Transcription
[music] >> Today's story takes us to Salida, Colorado, a quiet mountain town in Chaffee County, home to more 14,000 foot peaks, known as 14ers, than any other county in the state. For hikers and climbers, it's paradise. But behind the breathtaking scenery, one mystery would shatter the town's peaceful image forever.
On Mother's Day, May 10th, 2020, a neighbor called in the late afternoon to report that Suzanne Morphew had not come home. Her husband and daughters could not reach her, and her bike was missing from their home. You see, Suzanne was an avid cyclist. It was more like a hobby for her, so she often go riding in the mountains. But doing that on Mother's Day, and her children not hearing from her the whole day, was very odd.
Search teams were deployed that same evening. Deputies from the Chaffee County Sheriff's Office, search and rescue crews, spreading out across the terrain around the Morphew property, and the mountain roads nearby. They found her bike abandoned, left on a remote stretch of road near their home. No sign of Suzanne. No indication of what had happened. No sign at all of where she had gone.
>> Suzanne?
>> Yeah.
Suzanne Renee Morphew was born on April 30th, 1971 in Alexandria, a small town of around 5,000 people in Madison County, Indiana. She was the fourth child of Gene and Adrian Morphew. Suzanne was 9 years old when her parents divorced. She studied at Alexandria Monroe High School, where she competed for homecoming. After school, Suzanne went to Purdue University and earned a degree in elementary education. She graduated in 1994.
That same summer, on August 5th, 1994, she married Barry Morphew, the same Barry Morphew who had also grown up in Alexandria alongside her. He was the star baseball player who had even been drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays before an injury ended that chapter of his life. They had both gone to Purdue. From the outside, they looked like a natural match.
Suzanne taught middle school for a while. She loved children the way good teachers do, not just their grades, but their actual lives. Eventually, she stepped back from teaching to raise their daughters full-time. Mallory was born on July 4th, 1999. Macy came along on August 28th, 2003. Those two girls became the center of Suzanne's world.
In 2018, Barry and Suzanne moved from Indiana to a home just outside Salida, Colorado, a mountain town of around 6,000 people in the upper Arkansas Valley. The official reason was to be closer to Mallory, who was at college nearby. They traded the flat Indiana countryside they had known their whole lives for high altitude, mountain roads, and a house with deer wandering through the yard. But underneath the fresh start, the marriage was struggling. It had been struggling for a long time.
May 10th, 2020 was a Sunday, Mother's Day. Barry Morphew had left the family home outside Salida in the very early hours of that morning. Court documents show his phone and vehicle data were active as early as 3:30 in the morning. He drove about 150 miles north to a job site in Broomfield, Colorado. Their daughters, Mallory and Macy, were away on a church camping trip. Suzanne was home alone.
During the afternoon, a neighbor called Barry to say the girls had been trying to text their mom all day to wish her happy Mother's Day and had not heard back at all. Barry told the neighbor to go and check the house and look for Suzanne's mountain bike. When neither Suzanne nor the bike could be found, he told the neighbor to call the sheriff. Barry himself reportedly started driving back home at just after 6:00 in the evening.
Suzanne's mountain bike was found by deputies near Chaffee County Road 225, down a steep bank off the side of the road. Barry arrived home at around 8:40 that evening. He was reportedly emotional for a few minutes when he got there. By that Sunday night, Mallory and Macy were home. Suzanne was still missing.
For the investigators who responded to that scene, the bike told them almost nothing about how Suzanne had come to be separated from it, and that was the problem. In rough Colorado terrain, under normal circumstances, if this was an accident, it will most likely leave something behind. This wasn't looking like one. Sheriff John Spezze set up a tip line and brought in state and federal resources within days. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the FBI were both involved.
>> Investigators say they've gotten nearly 150 tips in the disappearance of a Chaffee County mother. Investigators have asked for people in that area to keep footage on their doorbell cams for up to 2 days before Mother's Day. Morphew's family has offered a $200,000 reward for any information.
