Colorado mom Suzanne Morphew's husband arrested for her murder for the second time | Forensic Files

[Music] When something like this happens, when somebody goes missing, you want answers.
But this case is incredibly unique. When you started to dig a little bit deeper,
nothing is what it seems. Suzanne Morphw went missing on Mother's Day in May of 2020. And from there on
out, it became a nationwide search for her. Suzanne Morphw left for a bike ride and she never came back. She has two
beautiful daughters. The family looks to be perfect from the outside. Every picture you saw of them, they were
smiling, they're laughing, they're looking like they love each other. She grew up in Indiana. She came to Colorado
and she began to mountain bike. We see pictures of a beautiful woman, an active, physically fit woman taking
advantage of the mountains. Barry Morphw was a business owner. He was an avid hunter and a man's man.
On May 9th, Barry was very happy because there had been some marital tension, but
not on May 9th. All we have to go on is what Barry says occurred. That's right. Barry says they had a nice dinner
together. They even made love and then they went to sleep and she was still sleeping the next morning when he left
for work. So the next day, Mother's Day, the daughters are out on a camping trip.
Did that strike people as odd? Family had told investigators that it was odd that their daughters would not be with
their mom. She didn't have anything else to do. and all of a sudden her daughters and her
husband are both gone. Barry Morphe said he texted his wife Suzanne to wish her a happy Mother's
Day. He received no reply. He had contact with his daughters back and forth. Can't get a hold of mother and
then someone contacted a neighbor, right? The neighbor had told Barry that her car is here. She was not home. And
Barry says, "Well, maybe go look for her bike cuz she's an avid mountain biker."
The neighbor said he could not find it. Local law enforcement responds to the scene and they do find her bicycle.
Where was that bike? It's right over here, Peter. The bike was found at the bottom of this ravine right here. The
initial thought is kidnapping. Oh, Suzanne, if anyone is out there that can hear this that has you, we'll do
whatever it takes to bring you back. So about 10 days into the investigation, they learn about a piece of technology
that we have an example of right in front of you. What is that? Right. So they find a spy pin. It looks something
like this. And they find it in the master bedroom of the Morphew home. It's like James Bond. It's a pen that looks
like a regular pen. And it records conversations. This pipe pin was given to Suzanne to
record Barry Morphw in hopes of catching him in an affair. It backfired in fact.
As a matter of fact, it backfired. Captured on the spy pen is a conversation between Suzanne Morphw and
somebody named Jeff. And it's clear that Jeff is her lover. They did not know who
Jeff was, but it put a new wrinkle into the case for sure. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music]
What happened on this road is a real mystery. No one knows where is Suzanne. [Music]
In the days, weeks, and months after Suzanne Morphw was reported missing on Mother's Day 2020, her trail went cold.
But the mother of two's disappearance had become the biggest story in Colorado. 49year-old Suzanne Morphw
remains missing. Home of a missing woman from Chaffi County is now being searched. Teams are combing the terrain,
even brought in boats to search the local waterways. And we're going to fan out and we're
going to work that area very carefully. Okay. 4 months in, Suzanne's brother, Andrew
Mormon, organized a citizen search. He said he felt he had to do something, anything. I'd hoped to find her alive.
and and at some point you have to realize when somebody's missing after so long that the chances of that diminish
dramatically. The thought that Suzanne may have been abducted hit the peaceful picturesque
town of Salida hard. I came home every day and my wife asked me, "Have they found her yet?"
Dan Rydenower has covered the story for his local morning show. Hippie Radio 975
with Dan R. Good morning. 827. Now Barry and Suzanne Morphw were not known well in Salida, Colorado. They had only been
here for a couple of years. Before moving to Colorado in 2018, Barry and Suzanne grew up in the small town of
Alexandria, Indiana, where they met in high school. Suzanne competed for homecoming queen.
Barry was a star baseball player who was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays. Injury ended Barry's dreams of a
major league career. They both attended Purdue University and married in 1994. He started a landscaping business.
Suzanne taught middle school before becoming a full-time mother. They had a couple of daughters, one in
college and they had a daughter in high school. Macy, 16 years old when her mom disappeared, lived at home. Her sister,
Mallerie, attended college, and the morphuse told some friends they moved to a home just outside of Salida to be
closer to their older daughter. But there were also rumblings about the state of the Morphwus marriage. Maybe a
new place, a new home, new scenery around them would strengthen their family and therefore strengthen their
marriage. But the move did not appear to improve the relationship. It was a tough time, says her sister,
