Police release 911 call of moment Gene Hackman and his wife were found dead

An emotional 911 call by a maintenance worker who discovered the bodies of Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy Arakawa has been released.

The unnamed worker appears to cry and repeat “damn” as he says he can see Arakawa’s body “not moving” from outside a window of the couple’s New Mexico home.

He urged the 911 call handler to “send someone up here real quick” as he said the house the couple were in was locked.

Hackman, 95, Arakawa, 65, and one of their pet dogs were found dead on Wednesday after police carried out a welfare check. Two healthy dogs were also on the property.

The actor’s body was discovered in a mudroom while Arakawa was found in a bathroom next to a heater. They had been dead for some time, detectives from Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Office wrote in a search warrant.

There were scattered pills and an open prescription bottle on a countertop near Arakawa.

The couple’s deaths are “suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation”, the warrant said.

There was no indication they had been shot and they had no other wounds, police said. The warrant added that the door to the property was found ajar and there were no signs of forced entry.

Preliminary findings from a medical investigation have found the couple suffered “no external trauma”.

Official results of post-mortem examinations and toxicology reports are pending, and the manner and cause of death have not yet been determined, according to the sheriff’s office.

Hackman’s daughter had earlier suggested the couple may have been killed by carbon monoxide – but the cause of death remains unclear.

The local utility company tested gas lines in and around the home after the bodies were found and did not find any sign of problems, the police warrant said.

Tributes poured in for Hackman, who won an Oscar for his lead role in The French Connection, a 1971 action movie by William Friedkin, and another for best supporting actor in Clint Eastwood’s 1992 western, Unforgiven.

He was also known for playing Lex Luthor in the Superman films of the late 1970s and 1980s.

Roles in the Francis Ford Coppola mystery thriller The Conversation and in the historical drama Mississippi Burning, where he starred as an FBI agent alongside Willem Dafoe, helped cement his career as one of Hollywood’s greats.

Among those paying tribute was the Prince of Wales, who said he was “so sad to hear the news”.

“Hackman was a true genius of film who brought each and every character to life with power, authenticity and star quality,” he said in a post on X.

The Shawshank Redemption actor Morgan Freeman said “bringing the French film Garde a Vue (Under Suspicion) to life with the incredibly gifted Gene Hackman” was “one of the personal highlights of my career”.

The thriller, released in 2000, saw Hackman play wealthy tax lawyer Henry Hearst who is questioned by Freeman’s character, Captain Victor Beneze, about the murder of a young girl.

American filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola hailed Hackman as a “great actor” who was “inspiring and magnificent in his work and complexity”.

Coppola wrote and directed the Oscar-nominated 1974 mystery thriller The Conversation, which starred Hackman as a surveillance expert who has a crisis of conscience when he suspects the couple he is spying on will be murdered.

Bill Murray, who starred with Hackman in the 2001 film The Tenenbaums, called him a “tough nut” and a “really good” actor.

Singer Sting said the world had “lost a legend” while actor and director Clint Eastwood said Hackman would be “deeply missed”.

Dirty Harry actor Eastwood starred opposite Hackman in 1997 political action thriller Absolute Power, where he played master jewel thief Luther Whitney.

Hackman married Arakawa, a classical pianist, in 1991. He had three children, Christopher, Elizabeth Jean and Leslie Anne, with his late ex-wife, Faye Maltese, who died in 2017.