Found Deceased CO - Suzanne Morphew, 49, Chaffee Co, 10 May 2020 *Case dismissed w/o prejudice* #108

[Chimera]

That Monday after she was killed was going to be her first maintenance treatment iirc.
JMO

Imagine being in remission ... only to lose her life to murder.
A life stolen selfishly away from Suzanne !!

 

[Centaurus]

Oh please! The married man who was having an affair with SM ruined his own marriage. He needed no help from BM, IMO.

I guess I worded that poorly, sorry. I meant he would make sure the wife and children of JL would find out. Agree, that JL ruined his own marriage.

 

[Skigh]

Last photo. Last towel.

If that towel was in the grave....

He's not that stupid.

But he's surprised us before.

JMO

I also wondered whether he would have wrapped Suzanne in that towel or something else from the Puma path home ,but think he had enough forensic knowledge to have dumped anything he took from the house in one of his dumpster runs. I would love to know what Suzanne was wearing or if he removed her clothing.

 

[kittythehare]

Last photo. Last towel.

If that towel was in the grave....

He's not that stupid.

But he's surprised us before.

JMO

my mind wanders off in strange and awful directions, I think he sedated her with a dart, trussed her and packed her in some fashion and drove her to where he decided to bury her.
If he used the second vehicle it's not traceable.

I wonder if he shot her in the grave?

I wonder too if maybe it will yield no evidence at all..

 

[Deerrun]

Not sure if discussed, I am not caught up. Per an article I read, they found Suzanne's port (chemo) with her body and was one of the identifying pieces of evidence. My question and curiosity is if someone used a tranquilizer dart on her would there be any remnants of it in/on her port? I know blood wouldn't flow through it but the piece that was attached inside could have contact with blood. I dont think there is any tissue remaining of her but I wonder if her port has any clues. Please excuse my ignorance if this is farfetched.

 

[SleuthBee]

I’m just catching up so this may have been mentioned already but they can test hair for drugs. Hair is the last part of a body to decompose. Hopefully Suzanne’s is still viable.

As per Ed Wallace, Jr., hair could be available for toxicology tests. If BM injected her with one of his tranquilizing darts, it may show up in hair analysis, bone marrow and even dead insects located around the body or in the grave.

 

[Chimera]

I am not quoting everyone on here about the affair and BM knowing or not knowing.

My take is I think he suspected an affair, was trying to catch her, and probably thought it was someone local at first. I don't think he knew it was JL until LE told him. He's not a cool cucumber, he's emotional, immature and a bully. He was watching Suzanne slowly remove herself from their relationship and that was driving him crazy. I believe that he's always elevated his importance in his professional life and his marriage. Her blinders were off and I do think she was done with him. Maybe he did catch her messaging but if she were able to close the app he wouldn't see those messages. We will never know all of the truth of what BM knew and what he didn't. I agree he peppers bits of reality along with his fake tales. All JMO!

My .02 is that her husband was already straying from her, and who knows how much behavior she'd already put up with, from him ?
But Suzanne wasn't allowed to try to have a new life, herself.
Imo BM was and is a spoiled brat.
Omo.

 

[Purdue19]

<sbm>
I believe Suzanne's friend and not Barry.

Obviously, this is a matter of our personal interpretation of the various accounts. ICBW, but am interested to see if any of the other "old timers" here remember Barry crashing the Florida trip.

IMO.

We are definitely of the same opinion.

Regarding the Florida trip, from the AA:

Barry then referenced the second Valentine's Day in a row when Suzanne "met this guy," when she said she was meeting her dad. Barry said he told Suzanne, "Honey, (unintelligible) I'm comin' to Florida. Let's just spend a few days." He said he went and they had an "unbelievable time. We had sex three times a day. She was incredibly romantic with me. She gave me the most beautiful card that was heartfelt."

Barry admitted to questioning Suzanne about the Louisiana trip she took, where she met up with JL, which seems to imply that BM was at the least very suspicious. Furthermore, he explicitly admits he had intuition about the affair, then realizes he's said too much.

Agents talk about some things related to Suzanne's seven trips and her behavior in Mexico that likely made Barry suspicious like when he wanted to see her phone, because he was not a fool. Barry said, "I had some intuition, but I would never think it was a physical thing." ^65 Barry was told that doesn't make him guilty of her disappearance (Barry does not protest). ^65 Barry refuses to tell Agents in subsequent interviews how long he suspected Suzanne was having an affair.

