Actor Gene Hackman, his wife Betsy Arakawa, and their dog were found dead in their Santa Fe home, in a scene that one detective had deemed “suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation.

Gene Hackman, his wife Betsy Arakawa and their dog were found dead in their home on Feb. 26, the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s office tells PEOPLE

Gene Hackman did not make many public appearances in his last few years of life, with the handful of times he did often drawing news coverage. Before that, however, he was a frequent subject of The New Mexican's former celebrity-sighting "El Mitote" column.