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[Music] When something like this happens, when somebody goes missing, you want answers.
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But this case is incredibly unique. When you started to dig a little bit deeper,
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nothing is what it seems. Suzanne Morphw went missing on Mother's Day in May of 2020. And from there on
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out, it became a nationwide search for her. Suzanne Morphw left for a bike ride and she never came back. She has two
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beautiful daughters. The family looks to be perfect from the outside. Every picture you saw of them, they were
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smiling, they're laughing, they're looking like they love each other. She grew up in Indiana. She came to Colorado
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and she began to mountain bike. We see pictures of a beautiful woman, an active, physically fit woman taking
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advantage of the mountains. Barry Morphw was a business owner. He was an avid hunter and a man's man.
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On May 9th, Barry was very happy because there had been some marital tension, but
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not on May 9th. All we have to go on is what Barry says occurred. That's right. Barry says they had a nice dinner
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together. They even made love and then they went to sleep and she was still sleeping the next morning when he left
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for work. So the next day, Mother's Day, the daughters are out on a camping trip.
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Did that strike people as odd? Family had told investigators that it was odd that their daughters would not be with
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their mom. She didn't have anything else to do. and all of a sudden her daughters and her
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husband are both gone. Barry Morphe said he texted his wife Suzanne to wish her a happy Mother's
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Day. He received no reply. He had contact with his daughters back and forth. Can't get a hold of mother and
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then someone contacted a neighbor, right? The neighbor had told Barry that her car is here. She was not home. And
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Barry says, "Well, maybe go look for her bike cuz she's an avid mountain biker."
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The neighbor said he could not find it. Local law enforcement responds to the scene and they do find her bicycle.
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Where was that bike? It's right over here, Peter. The bike was found at the bottom of this ravine right here. The
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initial thought is kidnapping. Oh, Suzanne, if anyone is out there that can hear this that has you, we'll do
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whatever it takes to bring you back. So about 10 days into the investigation, they learn about a piece of technology
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that we have an example of right in front of you. What is that? Right. So they find a spy pin. It looks something
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like this. And they find it in the master bedroom of the Morphew home. It's like James Bond. It's a pen that looks
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like a regular pen. And it records conversations. This pipe pin was given to Suzanne to
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record Barry Morphw in hopes of catching him in an affair. It backfired in fact.
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As a matter of fact, it backfired. Captured on the spy pen is a conversation between Suzanne Morphw and
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somebody named Jeff. And it's clear that Jeff is her lover. They did not know who
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Jeff was, but it put a new wrinkle into the case for sure. Heat. [Music] Heat. [Music]
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What happened on this road is a real mystery. No one knows where is Suzanne. [Music]
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In the days, weeks, and months after Suzanne Morphw was reported missing on Mother's Day 2020, her trail went cold.
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But the mother of two's disappearance had become the biggest story in Colorado. 49year-old Suzanne Morphw
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remains missing. Home of a missing woman from Chaffi County is now being searched. Teams are combing the terrain,
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even brought in boats to search the local waterways. And we're going to fan out and we're
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going to work that area very carefully. Okay. 4 months in, Suzanne's brother, Andrew
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Mormon, organized a citizen search. He said he felt he had to do something, anything. I'd hoped to find her alive.
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and and at some point you have to realize when somebody's missing after so long that the chances of that diminish
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dramatically. The thought that Suzanne may have been abducted hit the peaceful picturesque
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town of Salida hard. I came home every day and my wife asked me, "Have they found her yet?"
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Dan Rydenower has covered the story for his local morning show. Hippie Radio 975
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with Dan R. Good morning. 827. Now Barry and Suzanne Morphw were not known well in Salida, Colorado. They had only been
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here for a couple of years. Before moving to Colorado in 2018, Barry and Suzanne grew up in the small town of
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Alexandria, Indiana, where they met in high school. Suzanne competed for homecoming queen.
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Barry was a star baseball player who was drafted by the Toronto Blue Jays. Injury ended Barry's dreams of a
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major league career. They both attended Purdue University and married in 1994. He started a landscaping business.