Additionally, this continues to haunt me from the AA:

SA Grusing said he did not know if Comey was a liar, and Barry interrupted, "That's ridiculous. How could you not know he's a liar from what he said on the stand? In front of the Senate?"
SA Grusing asked what he said. Barry stated, "Well, I don't know exactly what he said, word-for-word, but they asked him questions and he said, 'I don't recall.' Just like Hillary Clinton. All, all them freakin' liberals don't 'recall anything' when they don't want to tell the truth." ^60
^60 Barry's equating of people saying "I don't recall" means to him that those people are telling lies was told back to Barry on April 22, 2021, when Barry said "I don't recall" to most of the critical questions about what happened to Suzanne on Saturday and Sunday, May 9th and 10th.

 

[Momofthreeboys]

Last photo. Last towel.

If that towel was in the grave....

He's not that stupid.

But he's surprised us before.

JMO

The towel is probably at the resort where I'm guessing that picture was taken. I don't think it was taken in May the year she disappeared.

 

[Charlot123]

I'll bet that it would depend on how it was edited and where, what software was used, etc., and the new edited version could then contain identifying information about the person's device doing the edits.

I just opened a photo I took with my Nikon camera last week and looked at the various very detailed metadata, which includes my name, date and time taken, GPS location, etc. I resized that image in Photoshop Elements and resaved it under a new name using the "save as for web" feature. Closed the file and reopened it. Was surprised to see no meta data at all other than my name in the new version, and date and time saved.

EDITED TO ADD - Interesting, too, as I also did a test where I did one minor edit to a camera photo in Photoshop Elements and saved it under a new name, and this time it DID keep all of the camera metadata, so perhaps it depends on the type of edit.

Aha! The method of saving does seems to affect the metadata. If I save as a jpg, it retains the camera metadata, but if I "Save as for web" (which is another method of saving as a jpg, but provides you with a smaller, more compressed version) it strips most of the metadata out.

I also took a screenshot of the same image and looked at the metadata for that, which was pretty sparse. I saved it, closed it and reopened it, and it tells me the date and time I saved it, and that I used Photoshop Elements 2023 to save it, but nothing else.

OK. I have several phones from different providers (don't ask why; should definitely drop Verizon, lol).

So: say, I make a photo with iPhone and re-photo is with 'Droid, and then edit with... whatever editor. The 'droid photo won't have the metadata about the original iPhone photo, as it will be a new photograph. Now, granted, there will probably be info in cloud and Google photos about the original one, but tbh honest, me and Google fight. They want me to buy more storage, and I don't. So technically, you can clean off a lot. I do.

 

[al66pine]

Barry. Talking to a Snitch? In Prison?

I cannot believe that Barry would speak to anyone about what he did to Suzanne,so find it hard to think any information would have come from a prison snitch.

@Skigh Yes, I see your point and tend to agree, but then again----

I'm thinking about the PCA's recital of numerous conversations, inteviews, interrogations, that Barry had w verious members of LE agents &agencies over a year long period.
When arrested, Barry expressed surprise/shock, saying something to the effect, I thought you (you guys or a named LEO?) were my friend(s).

Could have been a phony-baloney comment, but maybe could have been an indication of his misjudgment of circumstances or misreading of ppl? IDK.

And IIRC Barry himself was in a county jail, not prison.
If the "prison snitch" as a source is true, Barry MAY have made spilled info to someone "out" at time of BM's stmts. but who subsequently was in jail or in prison.

Just spitballing here.
Not assigning much weight to a prison snitch as a source helping to locate SM's remains but not totally dismissing it as a possibility. imo.

 

[kittythehare]

IIRC MG said that Barry was watching his trail cams while they were raking the beach at the worksite.

We know he had at least one mini cam, we just don't know where it was.

And we know Suzanne was engaging with JL throughout the morning and early afternoon, including the infamous sunbathing photo.

I suspect BA sped home because he'd seen enough.

JMO

Sounds right.

 

[Charlot123]

I don't know...I got sucked in and read the entire AA yesterday. I have a strong feeling BM did not know who Suzanne was having an affair with. It almost killed him to learn another man was making his wife happy (which I LOVED haha). He asked and begged to know the name of the other man several times (even calling the other man a "boy"). His ego was so hurt because another man brought happiness and love to Suzanne's life.

The overwhelming thought I had while reading the AA was BM sounds like a child. An absolute child. He never matured past 5th grade. Suzanne deserved so much better.

I wonder if he didn't and was just insecure and jealous...and then he did. Remember, this was a guy he threatened in HS. He could have become very angry after he found out.