Melinda Mormon. My sister had um sent me a text message. It was very lengthy. It was very powerful. It was
very revealing. In this Zoom interview, Melinda said she received Suzanne's text
two days before she disappeared and it was boiling over with anger toward Barry. The text read in part, "He's also
been abusive emotionally and physically. I feel more angry now. Anger at what I've allowed."
Barry was very dominant in the relationship and my sister was a very passive, gentle soul. He had a great
tendency to overpower and intimidate people to get what he wanted. And what kind of boss was he? You know,
he was real quiet, stern. He knew what he was doing cuz that's what he did in Indiana. Cody Cox was part of Barry's
landscaping crew for nearly 2 years when Barry first arrived in Colorado. I talked pretty highly about Barry cuz I
was with him all the time. He's like inspiration to me almost. He was a real cool guy. Cody said he regularly heard
Barry talking to Suzanne as they drove in Barry's truck. They seemed to communicate pretty well.
She is a sweetheart. She is a real kind lady. She's almost like an angel, like something you'd see off a Hallmark
movie, you know, like real nice, almost too perfect. So when I heard about the news,
I didn't believe it. I heard it actually on the radio and I was like, did they just say Suzanne?
And I was like, oh my gosh, who would even want to hurt her? The first day authorities searched for
Suzanne, they found her mountain bike close to the Morphw home. Where was the mountain bike found? It
was found right over this little cliff right here, resting on these boulders. She was new at mountain biking, so an
accident is certainly plausible. I would only ask where's Suzanne. She would have been injured. Yeah, she
would have been injured. Investigators believe the scene was staged. And days later, they discovered Suzanne's helmet
roughly a mile away off Highway 50. The helmet was found on the south side of the road, this side of the road, which
would be to our left. So, is the thought somebody threw it out of a window? Perhaps. That's the
thinking. Yes. It appeared as though Suzanne could have been abducted. And that's when Barry made that public plea.
Please, we'll do whatever it takes to bring you back. In those early days, Barry had a theory about what happened
to Suzanne that he shared with Tyson Draper, who has his own YouTube channel. They happened to meet at the site where
Suzanne's mountain bike was found. And Tyson secretly videotaped Barry. Um the first night there was a mountain lion.
The officer seen it walk by the car. So we thought maybe she got attacked by a lion. A mountain lion killed her. If
that happened, there would have been signs of that. There would have been blood. There would have been struggle.
So that was a very short-lived speculation. Authorities began to doubt that Suzanne
even took a bike ride, especially after her sunglasses and hydration backpack were found in her car. Investigators
also found her driver's license and credit cards in her Range Rover, but her cell phone was missing. Did Barry Morphw
cooperate with investigators during the course of this? He had been interviewed by investigators through the course of
it and he talked to investigators almost every time. 11 News reporter Ashley Franco is live at the Chaffi County
Court. Ashley Franco who reported on the case for the CBS affiliate in Colorado Springs has read the police documents
and she says Barry has repeatedly told the same story. He came home around 300 p.m. on May 9th, 2020 and had a pleasant
evening with Suzanne. The next morning, Mother's Day, Barry says he drove to a job some three hours away. He says the
last time he sees his wife is when she's sleeping in their bed. As investigators
began trying to verify Barry's alibi, they were pulled in a new direction. Suzanne's spy pen had surfaced with that
intimate conversation. Now they needed to figure out the identity of Jeff, Suzanne's lover. Could
this man have had something to do with Suzanne's disappearance? It was just days after Suzanne Morphw
went missing when investigators make that intriguing discovery. They discover a spy pen. A spy pen. A
spy pen. A Gruber is a professor of law at the University of Colorado and a former defense attorney. She has closely
studied all the public investigative files in the Morphew case. She knows it was not easy for investigators to find
Suzanne's secret lover, a man named Jeff. She hid that affair so well that it took agents 6 months to find the man
she was having an affair with. Jeff turned out to be Jeff Libler, and he had a wife and six children in Michigan
where he lived. He and Suzanne had a one-time fling after high school. Decades passed until Suzanne reached out
to Jeff out of the blue in 2018. When Suzanne and Barry moved to Colorado, Suzanne messaged him on Facebook. And
what did she message him? Howdy, Stranger. And from that moment, they had talked almost every single day non-stop.
In the months after Suzanne went missing, Jeff kept quiet. He only began cooperating after he was located by
investigators who learned Jeff had taken steps to hide the nearly 2-year affair.
What he did was delete all his social media accounts that he had used to communicate with Suzanne. He's got a lot
to lose if revelations of this affair come out. Jeff told agents he only took those steps because he did not want to
tarnish Suzanne's memory and worried he might lose his family and job. He was also worried agents considered him a
