
ahead and complete your thought. But I I wanted to
back up to that because I'm really not understanding the
conditions right right, you know. But so the dog was
in the German shepherd in the closet, was in a carrier.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
That's what That's what has been being alleged. And there's
a lot of stuff that's floating around out there at
this point in time, and I'm hoping that we'll get
a firmer handle on that. But I'll go ahead and
throw this little nugget out to you. If that dog
was in a in a carrier or a cage, or
however you want to say it, that animal didn't have
access to water. And you know, dehydration is one of
(21:34):
the quickest ways for whether it's people or dogs to die.
You're absent water for two to three days, and buddy,
let me tell you something, it's all over with the
crime at that point in time. The other dogs were
one was outside and you had the other one that
was still on the indside of the house. So that
(21:56):
little bit to me, if that is accurate, you know,
kind of explain something relative to time. You begin to
think about, you know, how long does it take a human.
I can't necessarily comment on a canine. With these big dogs.
These are German shepherds, apparently Gene had a real affectation
for German shepherds, and he loved them. There's several pictures
(22:17):
of him out there, you know, with a huge grin
on his face and beautiful face, that German shepherd, you know,
just just kind of hanging onto him. And you know,
you think about the status of the remains in the
house and their location, because that's been a big bone
(22:37):
of contention in the last thirty six hours, the position
of the remains and the status of the house. You know,
I'm still amazed right now. When the first reports came out,
they said that there was evidence of forced entry. Well,
(22:58):
that appears to not be true. Let me repeat that
that appears to not be true. It's inaccurate. The front
door was open. Now some have said that it was unlocked.
Other people say that it was open, and there may
have been other open doors, but again we can't validate that.
But it plays an important part here. When you have
(23:22):
the two masters that are essentially deceased, You've got these
other dogs that are wandering about and in these different locations.
Because Betsy's on the floor of the bathroom, from what
we understand, lying on her side, there is an adjacent
pill bottle that has opened and pill scattered about on
(23:46):
the counter. We don't know what the medication was that
might play into this. And then Gene is down the
hall in the mudroom is what they're referring to this as, let.
Speaker 2 (23:58):
Me kind as the mudroom.
Speaker 1 (24:00):
Yeah, mudroom for people that are not familiar with it.
My friends, all my friends up north, they use the
term mudroom. I'd never heard it necessarily down here in South.
But it's a place generally a rear entrance where you
make your way into the house. Manytimes, the laundry room
will be back there and it'll be all contained, and
it's where you can be dirty. You know. You walk
in and you take your galoshes off or your shoes
(24:22):
and you put them in there. You hang your raincoat
up or your other accouterment and you don't track it
into the house. Hence the term mudroom. Well, when they
observed Gene Hackman's remains, he's lying on the floor and
he's clad in a pair of gray sweatpants. He's got
a dark blue long sleeve t shirt on, and again
(24:46):
back to the cane. Cane is lying adjacent to him,
along with his brown leather slippers. They didn't really say
if they were on his feet or not. But here's
another piece to this. He had a sunglasses line there, Dave.
And assuming that there is a door, which you would
imagine there would be in the mud room, you know,
(25:07):
a big question is was he trying to exit house
for some reason that we don't know at this point
in time. You know that the police at the scene
said that they didn't see any overt signs of trauma.
But one of the things you're having to kind of
fight with here is the fact that and I don't
(25:28):
know if there were actual medical legal personnel there. I
hope that there were from the state Medical Examiner. New
Mexico is one of the states that does not have
a corner. As a matter of fact, I've used the
term superlative. They have a superlative State Medical Examiner's office
that is run thankfully by the state Health Department, not
(25:48):
the state police. So they have a real vested interest
in all manners of death. And you know, that's the
way I like to roll. And they're actually affiliated with
the university there with medical school, so they're scientifically, they're
right on the cutting edge, and this is not something new.
They've been that way for a long time. I hope
that one of those individuals were there to assess the
(26:10):
remains because day. One of the biggest problems with this
is going to be something that we've talked about for
a long long time here on body Bags, and that's PMI,
the post mortem interval here, because you're trying to nail
down a time. That's the big question that a lot
of people have. Beyond the suspicious stuff, we have to
kind of try to understand how long they had been dead.
