Found Deceased CO - Suzanne Morphew, 49, Chaffee County, 10 May 2020 #74 *ARREST*

[MyJoey]

Did I read that one of the trash dumps took 45 minutes? At a men’s wear house maybe?

 

[girlhasnoname]

Did I read that one of the trash dumps took 45 minutes? At a men’s wear house maybe?

Yes, curious what took so long there.

 

[CGray123]

This reminds me of another issue that has been discussed....Barry presenting love letters from Suzanne. That was important because it didn't demonstrate that Barry loved Suzanne and appeared to be not supporting Barry's love for her. But now that we know Suzanne was done with the marriage..and wanted a divorce. I see Barry producing those letters quite differently. I now think he produced them to sell the idea that Suzanne still loved him and that their marriage was healthy and happy...iow...he was trying to hide the reality of the marriage...and not that he was trying to convince the world that he loved her; as was my initial impression.

I agree. BM apparently hoped the investigation wouldn't result in charges and decided to keep the illusion of an ideal marriage for his family (and even more, for his reputation and future romantic opportunities) by manipulating the press. We are only now learning what many of us suspected: this image was 100% false.

BM has apparently duped members of his family. I remember Lauren's tweet:
Lauren Scharf
@LaurenScharfTV

Barry Morphew’s sister just came up to me in the hallway and said, “Are you Lauren? Yes. You are an instrumental part in destroying our family.” She then walked away.

10:29 AM · Aug 9, 2021 from Salida, CO·Twitter for iPhone

The only thing Lauren did was to give BM opportunities to tell his story to the public, and then to follow up and confirm (or not) what he said. She even gave him an extraordinary degree of editorial control over his interviews.

Lauren isn't responsible for the shakiness of BM's alibi or the largely negative reaction to his statements. The Morphews of Indiana should be looking to him as the person who destroyed the family. The evidence is there, for anyone who is not in a state of denial. MOO.

 

[CGray123]

"And Suzanne trusted the Lord and if one person got saved from this, she would think it was worth it." So it was Barry who was "saved" from suicide.

BAM!

 

[MyJoey]

Yes, curious what took so long there.

Well we have a strong chlorine smell in the hotel room and a 45 minute trash dump. I believe he could have taken SM with him to the hotel (not alive, but in the truck) and disposes of her in a dumpster.

 

[Seattle1]

I think the judge will not make an immediate decision unless there is evidence and not speculation to come to support Suzanne being deceased. I think he will review the prosecution's case and the defenses case as given during the preliminary and then make decisions around the charges and what might go forth for trial. I think if it goes to trial he will release a heavily redacted arrest affidavit.

^^bbm
I think OP is confusing a trial with the PH. There's nothing to ponder here! The judge will decide immediately on those charges where the state met the burden. Other charges may be downgraded or dropped.

The trial will be where evidence is weighed if SM is deceased. The standard in the PH is whether an ordinary person could have a reasonable belief that the defendant may have committed the crime for which they are charged.

"Preliminary Hearings" In Colorado Felony Criminal Court Cases

 

[MassGuy]

Well we have a strong chlorine smell in the hotel room and a 45 minute trash dump. I believe he could have taken SM with him to the hotel (not alive, but in the truck) and disposes of her in a dumpster.

No dogs hit on his vehicle, and I just can’t imagine he’d drive all that way with a body, and dispose of it in that manner.

He had hours to work with the previous afternoon/evening, and I’m convinced that’s when he disposed of Suzanne.

There was too much shadiness with his phone activity for him not to have been doing that.

 

[MassGuy]

^^bbm
I think OP is confusing a trial with the PH. There's nothing to ponder here! The judge will decide immediately on those charges where the state met the burden. Other charges may be downgraded or dropped.

The trial will be where evidence is weighed if SM is deceased. The standard in the PH is whether an ordinary person could have a reasonable belief that the defendant may have committed the crime for which they are charged.

"Preliminary Hearings" In Colorado Felony Criminal Court Cases

That’s it. I think people are viewing the standard as the one for trial. I’ve even seen people say “I couldn’t convict Barry based on this.”

That ain’t it.

