Speaker 1: Well, it was a murder mystery that really gripped Colorado.
Speaker 1: It is the murder of Suzanne Morpheu and it's where
Speaker 1: we kick off True Crime Tuesday.
Speaker 2: The story is true, sounds true, No, it sounds made up.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Barry and Shannon present True Crime.
Speaker 1: So this is the case of a woman in Colorado
Speaker 1: by the name of Suzanne Morphew who disappeared on Mother's Day.
Speaker 1: It's always odd when that happens, right, and Lacy Peterson
Speaker 1: disappear Christmas. Well, this woman disappears on Mother's Day twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: Also important to point out that that was deep, deep covid.
Speaker 1: Right right to remember the whole lockdown was in effect,
Speaker 1: certainly in April. I don't know how much Colorado played
Speaker 1: by the rules, but yes, it is the time that
Speaker 1: we're talking about. This was a case that right away
Speaker 1: drew the attention of true crime podcasters across the country.
Speaker 3: Forty eight Hours picked up on it as well. It
Speaker 3: was everywhere.
Speaker 1: And now it's back in the news because a grand
Speaker 1: jury has returned in an indictment charging Barry more Few
Speaker 1: fifty seven years old with the first degree murder of
Speaker 1: his wife, Suzanne. Now This is five years after the fact.
Speaker 1: This was, in some people's opinions, a cold case, but
Speaker 1: it seems like they were crossing t's and dotting eyes
Speaker 1: against the husband this whole time. This is the second
Speaker 1: time that Barry, the husband, has been charged in the
Speaker 1: death of his wife.
Speaker 3: They had to drop the charges.
Speaker 1: In twenty twenty two without prejudice, meaning they could be refiled.
Speaker 3: Essentially.
Speaker 2: One of the other big keys is this time they
Speaker 2: have her body, and they didn't have her body when
Speaker 2: they first filed charges in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 1: Now their community, this is in central Colorado. They say
Speaker 1: it captivated the community of about twenty thousand people.
Speaker 3: More than fourteen hundred tips.
Speaker 1: More than seventy officers from the county Sheriff's office, the
Speaker 1: Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and the FBI were involved. And
Speaker 1: this a lot of work went into this one. You
Speaker 1: can just see how extensive it was. I mean, just
Speaker 1: the tips alone with a small town community like that,
Speaker 1: had to.
Speaker 3: Just be crazy to sift through. Where did it all start?
Speaker 1: While Suzanne went missing, a neighbor reported her missing to
Speaker 1: police at about five forty five on Mother's Day, May tenth,
Speaker 1: twenty twenty.
Speaker 2: The problem is that may have been a day or
Speaker 2: two or more after she died, Barry told police. Barry,
Speaker 2: the husband, told police that she was still asleep in
Speaker 2: bed when he left their home near Salida, Colorado, at
Speaker 2: about five in that morning five in that morning for
Speaker 2: a work trip.
Speaker 3: He checked into a hotel that night.
Speaker 2: Investigator said, he spent very little time at the job
Speaker 2: site during the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, according to the indictment. I actually read the indictment
Speaker 1: over the weekend because a lot.
Speaker 3: Of fun, A lot of fun time, you are, I know?
Speaker 1: Anyway, according to the indictment, besides two brief visits to
Speaker 1: the job site area, he wasn't there. Conversely, electronic evidence
Speaker 1: cameras from the hotel he stayed in and just all
Speaker 1: the cameras that now surround us in our everyday life,
Speaker 1: showed him driving to various locations and discarding unknown items
Speaker 1: in separate trash cans.
Speaker 3: Ah, he's a heads up right.
Speaker 1: I saw one of the still images from the hotel
Speaker 1: hallway camera of him caring a bag of trash and
Speaker 1: a pair of shoes, per the indictment. Barry Morphew deleted
Speaker 1: a text chain on May sixth, so this was four
Speaker 1: days before she was reported missing on that Mother's Day.
