July 1, 2025 • 45 mins
Suzanne Morphew vanished on Mother's Day 2020. Her husband Barry Morphew was later charged with her murder, even though her body had not been found. Due to many issues, the judge dismissed the case one week before it went to trial and Barry Morphew walked out a free man. The judge dismissed the case "Without Prejudice" meaning the Morphew could be charged again at a "later date". That "later date" came when Barry Morphew was indicted by a grand jury charging him with Murder in the first-degree of his wife Suzanne Morphew. He was arrested in Arizona on Friday, June 20, 2025. Joseph Scott Morgan and Dave Mack discuss the case and why it was dropped the first time and why it is being brought again now. Professor Joseph Scott Morgan will explain the forensic evidence that is "the smoking gun" of the case.
Transcript Highlights
00:00.00 Introduction
00:49.42 Case of Suzanne Morphew
05:08.01 Mother's Day, Suzanne missing
09:47.15 Sasha Krause similar story
16:17.97 Barry Morphew hotel room smelled like bleach
20:26.86 Vigils, volunteers searching, Barry Morphew not helping much
25:13.43 Charges dropped, investigators believe they know where bones are but can't get to them
30:30.99 Suzanne remains found 45 miles from her home
35:05.68 Remains bleached, no maggots or other bugs feasting on her remains
39:59.83 Barry Morphew used BAM on deer
45:06.59 Conclusion
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Quality times, but Joseph's gotten more. Sometimes there's just cases
that stay with you over a protracted period of time,
and either it happens as a result that you're getting
(00:23):
I call it assaulted your ears assaulted every day by
the media, or it's something that puts a hook in
you and you can't get it out of your mind.
It's kind of been that way with the Susanne Morphy case.
From me started covering this thing, I don't know. I
(00:48):
guess it was in twenty twenty when it first dropped.
The first person I ever covered it with was Nance Grace,
and I didn't understand all the ends and that, but
there were so many layers to this thing relative to
how everything went down, her missing them, coming from Indiana
(01:10):
to Colorado, which always struck me as odd, and then
not being able to find her remains, and then to
add this one little piece that no one has ever
actually been held to account for her death. Well, as
(01:35):
of the last few days, that's changed. There's been an arrest,
there will be a prosecution, I think, of course, a
trial and finally maybe an outcome. But I wanted just
(01:58):
to briefly have a conversation with you today about some
insights that we now have as a result of court filing.
We're going to discuss it today. I'm Josephcott Morgan and
this is Bodybacks. Brother David, I think you've been on
(02:18):
this journey with me all along. I mean, you you
covered this case. It was Mother's Day, am I correct?
It was twenty twenty, Correct, it was twenty twenty and
Mother's Day and Mother's Day is a big deal around
my house, you know, we it's a big deal. I
think that's you know it kind of it had that
(02:41):
effect on me, you know, relative to my wife and
the things that we we we always go to church
on Mother's Day. We try to go to church every Sunday,
but we go to church. There's always a meal. Mom
doesn't have to cook, you know, those sorts of things,
and we flowers, car you know, everything along those lines
(03:03):
that you know, and she should be made to feel
special because in my world, Kimmy Sue does everything for
all of us and rarely, if ever complains. She will
complain if there's a sense of ingratitude about the things
that she's doing that maybe people take for granted. We
(03:26):
always try not to take it for granted.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
But you know, it's usually the complaint is when it's
not for her, it's for you being taken for granted.
She'll fuss about somebody being taken for granted, but not herself.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, that's the selfless nature of a mother.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
It is, It truly is. And with my wife, she's
the finest mama I've ever known. And I'd argue that
point with anybody. She would do anything for her kids,
and you know, by extent, she should do anything for me.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
She's a mama bear too.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
She is mam bear. Well, we'll be into the person
that falls in her lot of sight. She'll rip you
to shreds. But yeah, but she's she's good hearted, you know,
and that's what I love about her. She's good hearted
and patient.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
I was actually looking behind this case, Joe, because I
knew that i'd covered it since it began, and it
was May of twenty twenty, so we're five years into
this now. And I remember when on Nancy Grace we
were talking about the case because it was a missing
person's case. It was a woman, Susanne Morphew, who gets
(04:39):
up on Mother's Day. She has two daughters, young adults
their college age, and her husband her husband, Barry, had
left early that morning for a job out of town.
