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On Mother’s Day, Sunday, May 10, 2020, 49-year-old Suzanne Morphew was meant to be home alone. Her husband of nearly 26 years was out of town on business while her two daughters were on a road trip, scheduled to come home sometime that day or the following morning. However, when Suzanne’s daughters continued to send Mother’s Day text messages & place phone calls that went unanswered, their concern began to grow since their mom was usually very responsive. As the day wore on to evening, one of the Morphew’s neighbors, Martin & Jeanne Ritter, called police to report her missing when there was no sign of her at the house.
Suzanne & Barry Morphew met in high school where they grew up in their hometown of Alexandria, Indiana. While Barry was a star baseball player who ended up being drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays until his career ended from an injury, Suzanne was always well-liked, surrounded by friends & was nominated as homecoming queen.
After high school, they both attended Purdue University & went on to get married in August 1994. Barry started a landscaping business while Suzanne was a middle school teacher until she stepped away to raise their daughters, Mallory & Macy. Photos of the gorgeous family of four looked like the picture of perfection.
In 2020, Mallory was attending Western State University in Gunnison, Colorado while Macy was a 16-year-old in high school. After Mallory moved away to Colorado to attend college, Suzanne & Barry decided to leave their home in Arcadia, Indiana & relocate to be closer to their daughter.
In April 2018, they purchased a 3,300 square foot Salida, Colorado mountain home at 19057 Puma Path for $1.6 million that was less than an hour away from Mallory’s school.
Now settled in Colorado, Barry was the owner of Sunset Farms landscaping company & he also worked as a subcontractor for Diesslin Structures, a general contracting company.
After Suzanne was reported missing, investigators arrived at the Morphew’s home at 5:46 pm & found the house locked with no sign of forced entry.
Martin & Jeanne Ritter told Deputy Brown that they’d gotten a phone call earlier that day from Mallory because she was concerned that she hadn’t been able to get a hold of her mom that day. She asked if they could go over to their house to check on her & when Jeanne walked over, Suzanne wasn’t there so Martin contacted Barry.
Barry explained that he wasn’t home, but he also hadn’t been able to reach his wife that day so he asked Martin if he could go back over to the house to see if her bike was there. When Martin called him back, he explained that neither Suzanne nor her bike were at the house, but her Range Rover was in the garage. Barry asked Martin if he could call the sheriff, which he did.
At 7:31 that evening, investigators found Suzanne’s bike down a hillside off a dirt road between her house & Highway 50, less than a mile away from home. Based on the evidence at the scene, investigators came to believe that her bike had just been tossed in that location. There was no evidence of a crash as the bike wasn’t damaged, there were no break marks, the vegetation around the bike wasn’t flattened to suggest that Suzanne had fallen there & there was no blood in the area. If Suzanne fell down the hill, where was she?
Four days later on May 14, Suzanne’s turquoise helmet was found 33 feet off the side of Highway 50 about 1.5 miles from the Morphew home & 0.84 miles from where her bike was found. Meanwhile, her sunglasses & hydration backpack were found inside her car as well as her driver’s license & credit cards while her cell phone was missing. This reinforced investigator’s beliefs that her bike & helmet had been planted & they questioned if Suzanne had actually gone for a bike ride on Sunday morning.
Shortly after Suzanne went missing, Barry took to social media & speculated that his wife may have been attacked by a mountain lion while she was out on her bike despite the fact that evidence near her bike didn’t support this.
When Deputy Brown finally got hold of Barry at 7:10 pm on Sunday, they asked him about that weekend. He explained that he’d been out & about on Saturday afternoon, but came back to the house somewhere around 3 pm. He said they had a wonderful evening together; they sat out in the sun & chatted, grilled steaks for dinner, had sex & then he went to sleep at about 8 pm.
Barry & Suzanne had been alone at the house since Tuesday, May 5 after Suzanne drove Macy to Gunnison so she could go on a camping road trip to Utah & Idaho with Mallory & her friend. The girls planned to be back sometime on Sunday or Monday.