(26:33):
And the other big mystery that has been pushed forward
is do they die at the same time? And that's
you know, I think that that goes to the heart
of the matter, Dave.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
That's been my question since we started it, and I
pointed it out earlier. If they were both ninety five,
probably would not get the suspicious angle in it. But
it's the fact you have a ninety five year old
man and a sixty four year old woman. Granted, I
mean that's again I hate saying that it's not the
ab difference. It is the age difference. You know, It's
(27:04):
because it is because there is such a big difference
in their ages. A ninety five year old man falling
having a heart attack, something happens and he dies not uncommon.
But to simultaneously have a sixty four year old woman
in a different part of the house, not even in
the same part of the house. And that's again, it
just looks like something happened quickly, because you mentioned his
(27:27):
glasses and cane and sunglasses are right there. He's in
the mudroom probably well, no, either coming in from going
from having been somewhere or getting ready to leave to
go somewhere. She's in a restroom where she is taking
medication at whatever time something befalls her because the pills
are scattered on the countertop. And you also, that's just
(27:50):
a unique situation, two people of such diverse ages having
this situation happen. You have to assume, No, you don't
have to assume anything. I assume since they were in
drastically different parts of the home that whatever hit them
hit them both at the same time.
Speaker 1 (28:08):
Yeah, that is the assumption here, And there's nothing wrong
with saying that. People make fun of that. But you
know that's why this idea of determining the time since
death both individually and then assessing it and comparing it.
(28:29):
Do the do the two proceeds look like their head
to head are running neck and neck. That's a better analogy.
And if not, then it gives us potentially a bit
of information. Let's say that Betsy is in more of
(28:49):
an advanced state of decomposition. The term mumiflication has been
used relative to her hands and her feet, and I'll
go ahead and be very blunt. Even the search warrant
and anybody can see the search warrants out there, says
that her face was bloated, which is consistent with decompositional changes.
So if she is in a more advanced just follow
(29:13):
my logic.
Speaker 2 (29:13):
Care.
Speaker 1 (29:15):
If she is in a more advanced state of decomposition,
then mister Hackman, was the question is this? And this
goes back to what I talked about the cayphosis earlier.
You know, where he's depended upon her, he's having to
use her to steady himself and to walk about. If
that's the case, was she having some type of medical
(29:38):
event Dave where she entered the bathroom trying to get
to her meds? Now, I don't know, I have no
idea what these meds are, but let me throw one
out to you. In particular, Let's say it's n yourachlissering. Okay,
take tab you're having angina, put it beneath your tongue.
The problem here is, at this point in time, we
don't know anything about miss are calls medical history. But
(30:04):
if she's on some type of medication, she is depended
upon day in and day out to help her along,
and she collapses in the bathroom and passes away. One
of the more sinister things about this is that if Jeanne,
who might be totally dependent upon her, remember they haven't
(30:28):
been seen for a while, no one's been checking in
on them. They don't necessarily have a caretaker there if
she's been dead for a while. Dave sadly he could
have wandered about the house for a while, searching for
the spouse who he loved and had been committed to
(30:50):
for over thirty years, that they'd built a life there
in Santa Fe. And in one desperate attempt, he's trying
to go for help. He's got a sunglass, says he's
got caine, he's got his T shirt, he's got sweatpants on,
and then he couldn't take another step and he collapses
(31:10):
in that mudroom. I don't know that that's necessarily the case.
But I do know this right now, at this stage,
at least, we probably have more questions than we do answers.
But as I always say on bodybacks, the truth is
always going to be told, and generally the key to
the truth in our world is science. All Right, brother Dave,
(31:47):
go ahead, hit me. I know what you're gonna come
at me with. Let's talk about mumification, because it keeps
coming up in conversation time and time again, and I
don't mind addressing it. But go ahead.
