Grand jury indicts Suzanne Morphew's husband for murder in her death
A grand jury in Colorado has returned an indictment against Barry Morphew, charging him with the murder of his wife, Suzanne Morphew, officials announced Friday.
Suzanne Morphew went missing on a bike ride on Mother's Day in May 2020. Her remains were found more than three years later while investigators were searching in an unrelated case. Her death was subsequently ruled a homicide.
MORE: Suzanne Morphew, mother who went missing on bike ride, died by homicide: Autopsy
Her husband, Barry Morphew, was charged with her murder in 2021, but those charges were dropped in April 2022 just before a trial was supposed to begin.
The grand jury returned the indictment against Morphew on Wednesday. He was taken into custody in Arizona and will be extradited to the San Luis Valley to face charges, according to the Twelfth Judicial District Attorney's Office.
'Federal, State and local law enforcement have never stopped working toward justice for Suzanne," Twelfth Judicial District Attorney Anne Kelly said in a statement on Friday. 'The Twelfth Judicial District Attorney's Office stands in solidarity with Suzanne's family and the citizens of Chaffee and Saguache Counties in pursuing the Grand Jury's indictment.'
Suzanne Morphew's body was found in September 2023 near the town of Moffat, about 90 minutes south of where she lived.
Her death was determined to have been caused by homicide "by undetermined means in the setting of butorphanol, azaperone, and medetomidine intoxication," according to the autopsy.
MORE: Remains of Suzanne Morphew found 3 years after her disappearance
Barry Morphew has denied any involvement in his wife's death.
He and his daughters spoke to ABC News in May 2023 after they filed a lawsuit against prosecutors, saying he was wrongfully charged.
"They've got tunnel vision and they looked at one person and they've got too much pride to say they're wrong and look somewhere else," he said at the time. "I don't have anything to worry about. I've done nothing wrong."
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Judge grants motion to dismiss charges in Suzanne Morphew case
Case update: Barry Morphew was arrested in Arizona on June 20, 2025, two days after he was indicted on first-degree murder charges in the case of his wife's death. This was the second time Barry Morphew has been arrested and charged in Suzanne Morphew's death. In a high-profile case that has already seen numerous and sometimes odd twists and turns over the past three years, including crucial judicial sanctions, a judge agreed to dismiss all charges against Barry Morphew, without prejudice, just nine days before he was to stand trial for the first-degree murder of his wife and mother of their two daughters, Suzanne Morphew. Prosecutors, who can re-file charges in the future, filed a motion to dismiss the indictment minutes before a pre-trial conference on April 19, 2022, with D.A. Linda Stanley writing they need to investigate further and believe "we are close to discovering the victim's body." Stanley also cited the court's decision to exclude "several key expert witnesses initially endorsed. Without this crucial evidence and without the victim's body, the People cannot move forward at this time in good faith." "First I want to say that Mr. Morphew not only was presumed innocent and still is presumed innocent, he is innocent," Morphew's attorney, Iris Eytan, said at a press conference after the charges were dropped. In response to the State pointing to the need to find Suzanne's body, she said, "Forever they have stated that they don't need a body — that a body is irrelevant. But you need to know, that in this case, there has been not a single ounce of physical evidence that has been found connecting Mr. Morphew to this … alleged crime." Since Barry Morphew's arrest, his defense attorneys had asked Judge Ramsey Lama, multiple times, to dismiss the charges against him. Over the past several months, they pressed the judge to issue severe sanctions on the prosecution for failing to turn over potentially exculpatory evidence ahead of trial. And the judge imposed damaging sanctions, including barring 11 of their 16 endorsed expert witnesses — among others, experts in DNA, vehicle data and a cell phone data analyst, as punishment for violating discovery rules. In all, the Court excluded 14 of the prosecution's expert witnesses. The judge found that DA Stanley and her team repeatedly missed deadlines and failed to turn over important information, writing, "The People's actions amount to negligent and arguably, reckless disregard" for their discovery obligations. In earlier filings, prosecutors said that the Court did not find willful misconduct associated with any discovery violations, noting "ultimately the sanctions imposed greatly damage the People's case, tantamount to dismissal, for late disclosures that were not greatly prejudicial, but rather technical in nature." "48 Hours" correspondent Peter Van Sant updates the case in "The Suzanne Morphew Case: Nothing is What It Seems," now streaming on Paramount+. When Suzanne Morphew, a Colorado mother of two girls, vanished on Mother's Day in May 2020, authorities