Found Deceased CO - Suzanne Morphew, 49, did not return from bike ride, Chaffee County, 10 May 2020 #14

[gitana1]

They always need the public's assistance, that's why they have tiplines and canvases, which are the cornerstones of most investigations. They would be powerless without the public's assistance. If people just "shut up and let them do their jobs" (as some naive cop fanboys and egotistical cops have been known to say), law enforcement's cold case backlogs would be exponentially more depressing that they already are.

Law enforcement, though to be admired and respected, ought not be assumed infallible or a sole source of case resolution anymore than they ought be assumed society's top experts or it's sole source or protection. Though they should be afforded a good measure of trust and benefit of doubt when something seems wrong or overlooked, they ought not be instantly assumed on top of it and having a good reason for appearing to miss something crucial.

Asking questions, keeps them sharp and honest and keeps us informed and willing to continue to trust. Both are necessary for our system of justice to work, otherwise what we would have is anarchy or a complete police state.

No one is saying that if someone has a real tip they should stay quiet. What many of us are saying is that the public are not experts entitled to details of a professional investigation because you think they’re not solving it quickly enough.

It just doesn’t work that way. There’s tons of information they have that we don’t and we aren’t entitled to it.

And what I believe the poster you’re responding to was saying was that they don’t need the public’s help in a specific direction, with relation to the supposed vehicle tip.

Of course they need the public’s help when and IF that public knows something pertinent to the case. Not just general brainstorming.

Otherwise, LE absolutely should be assumed to be on top of it or going in the right direction, if a direction is stated, until and unless something comes out that indicates they’re mistaken. You know why? Because they know everything and we know close to nothing. There is a reason for the things they do and we aren’t privy to it.

Of course they’re not infallible. There have been mistakes. Usually those closest to the victim are the ones who determine that.
But the solution to that is not enlisting curious, amateur detectives from among the public who arrogantly believe they’re entitled to know investigative details and that they will be able to solve a case that LE can’t.

 

[CronesEye]

I totally agree. I would never have a house there, myself. Just living in that location and spending a lot of time alone is a risk, I would think; but then again I've never lived like that, so what would I know about it?
The sheriff confirmed, in his first news conference, that SM was "an avid biker" and that "she rode pretty often". There is really only one direction to ride from SM's house, and that is "up". There is really only one direction to get back home, and that would be "down". The logical choices of that return direction would be back down Highway 50, which in my opinion would be no fun at all after the first time; Fooses Creek, or Green's Creek.............which comes out well below SM's house and requires a pretty steep ride back up US 50 to get home. I think she took it often, but I caution that he Colorado Trail and the Fooses Creek descent run very close together. When ascending on the Colorado Trail, there are plenty of opportunities to cut the ride short of the top, making the descent much less adrenalin-pumping; but still a great ride for fresh mountain air and quality exercise. IMO

I just have to say it after looking at that video - Colorado is nice but Montana is nicer. Don't you think?

I will take a closer look at those trails tomorrow. I do remember solitary bikers going up hill in the Beartooth. Not my thing.
SM must be a real go getter if she went up those trails. I can't imagine she wouldn't have got to know the other local bikers she would be seeing coming and going past her home. Several bikers posting said they look out for each other as a matter of practice, but I imagine some do and some don't.
The Sheriff Spezzee said they blocked off Monarch pass? That was far from SMs house. I thought they only blocked off her road.He said on that Thursday they blocked off Monarch pass. A very large area to search.
Dave F, I would rather run into a grizzly bear, than some humans. Humans present the risk more than the terrain and the critters.

 

[gitana1]

Beyond his bizarre verbiage “we went to”, he had the neighbor call 911. BM didn’t even make the call himself. Imagine you are in his shoes. I’d be on the phone in a flash. Today with the arrest of CD, I took pause. This man has a history of carnage and is absolutely crazy. It took almost 9 months to arrest him and he made it easy.

Not only that but LE’s focus is pretty intense and very clear. That guides me.

 

[GordianKnot]

From your post:

TD: "You were in Denver, but how long before someone noticed she was gone?"

BM: "It was Mother's Day so...um...we uh...had two daughters that were coming home from the trip and I had that job in Denver that I wanted to get started on on Sunday set it up for my workers, my workers were coming in Sunday night. Normally I don't work Sunday night. I work Monday, but I being the owner I wanted to get everything lined up so that I didn't have to worry about Monday morning, just get busy working. So I told my wife, I said, 'Listen, the girls are gonna be home; they want to spend Mother's Day with you. Mind if I go get started with this?' The girls were running late so they texted Happy Mother's Day. She didn't text back. So we went to ... they called my neighbors. And said listen, it's Mother's Day, I'm a little worried and will you go check the house? And the neighbor went and checked the house. Saw that her car was there but the bike was gone. She called me in Denver and said, "Hey, we're just a little worried." And I go, "Well, I am too. Why don't we just call the police, just to be safe?"
---------------------------------------------------
Well, he lied a lot but the most important lie of all is:
....She bikes. She'd ride the bike...

