Spencer Tepe‘s friends rushed to his house when he didn’t show up for work on December 30 … and we’ve obtained the dramatic audio from when the bodies were discovered.

As you know, Spencer and his wife, Monique Tepe, were found with gunshot wounds inside their Columbus, Ohio home after Spencer’s coworkers called in a welfare check.

The dramatic incident plays out in a series of phone calls … when Dr. Mark Valrose — one of Tepe’s friends — calls the cops to request a welfare check, telling them it’s super unlike Tepe to miss work and not communicate with the staff.

Tepe’s associates then head to the house … where they ask the dispatcher to send first responders back to the location — apparently a welfare check had already been conducted — because they think they heard one of the Tepe kids yell.

Eventually, they say they’ve spotted a body … and a friend named Alex Ditty finds Spencer lying next to his bed, covered in blood. Ditty says they can’t force themselves to get any closer to the body — with the physical shock and horror keeping him away.

The gut-wrenching audio captures the horror in the voices of everyone involved … horror which hasn’t abated in the days since the bodies were found.

Authorities have not yet made an arrest in the case … though they are searching for a person of interest who was walking near the Tepe house around the time of the shooting.

The couple’s two orphaned children — a one-year-old and a four-year-old — are currently staying with a family member … and are apparently unaware of the shooting.