wondered if she'd been abducted or if her husband Barry — whom she had threatened to divorce — might have killed her. Investigators never expected the case would have so many bizarre twists and turns and eventually involve a chipmunk alibi, a tranquilizer gun, a "talking" truck, mystery DNA and a spy pen right out of a James Bond film. "This case is incredibly unique," says Aya Gruber, a law professor at the University of Colorado at Boulder. "When you started to dig a little bit deeper, nothing is what it seems." Gruber studied thousands of pages of public documents from the prosecutor, investigators and defense attorneys. Suzanne was reported missing on May 10, 2020. She'd been alone that day because her daughters, Macy, 16, and Mallory, 20, were off on a church-sponsored camping trip and planned to return home later that Mother's Day. At the same time, Barry Morphew told investigators he had left the home early in the morning to drive to a job site some three hours away. He said the last time he saw his wife of 25 years was when she was sleeping in their bed. After Suzanne was officially reported missing by a neighbor, investigators began to examine Barry's story. Friends and relatives told investigators that the marriage was troubled, and agents found a deleted text from Suzanne to Barry on his phone that read: "I'm done. I could care less what you're up to and have been for years. We just need to figure this out civilly." But 10 days after Suzanne disappeared, agents were pulled in a different direction when they found a so-called spy pen belonging to Suzanne. The spy pen has a long battery life and is designed to look and write like an ordinary pen. But it has one extra feature: it is voice-activated and records conversations. Suzanne had acquired it, she told a friend, because she suspected Barry was having an affair and she hoped to use the pen to gather evidence. But the plan backfired. Investigators listened to what the pen had recorded and, although there was no evidence of Barry having an affair, they say they heard "intimate" conversations between Suzanne and someone named Jeff. It was another twist in a case filled with them. Without knowing who Jeff was or his location when Suzanne went missing, they could not eliminate him as a person or interest. It took FBI agents six months before they uncovered his identity: Jeff Libler, a man both Suzanne and Barry knew from their Alexandria, Indiana, high school. Jeff and Suzanne had had a one-time fling after graduation, and she'd reached out to him in 2018 after the Morphews moved to Colorado with a Facebook message that read simply: "Howdy stranger." "And from that moment they had talked almost every single day nonstop," said Ashley Franco, a reporter for KKTV, the CBS affiliate in Colorado Springs, who has covered the story from the beginning. That was enough to ignite a nearly two-year love affair. Jeff had a wife and six children. He lived in Michigan and claimed to be there with his family on the day Suzanne vanished. Agents eventually discovered the lovers had spoken to each other for dozens of hours, often communicating via secret accounts on WhatsApp and LinkedIn. Jeff also admitted that they met for romantic rendezvous in New Orleans, Florida, Texas, Michigan and Indiana. After Suzanne disappeared in May 2020, Jeff did not contact authorities. Instead, agents say, he deleted the accounts where he had communicated with Suzanne. "What he did was delete all his social media accounts that he had used to communicate with Suzanne," says Gruber. "He's got a lot to lose if revelations of this affair come out." Jeff reportedly told agents he did not want to tarnish Suzanne's memory, but he also told them he worried that he'd lose his wife, children and job. He also worried he might be considered a suspect. "He asks the agents, 'Am I a target?'" says Gruber. After agents confronted him, he did cooperate, providing a sample of his DNA and passwords to the deleted accounts. Investigators eventually were able to retrace the couple's steps and recovered texts by tapping into the iCloud accounts of Jeff and Suzanne. Jeff was able to provide receipts for a home goods store he'd visited in Michigan on the day Suzanne vanished and he was eventually cleared. Investigators still had their suspicions about Barry Morphew. They never uncovered any evidence that he was having an affair, but investigators found his actions on that Mother's Day weekend to be suspicious. They asked Barry why his phone seemed to be pinging all around his house on the day before Mother's Day and he told them he must have been out shooting chipmunks, which he said were a constant nuisance at the house. It was perhaps the world's first chipmunk alibi, but Barry stood by it, saying he'd shot 85 chipmunks in the two years he owned that Colorado house. "And then that confession to shooting chipmunks becomes a major piece of incriminating evidence against him," says Gruber. Van Sant asked why. "Because [agents are] saying, 'Well, you know, now he's admitting to having run around the house. And this is a ridiculous explanation, so it must be the explanation of a guilty person,'" says Gruber. What's more, there was no evidence