Those two short sentences that he squeezed in his blether don't belong there. Read his vague, incoherent rambling again. It doesn't flow.

He doesn't say when he left, when he saw his wife last, how long she really was missing..
He basically just wants to highlight that "She bikes. She'd ride the bike"
He really didn't want to say anything else, just those.

Exactly.

"She said, 'That's fine....'. She bikes ... She'd ride the bike ... The girls would get home; they'll be together. That's what we thought was gonna happen."

I have no doubt that was the plan.

SM would "go for a bike ride."
The girls would then get home.
And find her and the bike missing, while BM was still 2 hours away in Denver.

That's what "we" thought was gonna happen.

Only, "we" didn't know that the girls would be running late. Whoops!

So, "we" had to switch to Plan B.

Plenty of machinations going on here….
Crafted by one puppeteer, manipulating the strings from behind the curtain.

JMO.

 

[CronesEye]

Beyond his bizarre verbiage “we went to”, he had the neighbor call 911. BM didn’t even make the call himself. Imagine you are in his shoes. I’d be on the phone in a flash. Today with the arrest of CD, I took pause. This man has a history of carnage and is absolutely crazy. It took almost 9 months to arrest him and he made it easy.

who is CD?

I get in trouble for telling my family I will go to the end of the world for them, they get mad and tell me to leave it to the professionals. It's their job they know what they are doing, is what I am told.
But everyone is different. I can't really put myself inside someones brain. I respect the fact that all our brains are wired differently.

 

[MassGuy]

who is CD?

Chad Daybell.

 

[gitana1]

I don't understand why a thorough search for Suzanne has not been made. 90 or 100 searchers for 2-3 days is definitely not enough in this terrain.

Why has Texas Equusearch not been brought in?

TES has finite resources. They can’t be everywhere, all the time. They mostly stay in TX. They will go out of state on occasion if family invite them. But most of the time, per what I’ve heard from Tim Miller, they can’t afford to go to an out of state search.

This is a private organization that has to be invited by private people and that has to be judicious about where they can go and how many cases they can cover.

 

[Dave F.]

I totally agree w/ everything you say...I am not really a contrarian, I just feel we have put so much focus on the husband, that we overlooked the possibility of any other . IMO LE May have a reason to continue silence other than BM.
Abduction by a person w/ possible mental instability would be one. Larry Gene Bell was very unstable. It was a very intense effort to bring Shari home. Kidnapper actually contacting family is another. They could actually be about to arrest someone else. I would like to rule out abduction and I am sure others have better skills than I do. I also find it challenging to work my way backwards and I thought some members might find that a good exercise. I keep trying to stress this—LE has to be right, I can be wrong and not affect LE efforts at all!
I also actually got on google earth today and finally got the street view up to the smaller roads and I realized just how close the RV camp is to Puma Path. I am sure these people would have been questioned. Perhaps they came forward w/ info that lead away from BM. He is relatively easy to read, random stranger is a lot harder. Statistically? That has to be the hardest to solve and also the majority of cold cases JMO

You make some good points, but we really have no indication at all that LE even drove through the RV Park, much less stopped people and asked them any questions. I would agree that anyone who thought they saw something would probably call the tip line. IMO

 

[gitana1]

BBM You’re correct in that we don’t know if they have or haven’t. They could be reviewing camera footage this entire time but aren’t going to tell the public about it. It’s a very time-consuming process. If they obtained camera footage from a particular home or business, I’m sure they told the homeowners not to speak about it. MOO

And they very likely are, and/or computer and phone or GPS records, if we use multiple other cases as guideposts.

 

[Hannah3105]

Sorry if this has already been discussed, I’m in the U.K. so I’ve just woken up.

Apparently there is going to be a press release tomorrow, as per Lauren Scharf.

Lauren Scharf (@LaurenScharfTV) on Twitter

 

[gitana1]

I think Suzanne was killed by a mountain lion.

And yet LE, who know everything we do and much, much more, and who searched around where her bike was found, extensively, don’t.

 

[katydid23]

IMO, I don't believe the CO Morphew home is ground zero for whatever event caused her disappearance.

K9Enzo,
I always appreciate your well thought out posts. I know you have some real world experience looking for the missing.

My question:
When you go out on a search, how much background info are you given about a case?

Is it just, here's the missing woman's scent, now see if you can find a trail?

Or are you given more info about what is going on---like 'she left after an argument at midnight and she was drinking', etc...?

 

[gitana1]

I think Suzanne was killed by a mountain lion.

And yet LE, who know everything we do and much, much more, and who searched around where her bike was found, extensively, don’t.

 

[katydid23]

IMO, I don't believe the CO Morphew home is ground zero for whatever event caused her disappearance.

K9Enzo,
I always appreciate your well thought out posts. I know you have some real world experience looking for the missing.

My question:
When you go out on a search, how much background info are you given about a case?

Is it just, here's the missing woman's scent, now see if you can find a trail?

Or are you given more info about what is going on---like 'she left after an argument at midnight and she was drinking', etc...?

What info would searchers be given in Suzanne's case? Would they be told she went for a bike ride and bike was in a ravine? Or that she MAY have been on a ride, but maybe not?

