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After 49-year-old Colorado mother Suzanne Morphew went missing in May 2020, authorities believed her husband, Barry, was responsible. After all, she had just told Barry she wanted to end their marriage. She told friends he was abusive, controlling, and manipulative; they had financial issues, and she was having an affair. And surveillance footage captured Barry throwing items into trash bins in several different locations shortly after she disappeared.
But Barry insisted he was innocent and blamed some unusual culprits for her disappearance and his behavior at the time: a mountain lion, 85 chipmunks, a bull elk, deer with horns, and even a wandering turkey. The case took yet another bizarre turn when just before his trial was scheduled to start on April 28, 2021, the district attorney asked that all charges be dropped. Then, in May, Barry filed a $15 million lawsuit against prosecutors and local, state, and federal investigators, saying his civil rights had been violated — he was jailed for five months before being released on $500,000 bail — through malicious prosecution, unlawful detention, fabrication of evidence, and conspiracy, among other complaints.
Now Suzanne’s body has been found, buried in a shallow grave in a sagebrush-covered prairie, during an unrelated search. It’s unclear whether the remains will lead authorities to try to prosecute Barry again — or point to another potential suspect. Morphew’s attorney said in a statement shared with HuffPost, “What appears to be the overriding focus is a finger pointing right back where it started 3 ½ years ago: a movement to blindly re-accuse Barry for Suzanne’s death. … The first and most important focus should be that the Morphew’s just learned that they lost their beautiful mother and wife after she disappeared 3 ½ years ago.”
Here’s where the case stands, based on the 129-page arrest affidavit originally filed against Barry and the many legal twists and turns that have taken place since then.
Suzanne Morphew.
Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office
Suzanne’s Disappearance
Authorities said Suzanne was last known to be alive on Saturday, May 9, 2020, at 2:03 p.m., when she sent a selfie on LinkedIn to her secret boyfriend. Her best friend, Sheila Oliver, whom she constantly communicated with over text and Snapchat messages, also became worried when she didn’t read three Snapchat messages in the early evening — Suzanne had been involved in planning Oliver’s daughter’s wedding, and the friends were excited about the ceremony set to take place the following day. Then on Sunday, May 10, one of Suzanne’s daughters, who was on a road trip, became concerned that she didn’t reply to her Happy Mother’s Day message and asked neighbors to check on her, the neighbors later told police, according to the arrest affidavit. They did not find her at the house and called Barry to let him know she was missing. It was Barry who first suggested that Suzanne, who had taken up mountain biking after surviving her second bout with cancer, had gone out for a ride on Sunday. When the neighbors told him she wasn’t at home, he asked them to look for her bicycle and call 911 if they didn’t find her. He said he was driving home and didn’t have cell service — although at the time, authorities said, security surveillance confirmed he was actually at a hotel with cell service.
Just after 7:30 p.m., investigators found Suzanne’s undamaged bike in a nearby ravine, where a police officer’s bodycam recorded Barry arriving in his truck at around 8:45 p.m. The second question he asked police was whether she’d been attacked by a mountain lion, which he said he’d been tracking in the area, the probable cause affidavit said. Suzanne’s teal helmet was found three days later, about 1.5 miles from the Morphews’ house. Her cellphone has never been found.
Selfies of Suzanne Morphew during her bike rides.
Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office
Barry’s Story
According to the probable cause affidavit, Barry insisted to police that “there was nothing out of the normal Saturday afternoon.” He worked in the morning, came home, and had lunch with Suzanne, and they went for a hike. Later that evening he grilled a steak for their dinner, they had sex, and then went to bed. “It’s actually one of the best nights we’ve had in a while, actually,” investigators said Barry told them.
The affidavit outlines Barry’s accounts of his movements on Sunday: He woke up at 4:30 a.m. to leave early for a landscaping job near Denver, about 150 miles from their Salida home. Suzanne was in bed, sound asleep, when he left at around 5 a.m., investigators said he told them. He drove to Broomfield, where the job site was located, and checked into a Holiday Inn Express, where he expected another contractor to arrive later that evening. He rested briefly and then went to the job site at around 10 a.m., investigators said he told them, drove to a McDonald’s and came back to the hotel for about an hour, then returned to the job site. He was there, he said, when his neighbor called him at around 5 p.m. to say his daughter had called her after being unable to reach Suzanne. He left the job site, dropped off tools at the hotel for his contractors, and from there drove directly to Salida.
Surveillance footage of Barry Morphew on May 10, 2020.
Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office
The Police Timeline
But investigators created a timeline that they said contradicted Barry’s accounts using cellphone records, GPS data, and truck telematics, a vehicle monitoring technology. Other evidence and some odd statements involving more wildlife also raised questions for investigators about whether he was telling the truth.
According to investigators in the arrest affidavit, Barry gave inconsistent accounts of what he was doing during lunchtime on Saturday. Although he’d initially said he’d driven home to have lunch and go hiking with his wife, location data seemingly showed him approaching the house on foot. (Oliver later told investigators that Barry had stalked her and Suzanne on at least two occasions, sneaking up to their houses because he believed Suzanne was having an affair.) Barry accounted for his movements, authorities said, by saying he was watching turkeys. Later he said he was specifically searching for a turkey that his daughter had shot with a bow but they hadn’t found. An FBI agent testified at the preliminary hearing that cellphone data indicated when Barry came home at around 2:44 p.m. Saturday he began “moving in a pattern around the outside of the house.” When asked whether he was looking for Suzanne, Barry told the agent, “I shoot chipmunks.” When the agent said it looked like he was chasing one, Barry allegedly said, “Yeah, I was. I’ve shot 85 chipmunks because they got into my furnace and cost me a bunch of money.”
At 2:47 p.m., his phone entered airplane mode, where it would stay until 10:17 p.m.
Through multiple interviews, Barry was fairly consistent in saying that he grilled steak for the couple’s dinner on Saturday. But when investigators pointed out that they found only one plate in the dishwasher, he said that he must have hand-washed his.
And although he had said they went to bed early, investigators said his phone registered “approximately 210 locations” near the house that night — compared to zero to two locations the previous eight nights. From 3:25 a.m. to 3:45 a.m., investigators noted 80 telematic “events” involving his truck, including opening and closing the doors and backing it up the driveway. Barry said that his alarm woke him up at 4:30 a.m. Sunday to leave for the landscaping job, but authorities said there was no record of that on his phone. He later said he must have woken up on his own and may not have actually seen Suzanne in bed but did hear her snoring.
The locations where Suzanne’s bike and helmet were found were in the opposite direction of the route Barry took to his job site, but his cellphone and GPS activity showed that he had driven by both spots that Sunday morning, authorities said. According to the police affidavit, he didn’t volunteer that information, but when questioned directly, he said he had gone by the locations by accident because he was unfamiliar with the job site area, even though he had been working for the same landscaping company for ten months.
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Denial of responsibility! Vigour Times is an automatic aggregator of Global media. In each content, the hyperlink to the primary source is specified. All trademarks belong to their rightful owners, and all materials to their authors. For any complaint, please reach us at – [email protected]. We will take necessary action within 24 hours.