of any chipmunk shootings around the house and neighbors did not recall hearing any type of disturbance during that period of time. Cases sometimes turn on the smallest of things and, in this case, agents seized upon just such a small item. Agents had found a small clear plastic cap in the family's dryer that they believed was from a syringe used to inject chemicals into a tranquilizer dart. Barry acknowledged he knew how to inject chemicals into a dart and that he'd shot many deer for trophies and so he could get their antlers. His garage was filled with deer heads and a pile of antlers. However, there was no working tranquilizer gun found in the home and authorities say Barry's DNA was not on that plastic cap. Even so, investigators developed a theory that Barry had shot Suzanne with a tranquilizer gun and then chased her around the house before she passed out. They found a door frame that was broken and suspected there had been a confrontation. Agents also tapped into a new investigative tool called digital vehicle forensics. They pulled data from his Ford truck's many computers and got the truck to "talk" to them. They learned that when Barry said he was sleeping, the truck's doors were opening and closing. He was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and other crimes in May 2021. Suzanne's body has not been found and prosecutors presume she is dead. Barry eventually pleaded "not guilty." But at the eleventh hour, there was one more twist revealed for the first time publicly at a preliminary hearing to determine if there was enough evidence for probable cause. Prosecutors admitted at a hearing held in the summer of 2021 that their own forensics team had uncovered DNA evidence that threatened to destroy their case against Barry. State technicians had found DNA on the glove compartment of Suzanne's car that partially matched an unknown male connected to three unsolved sexual assault cases in three different cities. Barry Morphew and Jeff Libler were excluded from that DNA sample which meant there was a chance Suzanne had fallen into the hands of a sexual predator. "This DNA discovery is so significant," Gruber said. "All of a sudden, the seemingly implausible becomes more possible." Judge Patrick Murphy wwas candid in his assessment of the case, saying it could go either way before a jury. He found enough probable cause to put it over for trial but ordered that Barry be released on $500,000 bond, observing that he thought there was not "a fair likelihood" that Barry would be convicted by a jury. Barry entered a plea of not guilty to the charges. Barry Morphew raised the bond money and is free awaiting trial. Judge Murphy disqualified himself because of a potential conflict of interest involving a witness, and Judge Ramsey Lama was appointed in January 2022. Morphew's trial, which was moved from Chaffee to Fremont County, Colorado, was scheduled to begin on April 28. Then, on April 19, Stanley and her team filed the motion to drop all charges, without prejudice, until they gather more evidence. But Morphew's attorney, Iris Eytan, argued that the case should be dismissed with prejudice so that it cannot be refiled. The court dismissed the charges without prejudice. At the press conference outside court, Eytan made it clear her opinion that her client should never have been charged. "These charges were false from the beginning … The prosecution was manufacturing a murder case," she said. "You've seen shows called 'Making a Murderer?' That's what was happening here in this courtroom … They absolutely dismissed this case at this point because they knew they were going to lose this trial and Mr. Morphew was going to be acquitted and exonerated." "Barry Morphew loves Suzanne Morphew," Eytan said. "He loves her and he misses her and he wants to know where Suzanne Morphew is. It's a big question mark … Definitely there was not any evidence, even close to convicting him of murder of his wife." As investigators continue searching for Suzanne Morphew's body, focusing on a "remote and mountainous region nearby the Morphew residence," as the DA wrote in her motion, waiting for five feet of snow to melt before they can safely excavate the area, Barry Morphew, alongside his daughters, walked out of the Fremont County courthouse a free man. With all charges against him dropped, his bond is lifted, his GPS ankle monitor removed, and his passport returned. And about 1,000 people who had been summoned to appear for jury selection are released. In May 2023, Barry Morphew filed a $15 million federal civil rights lawsuit against prosecutors and law enforcement officials stating he was wrongfully arrested, jailed and prosecuted. SpaceX Starship upper stage blows up Hurricane Erick approaches Mexico with destructive winds, major storm surge "Jaws" premiered 50 years ago, but it's a wonder it got made at all
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Colorado murder suspect arrested in Gilbert maintains his innocence