 

[al66pine]

BM failed to answer when 'last saw her'?

Either LE told him not to disclose that info or he chose not to, although likely told him to keep mum; At the least his attorneys told him to zip it! IMO

@mom2chloe I gotta think his atty (azz-uming he's retained one) emphatically advised, maybe begged, BM not to make public stmts.<---totally predictable, routine, SOP, ordinary, run of the mill, commonplace, orthodox. No surprise there. Or even private stmts to anyone.

Now trying to think of a reason why LE would ask/advise BM not to disclose when BM & SM last saw or talked w one another, but coming up empty. A verified legal professional (apologies, forgot which one) here posted thoughts about defendants being chit-chatty w the media. Paraphrasing: Prosecutors (usually) love blabbermouths who spout off specific details, which they use to show defendants's self-contradictions w stmts to LE and weave w other evidentiary threads into a tapestry for the jury. ( Hope I have not taken too much literary license there.)

 

[CronesEye]

I totally agree w/ everything you say...I am not really a contrarian, I just feel we have put so much focus on the husband, that we overlooked the possibility of any other . IMO LE May have a reason to continue silence other than BM.
Abduction by a person w/ possible mental instability would be one. Larry Gene Bell was very unstable. It was a very intense effort to bring Shari home. Kidnapper actually contacting family is another. They could actually be about to arrest someone else. I would like to rule out abduction and I am sure others have better skills than I do. I also find it challenging to work my way backwards and I thought some members might find that a good exercise. I keep trying to stress this—LE has to be right, I can be wrong and not affect LE efforts at all!
I also actually got on google earth today and finally got the street view up to the smaller roads and I realized just how close the RV camp is to Puma Path. I am sure these people would have been questioned. Perhaps they came forward w/ info that lead away from BM. He is relatively easy to read, random stranger is a lot harder. Statistically? That has to be the hardest to solve and also the majority of cold cases JMO

I'm kinda of new and what this is teaching me is to me less biased and I do have bias. Facts are good things. We don't have access to many of them. So I am happy with looking at all available details, learning how to work backwards as you say. And learning what others think. I learn a lot from everyone, all kinds of input, it's all good.

 

[Dave F.]

I just have to say it after looking at that video - Colorado is nice but Montana is nicer. Don't you think?

I will take a closer look at those trails tomorrow. I do remember solitary bikers going up hill in the Beartooth. Not my thing.
SM must be a real go getter if she went up those trails. I can't imagine she wouldn't have got to know the other local bikers she would be seeing coming and going past her home. Several bikers posting said they look out for each other as a matter of practice, but I imagine some do and some don't.
The Sheriff Spezzee said they blocked off Monarch pass? That was far from SMs house. I thought they only blocked off her road.He said on that Thursday they blocked off Monarch pass. A very large area to search.
Dave F, I would rather run into a grizzly bear, than some humans. Humans present the risk more than the terrain and the critters.

Yes, Montana is much better. That's always been my opinion.

Monarch Pass, for automobile traffic, is Highway 50. One lane up, one lane down, and an occasional stretch of passing lane. I understood it that they wanted send the dogs up Highway 50 a ways from the CR 225 turnoff, and didn't want traffic to interfere with the dogs work. CR 225 was closed to automobiles for all of Monday and Tuesday, I believe. IMO

 

[Dave F.]

K9Enzo,
I always appreciate your well thought out posts. I know you have some real world experience looking for the missing.

My question:
When you go out on a search, how much background info are you given about a case?

Is it just, here's the missing woman's scent, now see if you can find a trail?

Or are you given more info about what is going on---like 'she left after an argument at midnight and she was drinking', etc...?

What info would searchers be given in Suzanne's case? Would they be told she went for a bike ride and bike was in a ravine? Or that she MAY have been on a ride, but maybe not?

I believe they are all on the same radio frequencies. Whatever one calls in, they all know.

I believe search dogs are trained to start with a scent from a spot where the person was known to have been, and search the next "hit" of that scent. They keep searching outward trying to put together a chain of hits.There is no such thing as a continuous scent trail away from a known spot, and rubbing the dog's nose with her perfumed hankie is a cinema technique anymore, I think. IMO

 

[swedeheart]

per lauren scharf:

 

[DBLG]

Good post. I wonder what all is involved with "getting everything lined up" for a job that starts on Monday? I thought he implied he left Sunday ( that's how I interpreted his comments), possibly in the am. With Denver only 2 hours away, it seems odd to me that he would leave on Saturday as "getting things lined up" doesnt sound like a two day ordeal, JMO.

When I think of BM "getting a job lined up" I imagine he may have brought tools, equipment, digging machinery, etc. It makes me think he was preparing an explanation of why he may have been visually spotted with equipment (shovels, gravel, soil, etc,). Maybe he hauled a trailer to Denver and left it there. Possibly setting up a reasonable explanation if tools were notably missing from his home or one of his trailers was missing. But we all know the "workers" he mentions that were supposed to show up on Monday morning will be located and interviewed. I am so interested to hear the details of his alibi as we get deeper into this case.