ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — Authorities released more videos Friday related to their investigation of the deaths of actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, including images of agents returning to the couple’s Santa Fe home days after they were found to look for more evidence.

The bodies of Hackman, 95, and Arakawa, 65, were discovered Feb. 26 after maintenance and security workers called police.

The Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office has been releasing redacted records on a rolling basis since a recent court order allowing them to be made public as long as any images of the dead couple are obscured. More are expected.

The latest release includes hours of police body camera video and builds on what has already been made public, including a lengthy investigative report, photos and hours of body camera and security video showing the initial police response.

The new videos show authorities interviewing workers and returning to the home to search for more evidence early on in the investigation before they knew how Hackman and Arakawa died.

An hourlong video shows detectives searching the home in early March for Arakawa’s laptop and any other clues. Representatives of Arakawa’s family let them inside the house and led them to the bathroom where her body was found.

In another video, detectives are reviewing security videos at a pharmacy for any footage of Arakawa in mid-February.

The employee helping them asks what they’re looking for, and one of the detectives says a woman is dead.

“We’re trying to see her last moments,” the detective says.

Another video shows a man who does pest control on the property telling officers that he has not seen Hackman in at least a month, but that it is normal to not see or talk to the couple during his monthly visits.

The last time he saw Hackman, he says, they waved to each other but did not speak.

“He was looking frail,” the worker says. “He was bent over with a cane. His hair was sort of wild.”

Authorities say Arakawa died of the rare hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, a rodent-borne disease that can cause a range of symptoms including flu-like illness, headaches, dizziness and severe respiratory distress. Hackman is believed to have died about a week later of heart disease with complications from Alzheimer’s disease.

One of the couple’s three dogs also was found dead in a crate near Arakawa’s body, while two other dogs were found alive. A state veterinary lab attributed the dog’s death to dehydration and starvation.

SANTA FE, N.M. — A New Mexico court is weighing whether to block the disclosure of an array of records from an investigation into the deaths of actor Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy Arakawa, at the request of the couple’s estate.

Santa Fe-based Judge Matthew Wilson scheduled a hearing Monday to consider a request from estate representative Julia Peters to seal photos, video and documents to protect the family’s constitutional right to privacy. The court put a temporary hold on the release of records pending the hearing.

The partially mummified remains of Hackman and Arakawa were found in their Santa Fe home on Feb. 26, when maintenance and security workers showed up at the home and alerted police. Authorities have confirmed Hackman, 95, died of heart disease with complications from Alzheimer’s disease about a week after his wife’s death. Hackman may have been unaware Arakawa, 65, was dead.

Her cause of death was listed as hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, which is a rare, rodent-borne disease.

New Mexico’s open records law blocks public access to sensitive images, including depictions of dead bodies. Experts also say some medical information is not considered public record under the state Inspection of Public Records Act.

Peters has emphasized the possibly shocking nature of photographs and video in the investigation and potential for their dissemination by media in the bid to block them from being released.

The Hackman family estate’s lawsuit also seeks to block the release of autopsy reports by the Office of the Medical Investigator and death investigation reports by the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office.

The bulk of death investigations by law enforcement and autopsy reports by medical investigators are typically considered public records under state law in the spirit of ensuring government transparency and accountability.

Authorities unraveled the mysterious circumstances of the couple’s deaths and described their conclusions at a March 7 news conference without releasing most related written and photographic records.

One of the couple’s three dogs, a kelpie mix named Zinna, also was found dead in a crate in a bathroom closet near Arakawa. Two other dogs survived.

The written request to seal the records notes the couple placed “a significant value on their privacy and took affirmative vigilant steps” to safeguard it during their lives, including after they moved to Santa Fe and Hackman retired. The state capital is known as a refuge for celebrities, artists and authors.

Arakawa had no children, while Hackman is survived by three children from a previous marriage. Privacy likely also will play a role as the couple’s estate is settled. According to probate court documents, Hackman signed an updated will in 2005 leaving his estate to his wife, while the will she signed that same year directed her estate to him. With both of them dying, management of the estate is in Peters’ hands.

A request is pending to appoint a trustee to administer assets in two trusts associated with the estate. Without trust documents being made public, it’s unclear who the beneficiaries are and how the assets will be divided.

Attorneys who specialize in estate planning in New Mexico say it’s possible more details could come out if there were any legal disputes over the assets. Even then, they said, the parties likely would ask the court to seal the documents.

