Gene Hackman 911 call reveals distressing moment actor and wife were found dead
Harrowing new details have emerged from the 911 call made after the “mummified” bodies Gene Hackman and his wife were found. Listen to the call.
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Gene Hackman and his wife were inside their home, not moving according to the 911 call of the person who discovered the bodies.
TMZ obtained the audio of the 911 call that led to police discovering the bodies of Oscar winner Gene Hackman, 95, and his wife Betsy Arakawa, 63, as an unnamed caretaker of the area can be heard frantically pleading for the dispatcher to send someone to the house.
While the dispatcher puts out a call for the paramedics, the caller repeatedly says “Damn” into the phone while sniffling away tears.
He’s then asked a series of questions about the “patients,” as the dispatcher calls them, questions to which he doesn’t seem to have the answer to - including their ages and genders.
However, the caller, who is looking through a window, says he can’t see anyone moving inside the house.
It comes as reports emerged that Hackman’s wife was found mummified and bloated when the two were discovered dead with their dog in their multi million dollar New Mexico home by maintenance workers who hadn’t seen the couple in about two weeks, according to an affidavit.
Police said the deaths were “suspicious enough in nature to require a thorough search and investigation” after finding the door to the couple’s home was “unsecured and opened” and an open orange pill bottle and pills scattered around the room where Hackman’s wife and one of their German Shepherd dogs were discovered.
Police noted that it appeared Arakawa had “obvious signs of death, body decomposition, bloating in her face and mummification in both hands and feet,” when she was found on the floor of a bathroom near the home’s entry, according to the report.
The door into the couple’s $3.3 million (A$5.2 million) Santa Fe, New Mexico, home, which sits on six acres and is over 8000 square feet, was left open — but there was no sign of forced entry or theft, according to the report.
Police also noted in the report that a black space heater was found near Arakawa’s head. A responding officer said “he suspected the heater could have fallen in the event the female abruptly fell to the ground,” the affidavit said.
The couple’s dog was located about four metres away from Arakawa inside the bathroom’s cupboard, police wrote in the report.
Meanwhile, Hackman’s body was located in what police believe was the mud room near a pair of sunglasses. Officers wrote in the report that it appeared he had “suddenly fallen.”
They also wrote that there was “no obvious sign of a gas leak.”
The New Mexico Gas Co. is working with the Santa Fe County Sheriff’s Department in the investigation, spokesman Tim Korte said.
The star’s daughters and granddaughter said they were “devastated” by the loss — remembering him as “always just Dad and Grandpa.”
“It is with great sadness that we announce the passing of our father, Gene Hackman and his wife, Betsy,” Elizabeth, Leslie and Annie Hackman said in a statement.
“He was loved and admired by millions around the world for his brilliant acting career, but to us he was always just Dad and Grandpa. We will miss him sorely and are devastated by the loss.”
The couple, who were married for over 30 years, had been living in their Santa Fe home since Hackman’s retirement from acting in the early 2000s.
MYSTERY SURROUNDS DEATHS
Hackman was last seen publicly with Arakawa in March 2024 at a restaurant in Santa Fe.
The Oscar winner appeared frail as he used a cane and grabbed onto his wife’s arm for support when walking.
He previously revealed that one of his only fears in life was death.
“I try to take care of myself. I don’t have a lot of fears. I have the normal fear of passing away,” he told Empire in a 2009 interview.
“You know, I guess we all think about that, especially when you get to be a certain age. I want to make sure that my wife and my family are taken care of. Other than that, I don’t have a lot of fears.”
HOLLYWOOD ICON
Hackman was one of the most accomplished actors of all time, thanks to star turns in The French Connection, Mississippi Burning, Bonnie and Clyde and The Royal Tenenbaums.
The actor’s prolific resume includes two Oscars, three Golden Globes and the Cecil B. DeMille Award, bestowed in 2003.
