Actor Gene Hackman’s daughter Leslie Anne Allen had previously claimed that her father was in good health before his death last month. But investigators have now proven that her assessment of his health was completely incorrect.
During an interview shortly after Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa were found dead, Allen claimed that her father was “in good health” and showed no signs of any health problems.
“There was no indication that there was any problem [with his health],” Allen told The Daily Mail. “He liked to do Pilates and yoga, and he was continuing to do that several times a week. So he was in good health.”
Allen admitted that she hadn’t seen or spoken to Hackman or Arakawa “for a couple of months” because she lives hundreds of miles away in California, but she insisted that she remained “close” with her father and that “everything was good.”
“We were close… I hadn’t talked to them for a couple months, but everything was normal and everything was good,” she said.
After a full investigation into the deaths of Hackman and Arakawa, experts determined that Allen’s assessment of Hackman’s health was completely incorrect.
Not only was Hackman not in “good health,” as Allen claimed, but Chief Medical Investigator Dr. Heather Jarrell actually determined that the former actor was “in a very poor state of health.”
“Mr. Hackman showed evidence of advanced Alzheimer’s disease,” Jarrell said. “He was in a very poor state of health. He had significant heart disease, and I think ultimately that’s what resulted in his death.”
While Allen hadn’t spoken to her father in months, it does not sound like his health issues were new, either.
Jarrell’s autopsy revealed that Hackman suffered from “severe heart disease, including multiple surgical procedures involving the heart, evidence of prior heart attacks, and severe changes of the kidneys due to chronic high blood pressure.”
Needless to say, it’s obvious that Allen was incorrect when she claimed that her father was in good health and showed no signs of health problems before his death.