Speaker 2 (32:01):
I'm glad because that is the first thing, you know,
we are going to look at. Okay, you were just
laying out a plan of maybe an explanation of what
happened that she had a medical emergency and he couldn't
help her. My first thing is why didn't he pick
up the phone and call again? Maybe that's not something
he was able to do with his fingers and things
(32:22):
like that. I don't know what his you know, ninety
five years old. You know that's some are better off
than others, you know, in terms of being able to
use their fingers. That's why they got the jitterbug phone,
you know. Oh yeah, I mean there are things that
happen as you get older that make it tough. I
don't know. Maybe he didn't use it. I don't know
what his situation was. So thinking of wondering, how are
(32:43):
they going to determine you're you're the guy and you've
just found out that we've got two people separated in
age by thirty one years, that have been together since
nineteen ninety one. They don't appear to have any signs
of physical violence done to either one of them. But
Joe looking at the search warrant and maybe we need
(33:03):
to come back to this, but I'm kind of curious
about a number of things that there looking at. When
police put together a search warrant, it means they have
to present enough of the case before a judge who says, yes,
you can go in and look for these things. They
have to be specific. Sometimes they have to explain why
in a very gray area here. But the bottom line
(33:25):
is you have two dead individuals. Searching that home is
not going to be that difficult, you know, because they've
got to find answers. But still, because we are a
society that we have a right to the government not
coming in and going on fishing expedition, whether you're dead
or not. And that's what the search warrant is for,
is because they're not allowed to come into your home
unless you say yes.
Speaker 1 (33:45):
Well, this is where the utility of the words suspicion
comes in. I'm so glad you talked about the warrant
relative to a judge signing our magistrate signing off on
this thing. Words are very powerful. My wife always says
words are containers of power, and they are. You know,
the things that you speak that come out of your
mouth and they influence people. And when you're writing up
(34:09):
a search warrant, if you throw out that term suspicious,
and particularly when you give given the level of notoriety.
And look, you've been You've been in the media business
a lot longer than I have. Brother, you know that
if a celebrity dies, those lights get a little bit hotter,
(34:30):
it gets white hot. And you know, I can even
remember when Bob Sackett died. My lord calls came in,
you know, relative to that, even back to Philip Seymour Hoffman.
You know, it went on and on and on. Yeah,
it did, it did mine as well. Talked about a
(34:51):
great actor. And you know, I'm not going to go
down that road.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Addiction does not care about your fame, No, it does
anything else.
Speaker 1 (34:59):
Addiction does not discriminate at all. But yeah, they had
a couple of things. One of the biggest things I
think that really kind of hit home relative to their
suspicions or what they thought was the thing that raised
its head first was carbon monoxide poisoning. Now, I have
(35:24):
had cases of carbon monoxide poison I think that I've
mentioned it before, but it bears stating again. I have
had cases where where an entire family and I'm talking
about six family members were completely and totally wiped out
in one night from breathing in carbon monoxide. And David's
(35:48):
so lethal that it absolutely how can I say this,
It absolutely kills you. I'm not going to say instantaneously.
But all of those people never woke up. They were
in their beds, Joe.
Speaker 2 (36:04):
When you talk about a family not waking up, a
number of people, you know, we've had issues of carbon
monoxide happening. In stories like that, they're just sad, you know,
especially with portable heaters or generators during times of electrical outages,
it's a fairly normal common occurrence. But in this case,
you know right away they had the fire department chief
(36:25):
saying we didn't find anything. We've got New Mexico Gas
and Light. They're saying we didn't find anything. They've already looked,
they've checked pipes, they've checked for leaks all around the house.
It was the It was Gene Hagman's daughter, Leslie Ann,
who actually brought up the idea of carbon monoxide. And
according to the Daily Mail, she was smiling when she
(36:46):
did it. And I'm going to tell you when you're talking,
when you're trying to make a story, be a bigger story.
That's all you got to do. From the media standpoint
is why is his daughter smiling talking about carbon monoxide?
And I thought that was fascinating that that's how they
were pushing the story forward. But when you've got the
fire department and the New Mexico the officials involved in
(37:08):
a gas leak issue saying no, we couldn't find anything,
do we move on or is there more to check?
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah? There is more to check. I mean it's valid. Now.