Speaker 1: He deleted a May sixth text chain with the wife,
Speaker 1: though a screenshot of one message from her remained, and
Speaker 1: it read I'm done. I could care less what you're
Speaker 1: up to and have been for years. We just need
Speaker 1: to figure this out civilly, So right there in writing,
Speaker 1: it seems like this marriage is over and has been
Speaker 1: over for quite some time.
Speaker 3: Again.
Speaker 2: She's reported missing on May tenth. On May ninth was
Speaker 2: the last known communication, via a text message. About two
Speaker 2: in the afternoon on May ninth, she sent a text
Speaker 2: message to a guy out of state, to a guy
Speaker 2: that she may have been having an affair with. A
Speaker 2: Short time after that, Barry Morphew gets home and his
Speaker 2: cell phone was turned off for the next eight hours.
Speaker 3: Which is that's just unusual.
Speaker 2: Regardless of who you are and how old you are,
Speaker 2: if you have a cell phone, it's very unusual for
Speaker 2: you to turn it off nowadays.
Speaker 1: The neighbor called Barry around five pm on Mother's Day
Speaker 1: told him that his daughters were concerned because they couldn't
Speaker 1: reach Suzanne on her cell phone all day. He told
Speaker 1: the neighbor to check the house look for her bike
Speaker 1: because he knew she was going on a bike ride. Now,
Speaker 1: when they couldn't find her or the bike, he told
Speaker 1: the neighbor to call the sheriff at that point. Now,
Speaker 1: that's odd to me. The daughters, by the way, are
Speaker 1: adult daughters. And if they couldn't find mom, why wouldn't
Speaker 1: they call dad?
Speaker 3: Why would they tell the neighbor.
Speaker 1: Furthermore, the daughters couldn't reach Mom on her cell phone
Speaker 1: when they sent her Happy Mother's Day texts. Who texts
Speaker 1: them mother, Happy Mother's Day. That's a phone call you
Speaker 1: have to make.
Speaker 3: Isn't it. Mom is not going to be that's not
Speaker 3: gonna be sufficient.
Speaker 2: No, she's not gonna be.
Speaker 3: Mom's gonna be pissed off if you send that text.
Speaker 2: Well, they found the officers showed up, the home was locked.
Speaker 2: Suzanne is gone, the bike is gone. They located the
Speaker 2: bike about a half a mile less than a mile,
Speaker 2: i should say, from the house, and the bike and
Speaker 2: the helmet found just off of a highway.
Speaker 1: We'll tell you how they put the case together, why
Speaker 1: they couldn't put this case together right away, and more
Speaker 1: details about what they think happened to Suzanne.
Speaker 2: We are in the midst of true crime Tuesday, we're
Speaker 2: telling you the case of Suzanne Morphew, who disappeared on
Speaker 2: Mother's Day twenty twenty and was never seen again. Her husband,
Speaker 2: you can imagine, was a person of interest pretty soon
Speaker 2: into the disappearance. The public later learned that they were
Speaker 2: having difficulty in their many marriage.
Speaker 3: She may have.
Speaker 2: Been having an affair with an old high school classmate.
Speaker 2: There was something that had come out about that.
Speaker 1: Seems like the marriage had been over for quite some time,
Speaker 1: based on what her text messages to him were.
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 2: So, about a year after she disappears, the husband, Barry,
Speaker 2: is arrested and charged with murder, tampering with physical evidence,
Speaker 2: attempting to influence a public servant in connection with the death,
Speaker 2: et cetera. He pleaded not guilty. Charges were dropped without prejudice,
Speaker 2: which means that they could refile them if they wanted to.
Speaker 2: But again, they hadn't found her body. They just had
Speaker 2: a bunch of circumstantial evidence that was curious at best
Speaker 2: about this guy's behavior.
Speaker 1: Her body wasn't found until three years after she was
Speaker 1: reported missing. Or remains were found in and around a
Speaker 1: shallow grave about an hour south of her home. The
Speaker 1: majority of her bones were recovered and were significantly bleached.