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Suzanne taught middle school before becoming a full-time mother. They had a couple of daughters, one in
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college and they had a daughter in high school. Macy, 16 years old when her mom disappeared, lived at home. Her sister,
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Mallerie, attended college, and the morphuse told some friends they moved to a home just outside of Salida to be
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closer to their older daughter. But there were also rumblings about the state of the Morphwus marriage. Maybe a
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new place, a new home, new scenery around them would strengthen their family and therefore strengthen their
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marriage. But the move did not appear to improve the relationship. It was a tough time, says her sister,
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Melinda Mormon. My sister had um sent me a text message. It was very lengthy. It was very powerful. It was
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very revealing. In this Zoom interview, Melinda said she received Suzanne's text
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two days before she disappeared and it was boiling over with anger toward Barry. The text read in part, "He's also
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been abusive emotionally and physically. I feel more angry now. Anger at what I've allowed."
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Barry was very dominant in the relationship and my sister was a very passive, gentle soul. He had a great
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tendency to overpower and intimidate people to get what he wanted. And what kind of boss was he? You know,
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he was real quiet, stern. He knew what he was doing cuz that's what he did in Indiana. Cody Cox was part of Barry's
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landscaping crew for nearly 2 years when Barry first arrived in Colorado. I talked pretty highly about Barry cuz I
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was with him all the time. He's like inspiration to me almost. He was a real cool guy. Cody said he regularly heard
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Barry talking to Suzanne as they drove in Barry's truck. They seemed to communicate pretty well.
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She is a sweetheart. She is a real kind lady. She's almost like an angel, like something you'd see off a Hallmark
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movie, you know, like real nice, almost too perfect. So when I heard about the news,
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I didn't believe it. I heard it actually on the radio and I was like, did they just say Suzanne?
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And I was like, oh my gosh, who would even want to hurt her? The first day authorities searched for
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Suzanne, they found her mountain bike close to the Morphw home. Where was the mountain bike found? It
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was found right over this little cliff right here, resting on these boulders. She was new at mountain biking, so an
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accident is certainly plausible. I would only ask where's Suzanne. She would have been injured. Yeah, she
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would have been injured. Investigators believe the scene was staged. And days later, they discovered Suzanne's helmet
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roughly a mile away off Highway 50. The helmet was found on the south side of the road, this side of the road, which
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would be to our left. So, is the thought somebody threw it out of a window? Perhaps. That's the
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thinking. Yes. It appeared as though Suzanne could have been abducted. And that's when Barry made that public plea.
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Please, we'll do whatever it takes to bring you back. In those early days, Barry had a theory about what happened
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to Suzanne that he shared with Tyson Draper, who has his own YouTube channel. They happened to meet at the site where
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Suzanne's mountain bike was found. And Tyson secretly videotaped Barry. Um the first night there was a mountain lion.
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The officer seen it walk by the car. So we thought maybe she got attacked by a lion. A mountain lion killed her. If
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that happened, there would have been signs of that. There would have been blood. There would have been struggle.
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So that was a very short-lived speculation. Authorities began to doubt that Suzanne
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even took a bike ride, especially after her sunglasses and hydration backpack were found in her car. Investigators
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also found her driver's license and credit cards in her Range Rover, but her cell phone was missing. Did Barry Morphw
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cooperate with investigators during the course of this? He had been interviewed by investigators through the course of
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it and he talked to investigators almost every time. 11 News reporter Ashley Franco is live at the Chaffi County
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Court. Ashley Franco who reported on the case for the CBS affiliate in Colorado Springs has read the police documents
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and she says Barry has repeatedly told the same story. He came home around 300 p.m. on May 9th, 2020 and had a pleasant
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evening with Suzanne. The next morning, Mother's Day, Barry says he drove to a job some three hours away. He says the
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last time he sees his wife is when she's sleeping in their bed. As investigators
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began trying to verify Barry's alibi, they were pulled in a new direction. Suzanne's spy pen had surfaced with that
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intimate conversation. Now they needed to figure out the identity of Jeff, Suzanne's lover. Could
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this man have had something to do with Suzanne's disappearance? It was just days after Suzanne Morphw
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went missing when investigators make that intriguing discovery. They discover a spy pen. A spy pen. A
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spy pen. A Gruber is a professor of law at the University of Colorado and a former defense attorney. She has closely
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studied all the public investigative files in the Morphew case. She knows it was not easy for investigators to find
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Suzanne's secret lover, a man named Jeff. She hid that affair so well that it took agents 6 months to find the man
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she was having an affair with. Jeff turned out to be Jeff Libler, and he had a wife and six children in Michigan
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where he lived. He and Suzanne had a one-time fling after high school. Decades passed until Suzanne reached out
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to Jeff out of the blue in 2018. When Suzanne and Barry moved to Colorado, Suzanne messaged him on Facebook. And
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what did she message him? Howdy, Stranger. And from that moment, they had talked almost every single day non-stop.
