Murder-Suicide Claims O.C. Couple, 2 Children

A 38-year-old Anaheim woman apparently killed her live-in boyfriend and then drove to a desolate dirt road in Riverside, where she shot her son and daughter to death Wednesday before turning the gun on herself, police said.

A deputy on patrol near Lake Mathews discovered the bodies of Marcia Amsden-Kyle and her children, Storm Cameron Kyle, 9, and Tarah Leigh Kyle, 7, along with Tarah Leigh Kyle the apparent murder weapon, according to Riverside sheriff’s Det. Jess Gutierrez.

The car also yielded clues that led investigators to the Anaheim condominium of Amsden-Kyle’s recent boyfriend, Matthew Stephen Bailey, 28, where a man’s body was discovered, police said. Identification of that body was pending Wednesday night.

“We believe it is her boyfriend,” Gutierrez said. “It appears they had a relationship, it appears that relationship ended, and now we have four people dead. We think she shot him, then came out here and shot herself and the kids.”

The deaths along the dusty stretch of Tin Mine Road appeared to be the work of a person “driven to the edge and over,” Gutierrez said.

Anaheim neighbors and friends of Amsden-Kyle said she struggled with her temper, with her finances and with her relationship with Bailey.

“She had a lot of problems,” said Patti Brents, a friend who often baby-sat Amsden-Kyle’s children. “But why not leave the kids out of it? I just don’t get it.”

Anaheim police broke into Bailey’s home Wednesday afternoon and discovered the body, but officers could not search the residence further until a search warrant was secured later in the day, according to Anaheim Police Lt. Ted Labahn.

The cause and time of death were not immediately clear, Labahn said.

“We have no idea at this point how long the body has been there,” Labahn said. “It’s not fresh, but we don’t how long. It might be one day, it might be much longer, I don’t want to guesstimate.”

Amsden-Kyle lived alternately in Riverside County and at Bailey’s home in the 2600 block of Cameron Court in west Anaheim. The couple had dated more than two years, neighbors said, but the romance was rocky.

Amsden-Kyle despaired that Bailey, 10 years her junior and good-looking, would leave her, friends and neighbors said. Convinced her looks were the problem, she turned to plastic surgery to have her face lifted and breasts enlarged, friends said.

“I know she was struggling to keep him,” Brents said. “She had the surgery, she just kept her mouth shut and didn’t say a word if he went out with his friends all night. She was just doing what she could to keep him.”

Brents said she declined an offer last week to let her children visit and play with Amsden-Kyle’s youngsters. Word among the mothers of other students at nearby Dr. Peter Marshall Elementary School was that Amsden-Kyle had become too troubled and unstable to be trusted.

“She kept jaywalking with them,” Brents said. “I talked to people at school and they said she kept bringing them in late.”

Brents and other neighbors in the condominium complex said Amsden-Kyle also was battling with a landlord who planned to sell the home she shared with Bailey. One resident said a bitter Amsden-Kyle had talked of “going out to Riverside” to confront the landlord.

Late last year, according to four neighbors, Amsden-Kyle grabbed a gun hidden in Bailey’s bedroom and put it to her head. When Bailey saw her and told her to drop the weapon, she reportedly fired instead, the friends said. The slug lodged in their mattress.

As officers posted yellow crime scene tape around the second-floor condominium where the man’s body was discovered, neighbors gathered to talk about the troubled woman they remembered.

“She was just always yelling at the kids; she was kind of mean,” said Adam Gay, a 16-year-old who pointed out the concrete walkways in the squat complex where Storm Cameron Kyle rode his in-line skates and a skateboard. “I didn’t understand it. They were good kids: active, playful, always seemed happy, just playing all the time.”

Also contributing to this report were Times staff writers Len Hall and Tom Gorman.