Suzanne Morphew Part 1
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This is Jessica Knoll, host of the new series Back in Crime. If you're a follower of true crime, you're probably familiar with some of the most shocking stories from our history. Horrific tragedies like the Columbine Massacre. He turned the gun straight at us and shot. Oh my God, the window went out. And the kid standing there with me, I think he got hit. Okay. Oh God. And notorious criminals like cult leader Charles Manson.

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My name is Sarah Turney, and this is Voices for Justice.

Today I'm discussing the murder of Suzanne Morphew, a mother of two who was last seen around Mother's Day in 2020 in Maysville, Colorado. When Suzanne's daughters didn't get a response to the text they sent her on Mother's Day, they of course started to get worried. And when her bicycle was found at the bottom of a ravine that evening, everyone feared the worst.

But as friends came forward and investigators learned more about Suzanne's background and her life, the investigation really only pointed in one direction, to Suzanne's husband, Barry. At first, he claimed the two had a perfect marriage, but Suzanne was secretly documenting abuse, and by her friends' accounts, preparing to leave him and start a new life.

To investigators and the public, this seemed to be an open-and-shut case. But a DNA sample found in Suzanne's car put the prosecution's entire case in jeopardy, and some suspect that those involved with the prosecution were corrupt from the start. Now, after three long years, Suzanne's body has just recently been found, in a place that wasn't even on detectives' radar, adding even more complexity to this already complicated case.

This is the case of Suzanne Morphew. Suzanne was born Suzanne Renee Mormon in 1971. She was the youngest of her four siblings, two boys and two girls. She's the daughter of Adrian and Jean Mormon, who's actually the founder of Jean's Root Beer and Hot Dogs. This is a drive-in restaurant in Alexandria, Indiana, which is still popular today. Alexandria is where she was born and raised. This is about an hour northeast of Indianapolis. By

By all accounts, Suzanne was well-liked in high school and described as shy and beautiful. She even competed for homecoming queen. Now, it's important to know that her family lived on the first tee of a golf course, where is which at age 17, Suzanne met Barry Morphew.

Some sources say Suzanne and Barry met in high school, but this is only partially true. Suzanne was still in high school, but Barry, four years her senior, was a student at Purdue University when they started dating. They actually met over the summer while he worked at that golf course, Tending Greens. He was known around Alexandria for being a star baseball player. He was even drafted for the Toronto Blue Jays, but didn't end up playing professionally due to an injury.

A 2022 episode of 48 Hours refers to Barry as an avid hunter and a man's man. After graduation, Suzanne also went to school at Purdue with Barry. She also found her lifelong best friend, Sheila Oliver, her freshman year roommate.

Barry and Suzanne got married in 1994 after her college graduation. From there, Barry started his own landscaping business, and Suzanne taught middle school. Eventually, she quit to become a stay-at-home mom when she and Barry welcomed their two daughters, Mallory and Macy Morphew.

They lived in Arcadia, Indiana until 2018, when they decided to move to Colorado for a fresh start after their oldest daughter Mallory moved there to attend college. They ended up buying a home in Maysville, Colorado, just a few miles west of Salida. Maysville is a very small town with a population of fewer than 150 people.

For much of her adult life, Suzanne also fought a recurring battle with cancer, non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. It had relapsed after they moved to Colorado, and she was receiving cancer treatments from a clinic in Salida when she disappeared. Her last chemotherapy treatment was about six months before she turned 49 years old, on April 30th, 2020.

The next week after her birthday, on May 5th, 2020, both Morphew daughters and one of their friends packed up and left Colorado for a camping trip to Utah and Idaho. They were supposed to return on May 10th, Mother's Day. So let's talk about that day.

On the morning of Mother's Day, Barry Morphew got up between 4 and 5 a.m. and headed to Broomfield, Colorado for a landscaping project his company was set to begin. Now, Broomfield is about 150 miles from the Morphew's home and takes about three hours to get there.

Barry says Suzanne was still sleeping in bed when he left. At 8.41 a.m., Barry arrived at the Holiday Inn in Broomfield and texted Suzanne, quote, You up? Happy Mother's Day. I love you. He does not get a response, but he says he doesn't think much of it because the cell service near his home is spotty.

According to Barry, Suzanne's plan for the day was to clean the house to prepare for the girls' return. It was possible that the friend who went on the camping trip with them would stay the night at the Morphew's home as well, so Suzanne was trying to do some extra cleaning. Around 3.30pm, Barry texts Suzanne again, this time asking her to call him. But again, there's no response.

Both of Barry and Suzanne's daughters informed their dad that they had texted their mom for Mother's Day and never heard back. One of the girls reached out to Jean and Martin Ritter, neighbors of the Morphews, and asked them to go over there to see if their mom was at home. Jean soon called Barry back to tell him that Suzanne was not there.

Now, it's important to know that one of Suzanne's favorite hobbies was riding her bike, specifically mountain biking. So Barry asks his neighbors to see if Suzanne's bike was at home, and when they say no, he asks them to call the police. Between 5.45 and 6 p.m., Suzanne was reported as a possible missing person.

Jean recalls that she even left written notes posted outside the house, so that if Suzanne did come back from a possible bike ride, she would know that they were looking for her, and that the police had been called. Officers from the Chaffey County Sheriff's Office arrived at the Morphew home at about 7.30, and they immediately began searching for Suzanne and her bike. And it didn't take long for them to find her blue Santa Cruz bike with colorful pedals at the bottom of a hill near a ravine.