suspect. He asked the agents, "Am I a target?" Although he did not come forward on his own, Jeff did assist
agents after they found him. He agreed to provide access to his DNA, phone records, and his passwords for those
deleted accounts. By looking through the couple's iCloud accounts and phone records, agents were able to piece
together their relationship, including the times they met in person. Investigators also found that Suzanne,
on several instances, had gone on vacation to meet up with Jeff in many different states, ranging from Louisiana
to Florida. Investigators also discovered they'd sent intimate photos to each other, talked of becoming
husband and wife, and even mentioned leaving the United States. Jeff and Suzanne had talked about moving away,
moving to Ecuador at one point. If you were an investigator instead of a law professor, what would you want to know
about this Jeff Libler? Everything. I'd want to know everything about what he was doing, what he was thinking. Here is
somebody who arguably had the last communication with Suzanne before she went missing. The love affair between
Suzanne and Jeff became a key part of the investigation as agents tried to figure out what happened to her on that
Saturday, May 9th. the day before Mother's Day. Records show that Suzanne and Jeff messaged each other 59 times
that day, much more than usual, authorities say. At one point, Suzanne sends Jeff this selfie. Investigators
dub it her last proof of life photo. Barry was not home as the lover's texts heat up.
At 2:05 p.m., Suzanne writes, "I'm just in love with you. What you up to? Jeff's
response at 2:06 p.m. want to strip down and get naked? Lol. She responds by saying she'll load up
her WhatsApp account. And then at 2:11, Suzanne writes, "Okay, I'm on WA." Then at 2:26 p.m., Suzanne gets a text
from Barry that he's heading home. Done. Headed back. No one knows if Suzanne saw
that text or was preoccupied with Jeff, but she does not answer. Barry follows up, appearing to wonder where Suzanne
is. Did you leave? There was still no response from Suzanne, and investigators speculate the next few moments are when
Barry returned home. They noticed that Barry's cell phone appears to be pinging all around the outside of his house. Was
he chasing Suzanne before a final and fatal confrontation? Investigators asked Barry to explain
that unusual phone activity. And he says, "Well, let me think about that. I was probably walking around my house
shooting chipmunks." You heard right. It was perhaps the world's first chipmunk alibi. Barry says the chipmunks were a
constant nuisance at his house, and he'd been running around shooting them that day.
And then that confession to shooting chipmunks becomes a major piece of incriminating evidence against him.
There was no evidence of any chipmunk shootings around Barry's house. Part of his problem, Aas says, is that Barry
granted between 30 and 40 interviews, all without a lawyer to everyone from a county detective to members of the FBI.
Would you have allowed him to do all these interviews? No. Absolutely not. Meanwhile, Jeff Libler was cleared. He
told agents he was in Michigan that weekend and his alibi checked out. When investigators tell Barry of the affair,
he denies knowing anything about it. But if Barry knew nothing about Suzanne's affair, what motive would he have to
kill her? One clue may be a deleted text that investigators found on Barry's phone sent by Suzanne just days before.
I'm done. I could care less what you're up to and have been for years. We just need to figure this out civily. So the
only thing that makes sense is that Barry Morphw lost it when Suzanne finally said, "I'm leaving you." Barry
knew that his daughters would be away on their camping trip that Saturday afternoon, and authorities say he took
advantage of that opportunity to kill Suzanne and clean up the crime scene. From 2:47
p.m. until 10:17 p.m., just under 8 hours, Barry's phone goes into airplane mode. What do
authorities believe was happening during that time? Authorities say that they believe when his phone went into
airplane mode that he was disposing of possible evidence. Unable to track Barry's cell phone, investigators tapped
into a relatively new investigative technique, digital vehicle forensics, to pull a
stream of data out of Barry's Ford truck. And Barry's truck told a different story
than what he was telling investigators. They were using Barry's own car against him.
Ben Lamir is an expert in the new field of vehicle forensics. Give me a sense of how your technology
from your company helps solve criminal cases. So, a lot of times it's used to, you know, locate bodies, brings Lamir is
the CEO of the Burla Corporation. helps uh get people convicted. Um and it's helped get people not convicted.
Investigators from Scotland Yard to the FBI have learned how to use Burla's software to tap into the dozens of
computers in a car. It's accurate enough to be used as evidence in court cases. Correct. Yes, sir. It's uh it's used
every day in cases around the world. cases like the disappearance of Suzanne Morphw. Investigators created a burla
report, meaning they tapped into the data in Barry's Ford truck to track its movements after his cell phone went into
airplane mode. A couple of the pieces of evidence that I think are very harmful to his case um come from the data in the