I don't know about the daughter's response, but it's a
valid it's a valid ask if you will because when
you I don't know if people appreciate how rare. It
is where you have two individuals inside of a structure.
Not if you count the canine, that's a third that
(37:39):
just spontaneously die. You know, out of all the cases
I've worked of the course of my career, if I
have multiple deaths and one single structure, this is how
it rolls. It's either some kind of trauma related event
that can be shooting, stabbing, beating, fire, any number of things. Okay,
a storm, all right, you have the toxicity in the air.
(38:02):
Are they breathing in something that's going to kill them
or is there something internal that has been ingested at
that point in time. You and I've covered poison cases
where you know, we've got multiple people that die as
a result of it. But they have to explore that
and they will, And at the eme's office, I can
(38:25):
I'll bet you dollars to donuts. They're going to draw
blood on both and they're going to run a test
called a car box of hemoglobin level and it gives
you the measure of first off of carbonoxide. Because the
environment that we live in, you're always around carbonoxide. You
(38:45):
don't see it, but you know if you're walking down
the street, if you live in a big city, for instance,
and you've got a lot of car exhaust, it's going
to be carbonoxide. You know, if you're on farmland somewhere,
unless you're standing next to a tractor, you're not going
to have that much. But it's there, all right. So
there's a given amount, and then you have the toxic amount.
So they will draw the blood if they're able to,
(39:10):
because we're talking about individuals that are they're down the
road a little bit relative to decomposition, and that can
kind of make things more difficult. But there's also things
that we look for physically with carbon monoxide. And I
don't know that they saw this at the scene. Did
you know that with carbon dioxide assoxiation, your skin turns pink.
(39:31):
It's cherry red. I mean it's like imagine the most
brilliant colored popsicle you've ever seen, with artificial coloring and
all that stuff, and it like it's striking when you
see it. And not only that, the eyes, the sclera,
they're no longer white. They turn pink as well. And
even when you open the body, the organs are pink.
(39:54):
When you draw the blood, the blood is pink. Yeah,
it's that striking and a lot of that is deepended
upon how much you uptake. Okay, so there are physical
findings you have in addition to the chemistry that goes
into analyzing sample. If they're absent that then I'm hoping
and I'm sure that they will. They're going to do
like a broad spectrum drug panel that and we do
(40:18):
one anyway. We call it standard panel, and it covers
all the major drugs of abuse. Okay, that's just everybody
gets that. If you go to the morgue, you get
your blood drawn, urine drawn, bile, vitreous, it's all going
to be tested, all right, and then but here's the key.
We do know that there's a vial of medication there
(40:40):
hopefully that was collected and taken into the OCME, and
they're going to analyze the medication. If you have vile,
it has a label on it. One of the big
keys here to unlocking this mystery are the attending physicians.
How long has it been since they were seen in
the office of an attending physician. What did that individual
(41:02):
see when they exam what's the history? Because the ME
will go back to these individuals that have been doing
the treating. I'm assuming that it you know, ninety five
years old. There's a high probability that mister Hackman has
an attending all right. Now. I don't know what they're specting.
Maybe internal, maybe gerontology. I have no idea, but they
(41:23):
will be they'll have a list of medications. They're also
going to know what kind of hard history they've had.
Is there a history of stroke? You know, there's a
lot of stuff that hasn't been revealed, you know, relative
to that. Now, the complexity of this is further exacerbated,
as I've kind of already mentioned, relative to decompositional changes.
(41:46):
If you're looking at the bodies externally. First off, the
examination at the scene doesn't even compare to what you're
going to do it the more because you can't see
you know, you're in a mudroom, the lighting, the clothing
is still in body. You're not going to address a
body at the scene. I don't care what you say.
It's not good practice. You're going to do an initial
(42:07):
observation of the body. You're going to check for decompositional changes,
level of rigor mortis and liver and algor and all
those things that we check for. But you're not going
to disrobe a body that's seen body will go into
the more intact and I can guarantee you, particularly given
the high profile nature of this case, they're going to
(42:28):
do full body X rays, stem distern I mean top
of the head, soles, the feet. They're going to do
an extensive external examination, both clothed and unclothed, and then
when you go to do the internal examination, that'll be
very thorough. As a matter of fact, this case has
(42:50):
such a level of intensity to it. I can almost imagine, Dave,
that there will be more than one pathologist they're observing.
