Judge Domenico
summarized the uncontested facts articulated in the arrest affidavit as follows. My question for long term observers of this case is: Did he miss anything?
1. Macy Morphew’s admission that her parents argued a lot and that she feared they would separate or divorce.
2. Mrs. Morphew’s sister, Melinda Baumunk, described Plaintiff as one who lives a double life, a liar, an adulterer, a bully, one that has to have control, cunning, fools people a lot, and treats his wife and daughters as trophies.
3. Mrs. Morphew texted her sister two days before she disappeared: “Its hard dealing with the harsh abrasiveness and having to show respect. He’s also been abusive, emotionally and physically. There’s so much...I went thru a period of acceptance and I feel more angry now. Anger at what I’ve allowed.”
4. Mrs. Morphew kept a list of grievances about her husband on the notes application on her phone, which included “Phys abuse,” “Stalking Sheila and me in house without telling,” “Chase me around resort and threatened,” “Took phone,” “Not safe alone with you. Can’t be trusted,” “Oppressive,” and “Accused me of bf."
5. Mrs. Morphew texted her husband a few days before she disappeared: “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.”
6.. Plaintiff declined to submit to a polygraph examination regard- ing his memory of the events leading up to his wife’s disappearance and his alibi.
7. Investigators observed scratches on Plaintiff’s upper left arm three days after his wife disappeared.
8. Plaintiff thought it was “very suspicious” that his wife would not tell him about some of her communications, even if he did not know she was involved in a sexual relationship with another man.
9. Plaintiff’s conflicting statements about whether he went on a hike to Fooses Lake with his wife the day before her disappearance.
10. Plaintiff’s conflicting statements about whether he used his tran- quilizer or darts in Colorado, including his admissions that “I’ve shot two deer with my tranq gun, ‘cause I used to raise deer, and I collect horns” and that “I’ve shot deer from that little breezeway from between the garage and the laundry room.”
11. Plaintiff’s admission that he used BAM, Telazol, and Xylazine as tranquilizers and that he brought these chemicals, which he knew to be controlled substances, from Indiana.
12. Retired Colorado Parks & Wildlife Field Veterinarian Lisa Wolfe’s surprise that a civilian would have these animal tranquilizers.
13. Plaintiff’s admission that he kept the tranquilizer chemicals in vials and injected them into darts himself.
14. Mrs. Morphew’s “spy pen” recorded her husband listening to several episodes of “Forensic Files”— including three episodes about murders — during a drive to Pueblo less than two months before she disappeared.
15. Plaintiff was originally scheduled to pick up an employee to drive to Broomfield for a landscaping job around 5:30 p.m. on the day his wife disappeared but instead left at 5:00 a.m., twelve hours earlier than planned.
16. Plaintiff was seen “carrying unknown items in his hands and placing items into two separate trash cans located on the edge of the McDonald’s lot between 10:19 AM and 10:41 AM” on May 10, 2020, roughly six hours after Mrs. Morphew was last seen alive.
17. Plaintiff was the last person to see his wife alive.
18. Plaintiff could not recall the items that were in the trash bags, stating that they were “probably old clothes” or boots. He could also not recall why he pushed the trash to the extent that his shoulder was in the trash can.
19. Plaintiff suggested saying “I don’t recall” was code for not wanting to tell the truth but himself didn’t recall a number of critical facts surrounding his wife’s disappearance.
20. Plaintiff began to liquidate the family’s assets within a month of his wife’s disappearance.
21. Plaintiff was an avid hunter and a professional landscaper and may have possessed the tools and expertise necessary to kill his wife, bury her body, and dispose of the evidence.
22. Plaintiff became intimately involved in a relationship with another woman in the months immediately following his wife’s dis- appearance (before her body had been discovered).
23. Mrs. Morphew’s father felt it was odd that neither of his grand-daughters or Plaintiff were home on Mother’s Day, when Mrs. Morphew disappeared, and that it was unusual that Plaintiff would choose to work on the Sunday of Mother’s Day when he seldom worked on Sundays.