car. The prosecution's case is that Barry snapped at one point the day before Mother's Day.
Authorities believe Barry killed Suzanne that afternoon. He told agents he went to bed around 8:00 p.m. that night, but
the data pulled from the truck shows that the truck was put in reverse and moved some 96 ft closer to his house
around 9:30 p.m. Investigators think that's when he could have loaded Suzanne's body.
Initially, Barry told police that he set his alarm for 4:30 a.m. on Mother's Day
and left the house by 5 to drive to a job site in Broomfield, a town near Denver, 150 mi from Salida.
But the truck's computers showed that someone was opening and closing the truck's doors around 3:30 a.m.
Investigators believe Barry began driving toward Broomfield much earlier than he claimed, but there is a 4-hour
window, approximately 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. when no activity was recorded by the vehicle's computers. There are
events in the car that aren't recorded, so they can't give sort of a full chronological picture. And if Barry hid
Suzanne's body during that 4-hour window, the truck's data does not provide answers. Why is data missing
sometimes? Well, it gets overwritten. Um, you know, it is a computer and you know, log files, they only last so long.
But Barry helped fill in some of the missing data. He told agents he took a left upon leaving his home instead of a
right because even though it was dark, he remembered seeing some elk. He saw a herd of elk and he's a hunter, so he was
interested and he wanted to get an uplose look. That admission was significant to agents because it put him
in an area where a key piece of evidence had been recovered. Investigators found
Suzanne's bike helmet up that road. So, they believe at that point when he turned left instead of turning right
that he could have been ditching her bike helmet. At 8:10 on Mother's Day morning, the
truck's computers again began recording data, and by then, Barry's cell phone had also come back to life. Agents are
able to track Barry's cell and truck movements and can see that he first pulled over at this Broomfield bus stop
where he discarded something in a garbage can. And then he moves on to a hotel trash can, a McDonald's trash can,
a dumpster in a Men's Warehouse parking lot, and then back to the hotel and dump
stuff in a dumpster there. Investigators believe that during these trash runs, he
was disposing of evidence in different places within the Denver area. This is a surveillance shot of Barry on one of
those trash runs, but investigators could not see what he was throwing away. It may have looked incriminating, but
Barry claims it was just another day at the office. He told agents he was merely
being cheap, not criminal. and his claim, well, I just always have a lot of junk in in the vehicle. I don't like to
pay to have it uh disposed at a landfill. I This is just what I do. But it's suspicious that you would go to
five different trash areas to dispose of several things. Why not just do it at one?
After checking out the work site, Barry headed back to his room at the Holiday Inn. And investigators say he stayed
there from 12:42 to 6:03 p.m. By then, he'd already spoken to older daughter Mallerie, who told him she could not get
in touch with her mother. That's when the Morphew neighbors were contacted and could find no sign of Suzanne. Barry
asked him at that time if the bike was there to go check on her. Her bicycle is not here. Barry asks his neighbor to
call 911 and that's when the call to 911 was placed that Suzanne is missing. Barry doesn't head home immediately and
he is dropping some tools off for his co-workers. Tools including a shovel. With Suzanne now officially reported
missing, Barry tells his workers there's a family emergency and arranges hotel rooms with one of those workers taking
over Barry's room. When the employee was interviewed, he told investigators that
the room that Barry checked out of it had a strong smell of chlorine or bleach, which suggests what? That he
could be cleaning up a crime scene. Just after 6:00 p.m., Barry starts driving back to Salida. On the way, Barry speaks
to sheriff's deputies who advise him they found Suzanne's bike, and he arrives at that ravine at around 8:40
p.m. And investigators say that when he arrived there, he was pretty emotional for a few minutes.
By Sunday night, Suzanne's daughters were back home, but Suzanne is nowhere to be found. no questions asked, however
much they want. Barry offered a $100,000 reward for information that was later doubled to $200,000.
Investigators later discovered many texts from Suzanne to a close friend that apparently revealed her tormented
feelings about Barry. He won't speak of divorce. I feel no peace when he's here.
I wouldn't feel safe alone with him. Barry became the prime suspect. And investigators think they know how he
killed Suzanne. [Music] The large Morphew home remains sealed off and disappearing. While
investigators searched the Morphw home and the family's cars and trucks, Barry continued to talk seemingly to anyone
with a badge. Weeks and months went by and Barry remained at the center of the investigation.
Police are absolutely correct as a statistical matter to look at intimate partners when they suspect that a woman
might have been harmed or murdered. It's something like eight out of 10 times when a spouse dies, the other one's
