Gene Hackman

Never heard of that before. Awful. Poor woman.

 

Not trying to sound crass, but wouldn't that mean he was just walking around his house with his dead wife? Am I missing something? Apologies!

 

This sounds horrendous.

 

I'm purely guessing here, but considering his age, he probably relied on his wife to get him out of bed and care for him and with her gone he was entirely incapacitated. So not so much walking around the house but unable to do anything.

Such a situation, when the carer falls ill, is, unfortunately, not unusual.

 

The doors to the house were open weren't they, so I did wonder if it was a robbery, gone badly wrong.
Or maybe if Gene had fallen and died from his injuries, and that his upset wife had taken her own life afterwards, with tablets.
But the truth however, now its coming out, sounds like its worse than that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c89ydyjewjlo

 

Cheers, mate. I can't imagine how scared he must have been for that long on his own - poor guy. Rest in peace to them both.

 

Reports are he had evidence of alzheimer’s from his autopsy. So it’s likely he didn’t know how to take care of himself. It’s likely he died around a week later and he was found with no food found in his stomach and dehydrated.

The implication of someone with alzheimer’s continuously finding a dead loved one and then forgetting and finding them again is too awful to consider. Just awful.

 

That poor family, oh my god.

 

The medical reports though, suggest that...
"He had not eaten anything recently, but had shown no indications of dehydration".
And unfortunately seeing as he was in the advanced stages of Alzheimer's disease, its...
"quite possible that he was not even aware that she [his wife] was deceased, for those 7-8 days".

 

He had advanced Alzheimer's so may have been unaware that his wife had died.

 

He had three kids, was a massive movie star and likely knew many, many people, but ended his life alone with dementia shuffling round his house for two weeks with his dead wife laying on the bathroom floor. Nobody called or checked until service workers turned up.

As someone who recently lost his Dad and rang him twice a day, this stings. If you're lucky enough to have your parents and are on decent terms, give them a call x