Barry said he woke up Sunday morning at 4:30 am & left at 5 am for a planned work trip to Broomfield, Colorado, about three hours northeast from Salida. Suzanne was still asleep in bed, so he didn’t speak to her. He texted her a couple of times that morning to wish her a happy Mother’s Day, but she never responded. When he texted with their daughters that day, they also hadn’t heard from their mom.
According to Barry, Suzanne planned to clean the house & get the bedrooms ready for their daughter’s return home since it was possible that one of their friends might stay for a visit. He explained that she recently became interested in mountain biking & rode most days. When she did, she always wore a turquoise helmet, a windbreaker & carried her iPhone with her.
Suzanne battled through stage 4 non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma several times in her life. Her most recent battle began in 2019 when she was diagnosed with follicular lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, & she had been actively undergoing chemo treatments.
Barry said that when he arrived in Broomfield, he checked into the Holiday Inn where he was staying, rested for a bit & then left for a jobsite. He said that when Martin Ritter called him at about 5:15 pm he was still out on the site & Martin explained that his daughters were concerned since they hadn’t been able to reach their mom all day.
Investigators spoke with Morgan Gentile, one of Barry’s employees, who was scheduled to assist him with the Broomfield job; she explained that they originally planned to drive together & leave on Sunday evening. But for whatever reason, Barry left early that morning without even telling her. Barry later said he didn’t want to drive with Morgan since she smokes.
Morgan said that Barry contacted her on Sunday at 11:18 am to let her know that he had left without her. When she got to the jobsite that evening, she noticed that Barry hadn’t brought any of the necessary tools with him & the materials they needed had yet to arrive.
Cameras at the hotel & nearby businesses were reviewed & proved that Barry had been in the Broomfield area for about nine hours & forty-five minutes. Of those hours, he had spent less than a half hour at the job site; according to footage from the hotel, Barry remained there from 12:34 pm to 5:55 pm which was inconsistent with the statement that he provided to police when he said that he’d been at the jobsite for the entirety of the day. Besides his two brief visits to the site, electronic evidence & cameras depicted him driving to various locations, discarding unknown items in random trashcans. When faced with this information, Barry claimed it was something he often did to avoid paying to have trash disposed of at a landfill.
When asked about his relationship with his wife, Barry described it as the best. When they asked him if Suzanne would describe their relationship in the same way, he said she would.
However, as investigators began speaking with friends & family of Suzanne & Barry’s, they learned that this was absolutely not the case as Suzanne had been confiding in people that she was unhappy in her marriage in the weeks & months leading up to her disappearance.
According to Suzanne’s close friend, she had been planning on divorcing Barry & had been maintaining documented notes that outlined the issues in their relationship. These documents were recovered from electronic devices as well as from a physical search of the Morphew home. She sent her friend a text in March about how Barry refused to speak of divorce & was begging for another chance. Suzanne wrote, I’m so torn. But I’m (in) my heart I know who he is. She also texted that she felt no peace when he was home & she didn’t feel safe when she was alone with him. Her text messages also proved that her daughters were aware of their parent’s relationship issues.
According to Suzanne’s sister, Melinda, Suzanne described her husband as narcissistic, a liar, an adulterer, a bully, cunning, someone who loves money & treats his wife & daughters like trophies. Suzanne sent Melinda a long text on Friday morning & said that Barry was both emotionally & physically abusive toward her & she was angry at what she’d allowed to go on in the years of their marriage. Melinda admitted that her sister was co-dependent with Barry & had been a submissive housewife who was a gentle soul during the time when they lived in Indiana; allowing him to control the finances & often put up a front as if they were happy together. Meanwhile, Barry was more controlling & domineering.
According to a forensic download of Barry’s cell phone, he deleted a text chain with Suzanne, but a single screenshot of a single text message was saved to his phone on Wednesday, May 6, four days before she was reported missing. The image showed a text from Suzanne that read, I’m done. I could care less what you’re up to & have been for years. We just need to figure this out civilly.