Speaker 1: They also recovered a cancer port and items of clothing,
Speaker 1: including biking clothes she was known to wear, but they
Speaker 1: said that it was unlikely her body decomposed at that
Speaker 1: site and that the decomposition was inconsistent with her wearing
Speaker 1: the bike clothing at the time, so she was dumped
Speaker 1: there with the bike clothing, which is consistent with the story.
Speaker 1: He told authorities that he knew she was going out
Speaker 1: for a bike ride when she was missing. They also
Speaker 1: found things in her body, a chemical mixture known as BAM.
Speaker 1: What is that well, that is animal tranquilizer.
Speaker 2: Buttorphenol as a parent, as a parne and medetta to medine.
Speaker 1: Turns out the husband, Barry, used BAM all the time
Speaker 1: to sedate and transport deer on his farm in Andiana
Speaker 1: prior to moving to Colorado. He used BAM in Colorado
Speaker 1: as recently as the month before she disappeared to tranquilize
Speaker 1: a deer in the breezeway of his home. No other
Speaker 1: private citizens or private businesses in any of the surrounding
Speaker 1: counties had purchased BAM from twenty seventeen to twenty twenty.
Speaker 3: Now when that came through, When whoever.
Speaker 1: Did the deep dive of the data and went through
Speaker 1: all of the receipts or lack thereof of Bam, what
Speaker 1: a moment. He was the sole person who had access
Speaker 1: to Bam in the area when she went missing and
Speaker 1: her body turns turns up pumped full of it.
Speaker 2: Which again, this doesn't a put the murder weapon in
Speaker 2: his hands or be connect him directly to her disappearance.
Speaker 2: But you can make a very very strong circumstantial case.
Speaker 3: It's still evidence. It puts the murder weapon in his hands.
Speaker 3: In my summation, Well.
Speaker 1: I mean, but how yet it puts the he's the
Speaker 1: only person that had access to the weapon that killed
Speaker 1: her in the state.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, okay, I'll go with that, your honor. I
Speaker 2: retract my previous question. This guy has an attorney named
Speaker 2: iris A Ten who defended him in the first trial,
Speaker 2: and she says of Barry, not only is he a
Speaker 2: loving father, but he was a loving husband. I've handled
Speaker 2: thousands of cases that I've never seen prosecutors mishandle a
Speaker 2: case so recklessly. The case was fumbled so terribly. Three
Speaker 2: prosecutors were penalized after Barry's case was rightly dismissed. I
Speaker 2: dedicated the second half of my career to ensure that
Speaker 2: what happened to Barry doesn't happen to another In this
Speaker 2: in person saying that.
Speaker 1: Bothers me the most is there is a picture of
Speaker 1: him and his adult daughters. They're adult daughters, young adults,
Speaker 1: and they're leaving a court hearing. I'm assuming when the
Speaker 1: charges were dismissed without prejudice the first time, and they
Speaker 1: are done up, made up to a t, they are
Speaker 1: glamed out, they are smiling with their father walking away
Speaker 1: from the courthouse, And there is nothing in any of
Speaker 1: the things I read that they came out and said,
Speaker 1: you know, I loved my mom. Whoever killed my mom?
Speaker 1: It seems like they there was some sort of weird
Speaker 1: relationship there with them just texting their mother on Mother's Day,
Speaker 1: and it seems like the daughters were in.
Speaker 3: Freaking cahoots on this one.
Speaker 2: Isn't it.
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: I thought that as well, not necessarily because the text
Speaker 2: message on Mother's Day. But that's a good point. But
Speaker 2: I would find it really hard to with all of
Speaker 2: the circumstantial evidence that was originally brought up against this guy,
Speaker 2: that you, as a daughter wouldn't have questions. Yeah, you
Speaker 2: wouldn't have a whole series of questions for your own
Speaker 2: father about that.
Speaker 1: Also, then well, if it's not him, then who And
Speaker 1: you don't sleep till you find out who killed your mom.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I think we're gonna hear more about that. Okay, excellent,
Speaker 3: all right, we'll see you tomorrow.