RCMP found the bodies of four people from the same family in this farmhouse near Smith, Alta., Sunday. (Gareth Hampshire/CBC)

A 58-year-old man turned the gun on himself after shooting three members of his family in a northern Alberta town, according to new information released by the RCMP Thursday.

Ian Jeffrey Paget appeared to have died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, RCMP said in a news release.

The bodies of Paget, a woman police described as his estranged wife, Joan Hanson, 64, the couple's daughter Jolene Eliuk, 32, and her daughter, Misty, 9, were found on Sunday in a farmhouse in Smith, about 200 kilometres north of Edmonton.

On Wednesday, RCMP said the deaths were the result of a triple murder-suicide after the medical examiner determined all four died of gunshot wounds.

When police approached the property to enter the residence around 2 p.m. Sunday, they found Paget's body first, lying outside the house.

Autopsies on the four dead started on Tuesday afternoon.

While RCMP acknowledged from the start that they weren't looking for any suspects in the slayings, they were reluctant to call the deaths a murder-suicide until Wednesday after the post-mortems were completed.

Jolene Eliuk's ex-husband, Terry Eliuk, told CBC News on Monday that his former in-laws were heavily in debt and that tension had been building in the home for years.