An experimental treatment appears to delay Alzheimer’s symptoms in some people genetically destined to get the disease in their 40s or 50s, according to new findings from ongoing research now caught up in Trump administration funding delays.

The early results — a scientific first — were published Wednesday even as study participants worried that politics could cut their access to a possible lifeline.

“It’s still a study but it has given me an extension to my life that I never banked on having,” said Jake Heinrichs of New York City.

Now 50, Heinrichs has been treated in that study for more than a decade and remains symptom-free despite inheriting an Alzheimer’s-causing gene that killed his father and brother around the same age.

If blocked funding stops Heinrichs’ doses, “how much time do we have?” asked his wife, Rachel Chavkin. “This trial is life.”

Two drugs sold in the U.S. can modestly slow worsening of early-stage Alzheimer’s by clearing the brain of one of its hallmarks, a sticky gunk called amyloid. But until now, there haven’t been hints that removing amyloid far earlier – many years before the first symptoms appear – just might postpone the disease.

The research led by Washington University in St. Louis involves families that pass down rare gene mutations almost guaranteeing they’ll develop symptoms at the same age their affected relatives did – information that helps scientists tell if treatments are having any effect.

The new findings center on a subset of 22 participants who received amyloid-removing drugs the longest, on average eight years. Long-term amyloid removal cut in half their risk of symptom onset, researchers reported Wednesday in the journal Lancet Neurology.

Despite the study’s small size, “it’s incredibly important,” said Northwestern University neuroscientist David Gate, who wasn’t involved with the research.

Now participants have been switched from an earlier experimental drug to Leqembi, an IV treatment approved in the U.S., to try to answer the obvious next question.

“What we want to determine over the next five years is how strong is the protection,” said Washington University’s Dr. Randall Bateman, who directs the Dominantly Inherited Alzheimer’s Network of studies involving families with these rare genes. “Will they ever get the symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease if we keep treating them?”

Here’s the worry: Bateman raised money to start that confirmatory study while seeking National Institutes of Health funding for the full project but his grant has been delayed as required reviews were canceled. It’s one example of how millions of dollars in research have been stalled as NIH grapples with funding restrictions and mass firings.

At the same time researchers wonder if NIH will shift focus away from amyloid research after comments by Dr. Jay Bhattacharya, nominated as the agency’s new director.

“One of the reasons I think that we have not made progress in Alzheimer’s, as much as we ought to have, is because the NIH has not supported a sufficiently wide range of hypotheses,” Bhattacharya told senators, responding to one who brought up an example of earlier science misconduct unrelated to current research.

Scientists don’t know exactly what causes Alzheimer’s, a mind-destroying disease that affects nearly 7 million Americans, mostly late in life. What’s clear is that silent changes occur in the brain at least two decades before the first symptoms — and that sticky amyloid is a major contributor. At some point amyloid buildup appears to trigger a protein named tau to begin killing neurons, which drives cognitive decline.

Tau-fighting drugs now are being tested. Researchers also are studying other factors including inflammation, the brain’s immune cells and certain viruses.

NIH’s focus expanded as researchers found more potential culprits. In 2013, NIH’s National Institute on Aging funded 14 trials of possible Alzheimer’s drugs, over a third targeting amyloid. By last fall, there were 68 drug trials and about 18% targeted amyloid.

Northwestern’s Gate counts himself among scientists who “think amyloid isn’t everything,” but said nothing has invalidated the amyloid hypothesis. He recently used brain tissue preserved from an old amyloid study to learn how immune cells called microglia can clear those plaques and then switch to helping the brain heal, possible clues for improving today’s modest therapies.

For now, amyloid clearly is implicated somehow and families with Alzheimer’s-causing genes are helping answer a critical question for anyone at risk: Can blocking amyloid buildup really stave off symptoms? Without NIH funding, Bateman said, that opportunity will be lost.

“It’s absolutely insane,” said longtime study participant June Ward, who lives near Asheville, North Carolina, and plans to ask friends to complain to lawmakers.

Ward turns 64 in June and is healthy, two years older than when her mother’s symptoms appeared. “It is exciting to think about the possibility that Alzheimer’s disease might not be what gets me,” she said.

In New York, Heinrichs said he has hope that his 3-year-old son won’t “experience the stress and sorrow that I lived through as a young man to watch my father fade away.”

“We need the NIH to be not politicized,” added Chavkin, his wife. “It’s just about keeping people alive or helping them live better. And in this case, it’s helping my husband survive.”

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