Inset: Kyle Ann Morrow (Broadwater County Detention Center). Background: The Spa Hot Springs Motel in White Sulphur Springs, Montana (Google Maps).
A septuagenarian Montana romance novelist is behind bars after shooting and killing a motel owner, Treasure State authorities say.
Kyle Ann Morrow, 73, stands accused of one count of deliberate homicide for the death of 79-year-old Gene Gudmundson, according to a press release issued by the Meagher County Sheriff’s Office.
The violence occurred on July 12 at the Spa Hot Springs Motel on West Main Street in White Sulphur Springs, a tiny town located roughly 90 miles due north of Bozeman.
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Morrow is said to have walked into the motel asking about the location of the owner and his wife before continuing on through a gate near the counter to deliver the lone, fatal shot, according to an affidavit of probable cause obtained by the Bozeman Daily Chronicle.
“She said, ‘He is a son of a b—, I shot him,'” a motel front desk employee told police after the incident, the charging document reads. “I went to his office and saw him on the floor and blood.”
Deputies arrived just after 2 p.m. and found Gudmundson dead “due to a single gunshot wound,” the sheriff’s office said.
Investigators said they were able to identify the defendant as the shooter due to a combination of witness interviews and surveillance footage showing Morrow’s vehicle leaving the motel.
Meagher County Undersheriff Jerami West then traveled to Morrow’s address to find the car seen on the footage parked outside, according to law enforcement. The defendant is said to have ignored multiple attempts by West to contact her.
Then, the defendant tried to leave.
“Sometime later, Kyle Morrow left the residence on her own, got into her Nissan Frontier, and began to leave her property,” the affidavit goes on. “She was physically blocked by Montana Highway Patrol and Deputies, directed her out of the vehicle and she was taken into custody.”
After the arrest, investigators found a partially full bottle of Jameson, a handgun case, several loose cigarettes, and a lighter inside the defendant’s car, according to the charging document.
Inside her residence, police allegedly found multiple “suicide/final arrangement notes” in which Morrow admitted to killing Gudmundson.
The defendant is well known in the small community — but not for any kind of lawbreaking, according to law enforcement.
“She was just Kyle,” Meagher County Sheriff Jon Lopp told the newspaper. “We’ve seen her around; she rode her bike around a lot.”
The defendant has published three romance novels in which violence is a plot point, according to the Chronicle. Morrow has her own eponymous website that advertises her authorial works.
“We knew that those were subjects that she wrote a lot in her books,” Lopp told the newspaper. “But we got to look at everything, got to look at the whole picture.”
The defendant’s website also has a reviews section. One review noted by the Chronicle, but which no longer appears on the website as of this writing, was reportedly written by the victim’s wife.
“When she was an employee there, they had her books in the lobby,” Lopp went on. “I think Gene’s wife just did it to help her sell books.”
Morrow is being detained in the Broadwater County Detention Center on a $1 million bond, records show. She is slated to appear in court on Aug. 11 for a preliminary hearing.
The post ‘He is a son of a b—, I shot him,’: Romance novelist walks into motel asking for the owner, then blows him away when she finds him, cops say first appeared on Law & Crime.