The Brief A Colorado murder suspect was arrested June 20 in Gilbert. Barry Morphew is accused of killing his wife Suzanne in 2020. Her remains were found three years later, about 40 miles from where she went missing. The original case made national headlines in 2020. Suzanne Morphew, a mother of two, was last seen near her home in Salida, Colorado, on Mother's Day. She was reported missing after she didn't return home from a bike ride. The backstory Her husband, Barry, was initially charged with first-degree murder in the case, but the charges were dropped. Prosecutors at the time said they didn't have enough evidence to move forward and wanted more time to find her body. But the judge also accused the prosecution of withholding key evidence from the defense. The lead prosecutor in the case, Linda Stanley, was later disbarred, in part for her handling of the case. Suzanne's remains were found three years later, near the town of Moffat in Saguache County, Colorado, about 40 miles from where she went missing. An Associated Press report stated that an autopsy performed in 2024 found a drug cocktail used to tranquilize wildlife was found in her system. A tranquilizer gun and accessories were found in Barry's home, according to investigators. That brings us to this week, when a Colorado grand jury indicted Barry on first-degree murder charges. What they're saying The Gilbert Police Department says Barry was arrested in Gilbert during the morning hours of June 20 by the Arizona Department of Public Safety. "Federal, State and local law enforcement have never stopped working toward justice for Suzanne." said Twelfth Judicial District Attorney Anne Kelly. "The Twelfth Judicial District Attorney's Office stands in solidarity with Suzanne's family and the citizens of Chaffee and Saguache Counties in pursuing the Grand Jury's indictment." Barry has maintained his innocence throughout. "Yet again, the government allows their predetermined conclusion to lead their search for evidence," stated David Beller, Barry's attorney. "Barry maintains his innocence. The case has not changed, and the outcome will not either." What's next Barry's bond was set at $3 million.
Yahoo
3 hours ago
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Colorado man charged again with first-degree murder of wife who went missing in 2020
A Colorado man suspected of killing his wife was charged Friday for the second time with first-degree murder in her 2020 death, the 12th Judicial District Attorney's Office said in a release. Barry Morphew was previously charged with first-degree murder, among other charges, in May 2021 in the killing of his wife, Suzanne Morphew, who was last seen on Mother's Day in 2020. But those charges were dropped without prejudice — meaning charges could be filed again at a later date — in April 2022 as prosecutors were closing in on finding the woman's remains. Officials took Morphew into custody in Arizona on Friday, the district attorney's office said, but the office is working to extradite the man back to the San Luis Valley in Colorado. Twelfth Judicial District Attorney Anne Kelly said Morphew will be held in Arizona as the extradition proceedings play out, at which point he will be taken back to Alamosa County to stand trial on an indictment, unsealed Friday upon Morphew's arrest. She would not say why Morphew was in Phoenix at the time of his arrest. It was not immediately clear whether Morphew is being held in jail or if he has obtained legal representation. Iris Eytan, the attorney who represented Morphew in the earlier proceedings, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It was not immediately clear whether she is still representing him. Suzanne Morphew was last seen on May 10, 2020, near County Road 225 and West Highway 50 in Maysville, about 100 miles west of Colorado Springs. She was on a bike ride at the time. A 49-year-old mother of two, Suzanne Morphew was reported missing from her Chaffee County home by neighbors that same day, according to the indictment unsealed Friday. Her husband was the last known person to see her alive, and the only other person who lived in their house, their daughter, was out of state on a pre-planned trip that day. Also that day, her mountain bike was discovered on the side of a county road in Salida, Colorado, near the family's home. Days later, her helmet was found in a different nearby location, the indictment said. When officials arrived to the Morphew home to investigate, they found the house locked and Suzanne Morphew and her bike missing, the indictment said. There were no signs of a break-in and DNA testing did not turn up any intruder suspects. Her husband had repeatedly denied his involvement in her death, and he pleaded not guilty to the initial charges. When he was interviewed by police, Morphew said that he left his house at 5 a.m. the day the wife disappeared to go to a worksite in Broomfield, according to the indictment. She was still asleep in bed when he left town, he said. When he got to Broomfield, Morphew said, he checked into a hotel before heading to the job site for the rest of the day. That's where he was, he said, when he got a call from concerned neighbors who said his daughters were struggling to reach their mother. When they couldn't find Suzanne Morphew or her bike, he told them to call police. One of Morphew's employees who was supposed to accompany him on the trip to Broomfield disputed that telling of