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In the months after Suzanne went missing, Jeff kept quiet. He only began cooperating after he was located by
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investigators who learned Jeff had taken steps to hide the nearly 2-year affair.
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What he did was delete all his social media accounts that he had used to communicate with Suzanne. He's got a lot
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to lose if revelations of this affair come out. Jeff told agents he only took those steps because he did not want to
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tarnish Suzanne's memory and worried he might lose his family and job. He was also worried agents considered him a
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suspect. He asked the agents, "Am I a target?" Although he did not come forward on his own, Jeff did assist
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agents after they found him. He agreed to provide access to his DNA, phone records, and his passwords for those
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deleted accounts. By looking through the couple's iCloud accounts and phone records, agents were able to piece
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together their relationship, including the times they met in person. Investigators also found that Suzanne,
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on several instances, had gone on vacation to meet up with Jeff in many different states, ranging from Louisiana
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to Florida. Investigators also discovered they'd sent intimate photos to each other, talked of becoming
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husband and wife, and even mentioned leaving the United States. Jeff and Suzanne had talked about moving away,
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moving to Ecuador at one point. If you were an investigator instead of a law professor, what would you want to know
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about this Jeff Libler? Everything. I'd want to know everything about what he was doing, what he was thinking. Here is
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somebody who arguably had the last communication with Suzanne before she went missing. The love affair between
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Suzanne and Jeff became a key part of the investigation as agents tried to figure out what happened to her on that
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Saturday, May 9th. the day before Mother's Day. Records show that Suzanne and Jeff messaged each other 59 times
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that day, much more than usual, authorities say. At one point, Suzanne sends Jeff this selfie. Investigators
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dub it her last proof of life photo. Barry was not home as the lover's texts heat up.
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At 2:05 p.m., Suzanne writes, "I'm just in love with you. What you up to? Jeff's
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response at 2:06 p.m. want to strip down and get naked? Lol. She responds by saying she'll load up
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her WhatsApp account. And then at 2:11, Suzanne writes, "Okay, I'm on WA." Then at 2:26 p.m., Suzanne gets a text
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from Barry that he's heading home. Done. Headed back. No one knows if Suzanne saw
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that text or was preoccupied with Jeff, but she does not answer. Barry follows up, appearing to wonder where Suzanne
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is. Did you leave? There was still no response from Suzanne, and investigators speculate the next few moments are when
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Barry returned home. They noticed that Barry's cell phone appears to be pinging all around the outside of his house. Was
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he chasing Suzanne before a final and fatal confrontation? Investigators asked Barry to explain
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that unusual phone activity. And he says, "Well, let me think about that. I was probably walking around my house
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shooting chipmunks." You heard right. It was perhaps the world's first chipmunk alibi. Barry says the chipmunks were a
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constant nuisance at his house, and he'd been running around shooting them that day.
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And then that confession to shooting chipmunks becomes a major piece of incriminating evidence against him.
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There was no evidence of any chipmunk shootings around Barry's house. Part of his problem, Aas says, is that Barry
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granted between 30 and 40 interviews, all without a lawyer to everyone from a county detective to members of the FBI.
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Would you have allowed him to do all these interviews? No. Absolutely not. Meanwhile, Jeff Libler was cleared. He
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told agents he was in Michigan that weekend and his alibi checked out. When investigators tell Barry of the affair,
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he denies knowing anything about it. But if Barry knew nothing about Suzanne's affair, what motive would he have to
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kill her? One clue may be a deleted text that investigators found on Barry's phone sent by Suzanne just days before.