According to Barry, Suzanne began abusing anti-depressants & alcohol as a way to escape the stress of dealing with her cancer diagnosis & treatments which would lead to arguments where she accused him of being controlling. Her alcohol use had escalated in the last three months to the point that she was drinking nightly. He said their last argument was on Friday morning, but they were never physically abusive toward one another.
A search for Suzanne began on Monday morning, May 11, starting at the Morphew home which spanned several days. Both the home & the cars showed no sign of a break-in or an intruder. They found a locked gun safe inside the garage that contained a dart rifle, otherwise known as a tranquilizer rifle, that was positioned toward the front of the safe as well as packages of tranquilizer darts that contained capped hypodermic needles that were designed to load the darts.
When the clothing from the home’s dryer was removed, investigators found a cap from one of the hypodermic needles for a tranquilizer dart. Amongst this clothing was a pair of shorts that matched what Barry was seen wearing on video on Saturday, less than an hour before he got back home. However, he claimed to have no idea how the cap got into the dryer.
Barry admitted that he is an experienced tranquilizer dart gun shooter & is very familiar with loading the darts with the paralyzing chemicals. He indicated that he used them illegally to sedate deer in order to remove their antlers to sell.
According to Barry’s friends from Indiana, while he lived there, he was a deer hunter & used a specific tranquilizer called BAM to sedate & transport deer on his deer farm. Barry admitted to using BAM in both Indiana as well as Colorado as recently as April of 2020 when he tranquilized a deer near their house. He told investigators that they’d find tranquilizer darts around the property because, I came here & saw deer in my yard with big horns, I’m like, ‘I’m getting them horns.. & I’ll tell you exactly what I did.. I shoot ‘em. They go to sleep. I cut their horns off.’
Investigators soon learned that Suzanne had been having a secret affair with an old acquaintance who lived out of state & they communicated using WhatsApp & LinkedIn. Her last known message was sent to this man on Saturday, May 9, 2020 at 2:11 pm, just 32 minutes before Barry came home that day.
Searches of Suzanne’s electronic devices & social media proved that she hadn’t communicated with anyone after 2:11 pm on Saturday afternoon. Her last possible activity on any account protected by password access was at 3:08 pm which was over 24 hours before she was reported missing & conflicted with Barry’s account of seeing his wife asleep in bed before he left at 5 am on Sunday morning. This was not at all consistent with Suzanne’s usual routine & use of her electronic devices. Those that texted or tried to otherwise communicate with Suzanne after that timeframe indicated that her lack of response was very much out of the ordinary.
Ten days after Suzanne vanished, investigators found a spy pen inside the walk-in closet in Suzanne & Barry’s room. They learned that Suzanne’s friend had gotten her the pen in January, which is voice activated & records conversations, hoping to catch Barry in an affair. Instead, she accidentally recorded intimate conversations she had with a secret lover named Jeff.
Suzanne’s affair was so hidden that it took investigators six months to learn the man’s identity. In November 2020, they came to find that Jeff Libler lived in Michigan with his wife & six children. He was someone that Barry & Suzanne knew from high school & she & Jeff had a one-time fling during college.
One month after Suzanne, Barry & Macy relocated to Colorado in 2018, she sent him a Facebook message out of the blue that read, Howdy stranger. This message opened the floodgates & they began communicating on a daily basis & eventually began meeting up in person beginning in 2019. They met in New Orleans, Indianapolis, Dallas, Michigan & Florida, where they eventually had consensual sex.
Throughout their communications, they sent intimate photos to each other, discussed getting married & even mentioned leaving the United States, possibly to go to Ecuador.
After Suzanne vanished, Jeff never came forward on his own accord & made attempts to hide their affair. He later told agents that he didn’t want to tarnish Suzanne’s memory & worried he would lose his family & his job if their nearly two-year affair came out. However, once agents located him, he was cooperative & provided his DNA, phone records as well as passwords for deleted accounts.
