48 Hours - The Vanishing of Suzanne Morphew

Episode Date: July 2, 2023

After a mother of two vanishes on Mother’s Day, bizarre clues emerge — a chipmunk alibi, a tranquilizer gun and a spy pen. "48 Hours" correspondent Peter Van Sant reports.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to this podcast ad-free right now. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app today. Even if you love the thrill of true crime stories as much as I do, there are times when you want to mix it up. And that's where Audible comes in, with all the genres you love and new ones to discover. Explore thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and originals, with more added all the time. Listening to Audible can lead to positive change in your mood, your habits,

and even your overall well-being. And you can enjoy Audible anytime, while doing household chores, exercising, commuting, you name it. There's more to imagine when you listen. Sign up for a free 30-day Audible trial and your first audiobook is free. Visit audible.ca. In 2014, Laura Heavlin was in her home in Tennessee when she received a call from California. Her daughter, Erin Corwin, was missing. The young wife of a Marine had moved to the California desert

to a remote base near Joshua Tree National Park. They have to alert the military. And when they do, the NCIS gets involved. From CBS Studios and CBS News, this is 48 Hours NCIS. Listen to 48 Hours NCIS ad-free starting October 29th on Amazon 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 Morphew went missing on Mother's Day in May of 2020, and from there on out, it became a nationwide search for her. Suzanne Morphew 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 Morphew 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 Morphew 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's here, she was not home. And Barry says, well, maybe go look for her bike because 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 spy pen was given to Suzanne to record Barry Morphew 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 Morphew 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. As As a kid growing up in Chicago, there was one horror movie I was too scared to watch. It was called Candyman. The scary cult classic was set in the Chicago housing project. It was about this supernatural killer who would attack his victims if they said his name five times into a bathroom mirror.

Candyman. Candyman? Now we all know said his name five times into a bathroom mirror. Candyman. Candyman? Now, we all know chanting a name won't make a killer magically appear, but did you know that the movie Candyman was partly inspired by an actual murder? I was struck by both how spooky it was, but also how outrageous it was. We're going to talk to the people who were there. And we're also going to uncover the larger story. My architect was shocked when he saw how this was created. Literally shocked.

And we'll look at what the story tells us about injustice in America. If you really believed in tough on crime, then you wouldn't make it easy to crawl into medicine cabinets and kill our women. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder, early and ad-free, with a 48-hour plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. Call in two medicine cabinets and kill our women. Listen to Candyman, the true story behind the bathroom mirror murder,

early and ad-free, with a 48-hour plus subscription on Apple Podcasts. Hot shot Australian attorney Nicola Gaba was born into legal royalty. Her specialty? Representing some of the city's most infamous gangland criminals. However, while Nicola held the underworld's darkest secrets, the most dangerous secret was her own. She's going to all the major groups within Melbourne's underworld, and she's informing on them all. I'm Marsha Clark, host of the new podcast, Informants Lawyer X. In my long career in criminal justice as a prosecutor and

defense attorney, I've seen some crazy cases, and this one belongs right at the top of the list. She was addicted to the game she had created. She just didn't know how to stop. Now, through dramatic interviews and access, I'll reveal the truth behind one of the world's most shocking legal scandals. Listen to Informants Lawyer X exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify and listen to more Exhibit C True Crime shows early and ad-free right now. What happened on this road is a real mystery. No one knows. Where is Suzanne?

In the days, weeks, and months after Suzanne Morphew 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. 49-year-old Suzanne Morphew remains missing. Home of a missing woman from Chafee 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? And we're going to fan out and we're going to work that area very carefully, okay? Four months in, Suzanne's brother, Andrew Moorman, organized a citizen search. He said he felt he had to do something, anything.

I'd hoped to find her alive and at some point you have to realize when somebody's missing after so long that the chances of that diminished radically 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 Ridenour has covered the story for his local morning show. Hippie Radio 97.5 with Dan Argo. Good morning, 827. Barry and Suzanne Morphew 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 Mallory attended college, and the Morphews 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 Morphews' 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 Moorman. My sister had 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 because that's what he did in Indiana. Cody Cox was part of Barry's landscaping crew for nearly two years when Barry first arrived in Colorado. I talked pretty highly about Barry because I was with him all the time.