involved. Absolutely. Sometimes the smallest item will turn an investigation. And in this case, agents
seized on this clear plastic cap that a forensics team had found in the family's
dryer. Prosecutors believe the cap was from a syringe used to fill a tranquilizer dart. How do prosecutors
interpret that? The prosecution's theory is that at some point when Barry came home on the 9th and snapped and decided
to murder Suzanne, he used a tranquilizer dart that you would use on animals. There was no working
tranquilizer rifle found in the Morpheuse home, but Barry told investigators he was an experienced
tranquilizer dart gun shooter. He knew how to load darts with paralyzing chemicals, having used them to illegally
sedate deer and remove their antlers to sell. This is a photo of the inside of Barry's
garage with his collection of deer heads and a pile of antlers. We asked Dan Rydenower to read some of
what Barry told investigators. Barry said, "The first thing I thought of when I came here and saw deer in my yard with
big horns, I'm like, I'm getting them horns. And I'll tell you exactly what I did. I shoot them. They go to sleep. I
cut their horns off. It's totally illegal. But you're going to find tran darts around my property because I've
done that." Experts say it can take between 4 and 20 minutes for an animal the size of a deer to drop after being
shot with a tranquilizer dart. Agents theorized that Barry's phone had pinged from various locations around the house,
not because he was shooting chipmunks, but because he was chasing Suzanne after he shot her.
And what are you holding? What I'm holding is a Teladart model uh 706 rifle. They use this a lot in parks
throughout the country. Andrew Kaders, owner and CEO of Animal Care and Equipment Services, showed us a
tranquilizer rifle he'd typically use on animals. So, if Suzanne had been struck by one of
these darts, it's right here. Would she have time to run around, try to escape? She could, but I don't think she would
get very far. For a human being, it could be lethal, for sure. Bolstering the theory that Barry and
Suzanne had a confrontation the day she disappeared were apparent scratches seen
on Barry's left arm. Agents took the circumstantial evidence they gathered, Barry's apparent suspicious behavior,
his contradictory statements, the puzzling data from his truck, Suzanne's disturbing texts, and those five trash
runs, and brought it all to the district attorney. On nearly the anniversary of Suzanne's
disappearance, Barry is arrested. The moment captured on a cell phone by a passer by in May 2021. Tonight, the
husband of Suzanne Morphw is behind bars accused of killing her. The Chaffi County Sheriff says Barry Morphw was
arrested this morning. Suzanne's body has never been found and prosecutors assume she's dead. Despite
the lack of a body, Barry was charged with first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and a variety of
other allegations. He was held without bail and eventually pleaded not guilty. In their arrest affidavit, prosecutors
spelled out what they believe happened to Suzanne. It had become clear that Barry could not control Suzanne's
insistence on leaving him and he resorted to something he has done his entire life. Hunt and control Suzanne
like he had hunted and controlled animals. Suzanne's sister Melinda reacted to the
news of Barry's arrest. There are no winners in this story. There are two families who are suffering deeply.
Barry ultimately hired high-profile lawyers from Denver. And in the summer of 2021, Judge Patrick Murphy heard the
prosecution's evidence in open court. He decided to hold a preliminary hearing to see if this case had enough evidence
to go to trial. The defense tried mightily to blunt the state's case, countering that the clear
plastic cap found in the dryer means nothing because no one could say how long it had been there. Furthermore,
Barry's DNA was not found on that cap. And as for that chlorine smell in Barry's hotel room, one of the managers
from the Holiday Inn had actually communicated to agents that this smell of chlorine existed before Barry Murphy
was there because that room's directly above an indoor pool. And there was one more crucial issue the
prosecution had to deal with, one that its own forensic team uncovered. DNA evidence made public for the first time
now threatened to destroy the case against Barry. This DNA discovery is so significant. The agents swabbed the
inside of Suzanne Morphw's car and they found male DNA on the glove box and it wasn't Barry Morphw's DNA. He was
eliminated. The DNA also did not match Suzanne's lover, Jeff Libler. But it was a partial
match to the DNA of an unknown male who had attacked other women. And it raised a disturbing question. Had Suzanne
fallen into the hands of a sexual predator? [Music] In September 2021 at the Chaffi County
Courthouse in Salida, Judge Patrick Murphy heard arguments about whether there was enough evidence to try Barry
Morphw for murder. The judge named off three different scenarios, saying Suzanne Morphw left willingly. Barry
Morphw could have killed his wife or someone else abducted Suzanne and killed her. He said it was unlikely Suzanne had
run off on her own, even though she and lover Jeff Libbler had discussed moving to Ecuador. The judge says that because
of the evidence that's been presented about how loving Suzanne was toward her daughters and toward her family that she