So let's talk about this scene. They found the bike with the front tire pointed downwards towards the creek. But the scene just didn't look right. Investigators say that they immediately suspected that it was all staged. They say that there was no indication of a crash taking place. The grass and the plants around the bike were all fine. They weren't flattened like you'd imagine they would be if a human body made impact with the ground.

They also examined the dirt shoulder of the road above the ravine and didn't find any skid marks or tracks from a bicycle. They reported no damage to the bike or its tires. One of the responding officers, Deputy Brown, said, quote, "'After all these observations, I started to question if something criminal had occurred, as it looked like the bike was purposely thrown in this location.'"

Around this same time, at the Morphew's home, a teenage boy arrives with his father and sister. He is identified by police as the boyfriend of one of the Morphew's daughters. He tells officers that he began looking for Suzanne around 6pm, after his girlfriend told him that she couldn't get in touch with her. He shares that he's the one who actually got Suzanne into mountain biking in the first place, and he describes her skills as intermediate. She knew what she was doing.

And he adds some important context here. He says it wouldn't be like Suzanne to ride the trail along Highway 225 where her bike was found, saying it's just not a very rideable area. He said she'd have to carry her bike for a while before being in a place where she could actually ride it. And he also offers to show investigators some trails where he knows Suzanne does commonly go for rides.

Police interview him further, some of which was captured on body camera footage. When the officer asks if he's aware of Suzanne and Barry having any problems, he immediately looks to his father, and his father tells him to answer honestly. So he tells officers that he does think that they had some problems, but it's a quote, normal husband-wife type deal. The officer continues to ask him if Suzanne and Barry have talked about separating. He responds, quote,

They have, yeah. Deputy Brown then conducts a search of the Morphew home, and he doesn't find much that appears to be out of order. There are no signs of forced entry. And this next part is important. He notes that there are security cameras outside, and states that the house is well-kept, with the exception of one of the daughter's bedrooms, where the bed is stripped of its sheets.

In Barry and Suzanne's bedroom, Brown found one round of .22 caliber ammunition next to the bed, but it had not been fired. He also reports what appears to be a rifle storage case under the bed. And as Brown was leaving, another responding officer brought his attention to Barry's Bobcat skid steer. It was parked in the driveway next to a trailer. Now,

Now, if you don't know what a skid skier is, neither did I before looking it up. It's basically a large, multi-purpose piece of construction equipment. You can attach a variety of tools for construction or landscaping projects, but it is often used for digging. The second deputy told Brown that there were, quote, barefoot marks, or footprints in the bucket of the machine, and that the cutting blade appeared to be freshly replaced.

When the dogs searched the property, they alerted to the bobcat and the trailer. Reports say that one of the dogs even tried to lay down in the seat of the bobcat.

Now, of course, there were searches outside the home for Suzanne as well. Deputies were contacting local hospitals and morgues to try to find her. They also tried to track her cell phone, which was missing from the home, and they found very quickly that it last pinged at around 4.23 a.m. on May 10th. This was in an area nearby, about 11.5 miles west of a cell tower in Poncha Springs, but the phone now appeared to be turned off.

At about 8.42 p.m., Barry returned to Salida from Broomfield and positively identified Suzanne's bike. Barry asks officers if they found any tracks, human or animal. They say no, and Barry suggests that a mountain lion may have gotten Suzanne. But this strikes investigators as odd.

because there was no blood or a sign of a struggle at the scene. Barry and officers then went back to his home so he could pick out a piece of clothing of Suzanne's for dogs to use for scent. He ended up picking up a pair of her biker shorts from the floor of their closet. Suzanne's daughters, Mallory and Macy, returned from their trip later that evening.

Really, it was all hands on deck for this search for Suzanne. Over a hundred people and canines assisted, and they closed down the entrance to Suzanne and Barry's neighborhood. But nothing came of these searches.

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As we know these things go, after conducting searches for Suzanne, investigators began interviewing people who knew her. Let's talk about what Barry said in his first interview on the 11th, because it does change over time.

He explains that the day before Suzanne went missing, they had a great night. He says they grilled steaks, had sex, then went to bed early. On the morning Suzanne went missing, he says that he left the house around 5am and didn't speak to Suzanne before he left because she was still sleeping. He says he texted her twice during the day and got no response, just like I already told you.

and that his daughters told him that they had also not heard back from Suzanne. But it didn't take long for Barry to make his first discrepancy when talking to investigators. Barry admitted that he did own a variety of firearms, but they were all locked in a gun safe in the garage. Meanwhile, in a search of the Morphew home on that same day, investigators found a high-powered rifle in a closet on the ground floor, and a 12-gauge shotgun lying against the wall in the garage, neither of which were secured in a safe.

Now, this first interview isn't super eventful. I'm just trying to stay in chronological order, otherwise it gets very confusing. So we will definitely get into Barry's future interviews as we progress through the timeline.

Now, Mallory and Macy were interviewed next by Sergeant His Julian. The transcripts do make it clear that the girls are the ones being interviewed, but it redacts their names for privacy's sake, so we don't know which one of them made each of these statements. But here's what they said. One confirmed that Suzanne does mountain bike nearly every afternoon, often on a wide trail across the highway. She said that Suzanne would normally take her cell phone, sunglasses, and hydration backpack with her.

One daughter was asked if she had concerns with her parents' relationship, and she answered no. She said she did not believe Suzanne would leave the area for an extended amount of time. However, later that same day while speaking with the girls, one of them told the sergeant that her parents did argue frequently, and that she was scared they would get a divorce. She said they were, quote, not doing well, and that she thought it might be best if they separated.

