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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.
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