Donning a sundress, white cowboy hat and work gloves, Kyle Ann Morrow walked into Spa Hot Springs Motel and asked if the owner, Gene Gudmundson, and his wife were there. Moments later, she walked through the swinging gate next to the counter and shot Gudmundson dead, according to the affidavit of probable cause.
“She said, ‘He is a son of a bitch, I shot him,’” the front desk employee is quoted saying in the affidavit. “I went to his office and saw him on the floor and blood.”
Gudmundson was pronounced dead on the scene.
Authorities identified Morrow from surveillance footage of her vehicle leaving the motel. Meagher County Undersheriff Jerami West immediately went to her house where the car was parked outside, but Morrow refused to open the door and did not answer West’s seven attempts to call, according to the affidavit.
“Sometime later, Kyle Morrow left the residence on her own, got into her Nissan Frontier, and began to leave her property,” the affidavit states. “She was physically blocked by Montana Highway Patrol and Deputies, directed her out of the vehicle and she was taken into custody.”
Police found a semi-full bottle of Jameson, a handgun case, loose cigarettes and a lighter inside her car. Several “suicide/final arrangement notes” were found inside her house, in which Morrow admits to killing Gudmundson, the affidavit states.
Meagher County Sheriff Jon Lopp told the Chronicle that the department was familiar with Morrow and had “mostly positive” encounters with her previously. None of those interactions, Lopp said, involved criminal activity or mental health incidents.
“She was just Kyle,” Lopp said. “We’ve seen her around; she rode her bike around a lot.”
Morrow is a former motel employee, Lopp said, and the department is still working to pin down the timeline of her employment and the circumstances of her departure. She is also a published author of three romance novels set in the worlds of rodeo culture and Native American tribes in Montana.
Her first novel, "Belt Buckle Bunny," was published under the pen name "C. Pussy Buck" in 2016 and follows a rodeo-erotica writer who gets pulled into real-life chaos, including a love triangle and a body turning up, after a Montana rodeo ends.
Morrow’s second novel “Black Iron Brandy,” published in 2017, opens with the narrator waking up to a “homicidal thought” of killing her abusive husband.
"Could I actually kill him, though?" reads a line from page one.
"In the West, hunting season is good camouflage for anyone with murderous intentions," reads another from the same page. "Too bad I got buck-fever before I wanted to put Fred out of my misery.”
Her third novel, "Two Crow Omen," is set in the fictional town of Haywire, Montana, and centers on the narrator navigating tribal tensions and strained relationships. Later in the book, the narrator pulls a gun on a threatening man and fires a single shot at his car.
“I pointed the gun and fired into the flank of his red Corvette,” the book reads.
Morrow has a master's degree in creative writing, according to her website, which also states she was inspired to write romance novels after reading "50 Shades of Grey" and feeling certain she could write a better book. Her writing also drew from her rural Montana upbringing and experience teaching Native students in Alaska and the Fort Belknap Reservation, according to her website.
Morrow's writing, with its recurring themes of death and violence, is just one piece of the investigative puzzle, Lopp said.
“We knew that those were subjects that she wrote a lot in her books,” Lopp said. “But we got to look at everything, got to look at the whole picture.”
Morrow’s website also includes several testimonials from people praising her work. One of those reviews was written by Gudmundson’s wife, who said she encouraged customers at the motel to purchase the novel and that “Gene’s interested to read it” next.
“When she was an employee there, they had her books in the lobby,” Lopp said. “I think Gene’s wife just did it to help her sell books.”
Investigators are exploring all potential motives, Lopp said, including whether Morrow was a disgruntled former employee. While her written work dealt in fantasy, Lopp noted that this very real tragedy has deeply rattled the small town of White Sulphur Springs.
“It was very shocking to the community,” Lopp said. “We don’t have that kind of thing happen here.”