>> Suzanne's brother also organized searches across the county. They found no sign of Suzanne. Barry told investigators that everything at home was wonderful. In fact, he said the night before had been great. They made love and she was in bed by the time he left for work in the morning. Barry said their marriage was wonderful and that Suzanne was a good mother.
Days later, he made a video plea.
>> Oh, Suzanne, if anyone is out there that can hear this, that has you, please we'll do whatever it takes to bring you back. We love you. We miss you. Your girls need you. I will do whatever it takes to get you back. Honey, I love you. I want you back so bad.
Investigators were already building a very different picture of the case. They dug deep and it turned out Suzanne had confided in her closest friends through text messages and those messages paint a picture of a woman who felt trapped inside a life that had become frightening. "I feel no peace when he's here." She wrote to one friend in the months before she disappeared. And then, in a separate message, "I would not feel safe alone with him."
In March 2020, she texted, "He won't speak of divorce." Then, on May 6th, 2020, 4 days before she vanished, she sent a message directly to Barry, "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." That text was recovered from Barry's phone. It had been deleted.
According to court documents, Barry's behavior on the day Suzanne disappeared raised concerns straight away. He had scheduled the Broomfield work trip at the last minute. He had shown up with tools that were not adequate for the job, despite the trip supposedly being urgent. His phone showed he was active well before the 5:00 departure time he gave to police. On his drive up to Broomfield, he made multiple stops, including, according to surveillance footage investigators later reviewed, five separate rubbish disposals along the route. At his hotel, he was seen walking to his room with shovels, and then coming back out 19 minutes later wearing a different shirt and carrying a bin with items that could not be identified on camera. On the entire day his wife went missing, he did not call her, not once, not on Mother's Day. Okay, I'm not the only one finding this weird, right?
These were not conclusions yet, they were observations, but they were observations that did not fit. Investigators also found out that Barry had been telling his daughters that Suzanne had been struggling mentally in the months before she disappeared. He said she was not doing well, but the texts Suzanne had been privately sending to her close friend told a completely different story. Not of a woman falling apart, but of a woman who was planning her way out.
On May 20th, 2020, 10 days after Suzanne was reported missing, investigators searching the Morphew home found a pen in the walk-in closet of the master bedroom. It looked completely ordinary from the outside. It was, in fact, a recording device. Suzanne had bought it because she suspected Barry was having an affair. She had told a friend about it. She hid the pen in the closet hoping to catch him. What she had not anticipated was that the pen would end up recording her own private phone conversations, calls between Suzanne and a man she herself had been seeing.
It took FBI agents 6 months to work out who the man was. His name was Jeff Liebler, someone both Suzanne and Barry had known from high school back in Alexandria, Indiana. He and Suzanne had briefly dated after school before they went their separate ways. Decades passed. Then in 2018, when Suzanne and Barry moved to Colorado and Suzanne found herself feeling isolated in a new place inside a marriage that was breaking down, she searched for Jeff on Facebook and sent a message, "Howdy, stranger." They started talking again. What began as catching up became, over time, something more.
Investigators found out that Jeff Liebler had a wife and six children in Michigan. He had not come forward after Suzanne vanished. He had taken steps to keep the affair hidden. When FBI agents eventually reached him, 6 months into the investigation, he was told he was not a suspect. He was interviewed and cleared.
A few months into the investigation, forensic analysis of Suzanne's Range Rover produced a result that seemed to shake everything up. Unknown male DNA was found in the glove compartment of her car. Testing in October 2020 showed the profile at least partially matched a man connected to three separate unsolved sexual assault cases, one in Tempe, Arizona, one in Phoenix, Arizona, and one in Chicago, Illinois. Barry Morphew's DNA did not match. Had Suzanne been taken by a stranger? A predator passing through? Investigators could not rule it out.
Law Professor Aya Gruber, who studied the public investigation files closely, described the challenge it created.
