Photos of Gene Hackman’s, wife’s bodies will not be made public, New Mexico judge rules

Photos showing the mummified bodies of Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa will be blocked from public view, a New Mexico judge ruled Monday after the actor’s estate asked for a restraining order on the release of the images and other materials.

A representative of the Hackman estate had sued to keep the presumably grizzly photos — shot after “The French Connection” star had been dead for a week, and Arakawa for two weeks — out of the public eye, citing the 95-year-old actor’s famously private lifestyle and appealing to the family’s constitutional right to grieve privately.

On Monday, the First Judicial Court in Santa Fe County sided with the estate and ruled that the photos would be kept under wraps for the time being.

The ruling was first reported by the Daily Mail.

The bizarre circumstances of the couple’s mysterious deaths — which apparently occurred in different rooms and a week apart — caused a frenzy of speculation among fans and amateur sleuths.

Authorities eventually revealed that Arakawa, 65, probably died of the rare, rodent-borne illness hantavirus pulmonary syndrome in the bathroom of their sprawling Santa Fe mansion. Hackman, who had been suffering from severe Alzheimer’s disease, seems to have remained alive in the house for a full week before dying of heart complications in the entryway.

Although the public has yet to see the state of their bodies when they were found, authorities said they had been partially mummified in the dry, high-altitude Santa Fe climate.

One of the couple’s beloved dogs, a kelpie mix named Zinna, had been locked in a kennel when Arakawa died and was also found mummified near her remains.

The couple “lived an exemplary private life for over thirty years in Santa Fe, New Mexico and did not showcase their lifestyle,” claimed the family’s petition to seal the photographs, which also argued that the 14th Amendment gave family members the right to grieve without Hackman’s post-mortem photos paraded before the public.

New Mexico’s open records law blocks public access to sensitive images, including depictions of people who are deceased, said Amanda Lavin, legal director at the nonprofit New Mexico Foundation for Open Government.

Some medical information also is not considered public record under the state Inspection of Public Records Act.

At the same time, the bulk of death investigations by law enforcement and autopsy reports by medical investigators are typically considered public records under state law in the spirit of ensuring government transparency and accountability, she said.

With Post wires