 

[MyJoey]

No dogs hit on his vehicle, and I just can’t imagine he’d drive all that way with a body, and dispose of it in that manner.

He had hours to work with the previous afternoon/evening, and I’m convinced that’s when he disposed of Suzanne.

There was too much shadiness with his phone activity for him not to have been doing that.

Thoughts on the 45 minutes? Smell of chlorine?

 

[MassGuy]

Thoughts on the 45 minutes? Smell of chlorine?

He might have just been making phone calls. And yes, it’s also possible he was cleaning the bed of his truck with chlorine. I kind of like the latter, as it would explain the costume changes.

 

[10ofRods]

No dogs hit on his vehicle, and I just can’t imagine he’d drive all that way with a body, and dispose of it in that manner.

He had hours to work with the previous afternoon/evening, and I’m convinced that’s when he disposed of Suzanne.

There was too much shadiness with his phone activity for him not to have been doing that.

It seems clear to me that he reset his truck GPS right after the body disposal, as anyone would in his situation. So that gives a good indication of when he did the body disposal. I think it's also clear that this brilliant criminal thought airplane mode turned off the GPS on his phone. If he had reset the truck again after going to Broomfield, boy would that be evidence of criminal involvement.

So yeah, there's his phone giving the overall parameters (obviously didn't take it for the body disposal drive - he needed it to look as if he and Suzanne were both home). Then he messed up later with whatever he did with her phone.

If she did die around 3 pm on Saturday, by 3 am Sunday morning, yep, he would have been really really stupid to put her body in his truck (well, there are some things he could have done to slow decomp, obviously, but yeah, he was on to Stage II - the disposal of evidence - by 5:30 pm on Saturday). He could not have made it plainer than when he reset that GPS on his truck.

 

[MaisieBella]

It seems clear to me that he reset his truck GPS right after the body disposal, as anyone would in his situation. So that gives a good indication of when he did the body disposal. I think it's also clear that this brilliant criminal thought airplane mode turned off the GPS on his phone. If he had reset the truck again after going to Broomfield, boy would that be evidence of criminal involvement.

So yeah, there's his phone giving the overall parameters (obviously didn't take it for the body disposal drive - he needed it to look as if he and Suzanne were both home). Then he messed up later with whatever he did with her phone.

If she did die around 3 pm on Saturday, by 3 am Sunday morning, yep, he would have been really really stupid to put her body in his truck (well, there are some things he could have done to slow decomp, obviously, but yeah, he was on to Stage II - the disposal of evidence - by 5:30 pm on Saturday). He could not have made it plainer than when he reset that GPS on his truck.

Hi @10ofRods, I like your premise, but I wonder about this - when the truck was reset how much time would that have erased? Hours? Everything?
IOW, was any history at all left for LE to recover? TIA

 

[10ofRods]

Thoughts on the 45 minutes? Smell of chlorine?

The chlorine smell is really weird. At some point, Barry has to believe he or something he owned became contaminated with DNA/body fluid evidence. Chlorine isn't going to remove soil evidence from his boots, he knows that. He doesn't (apparently) bleach his car upholstery.

All along, I've had Lady Macbeth in my mind, as well as people I've interviewed or studied who committed terrible crimes. Barry was not psychotic when he murdered Suzanne, and he was not longterm mentally ill. Here we have a man who, I believe, actually loved his wife and daughters in the best way he knew how. Jealousy and rage overcame him, and his basic personality traits of control and manipulation took over.

SO, was he repeatedly showering/bleaching himself? Did he keep changing his clothes because he felt contaminated?

He apparently leaves the tools in the lobby - so he's not bleaching them, right?

As to Men's Wearhouse, we need to know more. Why does he spend so much time there, only to return to HIE and apparently dump stuff in plain view on the curb? What stuff could have been more important than the "tranq material" and the other stuff left at HIE?

My only guess is...things like Suzanne's journals.

Here's why: he wants to destroy them (and the evidence they contain about the decay of the marriage), but he needs to read/skim them first. I believe he spent a lot of the "blank time" on that weekend going through Suzanne's computer, text message, iCloud, etc - with wild abandon, because he was no longer worried about getting caught. Some people facing infidelity and a failed marriage try to avoid the facts until they can't, any more. Maybe he wanted to know why Suzanne had emotionally abandoned him for another man. I know I would want to read any journals my partner had, if I could (and we were breaking up), despite my belief that doing so is wrong.