 

[kittythehare]

If I had to make a guess, I would wager something happened to her between these times mentioned on the AA:

"By 2:43 PM, Barry's phone and F-350, per telematics, appeared to be at the Morphew residence.
On May 9th,at 2:47 PM, Barry's phone appears to enter Airplane Mode."

He gets home at 2:43 PM, finds or observes something that throws him into a rage and puts his phone on Airplane mode four minutes later. Putting your phone into Airplane mode is such a...reaction. You know?

Same as saying
Now is the time.

but I don't believe for an instant he had not thought about it and planned it for a very long time..

 

[10ofRods]

I cannot make up my mind whether digging a grave was done in a last minute panic because another plan failed or whether he thought that burying her in a shallow grave would point away from him since he did have his beloved bobcat . He must have known that a shallow grave would more than likely be disturbed by animals.

No wonder the room reeked of bleach ,those tools must have been bathed in the stuff.

Interesting points. I think he wanted her bones scattered by animals, or at least, factored that into his rambling statements about what might have happened to her. He knew there would at least be birds. Seeing carrion birds circling in that area is a daily occurrence (and actually, as I live near some open fields, I see turkey vultures circling almost daily - never think a thing about it). But, by digging a shallow grave, the murderer made it obvious that this was no animal predation event. I know it makes the murderer look stupid, but even the smartest murderers do really dumb things (thankfully for Justice). I feel that this murderer could not resist attempting a "decent burial."

I keep thinking about those tools, as well. Microscopic analysis of the shovel (if it is now in the hands of LE, which I don't know) could say something about the soil into which it last dug. And there could be teensy particles of that soil in micro-grooves on the shovel (but if he had, say, steel wool or something, I think that evidence could be disappeared). OTOH, the steel wool would reveal that someone thought it necessary to thoroughly scrub the shovel (gee, could it be BARRY, the guy who took a shovel into a hotel room on the day his wife disappeared??)

The whole bleach thing is confusing. Someone posted yesterday the interview with the asst manager of the hotel who said that particular room "always smelled like bleach" (due to the pool) but I have my doubts about that person's reliability. What sort of hotel allows noxious fumes to accumulate in a guest room? And why would there be THAT much bleach in the pool. Pools that are off-gassing chlorine to that extent are dangerous and that's not how pool chemistry is supposed to be managed (makes the hotel look really bad). What a lucky thing for Barry, right, if true?

But then Andy Moorman says that LE told him that the Puma Path house also wreaked of bleach. Hmmm.

JP and MG mention the bleach smell in that one room.

No other guest reviews of that hotel mention it (I would be on google reviews so fast if my room smelled of bleach!) I can think of all kinds of reasons why the asst manager might have made that statement to a reporter, though. I can think of reasons why some reporters would want a tidbit like that.

At the time of Suzanne's disappearance, Salida had two small town newspapers (digital; one can barely call them newspapers, as they were more like news blogs, each run by mainly one person, each with more opinion pieces than news, IIRC).

The two papers had competing viewpoints on nearly everything. Some of Barry's known friends (and IMO, Barry himself) were more associated with one of those papers than the other (IMO). The newspapers were both covering (before Suzanne's disappearance) the hiring of Sheriff Spezzi (and the two papers took vastly different viewpoints on it - with Spezzi's chief competitor for the position being supported by the one paper and Spezzi by the other). I think one of the online newspapers is no longer in existence, I haven't checked recently.

Even now, there is a local online entity (newspaper-ish) that has links to some extraordinarily biased/angled coverage involving Suzanne. It may be the same newspaper under a new name, but it has taken up the "cause" of besmirching Suzanne in a way that I find shocking - but not unbelievable.

IMO.

@Barry oh dear you have chosen an unfortunate moniker for this thread

Yes, but he's OUR @Barry and it is very good to see him here.

I’m just catching up so this may have been mentioned already but they can test hair for drugs. Hair is the last part of a body to decompose. Hopefully Suzanne’s is still viable.

But, IMO, hair would likely NOT leave a record of a tranquilizer injected just hours before death. Sadly. Her hair might, for example, show signs if cannabis use (something that Suzanne wanted to try for her chemotherapy nausea and which Barry forbid her to do, IIRC). So it will support the narrative that Barry started (of Suzanne's moral depravity - from his point of view).

So I am not confident that hair will yield the kind of evidence that I'd like to see. It would be the bone marrow and the blood that would reveal the animal anesthetic. In my view, it's possible that BM shot her with a commonly used deer anesthetic (which IIRC, he had procured from his "mentor" in Indiana, the guy who ran a deer farm). In researching post-mortem detection of anesthestics, I find that most doctors and others investigating this issue say it's really difficult to detect. The best technique involves using whole blood from a recently deceased person.

