Gene Hackman had a decades-long love affair with the city of Santa Fe, N.M., where he was found dead on Wednesday, Feb. 26.
The Oscar-winning actor, 95, his wife, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, 64, and their dog were discovered at their home. Their causes of death are still being determined in the ongoing investigation.
Hackman, who was born in San Bernadino, Calif. and spent much of his childhood in Illinois, first fell for Santa Fe after working on several films there, according to a 1990 Architectural Digest feature about the Southwestern-style ranch home the couple shared.
“It had a kind of magic in it,” the actor said of the desert location.
The home they purchased on 12 acres north of town, however, was far from magical when they first found it, according to their architect.
“The house was horrible,” Stephen Samuelson of Studio Arquitectura told AD. “It was a 1950s block building that had sat empty and had deteriorated. But it was a great site, and the foundation had been well placed on the land.”
Together, they transformed the structure to include soaring living spaces with twenty-foot ceilings and a style that blended Pueblo, Colonial and Spanish Baroque architecture.
“I wanted a big room with a great-hall feeling, with other rooms opening off it, not closed off with a lot of walls,” Hackman told the outlet. His interior design sensibility also leaned on the theatrical.
“The house is new, but from its newness we tried to bring it back a hundred years or more,” he shared. “The plaster was very good, but I wanted water marks, as if there had been leaks over the years. I wanted the plaster darkened in some places, as if by smoke.”
Throughout the house there are intentionally aged details, like wood ceiling beams that have been distressed and even burned. Hackman was so particular about every detail, Samuelson shares, “We had to call him and send sketches constantly. If we didn’t, we’d get a call in a few days: ‘Hello, this is Gene Hackman. Do you remember me?’”
Hackman told AD that the vision for his New Mexico residence was “totally different from my other houses,” which were much more formal. He moved a number of times throughout his career and enjoyed the project of renovating each property before moving on to the next.
That habit makes it more remarkable that Santa Fe had a grasp on the actor for at least 35 years, from the time he published the completed house there until his death.
“I think that he loved Santa Fe,” photographer Mark Kreusch told PEOPLE on Thursday, Feb. 27. “I saw him on multiple occasions and he would go to fast food places and he would go out and he had different properties where he would do yard work. In his early 90s, he would do this.”
The natural beauty and serenity of the area seemingly spoke to the star. “He would go on these long drives,” Kreusch said. “Like it was cerebral, kind of like he just was clearing his mind.”
Back in the ’90s, Hackman would get in his “pickup truck and drive toward the mountains with his oils and canvas” to paint, according to AD.
Hackman and Arakawa also frequently enjoyed picnics in nature.
“They would drive super far out in the middle of nowhere and she would bring him food and they would have little picnics . . . find some remote place, some really beautiful place, and they would park up and hang out for a couple hours.
The couple were also fixtures of their community and close with many of the local business owners.
Hackman and Arakawa were investors in a local Asian fusion restaurant called Jinja. A hostess at the eatery tells PEOPLE, that while the couple have not been involved directly with the restaurant for about 10 years, they still “have a drawing of [Hackman] in the back room” and Arakawa has had a lasting influence on the menu: “We do use Betsy’s recipe for green and red curry.”
Arakawa also had a passion for interior design and in 2001, opened a linens and home furnishings store in town called Pandora’s. An employee named Maite, who spoke to PEOPLE on Thursday, shared that she “was very sweet and very fun” and “the news of her death was very shocking.”
The bodies of the actor and his wife were discovered at their home in Santa Fe Summit.
A spokesperson for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office tells PEOPLE that deputies were dispatched to a home in Old Sunset Trail in Hyde Park where Hackman, Arakawa and one dog were found dead.
Though authorities initially said there was no foul play suspected, a search warrant affidavit obtained by PEOPLE noted that responding police officers found the front door ajar, an open pill bottle and scattered pills near Arakawa’s body as well as a knocked-over heater.
“The circumstances surrounding the death of the two deceased individuals to be suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation,” according to the affidavit.
Before they died, the couple had been living a private life for years. They were last pictured together during a rare outing on March 28, 2024. They married in 1991 and Hackman retired from acting in 2004 after appearing in more than 75 films and winning two Oscars.
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