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I'm done. I could care less what you're up to and have been for years. We just need to figure this out civily. So the
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only thing that makes sense is that Barry Morphw lost it when Suzanne finally said, "I'm leaving you." Barry
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knew that his daughters would be away on their camping trip that Saturday afternoon, and authorities say he took
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advantage of that opportunity to kill Suzanne and clean up the crime scene. From 2:47
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p.m. until 10:17 p.m., just under 8 hours, Barry's phone goes into airplane mode. What do
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authorities believe was happening during that time? Authorities say that they believe when his phone went into
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airplane mode that he was disposing of possible evidence. Unable to track Barry's cell phone, investigators tapped
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into a relatively new investigative technique, digital vehicle forensics, to pull a
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stream of data out of Barry's Ford truck. And Barry's truck told a different story
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than what he was telling investigators. They were using Barry's own car against him.
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Ben Lamir is an expert in the new field of vehicle forensics. Give me a sense of how your technology
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from your company helps solve criminal cases. So, a lot of times it's used to, you know, locate bodies, brings Lamir is
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the CEO of the Burla Corporation. helps uh get people convicted. Um and it's helped get people not convicted.
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Investigators from Scotland Yard to the FBI have learned how to use Burla's software to tap into the dozens of
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computers in a car. It's accurate enough to be used as evidence in court cases. Correct. Yes, sir. It's uh it's used
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every day in cases around the world. cases like the disappearance of Suzanne Morphw. Investigators created a burla
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report, meaning they tapped into the data in Barry's Ford truck to track its movements after his cell phone went into
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airplane mode. A couple of the pieces of evidence that I think are very harmful to his case um come from the data in the
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car. The prosecution's case is that Barry snapped at one point the day before Mother's Day.
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Authorities believe Barry killed Suzanne that afternoon. He told agents he went to bed around 8:00 p.m. that night, but
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the data pulled from the truck shows that the truck was put in reverse and moved some 96 ft closer to his house
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around 9:30 p.m. Investigators think that's when he could have loaded Suzanne's body.
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Initially, Barry told police that he set his alarm for 4:30 a.m. on Mother's Day
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and left the house by 5 to drive to a job site in Broomfield, a town near Denver, 150 mi from Salida.
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But the truck's computers showed that someone was opening and closing the truck's doors around 3:30 a.m.
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Investigators believe Barry began driving toward Broomfield much earlier than he claimed, but there is a 4-hour
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window, approximately 4:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. when no activity was recorded by the vehicle's computers. There are
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events in the car that aren't recorded, so they can't give sort of a full chronological picture. And if Barry hid
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Suzanne's body during that 4-hour window, the truck's data does not provide answers. Why is data missing
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sometimes? Well, it gets overwritten. Um, you know, it is a computer and you know, log files, they only last so long.
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But Barry helped fill in some of the missing data. He told agents he took a left upon leaving his home instead of a
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right because even though it was dark, he remembered seeing some elk. He saw a herd of elk and he's a hunter, so he was
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interested and he wanted to get an uplose look. That admission was significant to agents because it put him
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in an area where a key piece of evidence had been recovered. Investigators found
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Suzanne's bike helmet up that road. So, they believe at that point when he turned left instead of turning right
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that he could have been ditching her bike helmet. At 8:10 on Mother's Day morning, the
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truck's computers again began recording data, and by then, Barry's cell phone had also come back to life. Agents are
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able to track Barry's cell and truck movements and can see that he first pulled over at this Broomfield bus stop
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where he discarded something in a garbage can. And then he moves on to a hotel trash can, a McDonald's trash can,
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a dumpster in a Men's Warehouse parking lot, and then back to the hotel and dump
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stuff in a dumpster there. Investigators believe that during these trash runs, he
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was disposing of evidence in different places within the Denver area. This is a surveillance shot of Barry on one of
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those trash runs, but investigators could not see what he was throwing away. It may have looked incriminating, but
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Barry claims it was just another day at the office. He told agents he was merely
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being cheap, not criminal. and his claim, well, I just always have a lot of junk in in the vehicle. I don't like to
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pay to have it uh disposed at a landfill. I This is just what I do. But it's suspicious that you would go to
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five different trash areas to dispose of several things. Why not just do it at one?