She said they were, quote, in an unsafe place emotionally and weren't getting along. She said both her mom and dad had felt unsafe in the relationship at some point. She was asked if her mom would leave home because she felt unsafe, and she answered no, but later said that if her mom did leave, she wouldn't leave without immediately letting her and her sister know that she's okay.

Police do end up getting search warrants for the girls' cell phones, and investigators found a text from one of them that read, quote, I'm just so sad, name redacted.

and I texted mom for Mother's Day, and she still hasn't answered, and I'm scared her and dad probably got in a big fight, and I don't even know. It makes me want to be gone even more, because I don't want to be around them. It hurts me. And I know if Name Redacted is working, I might have to be home a lot more, and it'll probably be the worst summer of my life.

Now, of course, as investigators gather more information, they conduct more searches. They use drones, canines. They were searching in water. And finally, on May 13th, there's a break in the case. Investigators find what they believe is Suzanne's teal bike helmet off Highway 15 near the Morphew home.

There's a folded piece of paper inside listing Suzanne's contact information, as well as Barry, Mallory, and Macy's phone numbers. On the 14th, a dedicated tip line was established for her case. On the 15th, Monarch Pass, a popular spot for outdoor recreation, was closed for a search. Suzanne's nephew set up a GoFundMe page to raise money for search efforts, and a Facebook page dedicated to finding Suzanne was set up as well.

On the 17th, Barry posted a video online, publicly pleading for her safe return. In it, he says, quote, I want her to know that the family wants her back, and we love her. We're out there working for her. Barry offered a $100,000 reward leading for information to Suzanne's whereabouts. This was actually matched by a family friend, for a total of a $200,000 reward.

Chafee County Search and Rescue, the Colorado Department of Corrections, Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the Salida Police Department, and Fremont County Sheriff's Office all aided in this investigation. And it wasn't long before the FBI got involved. Chafee County Sheriff John Speezy made a formal request on the 18th for any doorbell, security camera, or hunting camera footage from the areas near Suzanne's home. They wanted everything from May 8th to May 12th.

Now, it is worth noting here that the Morphew's own security cameras were apparently not plugged in during this time, so investigators weren't able to find anything there.

While Suzanne and Barry hadn't lived in this community very long and were not super well-known, Suzanne's disappearance hit the community hard. So many people wanted to help. But in another press conference, Sheriff Speezy thanked those who were volunteering to search for Suzanne, and at the same time said that he wanted professionals to remain on the search.

When asked, he answered that Barry was cooperating with law enforcement. But as the days passed, investigators began to put together a much more sinister picture of what life was really like for the Morphews.

investigators speak to Suzanne's sister Melinda, who shared a text Suzanne had sent her on May 8th, two days before her disappearance. It read, quote, "'It's hard dealing with the harsh abrasiveness and having to show respect. He's also been abusive, emotionally and physically. There's so much. I went through a period of acceptance, and I feel more angry now. Anger at what I've allowed.'

Now, Melinda was not shy in telling investigators what she thought of Barry and her sister's marriage. She said Suzanne had spent years as a submissive housewife when the couple still lived in Indiana. She said Barry controlled all the couple's finances, and Suzanne suspected that he was cheating on her. Melinda said Suzanne, quote, "...threw caution to the wind by moving to Colorado, because Barry wanted to go there to hunt."

Melinda referred to Barry as one who lives a double life, a liar, an adulterer, a bully, controlling, someone who fools people a lot, is in love with money, and someone who treats his wife and daughters as trophies. She said as soon as she found out Suzanne was missing, she believed Barry was responsible.

Investigators also interviewed Sheila Oliver, Suzanne's best friend, and Sheila was also quick to share her insight on the marriage and her concerns. Sheila shared that her daughter, who Suzanne also considered to be like a daughter, got married on Sunday, May 10th.

Suzanne was originally going to attend the wedding, but because of COVID, the wedding was downsized. Sheila says that Suzanne was excited to watch the wedding on livestream and to see pictures, because she had apparently been helping Sheila prepare. On May 9th, Sheila sent Suzanne two Snapchat messages, one at 6.40 and another at 6.48. Suzanne never opened them, and Sheila said that this immediately worried her, because Suzanne always promptly opened her messages.

And there's more.

She shared that when she visited Barry and Suzanne in Colorado in 2019, Barry apparently snuck through the woods to stalk them and see what they were doing. She shared another instance of when Suzanne was visiting Sheila and her husband in Indiana. Suzanne had apparently left her phone while she went to the bathroom, and Barry called her numerous times, then called Sheila, then called her husband to see what Suzanne was doing. And all these calls were made in just a few minutes.

Sheila also gave investigators text conversations between herself and Suzanne from March 25th, just a few weeks before Suzanne went missing. In them, Suzanne wrote, quote,

There's a redacted name here, but it's clear that it's one of Suzanne's daughters. So redacted name and I had a very tough talk yesterday. She's wary of the tension here. She knows how he is towards me and almost begged me to divorce him.

Later in the conversation, Suzanne says that the daughter she's talking about even suggested she get a restraining order against her dad. Suzanne said it made her sick to have this conversation with a teenager. In the same conversation, Suzanne calls Barry Jekyll and Hyde. She also writes, quote, he won't speak of divorce. Sheila tells investigators that she purchased a spy pen for Suzanne so that she could secretly record Barry in an effort to catch him in an affair.