Maybe he was going through a lot of papers, selecting the ones for the messy notebook. Tossing the others. It seems to me that Wearhouse stop had to be low priority in terms of getting rid of evidence (the phone first, clothes he wore when disposing of her, any tools used in disposing of her, etc).

Maybe some of the papers incriminated Suzanne (in various ways) and so he kept those? I believe he thought he had more than one reason to kill her. He was still in a dialogue in his own mind about why he was right and she was wrong and deserved to die.

 

[cattlekate]

No dogs hit on his vehicle, and I just can’t imagine he’d drive all that way with a body, and dispose of it in that manner.

He had hours to work with the previous afternoon/evening, and I’m convinced that’s when he disposed of Suzanne.

There was too much shadiness with his phone activity for him not to have been doing that.

yeah. I’m still of the belief Suzanne was killed and moved before any cadaverine odors. She has to be close by the PP house.

I have no doubt the FBI/CBI/Sheriff immediately started wondering “what would a hunter/landscaper familiar with the acreage around his place do?”

Dylan Redwine was placed on USFS lands out in the open just off a Middle Mountain road. And yet he was still not found after many Autumn searches.

I truly believe Suzanne is close by PP.

 

[MaisieBella]

yeah. I’m still of the belief Suzanne was killed and moved before any cadaverine odors. She has to be close by the PP house.

I have no doubt the FBI/CBI/Sheriff immediately started wondering “what would a hunter/landscaper familiar with the acreage around his place do?”

Dylan Redwine was placed on USFS lands out in the open just off a Middle Mountain road. And yet he was still not found after many Autumn searches.

I truly believe Suzanne is close by PP.

 

[MaisieBella]

Yes, I think so too.

 

[10ofRods]

Hi @10ofRods, I like your premise, but I wonder about this - when the truck was reset how much time would that have erased? Hours? Everything?
IOW, was any history at all left for LE to recover? TIA

My understanding is that it erased GPS up to that point (back to original manufacturer's settings).

So, LE would not have any evidence from the truck as to places Barry had gone in the past year, scouting out...whatever he scouted out.

He probably chose a place for Suzanne within the month before her disappearance - and that would be erased from the truck. But his phone would have continued to collect information (not nearly as good for finding Suzanne, obviously, especially as GPS pings on the phone would be taking place more or less randomly and not linked to whether he was in his truck, moving around, showing entire routes). I notice that there's lots of evidence about where Barry was on Sat/Sun based on his phone.

I think LE has all the data from his truck from after the reset, and none of it from before. But they have his phone GPS data too. Barry clearly worried about LE finding the truck GPS data from his trash dump run, but knew how bad it would look to reset twice - that's why he's buying a new truck. LE got his old truck and took out that computer unit before he had a chance to get rid of it. I think he had no clue how quickly they were going to suspect him (that image of him trying to walk off with GD at around midnight, when the police "still had some questions to ask him" sticks in my mind...)

I'm also guessing that the new data is how they know he spent 40 minutes at Men's Wearhouse (etc).

The fact that he reset the truck when he did makes me think he used that truck to remove Suzanne from PP. He did not use the old RR. It would have been really difficult for him to remove all soil data from the RR in the timeframe he had, and still establish his alibi. For him, resetting the truck data was the lesser of the various evils (and someone here has pointed out he can try to claim that the truck "did it on its own" and "was doing that frequently" but I think experts in Ford trucks and GPS (and the unit itself - which is in evidence, IMO) will put the kabash on that line of defense.

Insects and soil on the RR...vs. tall tale about why truck GPS was reset (he really hoped he'd be rid of the truck by the time LE were onto him).

 

[10ofRods]

yeah. I’m still of the belief Suzanne was killed and moved before any cadaverine odors. She has to be close by the PP house.

I have no doubt the FBI/CBI/Sheriff immediately started wondering “what would a hunter/landscaper familiar with the acreage around his place do?”