He does construction stuff, and she had recently taken up
mountain bike riding and so that's what, you know, that's
what she was going to do. So it's Mother's Day
(05:01):
and she's by herself, and it's late in the afternoon
and the daughters are trying to call their mother. They're
on a camping thing that we can some special event
that they've been planning, and they talk to their mother
on a regular basis. They're all very close and they
can't get her on the phone, and so the daughters
reach out to a neighbor and says, hey, I can't
(05:24):
find you know, can't get up with mom. You know,
do you know she home or And the neighbor calls Barry. Hey, Barry,
your daughters are looking for mom. But they're looking for Suzanne.
They can't find her anywhere. And he's on the phone saying, okay,
go check my house, go over and you know, see
if her car is there. See if And that's when
Barry more few it's like five point thirty in the afternoon.
(05:45):
He says, you know, see if her mountain bike's there.
She's been bike riding and that's when the neighbor comes back.
She's not home. Her car is here, but her bike
is gone. That's when the missing person's case began. She
must have gone on a bike ride, but she never
made it back. So boom Berry's on his way back
home and police are called. Then they show up and
(06:07):
their report was she goes on a bike ride and
let's trace the area she would have gone. Now, Barry
meanwhile gets back and they have found her bike. It's
not that far from their home. And it's not a
biking on a trail that she would not, like, a
dirt trail, but a road. We're not talking massive highways here.
It is out of the country, but you know it's
on a road.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And having.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
The actual police bodycam footage of this event, Barry Morphew
shows up right after they have found the bike. He's
standing there and these two officers are saying, yeah, we
found the bike down the hill down there, and Barry
Morphew says, well, where is she? Do you think a
mountain lion got her? What a mountain lion?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Huh?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
And so Barry Morphew was the one that suggested she
must have been attacked by an animal and drug off. Well,
I'm gonna give you a little heads up here. Mountain
lions in that area are rare. They do tend to
be solo artists. You know, they play by themselves and
they have a certain area that they play in and
that's it. And there aren't any in this area. So
(07:17):
his whole salesmanship on the mountain lion, any word you
have of that, came from Barry Morphew. While the her
bike is still in the dirt. Okay, fast forward. Police
start looking into this, can't find Suzanne anywhere. The whole
idea of her bound mountain bike being found and her
being abducted. Hey, man, put up missing posts, you know,
(07:40):
missing persons posters. Well, people in town do it. Barry's
not real involved in it. Berry's involved with his girlfriend, oops,
Joshana Dark I think it was her name. Anyway, as
they start, they break down the thing with Barry early on.
(08:00):
You know, where were you? What kind of timetable? And
you know this is a This is an interesting point
for us nowadays, Joe. For those who think they can
lie their way out of anything, pay attention, because whether
it's Arry Morphew, Alec Murda, Brian Coberger. There's one thing
(08:22):
all three of these guys have in common. Only one
is convicted too, are accused, but it was their cell
phone data.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yep, because single Tom.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
If you think turning your cell phone off.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
For a very important part of time, you know, out
of the blue, is going to work, it doesn't. Because
if you always have your cell phone on on a
regular basis, but on this one particular day, at one
very very important time in question, your phone is turned
off and then it gets turned back on an hour later.
(08:59):
And that happened it two or three times, always at
very important times of well, we're looking for your wife,
but your phone was off for this hour. Your phone
was off here again, And that's never ever happened in
the history of you having a cell phone. It's never
been turned off at those times.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
You got a.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Problem, Yeah, you really do, because you can be tracked
and I always and this is not about tracking. Well,
it's not about turning off cell phone. But I don't
know if you remember, because we did cover this case
because it's so heartbreaking. Do you remember the young Mennonite
woman that was kidnapped I think it was in New
(09:37):
Mexico and she was by the airman, the guy that
was in the Air Force, and he kidnapped her from
their little Mennonite community and took her from there. She
was going in if I remember correctly, to set up
set up for Sunday school or something. You know, she
(10:00):
he was one of these folks that would she taught.
And in addition to that she was going to do
I think it was Sunday school. I'm not really sure. Anyway,
he snatched her from that location. And the thing about
their cell phones, she had a cell phone on her.
He had a cell phone on him, David, I'll never forget.
I can't remember which one of our friends. That's the
(10:20):
digital forensics guy. I saw the map they created, and the.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Name is Sasha Kraus, by the way.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
That's miss Kraus, that's right. And their phones were traveling
in tandem through the great wide open out there out west.