Now, Suzanne had apparently wanted to buy this for herself, but she was scared of Barry finding out that she'd ordered it.

Ten days after Suzanne's disappearance, investigators found this spy pen. It was in a bin of bras in Suzanne's closet. From it, they learned that Suzanne herself was having an affair with a man named Jeff, and she had recorded herself having some conversations with him. Now, they do suspect that these recordings were actually accidental, but the pen also held recordings of Barry. These recordings included Barry listening to episodes of Forensic Files in his truck on the way to a job site in March.

And two of these episodes had details that investigators made note of. Now, our reporter Brooke actually reviewed the content of these episodes, and can confirm that one of them is about a girl who goes missing while riding her bike. And another episode called The Cheater is about a couple who are cheating on one another, and it ends in murder.

The pen also recorded a phone conversation between Barry and Suzanne. In it, they seem to be arguing over money. Suzanne is recorded saying, quote, This is all I hear every day. What I'm not. What I should think. I am not listening to that anymore. Listen to me. Listen to me. Barry interrupts her and she continues, quote,

Listen to me. Listen to me. I have lived for years being told how I should feel, how I should act, how I should look, what I should drink, what I shouldn't drink, what I should put in my body, what I shouldn't put in my body. I fell into this.

One really interesting part of this case for me was that early on, investigators couldn't figure out who this Jeff man was. So they began digging. They found that between May 8th and 9th, Suzanne's Facebook page added 23 people as friends. 20 of them were men, and 3 were named Jeff. But none were the Jeff from the recordings.

This Facebook activity was considered abnormal for Suzanne, because she hadn't actually sent a friend request to anyone in the entire year of 2020 until May 8th. This is when her account sent out a mass amount at once. Some people she friended that day say they didn't know her very well, but they knew Barry.

Many of them had not spoken to either of them since high school. After finding out Suzanne was missing, one of the men she friended on the 8th called the tip line to report it, saying he hadn't spoken to her in over 30 years, and found it very strange that she suddenly reached out.

But as they were conducting these interviews and trying to find out who Jeff was so they could determine what piece of this puzzle he may have, investigators were also working on building a clearer timeline of Barry Morphew's movements leading up to Suzanne going missing. And they found a lot.

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Now, investigators were able to build a clearer timeline of the days leading up to and the day of Suzanne's disappearance using Barry's cell phone records and data recorded by his Ford F-350 truck. On May 6th, Suzanne sent Barry a text message. Investigators believe that she was asking for a divorce. It said, quote, I'm done. I could care less about what you've been up to for years. We just need to figure this out civilly.

Barry responded, quote, I promise you were wrong about all the crazy thoughts about me. Only a fool would stray from an angel like you. When I'm dead, which won't be long, you guys will be taken care of. Barry sent Suzanne messages that afternoon that appeared to be threatening suicide. He used language like, quote, When I'm dead, going to see my savior. And this life on earth is a mere grain of sand compared to eternity.

But here's the thing. These messages weren't actually on Barry's phone. They had to be recovered, because Barry had deleted them. In fact, he had deleted the entire history of all calls from Suzanne that week. When investigators asked him why, he claimed he didn't remember deleting them, but figured he wanted to free up space.

Now, I think it's worth noting that in terms of space on his phone, he had 58 saved voicemails. And none of them were from Suzanne. But to be fair, we don't exactly know what the capacity of that phone was or what space he had left.

But let's continue. On Saturday, May 9th, the day before Suzanne went missing, this day where Barry says that he and Suzanne had a great night, they cooked steaks, they had sex, they went to bed early, this is what we know. Around 11.15am, Suzanne received two messages about resetting her Facebook password.

Now, we don't know if this was Suzanne or someone else really trying to change the password, or if her account had been flagged for suspicious activity after making so many friend requests the previous day. Barry's phone showed him arriving home just after this at 11.27am. At about 1.40pm, he started exchanging texts with a contact in his phone labeled Tim Backhoe.

He left the house again around 1.50 p.m. At 2.26, he texted Suzanne that he was headed home. Then at 2.31, quote, did you leave? According to his phone and his truck, he arrived home again around 2.43. And at 2.47 p.m., his phone entered airplane mode, which it stayed in all day until 10.17 p.m. that night when he powered it off. He turned it back on at 4.23 a.m.,

Now, investigators noted that on the night of May 9th through May 10th, Barry's phone pinged in 210 locations. And I'm saying it like that because for context, this is opposed to the nights of May 1st through May 8th, when it only pinged in 0 to 2 locations during the same hours. So obviously, there was something very different about this time period.

Data from Barry's truck shows that between 3.21 and 3.48 a.m., his truck was at the Morphew residence, but over 80 events occurred, many of them being the doors of the truck opening and closing.

Now, I do want to say that when considering this data from Barry's truck, it's very important to note that it doesn't record all events involving the truck, and that its memory for certain functions automatically deletes itself after some time. So all that to say, just take that number with a grain of salt.

Barry left his home around 5am on the morning of the 10th, and investigators know that he turned left on Highway 50, when he normally would have turned right to go to Broomfield, which, as a reminder, is where he told investigators he was headed for work that morning. Now, he did end up eventually turning around and going to Broomfield, making one stop along the way at an RTD bus stop. Here, he threw away some garbage from his truck.

He arrived at the Holiday Inn in Broomfield around 8.15am. He then threw away two white trash bags. He left the hotel around 10.06 and went to a nearby McDonald's, where security cameras capture him again throwing away items in two separate McDonald's trash cans. And he was seen on camera pushing something further down into one of the trash cans.

