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