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After checking out the work site, Barry headed back to his room at the Holiday Inn. And investigators say he stayed
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there from 12:42 to 6:03 p.m. By then, he'd already spoken to older daughter Mallerie, who told him she could not get
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in touch with her mother. That's when the Morphew neighbors were contacted and could find no sign of Suzanne. Barry
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asked him at that time if the bike was there to go check on her. Her bicycle is not here. Barry asks his neighbor to
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call 911 and that's when the call to 911 was placed that Suzanne is missing. Barry doesn't head home immediately and
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he is dropping some tools off for his co-workers. Tools including a shovel. With Suzanne now officially reported
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missing, Barry tells his workers there's a family emergency and arranges hotel rooms with one of those workers taking
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over Barry's room. When the employee was interviewed, he told investigators that
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the room that Barry checked out of it had a strong smell of chlorine or bleach, which suggests what? That he
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could be cleaning up a crime scene. Just after 6:00 p.m., Barry starts driving back to Salida. On the way, Barry speaks
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to sheriff's deputies who advise him they found Suzanne's bike, and he arrives at that ravine at around 8:40
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p.m. And investigators say that when he arrived there, he was pretty emotional for a few minutes.
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By Sunday night, Suzanne's daughters were back home, but Suzanne is nowhere to be found. no questions asked, however
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much they want. Barry offered a $100,000 reward for information that was later doubled to $200,000.
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Investigators later discovered many texts from Suzanne to a close friend that apparently revealed her tormented
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feelings about Barry. He won't speak of divorce. I feel no peace when he's here.
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I wouldn't feel safe alone with him. Barry became the prime suspect. And investigators think they know how he
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killed Suzanne. [Music] The large Morphew home remains sealed off and disappearing. While
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investigators searched the Morphw home and the family's cars and trucks, Barry continued to talk seemingly to anyone
00:27:43
with a badge. Weeks and months went by and Barry remained at the center of the investigation.
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Police are absolutely correct as a statistical matter to look at intimate partners when they suspect that a woman
00:28:01
might have been harmed or murdered. It's something like eight out of 10 times when a spouse dies, the other one's
00:28:06
involved. Absolutely. Sometimes the smallest item will turn an investigation. And in this case, agents
00:28:14
seized on this clear plastic cap that a forensics team had found in the family's
00:28:19
dryer. Prosecutors believe the cap was from a syringe used to fill a tranquilizer dart. How do prosecutors
00:28:28
interpret that? The prosecution's theory is that at some point when Barry came home on the 9th and snapped and decided
00:28:37
to murder Suzanne, he used a tranquilizer dart that you would use on animals. There was no working
00:28:45
tranquilizer rifle found in the Morpheuse home, but Barry told investigators he was an experienced
00:28:52
tranquilizer dart gun shooter. He knew how to load darts with paralyzing chemicals, having used them to illegally
00:29:00
sedate deer and remove their antlers to sell. This is a photo of the inside of Barry's
00:29:08
garage with his collection of deer heads and a pile of antlers. We asked Dan Rydenower to read some of
00:29:17
what Barry told investigators. Barry said, "The first thing I thought of when I came here and saw deer in my yard with
00:29:24
big horns, I'm like, I'm getting them horns. And I'll tell you exactly what I did. I shoot them. They go to sleep. I
00:29:31
cut their horns off. It's totally illegal. But you're going to find tran darts around my property because I've
00:29:38
done that." Experts say it can take between 4 and 20 minutes for an animal the size of a deer to drop after being
00:29:46
shot with a tranquilizer dart. Agents theorized that Barry's phone had pinged from various locations around the house,
00:29:54
not because he was shooting chipmunks, but because he was chasing Suzanne after he shot her.
