Authorities haven’t found the body yet but they’re sure they have enough to make the explosive murder charge stick. Things couldn’t get more twisted in Maysville, Colorado. A year ago, on Mother’s Day, a woman allegedly went for a bike ride and never came home but they found the bike.
Her husband and two daughters were all in court Thursday. One daughter reportedly made a heart with her hands and mouthed the words “I love you” to her dad, in shackles at the defense table. Barry Morphew is accused of killing his wife.
The Mother’s Day murder
Last year, Barry Morphew was so upset he posted a “$100,000 reward for information leading to Suzanne Morphew’s return.” When he offered the 100k reward, a family friend quickly matched it. He wasn’t planning on ever having to pay up on that one. He didn’t bother beating the bushes with last Fall’s search party for her body either.
Suzanne’s brother, Andrew Moormon, set up a “volunteer search party in Chaffee County” but “Barry Morphew did not participate.” Police didn’t believe a word he ever told them. From what the local department just released, they have the Mother’s Day murder pretty well wrapped up and Barry’s chilling on ice.
According to public records Barry Morphew was officially charged with first-degree murder, tampering with evidence, and attempting to influence a public servant. The last one sounds like the weasel tried to buy his way out of facing justice. He appeared in court Thursday and will be held without bail.
Ever since his wife went missing, Barry has played innocent, acting like he was “cooperating with police.” Police are now convinced she died “May 10, 2020, the day she was first reported missing, after her daughters who were out of town for the weekend were unable to reach her on the phone.”
The story started out that “Suzanne had gone for a bike ride.” They found her bike, not far away. As the missing person’s investigation continued, police wouldn’t commit to confirming that “Morphew ever went for a bike ride” that Mother’s Day morning.
She was last seen alive, with Barry, “late afternoon or early evening” on Saturday, in the nearby town of Salida. It looks more like murder all the time. Barry had an alibi, of sorts. It’s not adding up either.
On the job in Broomfield
The same morning that the murder allegedly occurred, Barry drove three hours to the town of Broomfield, Colorado. He did that “in the early morning hours” because he claims he had a “construction job.”
As soon as he got the call that his wife had disappeared, he played the part of diligent concerned husband and “drove back to Maysville that Sunday before the job had begun.” “Just please tell us where she is at so we can get the closure everyone wants,” Suzanne’s friend Tisha Leewaye told reporters.
Months after the murder, that story started to unravel. Local reporters started digging into the job contract. It turns out that the company doing the work was located in the same Indiana town where “he and Suzanne both grew up and lived until 2018.”
Not only that, the company was “owned by a longtime friend.” There were publicly filed documents on the project and none of them were helpful to Barry. “None of the public documents I dug up for this job ever mention Barry Morphew,” reporter Lauren Scharf verifies.
Police weren’t buying that alibi either. They kept their opinions to themselves until they were ready to pounce. They “had not named him a person of interest or a suspect until Wednesday’s arrest.” Chaffee County District Attorney Linda Stanley said Wednesday in a press conference that “prosecutors are confident in the case against Barry Morphew, though Suzanne Morphew’s body has not been found.”
Even without the evidence, comments Stanley made “indicate authorities have some sense about what the cause of death was.” They charged him with murder. The exact quote is “So at this time, without the body, we wouldn’t be able to say that publicly. We do have information that led us to this point today and how we think a certain scenario had occurred, but as we investigate further that may change, so at this time we can’t comment.”