It's not going to be like a standard forensic pathology thing.
And even if they're not physically there, the primary pathologist
(43:12):
or pro sectors refer to, they're going to be consulting.
You know, they're going to say, what do you think
about this? This is what because anything that they say
that issues forth from that font of knowledge, if you will,
is going to be analyzed for years and years to come.
Anybody that's wearing tinfoil had in mom's basement is going
to say, you know, yeah, well what about you know, uh,
(43:34):
there was even an article and I'll go and say
it plainly, it's it's kind of disgusting. An article that
came out today and Randy Quaid, of all people, is
quoted as saying that because Gene Hackman, what was the quote,
is like, because Gene Hackman had the highest residuals in Hollywood,
that something nefarious has happened. And I'm thinking, just defy.
(43:57):
I like Randy Quaid as an actor. He's brilliant, but
he has really gone off the deep end of conspiracies
and government and everything else. And I encourage you to
look at what his life has been like over the
last thirty years exactly, and the frauding the innkeeper comes
to mind, and hiding out in Canada and being anyway.
Speaker 2 (44:19):
But let me get back to something.
Speaker 1 (44:20):
But the problem the one more thing about that, and
I'm going, but the problem with that is that when
someone in that status makes a comment like that, it
just further, you know, exacerbates any existing problems that you
might have. Now You've got everyone in the world that's
holding forth on this and saying that it's it's something,
(44:41):
you know, really really sinister. And I keep using that term,
but I don't know how much you have to take
everything into consideration day, you know, in a case like this,
and cover all of your p's and q's. Please forgive me.
I didn't mean to step on you.
Speaker 2 (44:54):
No, buddy. I think I get so frustrated with Randy
Quaid and other actors like that, because you know, it's
like I think about their career and at the end
you've got to realize that they're people too. And we
all have a crazy uncle that went off the reservation.
You know, We've all got that in our life, and
that's what he became. But to back up, I don't
know him. I don't know Randy Quaid, but I know
(45:16):
that he has comments about conspiracies a lot of the time.
And I don't know what Gene Hackman's residuals. I don't
know what kind of money he has. But you know what,
there's a lot of rich people in Hollywood, you know,
there's a lot of rich actors. And he retired and
for the last twenty years has been his own guy,
writing books, doing and just living his life in Santa Fe,
New Mexico. But here's my question for you, Joe. We
(45:38):
have two people that died in the same house, but
they weren't in a fight. Usually when we have a
married couple that dies there's a fight that broke out,
there's knife wounds, gun wounds and things like that. We
don't have that, But what we do have is an
odd term of what they found on the scene. We're
not talking about back at the Medical Examiner's office. We're
talking about mummification being used as a term by people
(46:01):
who saw them. And all I'm thinking of, sadly, because
I'm an idiot, I think of mummies and that, you know,
I'm thinking, did somebody watch, you know, Young Frankenstein Part two?
That we all miss about the mummy? Because why are
they talking about mummification if the hands and uh, you know,
you got a bloating of the of the head. They
talked about that with regard to Betsy Rakhala, but they
(46:23):
don't mention that about Gene Hackman. They do mention the
mummification of the hands. And they talked about being in
high desert, the altitude, the dry, lack of humidity, and
I get it. Those things do come into play, I guess.
Speaker 1 (46:35):
And you're right on You're right on target with that
day because here's the thing is in Santa Fe, even
though we we're not so familiar with it down here
in the South because we're so humid down here out there,
you are in hot desert. It's very arid, and there's
you know, uh, there is very little moisture in there. Plusure.