00:30:02
And what are you holding? What I'm holding is a Teladart model uh 706 rifle. They use this a lot in parks
00:30:09
throughout the country. Andrew Kaders, owner and CEO of Animal Care and Equipment Services, showed us a
00:30:17
tranquilizer rifle he'd typically use on animals. So, if Suzanne had been struck by one of
00:30:28
these darts, it's right here. Would she have time to run around, try to escape? She could, but I don't think she would
00:30:35
get very far. For a human being, it could be lethal, for sure. Bolstering the theory that Barry and
00:30:43
Suzanne had a confrontation the day she disappeared were apparent scratches seen
00:30:49
on Barry's left arm. Agents took the circumstantial evidence they gathered, Barry's apparent suspicious behavior,
00:30:57
his contradictory statements, the puzzling data from his truck, Suzanne's disturbing texts, and those five trash
00:31:05
runs, and brought it all to the district attorney. On nearly the anniversary of Suzanne's
00:31:13
disappearance, Barry is arrested. The moment captured on a cell phone by a passer by in May 2021. Tonight, the
00:31:21
husband of Suzanne Morphw is behind bars accused of killing her. The Chaffi County Sheriff says Barry Morphw was
00:31:27
arrested this morning. Suzanne's body has never been found and prosecutors assume she's dead. Despite
00:31:36
the lack of a body, Barry was charged with first-degree murder, tampering with physical evidence, and a variety of
00:31:43
other allegations. He was held without bail and eventually pleaded not guilty. In their arrest affidavit, prosecutors
00:31:53
spelled out what they believe happened to Suzanne. It had become clear that Barry could not control Suzanne's
00:32:00
insistence on leaving him and he resorted to something he has done his entire life. Hunt and control Suzanne
00:32:08
like he had hunted and controlled animals. Suzanne's sister Melinda reacted to the
00:32:15
news of Barry's arrest. There are no winners in this story. There are two families who are suffering deeply.
00:32:24
Barry ultimately hired high-profile lawyers from Denver. And in the summer of 2021, Judge Patrick Murphy heard the
00:32:32
prosecution's evidence in open court. He decided to hold a preliminary hearing to see if this case had enough evidence
00:32:41
to go to trial. The defense tried mightily to blunt the state's case, countering that the clear
00:32:48
plastic cap found in the dryer means nothing because no one could say how long it had been there. Furthermore,
00:32:57
Barry's DNA was not found on that cap. And as for that chlorine smell in Barry's hotel room, one of the managers
00:33:06
from the Holiday Inn had actually communicated to agents that this smell of chlorine existed before Barry Murphy
00:33:12
was there because that room's directly above an indoor pool. And there was one more crucial issue the
00:33:19
prosecution had to deal with, one that its own forensic team uncovered. DNA evidence made public for the first time
00:33:28
now threatened to destroy the case against Barry. This DNA discovery is so significant. The agents swabbed the
00:33:39
inside of Suzanne Morphw's car and they found male DNA on the glove box and it wasn't Barry Morphw's DNA. He was
00:33:47
eliminated. The DNA also did not match Suzanne's lover, Jeff Libler. But it was a partial
00:33:56
match to the DNA of an unknown male who had attacked other women. And it raised a disturbing question. Had Suzanne
00:34:04
fallen into the hands of a sexual predator? [Music] In September 2021 at the Chaffi County
00:34:23
Courthouse in Salida, Judge Patrick Murphy heard arguments about whether there was enough evidence to try Barry
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Morphw for murder. The judge named off three different scenarios, saying Suzanne Morphw left willingly. Barry
00:34:37
Morphw could have killed his wife or someone else abducted Suzanne and killed her. He said it was unlikely Suzanne had
00:34:44
run off on her own, even though she and lover Jeff Libbler had discussed moving to Ecuador. The judge says that because
00:34:52
of the evidence that's been presented about how loving Suzanne was toward her daughters and toward her family that she
00:34:59
could never do that. But the abduction theory could not be so easily dismissed, especially after that mysterious DNA was
00:35:07
found in Suzanne's Range Rover. Investigators learned that DNA at least partially matched the profile of an
00:35:15
unnamed man connected to three unsolved sexual assault cases in Tempee, Phoenix,
00:35:23
and Chicago. So, how can that DNA end up in her car? Well, that DNA can end up in her car if
00:35:31
she was the victim, for example, of a serial killer or there could also be potentially an innocent explanation. But
00:35:39
it is very very curious. Barry Morphw can stand up and say, "I'm not your killer.
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The man whose DNA is in my wife's car tied to past sexual assaults, that's your killer." Barry Morphew absolutely
00:35:57
could say that and that's what his defense is banking on in this case. In frank language, Judge Murphy gave his
00:36:05
opinion of the state's evidence. I find that the proof is not evident, nor is the presumption great that Mr. Morphew
00:36:13
committed first-degree murder. Despite that, the judge ruled there was probable cause to go to trial. But this
00:36:22
judge was very careful to say, "Look, I'm finding probable cause here, but it's only because I am looking at all
00:36:29
the evidence in the light most favorable to the prosecution." At that point, Barry had spent months in
00:36:38
jail. The judge says $500,000 cashonly bond. And are they monitoring him in some fashion? Barry Morphw is wearing an
00:36:47
ankle monitor for them to track him to make sure that he is staying in Chaffi County. A few days later, on September
00:36:54
20th, 2021, Barry Morphw and daughters Mallerie and Macy are all smiles as they leave the jail. Barry, how does it feel?
