HARPER ? A day after the bullet-riddled bodies of two men were discovered by the side of a rural highway, the wife of one of the victims was found dead of an apparent self-inflicted gunshot, officials said Friday.

Investigators said the deaths appeared to be a double murder and suicide.

The body of Kimberly Snyder was found Friday in a Sedgwick County home, Harper County Sheriff Kirk Rogers said.

Snyder, 26, is believed to have killed both men, although a motive is unclear, Rogers said. Officers recovered a handgun with her body and a rifle at the scene where the two men were found.

The men were identified Friday as Gene Snyder, 39, and Aaron Houdyshell, 26, both of Wichita. One was pronounced dead at the scene about 4:45 a.m. Thursday, and the other died about seven hours later at a hospital in Wichita.

Kimberly and Gene Snyder were married. Their relationship with Houdyshell was not immediately clear.

Kansas Highway Patrol Lt. Randy Moon said a newspaper carrier found the men in the westbound lane of U.S. Highway 160 near the intersection with Kansas Highway 2, three miles south of Harper. The men had either fallen or been dumped onto the highway.

The homicides were the first in the south-central Kansas county since 1996, when robbers shot and killed a man in his trailer at Anthony Lake. Thursday’s discovery left many residents shaken.

“One of our old-timers around here, a lady, came in and asked directions around it. She wasn’t about to go near it,” Allan Longbine said as he worked Thursday at the Anthony Farmers Cooperative branch in Harper.

Longbine said his customers feared the killings could be linked to drug trafficking.

David Klamm, left, of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, and Kansas Highway Patrol Lt. Randy Moon walk toward reporters after investigating the area on U.S. Highway 160 near Harper where two men were found with multiple gunshot wounds. One man was dead at the scene Thursday, and the other died later at a Wichita hospital. The wife of one of the victims was found Friday in Sedgwick County, dead of an apparent self-inflicted wound.