Phone records proved that Suzanne & Jeff messaged each other 59 times on Saturday which was more than they normally communicated. At 2:03 pm, she sent him a selfie through LinkedIn which investigators dubbed her last proof of life photo. Her final message was sent to Jeff 2:11 pm, 32 minutes before Barry came home. Barry texted Suzanne at 2:26 pm indicating that he was headed home, but it’s unclear if she ever saw this message. She never responded to the message Jeff sent her at 2:44 pm.
Data from both Barry’s cell phone & truck prove that he came home at this very time, 2:44 pm on Saturday afternoon. Once home, his cell phone began pinging all around the outside of his house & investigators wondered if he was chasing Suzanne before a final & fatal confrontation. When faced with this information, he claimed to have been running around the property shooting chipmunks because they were a constant nuisance. He claimed that while he was doing this, Suzanne was outside sunbathing. This was at 2:46 pm & only one minute later, he put his phone in airplane mode.
However, there was no evidence to support the chipmunk shootings.
Barry didn’t seem to know about Suzanne’s affair although by September 2019, it was clear he was growing suspicious. While they were on vacation in Mexico, he took his wife’s phone from her to look through it. On May 6, 2020, four days before she vanished, Suzanne saved a note in her phone that Barry accused her of having a boyfriend.
Since Suzanne sent Barry a text message on Wednesday saying she was done, investigators believe he took the opportunity to kill his wife & clean up any evidence while both of their daughters were away on a trip.
Barry’s cell phone was in airplane mode from 2:47 pm to 10:17 pm on Saturday. It’s likely that during this time, he was disposing of potential evidence. Since they weren’t able to track Barry’s cell phone, investigators utilized digital vehicle forensic from Barry’s Ford truck that was not consistent with what he was telling authorities.
Despite the fact that he said he was asleep somewhere around 8 pm on Saturday, data from the truck shows that it was put into reverse & moved about 96 feet closer to the house at 9:30 pm, a time when investigators believe he placed his wife’s remains in his truck.
Barry initially told investigators that he woke up at 4:30 am on Sunday morning & left at 5 am for Broomfield, however, the truck’s computers show that the doors were being opened & closed at about 3:30 am.
It’s likely he drove over to Broomfield much earlier than he claimed, but between 4 am & 8 am, no activity was recorded by his truck’s computer. Barry said that when he left their house, he turned left rather than right since he wanted to get a closer look at some elk he spotted. Because this was in the area of where Suzanne’s helmet was found, investigators believe he was tossing it out at this time.
Barry’s truck resumed recording data at 8:10 am on Mother’s Day, a time when Barry’s phone was also taken out of airplane mode. During this time, he pulled over at a Broomfield bus stop & discarded something in a trash can. He stopped at other nearby trash cans, including one at the hotel, at McDonald’s & a Men’s Wearhouse. He was likely disposing of evidence at this time.
Before Barry left the hotel in Broomfield to head home to meet investigators, he dropped a shovel & some tools off for his coworkers & got in touch with them about a family emergency. During this time, he arranged to have one of the workers take over his room & when they got into the room, they smelled a strong odor of chlorine or bleach.
During his drive back to Salida, Barry spoke with investigators who informed him they’d found Suzanne’s bike. He arrived at the ravine where her bike was located at 8:40 pm. According to investigators, he was rather emotional for a few minutes.
Macy & Mallory were back home by Sunday night while Barry offered a $100,000 reward for information leading to his wife’s whereabouts which was later doubled to $200,000 & made a public plea for her safe return.
Searches for Suzanne continued; scuba divers searched local waterways while local state authorities as well as the FBI, CBI & volunteers conducted large search efforts across the vast, rugged Colorado terrain. Despite these extensive searches, days turned into months & months turned into years & there was still no sign of Suzanne. Authorities presumed she was dead while Barry remained at the center of the investigation although no arrest was made.