Next, he heads to a men's warehouse store, where he throws away some more items. He sits in the parking lot for about 40 minutes before returning to the Holiday Inn in a black t-shirt. Here, he changes at least his shirt and exits his room 20 minutes later in a white t-shirt.

He then heads to the job site, where he stays for about 30 minutes. Then he goes back to the Holiday Inn, and when he gets back, he throws away another white plastic bag and some black containers.

Now, I know that is a lot, so if you didn't keep track, that's a total of five different locations where Barry threw away various items from his truck, which was obviously an immediate red flag to investigators. But let's keep going through the timeline. Stay with me. Barry enters his room at 12.42pm, and then nothing happens for about four and a half hours. This is when he gets that first phone call from Jean Ritter about Suzanne possibly being missing.

But Barry just sits in his hotel room for about 45 minutes until 6.03pm. Then he brings some tools in from his truck and leaves them in the lobby. And he leaves the Holiday Inn's parking lot at 6.12pm.

When investigators seized and searched Barry's F-350 after Suzanne's disappearance, they were shocked to find that it was pretty messy, despite all these stops to throw out garbage. When they searched Suzanne's Range Rover, they found her sunglasses, hydration pack that she always took on her bike rides, as well as her purse which held her ID and credit cards. This only further led investigators to believe that she did not go on a bike ride on May 10th.

In fact, they note that there is no evidence that she left her home after 7.06pm on May 8th. There also aren't any witnesses that remember seeing her outside the home besides Barry.

When searching Barry's phone, investigators found several deleted web searches that led them to believe Barry was at least considering cheating on Suzanne. Some of them included, quote, Older Man Younger Woman Relationships YouTube LocalSnapSexed.com Find a Cute Girl Near Salida and a video called, quote,

Also in his deleted searches was, quote,

In 2020, in a small California mountain town, five women disappeared. I found out what happened to all of them, except one. A woman known as Dia, whose estate is worth millions of dollars. I'm Lucy Sheriff. Over the past four years, I've spoken with Dia's family and friends, and I've discovered that

Everyone has a different version of events. Hear the story on Where's Dear? Listen on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Unfortunately, investigators never recovered Suzanne's cell phone, and it did not ping again after 4-23 on May 10th. But they were able to get some information from her iCloud account. They found a note backed up on her iCloud on May 8th, where she lists 50 grievances that she had with Barry.

Now, I'm not going to go through them all, but I will go through the most chilling. Now, I have to assume that this first one is an abbreviation of physical. It reads P-H-Y-S abuse. The next one says chase me around resort and threatened. Mental abuse while drinking, N-Y-E. Name calling. Said I only needed for money.

Not safe alone with you. Can't be trusted. Oppressive. Took phone. Slam on brakes when angry. Gun. Threaten to jump out of car. Shame and guilt daily for not meeting expectations. Verbal abuse. Your lack of control over me equals insecurities equals sick relationship. And monkey app.

So, let's dig in a little bit deeper to this. It's noted that monkey app refers to a dating app. The note about chasing her around the resort is from a trip to Mexico they took in late 2019. Suzanne told her friends that Barry took her phone to go through it. Another item on the list stated that Barry accused her of having a boyfriend on May 6th.

Now, of course, there's no denying that they're looking at Barry. Barry interviewed with investigators again several times between May and July, and investigators noted that he changed his story quite a bit throughout the interviews. On May 13th, he sat down with CBI agent Joseph Cahill and Chafee County detective Robin Burgess. Here, he gave some background information on his family. They learned that Suzanne is technically unemployed, but

but does invoicing work for Barry's current business, Sunset Farms LLC. He says they have joint bank accounts and a 501c3 called the Suzanne R. Morphew Hope Foundation. Barry says that on a normal day, Suzanne wakes up, has her coffee, reads her Bible, checks her emails, and rides her bike around the neighborhood.

He recounts the weekend's events by telling investigators that on May 9th, he was working on a rock beach project. The last text he received from Suzanne came between 11am and noon, when she asked him to pick up some chemicals for their hot tub. He again tells the story about them grilling steaks and says that it was a good time. In fact, he says it was one of the best nights they'd had in a while, because Suzanne, quote, didn't

didn't have any chemicals in her. By chemicals, he says he means the drugs and alcohol he claimed Suzanne was taking. He said they intentionally put their phones away to spend time with one another. He also says that he had pre-loaded his truck for the trip to Bloomfield the next day, and says he didn't go back outside before he and Suzanne had sex and went to bed before 8 p.m. He then set his alarm for 4.30 a.m.,

He tells investigators that he last saw Suzanne wearing short white shorts and a white string-style shirt when they went to bed.

As for the 10th, Barry gave a description of his travel route that did not include the left turn and the direction of where Suzanne's helmet was found. He also said he went straight to the Holiday Inn, not mentioning the trash run of the bus stop. He says he went to the hotel, rested, then went to the job site around 10 a.m., went to a McDonald's to clean his windshield, then back to the hotel and back to the job site. He says he was at the job site when Jean Ritter called him.

So he left the job site, dropped his tools off in the hotel lobby for his crew, then headed back to Salida. Now, when investigators asked him, he originally said that he and Suzanne had no marital problems at all, but eventually admitted that they did fight sometimes. He said Suzanne's alcohol and drug use led her to act hateful towards him and accuse him of trying to control her.

He denied ever having any physical altercations with Suzanne and said he was not physically abusive.