Dylan Redwine was placed on USFS lands out in the open just off a Middle Mountain road. And yet he was still not found after many Autumn searches.

I truly believe Suzanne is close by PP.

I agree. By "close," I mean that he had 2.5 hours total to leave the house and come back, including whatever it is he did with the body. So, I'd predict within a 30-45 minute drive (the whole thing took longer than he had imagined, of course). Still like a needle in a haystack.

Do we know when he unhooked the Bobcat? It was on his truck's trailer when he came back from Salida. He probably used it during disposal of Suzanne. So whatever maneuvers he had to make to park it where we see it in the crime photos, those would be erased as well. I'm assuming he also destroyed the camera data from the garage cams (did he buy new cards for them? toss them? are they missing?)

It's weird that I keep thinking that one of the advantages of tranquilizing Suzanne was that...he hadn't killed her yet, so the sheer panic of what he had done was yet to set in. He could stay on plan. He could stay calm. He hadn't actually killed her...yet.

 

[cattlekate]

The chlorine smell is really weird. At some point, Barry has to believe he or something he owned became contaminated with DNA/body fluid evidence. Chlorine isn't going to remove soil evidence from his boots, he knows that. He doesn't (apparently) bleach his car upholstery.

All along, I've had Lady Macbeth in my mind, as well as people I've interviewed or studied who committed terrible crimes. Barry was not psychotic when he murdered Suzanne, and he was not longterm mentally ill. Here we have a man who, I believe, actually loved his wife and daughters in the best way he knew how. Jealousy and rage overcame him, and his basic personality traits of control and manipulation took over.

SO, was he repeatedly showering/bleaching himself? Did he keep changing his clothes because he felt contaminated?

He apparently leaves the tools in the lobby - so he's not bleaching them, right?

As to Men's Wearhouse, we need to know more. Why does he spend so much time there, only to return to HIE and apparently dump stuff in plain view on the curb? What stuff could have been more important than the "tranq material" and the other stuff left at HIE?

My only guess is...things like Suzanne's journals.

Here's why: he wants to destroy them (and the evidence they contain about the decay of the marriage), but he needs to read/skim them first. I believe he spent a lot of the "blank time" on that weekend going through Suzanne's computer, text message, iCloud, etc - with wild abandon, because he was no longer worried about getting caught. Some people facing infidelity and a failed marriage try to avoid the facts until they can't, any more. Maybe he wanted to know why Suzanne had emotionally abandoned him for another man. I know I would want to read any journals my partner had, if I could (and we were breaking up), despite my belief that doing so is wrong.

Maybe he was going through a lot of papers, selecting the ones for the messy notebook. Tossing the others. It seems to me that Wearhouse stop had to be low priority in terms of getting rid of evidence (the phone first, clothes he wore when disposing of her, any tools used in disposing of her, etc).

Maybe some of the papers incriminated Suzanne (in various ways) and so he kept those? I believe he thought he had more than one reason to kill her. He was still in a dialogue in his own mind about why he was right and she was wrong and deserved to die.

Wow great post! These observations dovetail into Barry deleting Suzanne’s “done” texts! He was erasing her and her thoughts of leaving HIM! (Along with erasing her.)

 

[Seattle1]

yeah. I’m still of the belief Suzanne was killed and moved before any cadaverine odors. She has to be close by the PP house.

I have no doubt the FBI/CBI/Sheriff immediately started wondering “what would a hunter/landscaper familiar with the acreage around his place do?”

Dylan Redwine was placed on USFS lands out in the open just off a Middle Mountain road. And yet he was still not found after many Autumn searches.

I truly believe Suzanne is close by PP.

I agree. I'm also not opposed to the idea that BM manipulated somebody to unknowingly help cover his tracks.

For example, BM later told investigators that he first headed on US 50 towards Monarch on Sunday morning (versus Buena Vista towards Broomfield) because he was following an elk.

I wouldn't put it past BM to have told a story to an unknowing helper that he illegally took down an elk and after taking the antlers, he hurriedly placed the carcass inside a burlap bag and buried the animal. There's been much speculation about BM purchasing trees. He could have requested trees planted to hide the disturbed ground. MOO