Denver police were relieved to find three children who were reported missing Wednesday safe from harm, but they were still trying to learn why a man killed his wife before turning the gun on himself.

Officers called to the Green Valley Ranch home at about 10:30 p.m. Tuesday found the man’s wife dead and the children, who should have been there, missing.

The man was also gone, fleeing police in a white 2000 Chrysler Cirrus.

Denver police said that information prompted them to issue an Amber Alert for the children, ages 15, 5 and 18 months, about 4:30 a.m. Wednesday.

They abandoned the alert at about 7 a.m. after the children were found safe and the man, identified as Dominic Moses Moore, 32, was discovered dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside the Chrysler near Franktown.

The Denver medical examiner’s office did not release the woman’s name or cause of death, but police said she was Moore’s wife. Detectives were still trying to unravel the couple’s relationship to the children but said they all lived together.

Homicide detectives remained at the home throughout the day as curious neighborhood children looked on. Denver police Sgt. Steve Warneke, a department spokesman, declined to comment on what might have precipitated the shootings.

“These detectives have one shot to get it right, they have to go slowly and methodically to do that,” Warneke said.

Neighbors said the family had lived in the home about two years.

Moore’s sister told 7NEWS that her brother dropped the two younger children at her Aurora apartment Tuesday night and asked her to look after them. Police found them there Wednesday morning. The 15-year-old boy was out of the state visiting friends.

It was unclear who would take custody of them, Warneke said.

The Amber Alert, aired on electronic highway billboards and cellphones across the state, put the community on edge. A motorist who heard it reported seeing the Chrysler about 5:40 a.m. headed northbound on Colorado 83 just south of Franktown.

A Colorado State Patrol trooper already in the area tried to stop the Chrysler, but the driver kept going. Douglas County deputies joined the trooper in what spokesman Ron Hanavan described as a “low-speed pursuit.”

Moore twice avoided stop-sticks that had been placed on the road but eventually drove into a field and came to a stop. As officers approached the car, they heard a single gunshot, Hanavan said.

Moore’s sister said she did not know whether the couple was struggling.

Moore has a lengthy arrest record in the state, according to Colorado Bureau of Investigation records, beginning with an arrest and conviction as a juvenile in 1996. He also had been charged with violating a protection order, assault and aggravated robbery.

In 2002, he was arrested in Colorado Springs on suspicion of domestic violence and harassment. The case was dismissed.

In 2003, Moore was found guilty of vehicular eluding and possession of a weapon by a previous offender in Arapahoe County.

He was sentenced to four years in the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Sadie Gurman: 303-954-1661, sgurman@denverpost.com or twitter.com/sgurman