(46:58):
We're still at this point, we're in the winter months, okay,
and that even makes it drier. Now. I know people
are going to say, well, there's no storm blew through there. Yeah,
there's no storm that blew through there, but doesn't mean
that it's not dry. And it is dry. And so
when this happens, this idea of mummification, I don't necessarily
I've never really liked that term because it will and
(47:21):
I've had newspeople that have said, does this mean like
ancient Egypt. It's like, no, those are mummies that have
been prepared and wrapped in cloth and everything that the
ancients did, and they did it down and you know,
you know, Central America and South America. It's nothing new
under the sun. I like the term desiccation more, and
(47:45):
you generally hear that with dehydrated food, and that's precisely
what this means, is that it's absent any kind of water,
and so that water that has contained that moisture in
our human remains. That's there in a climate like this
is going to be drawn off pretty quickly. And so
you'll get the way I like to describe it is
(48:05):
hands and feet, the most distal areas. That means, the
most distant anatomical points away from the core of the body,
they go first, Okay. And so to give you an
idea as to what it looks like, imagine if you will,
(48:26):
newspaper that you find up in a closet that you've
not had your hands on for years and years, maybe
it's forty years old. It looks brittle, it's desiccated, it's
a dry. Matter of fact, it's no longer brilliant white.
It's gone from yellow to brown. And you'll see that
(48:46):
manifested on human remains that are in fact dried out.
And you can take you can go out there, and
it's kind of kind of interesting. You can go out
there out in the open, if you have not had
problems with animal scavenging. You can see bodies that are
(49:08):
truly desiccated out there, many times where there will still
be visible tissue. Whereas if those same people had died,
like in the Deep South, you wouldn't see that, you know,
you'd have this massive bloating that goes on the skin
is going to change and marble and do all those things,
and the soft tissue is going to be gone, you know,
after a period of time. It's just it's a different
(49:29):
Like you stated earlier, Santa Fe is very beautiful. I
would love to go there. I've seen images of it. However,
I do know what Arizona is like, what Colorado and
Utah are like. I would love to go and see it.
But there's also a change in the environment when you
get in West Texas and you get into New Mexico.
It's a different world out there relative to the environmental
(49:51):
influences that are with a body. Here's another thing too.
If these doors, and I've heard the plural, I've heard
them say doors as well that were open, Well, does
open mean unlocked or does open mean open? Okay, so
now you're you're not necessarily dealing with a climate controlled
(50:12):
and artificially climate controlled. So that's going to be an
influence as well. But they haven't really come forward with
more data at this point in time. I do know
that the Guardian right now is reporting that first autopsy
has been completed and they haven't seen any kind of
external trauma or anything that's really you know, giving them
(50:33):
pause at that point. So I can tell you what's
going to happen at this point, brother day, We're gonna
be waiting. We're going to be waiting. You know. It's
the old line about appending further testing and it probably yet,
Yeah you're not, and it would take some and I
can't imagine them releasing a definitive cause of death unless
(50:55):
there's some kind of obvious trauma, which the guardian's saying
there's not. But that's the already, and I have no idea.
You're going to have to wait until the drug chemistries
come back, you know what's going on, you know with
is there anything that toxicological sample that is giving you pause?
Is there are there any medications on board that are
(51:17):
in a toxic level? Okay, so that's what we're going
to be waiting on. The other thing that we're probably
going to be waiting on as well. Let's just say
either one of them had a heart attack or a stroke.
Well you can observe that what we refer to grossly
that is looking at the organ itself, whether it's the heart,
(51:38):
of the brain, the lungs as well. You know, it
might have pulmonary embelists or something like that. But they're
going to wait for histology, which means they're going to
take little bits of the tissue and then fix it,
which they have to fix it and stain it, and
they're going to put it on a slide and then
they're going to take a look at it microscopically. Because
(52:00):
I can tell you this, I know this as sure
as the sun is going to rise in the east
in the morning. There is not a single forensic pathologist
out there that is going to move forward without being very,
very cautious, because it's the world is very unforgiving with
(52:21):
the medical legal community. If you say something, you're the scientist,
they expect it to be you know from the burning
bush that is rooted in truth, it's rooted in science.
And of course for us relative to the passing of again,
one of the greatest actors of all time and his
(52:41):
precious wife Betsy and their dog, you want to make
sure that you're accurate because you get one shot at it,
and we have to be patient. We can't run off
and make wild suppositions and time will tell as well
as a science, I'm Joseph Scott Morgan and this is bodybacks.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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