could never do that. But the abduction theory could not be so easily dismissed, especially after that mysterious DNA was
found in Suzanne's Range Rover. Investigators learned that DNA at least partially matched the profile of an
unnamed man connected to three unsolved sexual assault cases in Tempee, Phoenix,
and Chicago. So, how can that DNA end up in her car? Well, that DNA can end up in her car if
she was the victim, for example, of a serial killer or there could also be potentially an innocent explanation. But
it is very very curious. Barry Morphw can stand up and say, "I'm not your killer.
The man whose DNA is in my wife's car tied to past sexual assaults, that's your killer." Barry Morphew absolutely
could say that and that's what his defense is banking on in this case. In frank language, Judge Murphy gave his
opinion of the state's evidence. I find that the proof is not evident, nor is the presumption great that Mr. Morphew
committed first-degree murder. Despite that, the judge ruled there was probable cause to go to trial. But this
judge was very careful to say, "Look, I'm finding probable cause here, but it's only because I am looking at all
the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution." At that point, Barry had spent months in
jail. The judge says $500,000 cashonly bond. And are they monitoring him in some fashion? Barry Morphw is wearing an
ankle monitor for them to track him to make sure that he is staying in Chaffi County. A few days later, on September
20th, 2021, Barry Morphw and daughters Mallerie and Macy are all smiles as they leave the jail. Barry, how does it feel?
How does it feel to be out? They stand firmly behind their dad. Barry declined our request for an interview.
Barry Morphw's homicide trial was to begin on April 28th, 2022. But in the months leading up to that date, Judge
Murphy recused himself and Judge Ramsay Lama replaced him. and Barry's defense team, led by attorney Iris Eton, filed
motions asking that prosecutors be sanctioned for failing to produce discovery in a timely manner, including
some potentially exculpatory evidence, like the male DNA found in Suzanne's Range Rover. There's DNA
that is placed on all the critical items of evidence in this case on the bike, on
the bike helmet, in the house, in the car that is linked to unknown males. In April 2022, Judge
Lama ruled that prosecutors repeatedly had missed deadlines and had failed to turn over important information in the
discovery phase. The judge wrote that while he did not find those actions quote willful, the court does find this
pattern to be negligent, bordering on reckless unquote. The judge's penalty was to knock out 14 prosecution
witnesses, including experts in DNA and cell phone and vehicle data recovery. They would not, he said, be allowed to
testify. This case is incredibly unique. Law professor Ya Gruber said the case was going to be an uphill battle for
prosecutors even before she heard about the most recent sanctions. There are not
many murder cases where the defendant has been charged with first-degree murder where there is no body, no blood
evidence of any foul play, no eyewitnesses. On April 19th, 2022, as a pre-trial hearing was about to begin,
District Attorney Linda Stanley filed a motion to dismiss the murder charges against Barry Morphw without prejudice,
meaning the case could be refiled at a later date. In her motion, the DA pointed to the court's decision to bar
several key witnesses. Without this crucial evidence and without the victim's body, the people cannot move
forward at this time in good faith. Neither Barry, his daughters, nor his lawyer had any advanced warning. I
didn't know a dismissal was coming today, although the writing was on the wall. In her motion for dismissal, DA
Stanley told the judge that officials believe investigators are close to discovering the location of Suzanne
Morphw's body. Court papers specifically mention a remote and mountainous region
nearby the Morphw residence that will be excavated after 5 ft of snow melts. Where is Suzanne Morphw's body? That is
the million-dollar question. Remember, there was an approximate 4-hour gap not recorded by the computers in Barry's
truck on Mother's Day morning 2020. Whether investigators ultimately were able to recover some of that missing
data or received a tip about the location of Suzanne's remains is not known. The San Isabel National Forest, again,
is 1.1 million acres. There's plenty of places to dispose of the body. Defense attorney Eton denies Barry has any
involvement in his wife's disappearance. Barry Morphw loves Suzanne Morphw. He loves her and he misses her and he wants
to know where Suzanne Morphw is. After the judge granted the motion to dismiss homicide charges against Barry,
he walked out of court a free man, flanked as usual by his loyal daughters. Suzanne's sister Melinda says she agrees
with the request to dismiss charges against Barry at this point. She said she hoped that with more time, searchers
will find Suzanne's body and win a solid conviction in her murder. This would dispel all rumors of her whereabouts.
And whatever else happens with the case, Melinda says she hopes her nieces keep one thing in mind. Mallerie Macy, your
mother would have laid down her life for you girls. She would never leave you. She would never forsake you.
She loved you with her whole being. [Music] 48 hours. Don't miss an episode. [Music]
Heat. Hey, Heat.

