Gene Hackman had a decades-long love affair with the city of Santa Fe, N.M., the place he was found ineffective on Wednesday, Feb. 26.

The Oscar-winning actor, 95, his partner, classical pianist Betsy Arakawa, 64, and their canine had been discovered at their home. Their causes of demise are nonetheless being determined throughout the ongoing investigation.

Hackman, who was born in San Bernadino, Calif. and spent quite a lot of his childhood in Illinois, first fell for Santa Fe after engaged on numerous motion pictures there, in accordance to a 1990 Architectural Digest operate with regard to the Southwestern-style ranch home the couple shared.

“It had a sort of magic in it,” the actor acknowledged of the desert location.

The home they purchased on 12 acres north of metropolis, however, was faraway from magical after they first found it, in accordance to their architect.

“The house was horrible,” Stephen Samuelson of Studio Arquitectura knowledgeable AD. “It was a Nineteen Fifties block establishing that had sat empty and had deteriorated. Nonetheless it was a tremendous web site, and the inspiration had been successfully positioned on the land.”

Collectively, they reworked the development to embrace hovering residing areas with twenty-foot ceilings and a way that blended Pueblo, Colonial and Spanish Baroque construction.

“I wanted an enormous room with a great-hall feeling, with completely different rooms opening off it, not closed off with numerous partitions,” Hackman knowledgeable the outlet. His inside design sensibility moreover leaned on the theatrical.

“The house is new, nonetheless from its newness we tried to convey it once more 100 years or additional,” he shared. “The plaster was glorious, nonetheless I wanted water marks, as if there had been leaks by the years. I wanted the plaster darkened in some areas, as if by smoke.”

All by the house there are intentionally aged particulars, like picket ceiling beams which had been distressed and even burned. Hackman was so specific about every aspect, Samuelson shares, “We had to identify him and ship sketches constantly. If we didn’t, we’d get a reputation in a few days: ‘Howdy, that’s Gene Hackman. Do you take note me?’”

Hackman knowledgeable AD that the imaginative and prescient for his New Mexico residence was “fully completely completely different from my completely different houses,” which had been much more formal. He moved quite a lot of cases all by his occupation and cherished the mission of renovating each property sooner than transferring on to the following.

That conduct makes it additional excellent that Santa Fe had a grasp on the actor for at least 35 years, from the time he printed the completed dwelling there until his demise.

“I imagine that he cherished Santa Fe,” photographer Mark Kreusch knowledgeable PEOPLE on Thursday, Feb. 27. “I observed him on numerous occasions and he would go to fast meals areas and he would exit and he had completely completely different properties the place he would do yard work. In his early 90s, he would try this.”

The pure magnificence and serenity of the realm seemingly spoke to the star. “He would go on these prolonged drives,” Kreusch acknowledged. “Desire it was cerebral, kind of like he merely was clearing his ideas.”

Once more throughout the ’90s, Hackman would get in his “pickup truck and drive in the direction of the mountains collectively together with his oils and canvas” to paint, in accordance to AD.

Hackman and Arakawa moreover typically cherished picnics in nature.

“They may drive great far out within the midst of nowhere and she would convey him meals and they’d have little picnics . . . uncover some distant place, some really pretty place, and they’d park up and dangle round for a pair hours.

The couple had been moreover fixtures of their group and shut with a lot of the native enterprise householders.

Hackman and Arakawa had been consumers in an space Asian fusion restaurant referred to as Jinja. A hostess on the eatery tells PEOPLE, that whereas the couple have not been involved immediately with the restaurant for about 10 years, they nonetheless “have a drawing of [Hackman] throughout the once more room” and Arakawa has had a long-lasting have an effect on on the menu: “We do use Betsy’s recipe for inexperienced and pink curry.”

Arakawa moreover had a passion for inside design and in 2001, opened a linens and home furnishings retailer in town referred to as Pandora’s. An employee named Maite, who spoke to PEOPLE on Thursday, shared that she “was very sweet and very fulfilling” and “the data of her demise was very shocking.”

The our our bodies of the actor and his partner had been discovered at their home in Santa Fe Summit.

A spokesperson for the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office tells PEOPLE that deputies had been dispatched to a home in Earlier Sunset Path in Hyde Park the place Hackman, Arakawa and one canine had been found ineffective.

Though authorities initially acknowledged there was no foul play suspected, a search warrant affidavit obtained by PEOPLE well-known that responding legislation enforcement officers found the doorway door ajar, an open pill bottle and scattered medicine shut to Arakawa’s physique as well as to a knocked-over heater.

“The circumstances surrounding the demise of the two deceased individuals to be suspicious enough in nature to require an intensive search and investigation,” in accordance to the affidavit.

Sooner than they died, the couple had been residing a personal life for years. They’d been last pictured collectively all through a unusual outing on March 28, 2024. They married in 1991 and Hackman retired from showing in 2004 after exhibiting in extra than 75 motion pictures and worthwhile two Oscars.