>> Well, that DNA can end up in her car if she was the victim, for example, of a serial killer. Or there could also be potentially an innocent explanation. But it is very, very curious.
The lead was followed up. It did not resolve. And while it sat unsettled in the file, the rest of the evidence kept building in a completely different direction. At some point during the search of the Morphew home, detectives found the cap of a tranquilizer dart cap. Barry Morphew owned a device that fired tranquilizer darts. He used it to manage deer on his property, something he had done back in Indiana and had continued doing in Colorado. The specific compound he used was called BAM, butorphanol azaperone, and medetomidine. It was not something you could just walk into a shop and buy. According to the prescription records investigators pulled, when Suzanne Morphew disappeared, there was only one private citizen in that entire part of Colorado with a documented prescription for BAM, Barry Morphew. When investigators asked Barry about the dart cap, noting that a tranquilizer dart had apparently been fired somewhere in or around the house, he said he had seen deer in the yard and wanted their antlers. By the way, I think that's illegal.
Moving on, nearly a year had passed. The investigation had put a case together. A 130-page arrest affidavit had been compiled by the Chaffee County Sheriff's Office alongside the CBI and FBI. On May 5th, 2021, Barry Morphew was arrested and formally charged with first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and attempting to influence a public servant. He had said he was innocent the whole time. He pleaded not guilty to everything. The charges were unusual because Suzanne had not been found. There was no body, no definitive crime scene. The prosecution's case rested on digital evidence, timeline analysis, witness accounts, the forensic history of the tranquilizer prescription, and the whole build-up of Barry's behavior.
A four-day preliminary hearing in August 2021, 20 hours of testimony was enough for Judge Patrick Murphy to rule the case would go to trial. Barry Morphew was released on bond in September 2021 with his daughters beside him. What happened next was honestly just wild. Joseph Cahill, one of the main CBI investigators, quit his job in December 2021 while he was being investigated by internal affairs.
>> Former agent Joseph Cahill told many law enforcement witnesses in the case that arresting Mr. Morphew was premature and the worst decision that could be made. In the motion to dismiss the case, Morphew's lawyers wrote that Cahill stated the case was not remotely ready for anybody to move the case forward.
Around the same time, the head of CBI Major Crimes told the Sheriff's Office that neither Cahill nor the other CBI agents wanted to arrest anyone yet. They wanted more forensic testing done first. That didn't mean they believed Barry was innocent. It just meant the case wasn't strong enough. Not because the evidence had changed, but because the whole process around it had gotten messy.
Barry's defense team didn't waste any time. They filed a motion to dismiss in February 2022. Then Judge Patrick Murphy stepped away from the case because of a possible conflict of interest. The trial moved from Chaffee County to Fremont County since you couldn't find a single person in that small mountain town who hadn't heard about the case already. No way Barry could get a fair trial there. And then, just days before the trial was supposed to start, April 19th, 2022, District Attorney Linda Stanley dropped the charges. She did it without prejudice, which meant they could come back and charge him again later, but for now, it was over. That day, Barry walked out of a Fremont County courtroom holding his daughter's hands. His lawyer, Iris Eiten, said there hadn't been a single physical evidence connecting Barry to Suzanne's death.
>> I didn't know a dismissal was coming today, although the writing was on the wall.
Barry didn't stop there. The next year, he filed a federal lawsuit asking for $15 million.
>> Barry Morphew, the Chaffee County man accused of murdering his wife nearly 3 years ago, is striking back, filing a federal lawsuit for a hefty sum of cash.
>> He accuses both state and federal law enforcement of, quote, "maliciously prosecuting him when they knew he didn't do it."
Even after the charges against Barry were dropped, investigators kept digging for answers, but it just felt like they were spinning their wheels. Then, out of nowhere, something finally cracked the case open. On September 22nd, 2023, 3 years, 4 months, and 12 days after Suzanne disappeared, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation was searching near Moffat in Saguache County following up on a totally unrelated missing person case. That's when they found human remains.
