Gene Hackman 911 call reveals barking, sobbing and cursing after star and wife were found mummified

A worker sobbed and cursed as dogs barked in the background when he discovered the mummified remains of Hollywood legend Gene Hackman and his wife Betsy.

‘Damn, damn!’ the man, who identified himself as the caretaker for the subdivision, told 911 on Wednesday after he discovered the couple’s remains in Hackman’s $3.3 million home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

‘I think we just found a deceased person inside the house,’ he continued, sniffing and crying, while the late couple’s two surviving dogs barked in the background.

The man was unable to tell the dispatcher the age of the residents of the home but said they were ‘a female and a a male, probably.’

‘I don’t know, sir, just send somebody up here quick,’ the exasperated worker pleaded.

‘The house is closed, it’s locked… I can’t go in but I see she’s laying on the floor.’

When asked if they appear to awake, the man responds repeatedly says no.

‘They’re not moving. Just send somebody up here.’

Hackman and his wife are believed to have lay dead for up to two weeks and were found partially-mummified. The skin and tissue of their bodies had been preserved, likely by the cool dry winter climate that Santa Fe enjoys. 

The 911 call contradicts the search warrant affidavit, which states a maintenance worker reported that the home’s front door was open when he arrived to do routine work Wednesday, and he called police after finding the bodies. 

An explanation for this discrepancy has not yet been shared by investigators.  

The Oscar-winner, his wife and one of their dogs were apparently dead for some time before the maintenance worker discovered their bodies at the couple’s home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, investigators said.

A dead German shepherd was found in a bathroom closet near Arakawa, police said. Santa Fe County Sheriff Adan Mendoza said during an unrelated news conference Thursday that the dog was found in a kennel. Two healthy dogs were found on the property — one inside and one outside.

‘There was no indication of a struggle,’ Mendoza said. ‘There was no indication of anything that was missing from the home or disturbed, you know, that would be indication that there was a crime that had occurred.’

Cops arriving at the scene deemed it suspicious enough to warrant a thorough investigation but later ruled there was no indication of foul play, with no wounds found on the bodies of Hackman or Arakawa.

Results of autopsies conducted on both bodies are not available yet, sheriff’s officials said, noting that carbon monoxide and toxicology test results are pending. 

The 911 caller and another worker later told authorities that they rarely saw the homeowners and their last contact with them had been about two weeks ago. 

Hackman, 95, was in a mud room off the kitchen. His sunglasses and cane were on the floor and it has been suggested the actor had suffered a fall.

Meanwhile Arakawa was found dead on the bathroom floor. A prescription bottle of pills was open and its contents were strewn across a bathroom counter.

Its unclear what those meds were or who they’d been prescribed for. A space heater was on the floor next to Arakawa and investigators believe it may have fallen around the time of her death.

Officials have refused to speculate further on what may have killed the couple or who died first. Autopsy results are set to take four to six weeks to be published.  

The New Mexico Gas Co. tested the gas lines in and around the home after the bodies were discovered, according to the warrant. 

At the time, it didn’t find any signs of problems and the Fire Department found no signs of a carbon monoxide leak or poisoning. 

A detective wrote that there were no obvious signs of a gas leak, but he noted that people exposed to gas leaks or carbon monoxide might not show signs of poisoning. 

The search warrant affidavit suggests that police appear to have a working theory that ‘some kind of gas poisoning’ happened, but that they don’t know yet and aren’t ruling anything out, Loyola Marymount University law professor Laurie Levenson said.

It is unclear how any gas leak could have dissipated by the time the bodies were found.  

‘They don’t have clear evidence that it’s any type of homicide, but they’re asking for blunt instruments or other weapons that could be used,’ said Levenson, who has no connection to the investigation. ‘It doesn’t also look like some kind of planned double-suicide.’

Hackman, a two-time Oscar winner with an estimated net worth of $80million, just turned 95 in late January. He became a recluse in the last 20 years of his life, after retiring from acting in 2004. He packed up his things, left Los Angeles for a quiet life in New Mexico – and he never looked back.

Friends occasionally shared glimpses of his post-acting life, including social media shots of fishing expeditions – while paying tribute to his silver screen triumphs. He would also occasionally be spotted pedaling around Santa Fe on a bicycle.

The gruff-but-beloved Hackman was among the finest actors of his generation, appearing as villains, heroes and antiheroes in dozens of dramas, comedies and action films from the 1960s until his retirement in the early 2000s.

He was a five-time Oscar nominee who won for The French Connection in 1972 and Unforgiven two decades later. His death comes just four days before this year’s ceremony.

Hackman met Arakawa, a classically trained pianist who grew up in Hawaii, when she was working part-time at a California gym in the mid-1980s, the New York Times reported in 1989. They soon moved in together, and by the end of the decade had decamped to Santa Fe.