Investigators found a vertical crack along the doorframe of Barry & Suzanne’s bedroom & the home’s previous owners confirmed that the crack had not been there when they sold their home to the Morphews in 2018. Barry denied having any idea how the crack came to be while investigators theorize that Barry may have damaged the doorframe as he tried to overpower his wife with the tranquilizer gun.
Based on the evidence collected, investigators theorize that when Barry came home on Saturday afternoon, he went into the garage, took the cap off the tranquilizer syringes to load the gun, placing the plastic cap in the pocket of his shorts. Although they failed to find a working tranquilizer gun or chemicals in the home, they believe he shot Suzanne, rendering her incapacitated & later discarded the gun & chemicals in the various garbage bins he stopped at on Sunday.
According to experts, it can take between 4 & 20 minutes for an animal the size of a deer to drop after being shot with a tranquilizer dart. The average female deer (doe) weighs anywhere from 80 to 120# while a male deer (buck) can weigh as much as much as 200# or more. According to Suzanne’s casefile, she is listed as 5’4” & 120#. For a human being, a shot could be lethal. Investigators theorize that when Barry’s phone was pinging erratically around their property, he was chasing Suzanne after he shot her.
Authorities photographed scabbed scratch marks on Barry’s arm three days after Suzanne vanished which reinforced the idea of a physical altercation leading up to Suzanne’s murder. However, Barry said he’d gotten the scratches from a tree while they were out hiking in the mountains.
Despite the fact that Suzanne’s body had not been found, Barry was arrested on May 5, 2021, a little less than one year after she vanished. He was charged with first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence & attempting to influence a public servant. He pleaded not guilty to all charges.
Barry hired a high-profile lawyer from Denver while a preliminary hearing was held to determine if there was enough evidence to go to trial. The defense argued that the clear cap found in the dryer wasn’t significant since there was no way to say how long it had been there & Suzanne’s DNA was found on the cap rather than Barry’s. Also, one of the managers from the Holiday Inn attributed the chlorine smell from Barry’s room from the indoor pool that was situated under that location & said it was there before he checked in.
A crucial issue the prosecution had to deal with was uncovered by their own forensic team. While searching Suzanne’s Range Rover, they found mysterious male DNA on her glovebox. In October 2020, the DNA was a partial match to an unnamed man connected to three unsolved sexual assault cases in Tempe, Phoenix & Chicago. It’s possible that the DNA ended up there because the man randomly came into contact with her car as a mechanic or if Suzanne had been a victim of a serial rapist. The latter scenario was unlikely since her bike & helmet were found discarded while her Range Rover remained in the garage after she went missing.
In September 2021, Judge Patrick Murphy named three different scenarios: Suzanne left willingly, Barry killed her or someone else abducted & killed her.
Despite the fact that Suzanne had discussed moving to Ecuador with Jeff, her family & friends maintain that while she would leave Barry, she would never leave without communicating with her daughters & her close friends from Indiana.
The judge ruled there was probable cause to proceed to trial while Barry’s cash-only bond was set at $500,000 & on Saturday, September 20, 2021, after a little more than four months behind bars, he was released from jail on bond with his daughters by his side. Macy & Mallory continued to support their dad, believing him to be innocent & attended most of his court hearings. He was released with an ankle monitor & ordered to stay in Chaffee County.
On April 19, 2022, nine days before Barry’s trial was set to begin for his wife’s murder, Judge Ramsey Lama, who was replaced after Judge Murphy recused himself after defense attorneys raised questions about a conflict of interest. The DA’s motion to dismiss charges against him were granted without prejudice, meaning the prosecution can re-file charges in the future. He & his daughter walked out of the courtroom that day with Barry, a free man.
This came after the presiding judge over the case barred prosecutors from using most of the key witnesses at trial as punishment for repeatedly failing to turn over evidence in Barry’s favor.