During this same interview, Barry listed a few people who he thought may be involved. One of them was a man named Cody Cox, who worked as a contractor for Barry's company. Barry claimed that Cox had threatened to kill him over being fired. He also pointed his finger at one of his neighbors, quote, cleaning lady and her boyfriend. Now during this interview, Agent Cahill noticed scratches on Barry's upper left arm. When asked, Barry said that they were from a tree while hiking.

Investigators also asked Barry to take a polygraph test, but he said he would not consent to something that was not reliable or admissible in court.

After his interview, investigators noted that according to surveillance video, Barry was at the hotel, not the job site when Gene Ritter called him, and that he quickly switched from saying he had a perfect marriage to saying that he and Suzanne fought frequently due to her use of substances. So from here, police go to Barry's co-workers to try to learn more about him. They first interviewed Morgan Gentile, a contractor who Barry hired after she was fired from another company they both worked for.

Morgan was with Barry for the Rock Beach project on May 9th and was a part of the Broomfield assignment, and she had a story to tell. Morgan says that Barry was supposed to pick her up and take her to the job site in Broomfield on Sunday evening at 5.30pm, not a.m., but she says that around 11.18am, Barry called her and says she needed to bring an extra person to work on the wall.

Morgan said she agreed to bring contractor Jeff Puckett, and that Barry didn't provide an explanation as to why he went to Broomfield early, and didn't pick her up like he said he would. She says that around 6.09pm, he called her to say he had a family emergency and was leaving Broomfield, but that he was leaving the tools she and Jeff would need in the hotel lobby. She says that around 7am on the 11th, Barry called her and said that Suzanne was missing, and he thought a mountain lion may have attacked her.

Now, investigators actually go back and interview her a second time, and in this interview, she revealed even more. She says that Jeff ended up staying in the hotel room Barry left, and that when she opened the door, she smelled chlorine so strong it made her eyes water. Now, she did say that it did not smell like cleaning chemicals, but like chlorine from a swimming pool. She and Jeff found damp towels on the floor.

And Jeff found what he called an insurance document belonging to Barry under one of the pillows. He threw it away because he didn't know what it was for.

Now, Morgan also recounts that when Barry called her around 11.18 on the 10th, he sounded like he was hungover. But she knew that he wasn't because he didn't drink. She says she remembers thinking to herself that he must have had the worst night of his life the night before. And maybe most damning of all, she says that on May 9th, when they were finishing up this Rock Beach project...

She made a comment to Barry, asking him if he knew that pigs could eat a whole human body in only two hours. She says Barry responded that he could, quote, bury a body and it would never be found.

Investigators also interviewed Cody Cox, the man that Barry said threatened him over being fired. When police interviewed Cox on the 14th, he said that the contractor Jeff Puckett, that same one helping Morgan finish the Broomfield project, had started a rumor that Cox said that he wanted to fight Barry for firing him. Cox says that although he was not happy with being fired, he had never physically threatened Barry.

He describes Suzanne as a nice lady, saying she had brought cookies to his children. He denied having anything to do with her disappearance and was cleared. So they go back to Barry. This time he's interviewed by Agent Cahill and his partner for the case, Agent Derek Graham.

This happened on May 21st. They were there to review Suzanne's victimology packet. Here, they once again found discrepancies in his story. Agents asked him if he set an alarm for 4.30 on Sunday morning, and this time he says he just woke up by himself without an alarm. They asked why he didn't pick up Morgan like he said he would, and he answered that it was because she smokes.

They asked about the insurance documentation found in the hotel room, and he says it must have belonged to the guy who stayed in the room after him. Barry also said that the room probably smelled like chlorine because the hotel used it to clean for COVID. In this interview, Barry also discussed Suzanne's drug and alcohol use more, saying she abused antidepressants, and he begged her to stop taking pills because they made her mean and angry.

He also said Suzanne's alcohol use increased when the girls left to go on their camping trip, because she didn't have to hide it from their youngest daughter. Barry said he didn't feel bad about leaving Suzanne on Mother's Day because he thought the girls were going to be home at lunchtime. When filling out this victimology questionnaire for Suzanne, Barry wrote sex as an answer for, quote, "'What would be the number one reason someone would want to make Suzanne disappear?'

When asked about this, he replied, quote, because my wife is beautiful, and that's my nightmare right now. Like if somebody's got her and sexually abusing her right now as we speak. During the same interview, he said, quote, we men need sex. That's all we need, and we'll be good.

Other statements he made on this day include him saying he gave her $300 to $400 a week in spending money, and that she never had to go to an ATM, because Barry was the ATM. He also revealed that he did have the passcode to Suzanne's phone. Another discovery that investigators believe to be a key piece of evidence is a plastic cap or needle sheath that they found in the dryer of the Morphew home. This was along with the sheets that had been stripped off one of the daughter's beds.

They theorized that maybe this came from a tranquilizer dart, and that Barry may have shot Suzanne with a tranquilizer before killing her. It's worth noting that he did do a lot of hunting, and did use tranquilizer darts to shoot deer and other animals. An officer took an empty new dart box, a hypodermic cover, a dart found in a box under a bench in the garage, and a new dart book from the home as evidence.

In another brief interview with Agents Cahill and Graham, Barry told them that he had not used tranquilizer darts since moving to Colorado, but that he did use them in Indiana to shoot deer.

In late May, police searched a residential property in Salida that Barry had been working on since April 2020. A neighbor reported that on May 9th, heavy machinery was used on the property late at night. They did have three canines out to help search the property. And this search does appear to be thorough. It lasted for three days. But it didn't lead to any sign of Suzanne.