events, the indictment said. The employee told police the pair was supposed to leave the evening of May 10, but Morphew left early that morning without telling him. Cameras in Broomfield placed Morphew at the job site for less than a half-hour, the indictment said. The cameras also caught him driving around town and throwing "unknown items in separate trash cans." Morphew was seen at the hotel on surveillance cameras throughout the afternoon, meaning he was there when the neighbors called him, not at the job site, according to the indictment. One week before Morphew was set to stand trial on the initial charge of first-degree murder in his wife's disappearance, prosecutors dismissed the charges because they said they had zeroed in on an area where they believed her remains to be, but weather in the region was prohibiting officials from recovery efforts, slowing down the case. Suzanne Morphew's remains were finally uncovered in September 2023 "in a shallow clandestine grave," according to the indictment. They were found during an unrelated search near Moffat in Saguache County, officials said at the time. Prosecutors believe Suzanne Morphew's remains were moved to that location at some point after her killing, and said it was unlikely that was the place where she was killed and where her body decomposed. Bike clothes were also found with her remains, but lacked signs of decomposition, which made it unlikely she wore those clothes as her body broke down. An April 2024 autopsy determined she died by homicide, which reported that drugs normally used as animal tranquilizers were found in her system. People who knew Morphew when he lived in Indiana before his 2018 move to Colorado said he was a deer farmer who used a specific tranquilizer called "BAM," which is composed of the three drugs found in his wife's autopsy — butorphanol, azaperone, and medetomidine, the indictment said. He admitted to using the tranquilizer in both states and as recently as the month before Suzanne Morphew disappeared. Suzanne Morphew "died as a result of homicide by unspecified means in the setting of butorphanol, azaperone, and medetomidine intoxication," the El Paso County coroner's report, obtained by NBC News at the time, said. This determination was made, the indictment said, because the autopsy also showed her body had begun to metabolize the chemicals, meaning "that her death was not immediate following BAM exposure." "The drugs are marketed as a compound injectable chemical immobilizer for wildlife providing pharmacologically reversible analgesia, sedation, and immobilization," the report said. A pharmacologist and medical doctor who testified in the case told officials that before Suzanne Morphew's death, BAM could be purchased only with a prescription from a veterinarian from one company in the U.S., according to the indictment. Records indicated Morphew filled and received "several" BAM prescriptions in Indiana and that he appeared to stock up on the tranquilizer before moving states. Police found no other private citizens or businesses in the area to have obtained BAM from 2017 to 2020, the indictment said. "Ultimately, the prescription records show that when Suzanne Morphew disappeared, only one private citizen living in that entire area of the state had access to BAM: Barry Morphew," the indictment said. Prosecutors had said they believed Morphew used a tranquilizer gun in his wife's murder. While searching their home following Suzanne Morphew's disappearance, police found a locked gun safe containing a tranquilizer gun and darts near the front, the indictment said. Police also found a pair of Morphew's shorts and a needle cap from one of the darts in the house's dryer. According to the indictment unsealed Friday, in early interviews with police, Morphew said his marriage was "the best." When officers asked if his wife would say differently, he said "no." But prosecutors had previously said Morphew was the only person with motive to kill Suzanne Morphew, because she was having an affair, believed her husband was having one too, and had plans to file for divorce. The indictment indicates that in the weeks and months leading up to her disappearance, Suzanne Morphew told people she was unhappy in her marriage, and searches of her house and phone found documentation of problems in their relationship. Days before her disappearance, Suzanne Morphew texted her husband: "I'm done," according to the indictment. "We just need to figure this out civilly," she said, according to the indictment. "It had become clear that Barry could not control Suzanne's insistence on leaving him, and he resorted to something he has done his entire life — hunt and control Suzanne like he had hunted and controlled animals," the affidavit said. Morphew also filed a $15 million lawsuit against authorities who accused him of killing his wife in May 2023. At the time, the couple's daughters spoke in support of their father. The district attorney's office said in the Friday release that the investigation into Suzanne Morphew's death had been ongoing. "Federal, State and local law enforcement have never stopped working toward justice for Suzanne," Kelly said. This article was originally published on