The California native was born Eugene Hackman on January 30, 1930. His parents moved from city to city, eventually settling in Danville, Illinois.
Hackman remembers his father, Eugene, saying goodbye to the family with a wave of the hand when he was 13.
“I hadn’t realised how much one small gesture can mean,” Hackman told GQ in 2011. “Maybe that’s why I became an actor.”
Hackman joined the Marines at 16, serving four-and-a half years in China, Japan, and Hawaii, before seeking a degree in journalism and television production at the University of Illinois.
He abandoned those plans to pursue a serious acting career, enrolling at 27 in the Pasadena Playhouse in California, where he met 19-year-old Dustin Hoffman.
“There was something about him that — like he had a secret. You just knew he was going to do something,” Hackman recalled to Vanity Fair in 2004.
They formed a tight-knit group with Robert Duvall and tried to launch their careers in NYC.
“There was a kind of feeling of Jack Kerouac at that time — ‘On the Road’ — kids just wanting to have a good time and kind of experience things. It didn’t have anything to do with being successful — just wanting to try this thing and see if it worked,” Hackman told Vanity Fair.
In 1964, at 34, Hackman scored his big Broadway break in Any Wednesday, which resulted in a star-making scene in Lilith (1964) alongside Warren Beatty.
When Beatty was selecting his cast for the 1967 film Bonnie and Clyde, he tapped Hackman to play his older brother. He scored an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor, one of five nods throughout his career.
In 1972, he won the Best Actor Oscar for The French Connection, a film that cemented his status as a leading man. The crime thriller boasts one of the best car chase scenes of all time, with death-defying stunts through 26 blocks of Brooklyn — all done illegally.
Surprisingly, everyone seemed to make it off the set without so much as a scratch.
“Filmmaking has always been risky — both physically and emotionally — but I do choose to consider that film a moment in a checkered career of hits and misses,” Hackman told The Post in 2021 in a rare interview, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of The French Connection.
“The film certainly helped me in my career, and I am grateful for that.”
Following The French Connection, which he claimed he’s only watched once, Hackman went on to star in Young Frankenstein (1974), Night Moves (1975), Bite the Bullet (1975), Superman (1978), and even Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven (1992), which gave him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
He also headlined blockbusters by playing a wayward reverend in The Poseidon Adventure (1972), a down-on-his-luck high school basketball coach in Hoosiers (1986), a guilt-ridden tax lawyer in The Firm (1993), and an eccentric father in The Royal Tenenbaums (2001).
While presenting him the Cecil B. DeMille Award in 2003, Michael Caine revered Hackman as “one of the greatest actors” he knows.
“Gene Hackman in Hollywood is known as an actor’s actor, but in my house, he’s known as a comedian’s comedian,” quipped Robin Williams, who co-presented the award.
“Whether it be comedy or drama, you’re the most gifted actor in America. You’re also a truly superhuman being,” he added.
After more than 100 credits, Hackman took his final bow in 2004’s Welcome to Mooseport, retiring from the screen — and stunts — to New Mexico.
“The straw that broke the camel’s back was actually a stress test that I took in New York,” he told Empire in 2009. “The doctor advised me that my heart wasn’t in the kind of shape that I should be putting it under any stress.”
Instead, he opted for the finer things, like “low-budget films,” painting, fishing and writing.
In fact, he co-wrote adventure novels such as “Justice For None” and “Wake of the Perdido Star” with his friend, underwater researcher Daniel Lenihan.
“It’s very relaxing for me,” Hackman said of writing. “I don’t picture myself as a great writer, but I really enjoy the process.”
While “stressful,” it’s “a different kind of stress,” he admitted.
“It’s one you can kind of manage, because you’re sitting there by yourself, as opposed to having 90 people sitting around waiting for you to entertain them,” he added.
Hackman had three children, Christopher, Elizabeth Jean and Leslie Anne, with his late ex-wife, Faye Maltese.
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