The husband of a woman whose remains were discovered more than three years after she was reported missing on Mother’s Day 2020 has returned to Colorado to face a first-degree murder charge in her death. Barry Morphew is being held in Alamosa, as confirmed by 12th Judicial District Attorney Anne E. Kelly. He was arrested in Arizona on June 20 after a new indictment was issued in the case of Suzanne Morphew’s death, which had initially been dropped due to prosecutorial issues with evidence. Morphew waived his extradition rights and has been awaiting transfer from a Phoenix jail to Colorado.
Scheduled to appear in court on Tuesday afternoon, Morphew faces the new charges related to Suzanne Morphew’s death, which was determined to be a homicide in a 2024 autopsy report despite the unspecified cause of death. An indictment revealed the presence of a tranquilizing drug cocktail in her bone marrow, prescribed to Barry Morphew, though her remains did not show signs of trauma.
Maintaining his innocence since his wife’s disappearance, Barry Morphew’s attorney David Beller criticized the new indictment, stating that the government’s conclusion is predetermined. Barry had previously faced murder charges in 2021, only for the case to be dropped in 2022 due to legal issues. Suzanne Morphew went missing in May 2020, sparking a widespread search effort that garnered national attention. Her body was eventually found in September 2023 in a shallow grave near the Morphews’ home.
The case against Barry Morphew has been fraught with legal challenges and allegations of evidence mishandling. Despite the ongoing legal battles, Morphew insists on his innocence as he prepares to face the charges once again in court.
According to the condition of the remains and clothing, a forensic anthropologist proposed that the body likely decomposed elsewhere before being moved to the site. Barry Morphew was connected to a wildlife sedative known as BAM, as toxicology testing showed that three drugs from this sedative were found in her bone marrow. The coroner’s office determined the cause of death as “homicide by unspecified means” due to intoxication from the three drugs: butorphanol, azaperone, and medetomidine. Barry Morphew obtained and filled multiple prescriptions for BAM while residing in Indiana before moving to Colorado in 2018. He was a deer farmer in Indiana and allegedly used BAM to tranquilize deer in both states. Records indicate that only Colorado Parks and Wildlife and National Park Service officials, not private individuals or businesses, had acquired BAM in the area surrounding their home between 2017 and 2020. No government officials reported any missing BAM supplies. The indictment concluded that during Suzanne Morphew’s disappearance, only one private citizen in that region had access to BAM: Barry Morphew.