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How does it feel to be out? They stand firmly behind their dad. Barry declined our request for an interview.
00:37:12
Barry Morphw's homicide trial was to begin on April 28th, 2022. But in the months leading up to that date, Judge
00:37:21
Murphy recused himself and Judge Ramsay Lama replaced him. and Barry's defense team, led by attorney Iris Eton, filed
00:37:31
motions asking that prosecutors be sanctioned for failing to produce discovery in a timely manner, including
00:37:39
some potentially exculpatory evidence, like the male DNA found in Suzanne's Range Rover. There's DNA
00:37:48
that is placed on all the critical items of evidence in this case on the bike, on
00:37:54
the bike helmet, in the house, in the car that is linked to unknown males. In April 2022, Judge
00:38:04
Lama ruled that prosecutors repeatedly had missed deadlines and had failed to turn over important information in the
00:38:12
discovery phase. The judge wrote that while he did not find those actions quote willful, the court does find this
00:38:20
pattern to be negligent, bordering on reckless unquote. The judge's penalty was to knock out 14 prosecution
00:38:29
witnesses, including experts in DNA and cell phone and vehicle data recovery. They would not, he said, be allowed to
00:38:38
testify. This case is incredibly unique. Law professor Ya Gruber said the case was going to be an uphill battle for
00:38:47
prosecutors even before she heard about the most recent sanctions. There are not
00:38:52
many murder cases where the defendant has been charged with first-degree murder where there is no body, no blood
00:39:02
evidence of any foul play, no eyewitnesses. On April 19th, 2022, as a pre-trial hearing was about to begin,
00:39:12
District Attorney Linda Stanley filed a motion to dismiss the murder charges against Barry Morphw without prejudice,
00:39:20
meaning the case could be refiled at a later date. In her motion, the DA pointed to the court's decision to bar
00:39:28
several key witnesses. Without this crucial evidence and without the victim's body, the people cannot move
00:39:35
forward at this time in good faith. Neither Barry, his daughters, nor his lawyer had any advanced warning. I
00:39:45
didn't know a dismissal was coming today, although the writing was on the wall. In her motion for dismissal, DA
00:39:54
Stanley told the judge that officials believe investigators are close to discovering the location of Suzanne
00:40:02
Morphw's body. Court papers specifically mention a remote and mountainous region
00:40:08
nearby the Morphw residence that will be excavated after 5 ft of snow melts. Where is Suzanne Morphw's body? That is
00:40:17
the million-dollar question. Remember, there was an approximate 4-hour gap not recorded by the computers in Barry's
00:40:26
truck on Mother's Day morning 2020. Whether investigators ultimately were able to recover some of that missing
00:40:33
data or received a tip about the location of Suzanne's remains is not known. The San Isabel National Forest, again,
00:40:42
is 1.1 million acres. There's plenty of places to dispose of the body. Defense attorney Eton denies Barry has any
00:40:53
involvement in his wife's disappearance. Barry Morphw loves Suzanne Morphw. He loves her and he misses her and he wants
00:41:02
to know where Suzanne Morphw is. After the judge granted the motion to dismiss homicide charges against Barry,
00:41:12
he walked out of court a free man, flanked as usual by his loyal daughters. Suzanne's sister Melinda says she agrees
00:41:22
with the request to dismiss charges against Barry at this point. She said she hoped that with more time, searchers
00:41:30
will find Suzanne's body and win a solid conviction in her murder. This would dispel all rumors of her whereabouts.
00:41:40
And whatever else happens with the case, Melinda says she hopes her nieces keep one thing in mind. Mallerie Macy, your
00:41:50
mother would have laid down her life for you girls. She would never leave you. She would never forsake you.
00:41:57
She loved you with her whole being. [Music] 48 hours. Don't miss an episode. [Music]
00:42:50
Heat. Hey, Heat.