He was 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's a sweetheart. She's 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 Morphew 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 was the thought somebody threw it out of a window, perhaps? That's the thinking, yes. Threw it out of a window, perhaps? That's the thing, 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. 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 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 Morphew 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 Chafee 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 3 p.m. on May 9, 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? Have you ever wondered who created that bottle of sriracha that's living in your fridge? Or why nearly every house in America has at least one game of Monopoly? Introducing The Best Idea Yet, a brand new podcast from Wondery and T-Boy about the surprising origin stories of the

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You can listen to The Best Idea Yet early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus. It's just the best idea yet. In the Pacific Ocean, halfway between Peru and New Zealand, lies a tiny volcanic island. It's a little-known British territory called Pitcairn, and it harboured a deep, dark scandal. There wouldn't be a girl on Pitcairn once they reach the age of 10 that would still have heard it. It just happens to all of us. I'm journalist Luke Jones and for almost two years I've been investigating a shocking story

that has left deep scars on generations of women and girls from Pitcairn. When there's nobody watching, nobody going to report it, people will get away with what they can get away with. In the Pitcairn trials, I'll be uncovering a story of abuse and the fight for justice that has brought a unique, lonely Pacific island to the brink of extinction. Listen to the Pitcairn trials exclusively on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify. It was just days after Suzanne Morphew went missing when investigators make that intriguing discovery. They discover a spy pen.

A spy pen. A spy pen. Aya 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 six 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, nonstop. 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 two-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. 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 lovers' 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, OK, I'm on WA. 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 notice 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, Ayas 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 civilly. So the only thing that makes sense is that Barry Morphew 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 eight 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 Lemire 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 locate bodies.

Lemire is the CEO of the Burla Corporation. Helps get people convicted. 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 used every day in cases around the world. Cases like the disappearance of Suzanne Morphew. Investigators created a burlar 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 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 p.m. that night, but the data pulled from the truck shows that the truck was put in reverse and moved some 96 feet closer to his house around 9.30 p.m. Investigators think that's when he could have loaded Suzanne's body. Investigators think that's when he could have loaded Suzanne's body. Initially, Berry 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 miles from Salida. But the truck's computers show 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 four-hour window, approximately 4 a.m. to 8 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 four-hour window, the truck's data does not provide answers. Why is data missing sometimes? Well, it gets overwritten. 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 up-close 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 the vehicle. I don't like to pay to have it disposed at a landfill. 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 1242 to 603 p.m. By then, he'd already spoken to older daughter Mallory, who told him she could not get in touch with her mother. That's when the more few neighbors were contacted and could find no sign of Suzanne. Barry asked them at that time if the bike was there to go check on her.

Her bicycle is not here. Barry asked 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 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. 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. The large Morphew home remained sealed off. While investigators searched the Morphew 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 ten 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 Morphew's 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 Reidenauer 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 tranq 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 Teledart model 706 rifle. They use this a lot in parks throughout the country. Andrew Katers, 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 in May 2021. Tonight, the husband of Suzanne Morphew is behind bars accused of killing her. The Chafee County Sheriff says Barry Morphew 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

Berry 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. 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 Morphew's car

and they found male DNA on the glove box. And it wasn't Barry Morphew'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? who had attacked other women, and it raised a disturbing question. Had Suzanne fallen into the hands of a sexual predator? Go inside the Suzanne Morphew case at 48hours.com.

In September 2021, at the Chafee County Courthouse in Salida, Judge Patrick Murphy heard arguments about whether there was enough evidence to try Barry Morphew for murder. The judge named off three different scenarios, saying Suzanne Morphew left willingly, Barry Morphew 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 Libler 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 Tempe, 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. nation. But it is very, very curious. Barry Morphew 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 cash only bond.

And are they monitoring him in some fashion? Barry Morphew is wearing an ankle monitor for them to track him to make sure that he is staying in Chafee County. A few days later, on September 20th, 2021, Barry Morphew and daughters Mallory and Macy are all smiles as they leave the jail. Barry, how does it feel? They stand firmly behind their dad. Barry declined our request for an interview. Barry Morphew's homicide trial was to begin on April 28, 2022, but in the months leading up to that date, Judge Murphy recused himself, and Judge Ramsey Lama replaced him. And Barry's defense team, led by attorney Iris Etan, 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 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. testify. This case is incredibly unique. Law professor Aya 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 pretrial hearing was about to begin, District Attorney Linda Stanley filed a motion to dismiss the murder charges against Barry Morphew 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 advance warning. I didn't know a dismissal was coming today, although the writing was on the wall. In her motion for dismissal, D.A. Stanley told the judge that officials believe investigators are close to discovering the location of Suzanne Morphew's body. Investigators are close to discovering the location of Suzanne Morphew's body. Court papers specifically mention a remote and mountainous region nearby the Morphew residence that will be excavated after five feet of snow melts. Where is Suzanne Morphew's body? That is the million-dollar question.

Remember, there was an approximate four-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, has 1.1 million acres. There's plenty of places to dispose of the body. Defense attorney Etan denies Barry has any involvement in his wife's disappearance. Barry Morphew loves Suzanne Morphew. He loves her, and he misses her, and he wants to know where Suzanne Morphew. He loves her and he misses her and he wants to know where Suzanne Morphew 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. Mallory 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. Accused of his mother's murder at 14. What kid could commit a crime To be continued... 48 hours, Saturday on CBS and streaming on Paramount+. If you like this podcast, you can listen ad-free right now

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