>> Tonight, we're learning more about the discovery of the remains of Suzanne Morphew, the Salida mom who went missing on Mother's Day of 2020. The Colorado Bureau of Investigation announced it had discovered her remains near the town of Moffat.
>> That's about 2 hours southwest of Colorado Springs and not far from Sand Dunes National Park and Saguache County.
>> Investigators believe Suzanne's body had been moved at least twice before ending up there. She'd been buried there for years. On September 27th, 2023, the coroner confirmed these were Suzanne Renee Morphew's remains. Her family released a statement. "The memories of her gentle spirit and wonderful smile have been a constant presence since her disappearance to all who knew and loved her. Fate may have played a key role in finding her, but it does not negate the resolute commitment of all those involved."
Fast forward to April 2024. Suzanne's death was ruled a homicide. The autopsy found butorphanol, azaperone, and medetomidine in her system. Ingredients used in BAM, the animal tranquilizer Barry had a prescription for, the same stuff he'd used to hunt deer for years. The official cause of death, homicide by undetermined means in the setting of butorphanol, azaperone, and medetomidine intoxication. That was a big deal. The chemicals in her bones matched what was found in his dryer. How do you even begin to explain that away?
Jump ahead to June 18th, 2025. The grand jury hit Barry with a fresh indictment for first-degree murder. By then, investigators already had a good idea of where he was. On June 20th, 2025, they pulled Barry over during a traffic stop in Phoenix. He'd been living there with a woman under a different name. They hauled him back to Colorado, where he played not guilty to all charges. His two daughters, who have stood by him throughout, helped him post a modified $3 million bond. He was released under strict house arrest with a GPS ankle monitor.
A trial was set for October 2026, but the defense filed a motion to continue, saying the volume of discovery material was unbelievable, and that they needed more time to go through it properly. Judge Jane Hopkins pushed the trial date to July 19th, 2027. In recent pre-trial hearings, prosecutors have said they plan to introduce evidence of past domestic abuse and marriage problems, arguing that Suzanne was actively planning to divorce Barry before she vanished. Barry's defense attorney, David Beller, maintains his innocence, pushes back on the domestic violence claims, and has pointed toward an alternate timeline involving alternate suspects. The trial is scheduled for July 19th, 2027.
The fact that Barry Morphew was living under the name Lee Moore in Arizona, telling a woman he was with that his wife had been abducted, is worth sitting with for a moment. He did not leave Colorado and start a quiet, low-key life. He built a new identity. He created a new story to explain Suzanne's absence. He was, in a sense, still managing the narrative, still deciding what other people would know and believe about what had happened to his wife. The investigators who tracked him down and arrested him in a traffic stop in Phoenix did not find a man who had been quietly living with guilt. They found a man who had been performing a different version of events for a new audience. That detail says something about who Barry Morphew is and why the people who never stopped looking made exactly the right call.
In the 5 years since Mother's Day 2020, the investigation into Suzanne Morphew's death survived more chaos than most cases seen in a generation. A disbarred district attorney, a resigned CBI agent, a dropped indictment, a $15 million lawsuit, a suspect living under a fake name in another state. And through all of it, the investigation stayed open. Sheriff John Specht, the man who stood in front of cameras and tip lines for years, said, "We have never stopped our investigation and will continue to follow all leads in pursuit of justice for Suzanne."
Suzanne Morphew has not been buried yet because her remains are still caught in legal disputes regarding the ongoing murder investigation. The trial is scheduled for July 19th, 2027. Whatever happens in that courtroom, one thing is already done. Suzanne Morphew was found and she was brought home. And the people who never stopped looking, who kept that file open through every legal setback, every piece of institutional chaos, every year of silence, made sure that her story and who she was in it will finally be told completely. Thank you for staying up until this point of the video. If this story touched you in some way, the best thing you can do is share it. Subscribe if you haven't and we will see you in the next one.