Carbon monoxide poisoning is a more likely explanation than an unusual suicide scenario. It’s not uncommon: Weird Al Yankovic’s parents tragically died the same way.
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Loved him in Mississippi Burning.
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Oh no, not my precious Lex!
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I know there are some chessheads on the forum so I wanted to post this.
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Worse than 2016 and we aren’t even a full third of the way into the year.
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So, it looks like Gene Hackman’s wife died first of hantavirus, and was his primary caretaker, and since he had advanced Alzheimer’s, he may not have been aware she had been dead for days. He apparently died of heart disease and hadn’t eaten in a while either. They still don’t know yet why one of the dogs was dead.
Seems to have been a tragedy, but at least nothing appalling appears to have gone down, and the initial assumption of no foul play appears to be correct.
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The article you linked says the dog was in a crate.
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But they haven’t revealed how it died. Was it locked in and it starved? Did it eat any of the pills that Hackman’s wife had that were found lying around? While it’s likely that lack of care from the deaths of its masters was the cause, they haven’t said yet.
I don’t think it’s a big mystery. The dog was in a crate, didn’t get water and food and died.
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That’s assuming the crate was locked. It’s not the case for the other two dogs, so what happened with that one? We need to wait a bit longer, they should release it soon.
Actually I am pretty sure it was reveal that dog had recently been brought back from a kennel. It probably wasn’t released from its cage before the sordid affair went down.
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A thing that’s also mentioned in the linked article.
Yes, but you’re still assuming that the dog was found in a locked cage. And while a virus and heart problems have been determined to be the cause of the two human deaths, even if the dog was in a locked cage, that’s still not confirmation that something else didn’t happen to it before it starved or dehydrated, because they haven’t released a cause. With all that happened here, there could yet be a third weird thing. Still have to wait for more info.
You know sometimes I feel what I wrote in apoplexy a few days ago wasn’t baseless. You really can be tedious when you want to do.
You don’t have to be Poirot to figure out a dog locked in a cage probably died of some form of deprivation before it caught the hantavirus especially since while dogs can contract hantavirus they present no symptoms of it. You don’t even have to be Encyclopedia Brown to figure it out.
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Dogs don’t become ill from hantavirus. It can infect their system, but they do not develop symptoms and it does not kill them.
My point in all this is, the dog has not had a confirmed cause of death revealed, while Hackman and his wife’s causes of death have been. Yes, we can assume it probably died in its cage due to lack of care, but we could and did make assumptions what went down with the two humans as well, until this release of the findings. Until the release of findings is released on the dog as well, we don’t know what happened. I’m not arguing the obvious, merely that the obvious has not been confirmed yet.
Occam’s Razor.
I’m thinking the dog probably died last while inside the crate. Because if it could get out it would either lie down beside either of their bodies and mourn itself to death (not likely)… Or eat their remains to stay alive. 
I mean, yes I’m assuming the dog died from lack of food and water in an enclosed space. I think that’s a pretty reasonable thing to say provided with the knowledge we have.
Didn’t you theorise Hackman killed his dog before committing suicide when it was announced?
I theorized it as a possibility. We had nothing to go on at the time. Now we have confirmation of two things, and strong evidence for the third, but it’s still not concrete yet. I know it’s pedantic, but I got a degree in criminal justice and so when it comes to official findings of things, I focus on exact words like a hawk.