On June 20, 2025, the husband of Colorado mom Suzanne Morphew was arrested for first-degree murder in her death more than five years ago. This is the second time Barry Morphew has faced murder charges in connection with her homicide after the initial charges were dismissed.

Suzanne Morphew was reportedly last seen on Mother's Day May 10, 2020, when she went for a bike ride and never returned. "48 Hours" correspondent Peter Van Sant reports on the disappearance of Suzanne Morphew, the case against her husband Barry Morphew, and the incredible twists the story takes in this July 2023 broadcast of “The Suzanne Morphew Case: Nothing Is What It Seems."

True crime. Real justice. "48 Hours" investigates the most intriguing crime and justice cases that touch on all areas of the human experience including greed and passion. "48 Hours," which premiered in 1988, has developed a rich history of original reporting and impact journalism that has helped exonerate wrongly convicted people, caused cold cases to be reopened and solved, and along the way changed lives.

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Brief Summary

Suzanne Morphew disappeared in 2020; her husband Barry is suspected but charges were dismissed due to lack of evidence.

Key points

The Disappearance of Suzanne Morphw. Suzanne went missing on Mother's Day 2020, sparking a nationwide search.
The Spy Pen Revelation. A spy pen reveals Suzanne's affair, complicating the investigation.
Barry's Alibi Under Scrutiny. Barry's claim of shooting chipmunks raises suspicion during the investigation.
Barry's Suspicious Behavior. Barry's actions raise eyebrows, including a strong smell of bleach in his hotel room.
The Arrest of Barry Morphew. Barry is arrested nearly a year after Suzanne's disappearance, accused of her murder.
DNA Evidence Complicates Case. New DNA evidence found in Suzanne's car does not match Barry, raising questions.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

Oh, Suzanne, if anyone is out there that can hear this that has you...

Barry's emotional plea for Suzanne's return.

2:34WatchJun 20, 2025

Tension

75/ 100High tension

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