Bone marrow gives a good record of recent chemical use, but what I'm finding is that every single human research project on this topic involves a newly deceased person as well. There are some animal studies, though, on longer-dead animals, and that's promising (that the marrow chambers could still retain some evidence of toxins/anesthesia, etc).

While looking into this topic (still reading), I found that it's not uncommon for someone to have severe allergic reactions to anesthesia (anaphylaxis) AND that there's a reason we do not use the same chemistry for human anesthesia!

It made me wonder whether Barry's real plan was to make Suzanne unconscious, thinking she'd wake up an hour later, like a deer. Then, he'd interrogate her, waving her journals in her face, etc. She ended up dead instead (from the deer anesthetic). He could not rouse her. He panicked. Anyone who would shoot a human with a deer dart (and don't get me started on whether he then put more of that stuff in her port) HAD to have realized the risk of death. So he didn't care if she died. But did he intend for her to die right when she did? Did she ever come to and did he interrogate her? Did he then simply give her more anesthesia, take her off premises, and give her still more?

By doing this, he found out what he wanted, punished her before she died, and created a complex crime with no chance of cadaverine right in the house. If it is true that dogs hit on his truck, it's because he interacted with her body at least 12 hours after her death. It's possible the initial dose of deer anesthetic killed her and the clock started to tick (surely he knew from his volunteer fire training about cadaver dogs and their capacities - otherwise, it's easy enough to google). If he did expect her to wake up (like a deer), and she instead went deeper into coma, I think he was prepared for that. He knew that even deer do not always wake up, and he knew he was using a product unusable on humans and likely to cause death.

IMO.

(Sorry for the super long post - I am appreciating the discussion here so much, as with so many others on WS, this case is really deeply embedded in my heart and soul, and I find myself crying as I read the medical literature on what can be found post-mortem with this amount of time passing - it's obviously something we anthropologists try to improve on, as we deal mostly with older bones).

 

[acutename]

As per Ed Wallace, Jr., hair could be available for toxicology tests. If BM injected her with one of his tranquilizing darts, it may show up in hair analysis, bone marrow and even dead insects located around the body or in the grave.

tough to believe that something fast acting would show up in hair or bone- I will research... does anybody know?

I did not follow BM's trial- did he have a legal reason to have animal darts? Seems that they use human-type anesthetics or opioids and they require a veterinary Rx ...

https://wgfd.wyo.gov/WGFD/media/content/PDF/Wildlife/Handbook-BioTechniques/A08-Immobilization.pdf

 

[Lyanna]

I also wondered whether he would have wrapped Suzanne in that towel or something else from the Puma path home ,but think he had enough forensic knowledge to have dumped anything he took from the house in one of his dumpster runs. I would love to know what Suzanne was wearing or if he removed her clothing.

In AA pg 20 he told LE on Mother's Day 2020 Morning, he heard her snoring, he got up for a shower and stated he last saw her wearing white shorts and white string type top, then he left for Broomfield. Don't remember reading LE found such items in the PP home in their searches. Maybe there will be fabric remnants that match these items?

Moo

 

[mrjitty]

That plus the fact that if BM was faking her communications he surely would not have stopped doing it in the afternoon on Saturday. His alibi would be much, much stronger if Suzanne's digital footprint showed activity on Saturday evening and Sunday morning.

Yes. It’s always been odd to me he didn’t think to do that but maybe he couldn’t get in to her phone?

 

[Cindizzi]

Did Barry ever take a polygraph?

On May 13, 2020 he was asked to take one and refused.
Page 21 of arrest affidavit:

https://www.courts.state.co.us/userfiles/file/Court_Probation/11th_Judicial_District/Chaffee/cases%20of%20interest/21CR78/21cr78%20Morphew%20Redacted%20Affidavit.pdf

SM’s brother, Andy said when CBI investigators came to Indiana in August of 2020 they told Andy that BM had said no to 2 offers to take polygraphs and a voice analysis test.

Up until then Andy had believed BM’s lie that he had taken and passed one.

 

[Chimera]

The towel is probably at the resort where I'm guessing that picture was taken. I don't think it was taken in May the year she disappeared.

No, it was not taken at a resort.
That photo is considered possibly the last 'proof of life' pic and was taken at Suzanne's house while she was sunning herself outside and this pic was maybe the one sent to JL ?
This is important if so, b/c it shows that BM might have surprised and/or ambushed Suzanne soon after the photo was taken ?
Omo.