In July 2022 Barry pleaded guilty to forgery for casting Suzanne’s 2020 election ballot for President Donald Trump; he was fined & assessed court costs of $600 & avoided jail time as part of a plea agreement. In this case, he filled out his wife’s ballot because he thought Trump could use the extra vote & didn’t think it was illegal. Trump ended up losing Colorado to President Joe Biden by 14% points.
District Attorney Linda Stanley told the judge that officials believed they were close to finding the location of Suzanne’s remains. Court papers made mention of a remote & mountainous region nearby the Morphew residence that would be excavated once the five feet of snow melted.
It’s unclear how investigators knew of this potential location; if investigators were able to uncover Barry’s movements during the four-hour gap in time on Mother’s Day morning 2020 or if they received a tip about the location of Suzanne’s remains.
In May 2023, Barry filed a $15 million lawsuit claiming he was wrongfully charged in his wife’s death, something that has caused him to lose his reputation & his integrity. He insists he had nothing to do with his wife’s disappearance & investigators have tunnel vision & have only focused their attention on him.
It wasn’t until September 22, 2023, more than three years after Suzanne vanished, when CBI agents stumbled upon her skeletal remains in a shallow grave during an unrelated search near the small town of Moffat, Colorado, about 50 miles (80 km) south of the Morphew home, less than an hour’s drive away. The location is very remote & known as the boneyard.
According to the affidavit, most of Suzanne’s bones were recovered & many were significantly bleached. Clothing similar to what she would have worn to ride her bike were found & a port for her chemo was removed by investigators.
After the discovery, Barry issued a statement through his lawyer in which he said that both he & his daughters were struggling with immense shock & grief as they had faith that their wife & mom would walk back into their lives again.
Based on the status of her remains & her clothing, a forensic anthropologist theorized that Suzanne’s body decomposed elsewhere, meaning her remains had to have been moved at least twice. Toxicology testing revealed that the three drugs used in the deer tranquilizer known as BAM were present in her bone marrow. The coroner determined that her cause of death was homicide by unspecified means in the setting of butorphanol, azaperone & medetomidine intoxication & indicated that there was no sign of trauma.
The autopsy further determined that Suzanne had not died immediately after being given the drugs as her body was able to start metabolizing the BAM.
Since a prescription is required to obtain the drug in Colorado, records show that at the time Suzanne vanished, the only private citizen living in the entire area of the state who had access to BAM was Barry.
With this information, Barry was arrested a second time on June 20, 2025 in Gilbert, Arizona & he was charged for his wife’s first-degree murder. He waived extradition to Colorado where he is being held on a $3 million cash bond. His trial date has yet to be set.
According to those close to Suzanne, she was the definition of a person who is beautiful on the inside & out. She had a beautiful smile, a huge heart & the ability to listen to & tend to others.
References:
- Barry Lee Morphew arrest affidavit
- CBS News: Evidence in the Suzanne Morphew case
- Grand Jury Indictment
- CNN: Husband of Colorado woman Suzanne Morphew re-arrested 3 years after charges were dropped in her 2020 death
- ABC News: Suzanne Morphew’s husband & daughters speak out for 1st time since filing lawsuit
- CBS News: Suzanne Morphew’s husband rearrested for her murder after her remains reveal presence of tranquilizer drugs
- Realtor.com: 19057 Puma Path, Salida, CO
- CBS News: Remains of missing Colorado mom Suzanne Morphew found in Moffat 3+ years after last seen
- CBS News: New details in Barry Morphew case unveiled thanks to autopsy of his wife Suzanne Morphew in Colorado
- 13 WTHR: Suzanne Morphew remembered by friends in Indiana
- CBS News: Barry Morphew, who had been charged in death of wife Suzanne Morphew, pleads guilty to casting her ballot for Trump
- People: Suzanne Morphew vanished 5 years ago. Inside her disappearance & why prosecutors claimed she was ‘hunted’ by her husband