So they go back to Barry again. On June 2nd, Barry met with Special Agent Johnny Grusing for an interview to discuss Suzanne's pattern of life. Barry told Grusing that Suzanne would leave him, but would never leave their daughters. And he agreed that an animal attack or bike accident were both unlikely due to the way that her bike and helmet were found. Barry says he thinks Suzanne may have been abducted, and brings up a case of a woman being abducted in Salida in 1980 for comparison.

Grusing told Barry that that case looked like an intimate partner homicide. Barry did not object. Another discrepancy came when Grusing asked Barry what his last mental image of Suzanne was. If you recall, I know this is a lot of information, but he had previously told investigators that he had last seen her wearing white shorts and a white string-style top. But now he told Grusing that he didn't see Suzanne on the morning of the 10th and therefore had no last image of her.

Grusing reminded Barry of his previous statements, and just trying to elicit some kind of response from him, asked if he at least remembered seeing a lump under the covers, anything indicating that Suzanne was in bed. Barry responded that he was sure he did see a lump under the covers, and he remembers that Suzanne was breathing. He once again reiterated that everything was fine with Suzanne on the 9th, quote, because there was no alcohol in her.

And really, this is why they continue to interview people like this. They go back and they go back for more details. And that's exactly what happened. In another interview with Agents Cahill and Graham, Barry provided more context for the evening of May 9th. Now he says that when he got home, he and Suzanne went for a hike on the nearby Fooses Trail. Then they sat at the lake for a while before going home to grill those steaks.

He says they were probably gone for an hour and a half. Then they probably watched TV, and that Suzanne was always on her computer. He says Suzanne made the potatoes while he made the steaks. And while she was doing the dishes, he went outside to change the pin on the bobcat.

Now, of course, while they're interviewing Barry, they're interviewing a lot of people in the background, and they're getting mixed opinions about Barry. Some of his friends maintain that he would never do anything to hurt Suzanne, while others weren't so sure. A man named Brad told officers that they'd been good friends with Barry for over 20 years. He said Barry was, quote, hard-headed and strong-willed, big-time controlling over Suzanne. When asked what he thought happened, he said,

He said he was scared to say what he really thought, but that he did think Barry got pissed off and accidentally killed Suzanne. He said Barry could never be wrong and would never admit to what he did. Brad also commented that Barry was great with a skid steer and could have easily buried her.

Another friend, Kurt, said that he knew Barry since childhood and was close to both Barry and Suzanne. When first asked, he said that he didn't think Barry was capable of killing Suzanne. But by the end of the interview, he turned to an officer and said, quote, I think he killed her.

A man named John called Suzanne's tip line to report that he worked on a landscaping project with Barry in Indiana in 2017, and he'd gotten into a physical altercation initiated by Barry. He says he remembers, quote, evil in Barry's eyes, and said that what he heard about Suzanne didn't sound good based on what he knew about Barry.

A man named Ted said that he and Barry would raise deer in Indiana to sell their horns, and that Barry would slit his throat if he knew Ted was talking to the FBI about him. Another man, Matt, told police that he had purchased Barry's business in Indiana for $400,000, when it was really worth about $20,000. He felt that Barry had deceived him.

Another of Barry's acquaintances from Indiana, George, said Barry was involved in a lot of shady business deals, and that working with him was like making a deal with the devil. When asked what he thought about Suzanne's disappearance, George answered that Barry was, quote, guilty for sure. He also called Barry a good liar, and said he would, quote, tell you something you know damn well is not true.

And we go back to Barry. When agents Cahill and Graham interviewed Barry on June 17th, they asked if anything had been a first for Suzanne leading up to her disappearance. Basically, was there any change in her activity? Was anything new in their lives? Barry said that she started taking THC and CBD edibles and oils about a month, quote, before she left.

He gave them a phone number of a man named Tim, who he said he was buying the THC and CBD from. Barry also said Suzanne was, quote, buying drugs off the street, and whoever was selling her drugs needed to be looked into as a suspect. Now, I think it's very worth noting that by this time that Suzanne and Barry got to Colorado, marijuana had been legal for quite some time. So there really would have been no need for Suzanne to buy drugs off the street.

But police did track down this man who they call CBD Tim in documents. He says he met Suzanne at a farmer's market in 2018. She told him about her cancer relapsing and said she wanted to try some non-traditional treatment methods to buy herself some time. He says Suzanne and Barry purchased hemp oil from him four times over the last two years. And once, Barry had initiated the purchase himself by calling and saying Suzanne's cancer had returned and

and she, quote, needed more oil. Tim is confused in all this. He says to him it doesn't seem like there was any conflict between Barry and Suzanne over Suzanne's use of the oil, and he didn't think that she was using it in secret.

On June 25th, Barry interviews again. This time he tries to place blame on Suzanne's family, saying that the Mormons were involved in marijuana and that they may have had something to do with her disappearance. He called Suzanne's sister Melinda wicked and said that Suzanne's brother David was, quote, smart enough to do something like this.

In that same interview, he tells agents that he suspects Suzanne may have been having an affair with Kurt, that same Kurt who has been Barry's friend since childhood, who admitted that he thought Barry killed Suzanne. Barry says that he never looked at Suzanne's phone, because he didn't want to betray her trust. He said Suzanne, however, went through his phone all the time.

