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‘The body of one of the couple’s German shepherds was found a few feet away from Arakawa, inside the bathroom closet.’

Inside the closet? Like behind a closed door?

And now a newer version of events has the dog in a crate in the bathroom. In the bathroom? Is that where you crate your dog?

You remember the mysterious deaths of a young California family out hiking. It took some time to figure out how they, their baby, and their dog, died. Theories abounded, but it turned out to be the most likely: Extreme heat.

The Hackman deaths present an even greater puzzle, the first piece of which, for UD, is: Why did almost two weeks elapse before someone (not family; a maintenance man) found them? No housekeeper? No calls from the kids? Hackman was a frail 95 year old.

*********************

Here, FWIW, is one scenario. Hackman’s 64 year old wife decided to kill herself after finding him dead (of a heart attack or whatever).

Authorities reportedly discovered Hackman’s body in the mudroom, in a similar state of decomposition [to his wife]; a deputy on the scene said it appeared he had “suddenly fallen.”

So he collapses and dies, and she, distraught, runs to the bathroom:

A deputy found [Betsy] Arakawa dead and lying on her side on the floor of a bathroom, a space heater near her head and scattered pills and an open prescription bottle on the counter. 

In a sudden, hysterical, decision, she hurls a bottle of pills down her throat and falls to the floor, or lies down on the floor, and stays there until she dies.

Margaret Soltan, February 28, 2025 2:29PM
Posted in: headline of the day

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Dr. Bernard Carroll, known as the "conscience of psychiatry," contributed to various blogs, including Margaret Soltan's University Diaries, for which he sometimes wrote limericks under the name Adam.
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