And again, he makes another, in my opinion, odd comment about sex. He says sex is a motive for someone to have taken her, saying that Suzanne had the body of a 30-year-old, and, quote, they women give us sex. That's all we ever want or need. And finally, on July 8th, Agents Cahill and Graham sat Barry down for their lengthiest interview yet. Barry was asked if he threw anything away at the hotel.

To which he responded, quote, I could have, but not that I recall. He stated twice that he didn't take anything into the hotel with him besides his backpack. The agent asked him about the trash in his truck, and Barry said it was just wrappers and bottles that accumulated over the week. He says he threw those things away when he went to a gas station to grab a granola bar. He also said that he might have thrown away some old boots that were in the back of his truck.

The agents report that they told him multiple times that he threw away more than just boots. And he said, quote, "'If there's clothes in my truck, there's probably just old clothes that I threw away.'"

Barry once again told the story of what he and Suzanne did on the 9th, telling agents that when he came home, he and Suzanne sat outside in the sun and hiked fuses. He says that when they got back, Suzanne read while he tinkered with things in the garage, then they grilled a steak. He says they cooked a single steak and split it, but ate off separate plates. When the agents say, we only found one plate in the dishwasher, Barry responds that he must have hand-washed his plate. Again, he's just contradicting himself here.

When the agents brought up the lack of activity on Suzanne's phone after Barry arrived at home around 2.45, Barry said that since the girls were out of state, Suzanne most definitely would have left her phone on. And again, this contradicts him saying that they put their phones away to enjoy the night together.

They also asked Barry why he took a shower before he left home and then again when he reached the hotel, and he said that showers relax him. They also told him that he changed shirts twice after arriving at the hotel, to which he said, quote, I change shirts all the time.

Barry told agents that when Gene Ritter called him to let him know that she couldn't find Suzanne, he was at the job site, and packed up his tools and then took them back to the hotel. But these agents told him that we know that you were at the hotel when you received that phone call, and Barry didn't refute their claims. They asked when was the last time Suzanne threatened to leave you, and Barry said he didn't know, and that he didn't recall Suzanne ever saying she was going to leave him.

They asked if Suzanne had told him she was, quote, done. And he said, quote, she's never said that. She loves her family too much. After this interview, another search warrant was issued for their home. While it was reported that bags of evidence were removed, according to documents, nothing really came of this.

Also, according to documents, Barry initiated a title change for Suzanne's Range Rover on July 13, 2020, and sold it on July 16, just two months after Suzanne was last seen. And Barry had also withdrawn all the money from the Suzanne R. Morphew Hope Foundation bank account, which was about $6,000.

Now, this is a big case, and all these interviews do matter. But of course, at the same time, Suzanne has a family that's grieving her. And by September, Suzanne's brother Andy was tired of waiting on police to find her. At a vigil for Suzanne held in Indiana, Andy took the opportunity to begin recruiting people for a search. His goal was to bring a thousand people to Colorado.

He told the media, quote, We were quiet for a while because the investigators asked that of us. But it's time now to rally the troops and go west to find her.

Andy did a great job. He ended up gathering about 400 people to participate in a five-day search. This was an all-out, all-terrain search. Andy brought a flat-bottom boat and two kayaks and encouraged people to bring their four-wheelers, their dirt bikes, anything they could use to search these rugged areas. They combed fields, hiked mountain trails, and climbed steep and dangerous slopes in a search for any sign of Suzanne.

Now, Chaffey County Sheriff John Speezy made a statement that deputies could not officially take part in this search because of liability concerns, but that they would be on standby in case the search yielded any evidence. But Andy told the Denver Gazette that he believed law enforcement had stopped physically searching for Suzanne, saying, quote, Now, Barry was noticeably absent from this search.

Andy also told the media that he believed his sister was the victim of foul play, and that she was mentally abused and not in control of her marriage. According to Andy and several articles from various sources, when the search teams tried to search the Morphew property, Barry came out of the house with a gun over his shoulder and asked them to leave. However, it is worth mentioning that the next day he did allow searchers to look on the property.

Andy told KOAA News, quote, I think everybody probably knows what happened. I'm literally just there to search. I need to find her, need to bring her home, give her a proper burial and closure for my family. And that's my point. I'm not about finding somebody guilty or trying to inflict punishment on anyone. That's not my job. That's law enforcement's job.

During the searches, canines showed interest in three areas. The first was a site along the Arkansas River, but investigators found no connection to Suzanne in this area. The dogs also showed interest in a property near the Morphew home and in an unincorporated area of Chaffey County. These areas were excavated, and nothing was found.

After Andy's search concluded, rumors circulated that Suzanne's body had been recovered, but the sheriff's office confirmed that she had not been located. A, quote, suspicious item was also located during the search, but investigators did not reveal what it was or if it had any connection to Suzanne.

After Andy went back to Indiana, no real leads were generated for several months. According to reporting by the Denver Gazette and their affiliated publication Out There Colorado, several sets of human remains were found in the fall of 2020 that many hoped would be Suzanne's, but were found to have no connection to her. But in November, investigators got the break they'd been looking for. They finally identified the man Suzanne was having an affair with as Jeff Libler.

Come back next week for part two, where I discuss Jeff, the eventual charges brought against Barry, and where the case is today. But as always, thank you, I love you, and I'll talk to you next time.

Voices for Justice is hosted and produced by me, Sarah Turney, and is a Voices for Justice media original. This episode contains writing and research by Brooke Haynes. If you love what we do here, please take a moment to follow and rate the show on your podcast player. It helps us and helps more people find these cases in need of justice.