And you know, she she was later found, you know,
deposited out in Sage, you know, in Arizona, somewhere in
this isolated, horrible area. And of course he had, if
I remember correctly, he had popped her once in the
(10:48):
back of the head with a rifle.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
And blackstaff Arizona. She was from Farmington, New Mexico. Yeah, Staff, Arizona.
If you're on the interstates, that would be on I
forty goes through Flagstaff and I think.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, and Flagstaff location, I've always wanted to visit up
in northern Arizona. Unbelievable. Yeah, here, it's there now. Yeah,
and the heat here, the you know. And that's the
thing about it is you can be tracked anywhere. And
we're seeing this more and more, but with more few
(11:21):
going back during that period of time. Isn't it interesting
how it's not so much about I think that there's
going to be a whole sub specialty that will develop
in human the study of human behavior as it relates
to digital interaction and what they can assess about your
(11:43):
whereabouts or about your activities relative to these boat anchors
that we carry around our pockets everywhere we go. And
this is a great example of that. One thing that
was yeah, I'm sorry. One thing that was important that
you guys know, because you followed this podcast, another Crime
through Crime podcast, you know that Suzanne Morpheu's husband, Barry
(12:05):
was charged.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
He was put in jail. His daughters, their daughters stood
beside him as.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
He was awaiting trial, and then a week before the trial,
by the way, the charges were dismissed without prejudice.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Without prejudice. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Now the prosecutor a woman named Linda Stanley. Yeah, I'm
making sure I got in the eight isn Linda Stanley.
She as a prosecutor. They have certain rules they have
to abide by. One of those would be turning over
information that could be exculpatory.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
You know when you get into discovery. Friends, Hey, you've
got a lot going against you if you're the suspect,
and they got a lot of stuff to bear, but
you have a right to know everything they got and
they have to turn it over to you. And if
they don't, there is there actually are real there's help
to pay. Linda Stanley actually then went after the judge
in the case and it became a whole fiasco, and
(13:02):
that was one of the reasons that led to them
dropping the charges. And then Linda Stanley was later disbarred. Okay,
so the former district attorney that originally prosecuted was going
to prosecute Barry Morphew ends up getting disbarred. So the
other reason they cut him loose the first time they
(13:23):
hadn't found Suzanne Morphu's body. It was a missing person,
no body homicide case. And to be honest with you,
that's always a tough sell because no matter what, no
matter what you have, no matter what type of evidence
you think you have, I can still stand up as
(13:43):
the defense and say he didn't do it. She's hiding.
She could walk in this door two days after you
convict him, you sentenced him to death.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
She could walk through the door.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And based on the problems they had with the prosecutor,
based on the fact that they thought they knew where
her body was but they couldn't get to it because
of the snow, they decided, okay, well we'll drop this.
A week before trial begins in April, they dropped the
charges and they find her body several months later. And
(14:18):
what they found, Joe, you're going to have to explain
because I didn't understand it then, Yeah, and I know
less now, even though he's been the rest of The.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
More knowledge you acquire, the more confused you become. I've
had that happen to me at several points along along
my career, and I think that that this is this
is a piece to this and there's some interesting terminology
that's going to come up, you know, as we have
this discussion. One one word in particular stands out because Dave,
(14:51):
being the best producer in the business bar none, He's
provided me with the rendering from the grand jury, and
it's fascinating, to say the very least. But there's a
term that's used in this document that has elicited quite
a bit of confusion about what exactly it means. I'll
(15:14):
give you a hint. It has to do with household
cleaning as opposed to a result from being left in
the sun. We heard early on Dave and I have
(15:45):
a distinct memory of this of very Morphew having been
in a hotel room at some point in time along
this timeline, and one witness had stated that relative to
his motel hotel room, there was a strong odor of
(16:10):
bleach in that room. And I never could make heads
or tails of that really, because you know, I'm thinking
generally at a crime scene when people use bleach, they're
trying to eradicate blood in some way. They're trying to
because bleach is so very caustic it can certainly destroy
(16:33):
certain things. I don't think that it is as effective,
as many criminals believe that it is. However, there was
always this specter that raised its head in a more
few case that something had happened in a hotel room
that may or may not have been associated with Suzanne's
disappearance at that particular time. Or could it been he
(16:56):
was just doing cleaning of his own in his hotel room,
did he have clothes that needed to be cleaned, or
something like this. So we were a bit confused, and
still to this day, I think that there's a bit
of confusion relative to the timeline. However, things became or
came into focus relative to her body finally being discovered,
(17:19):
or what remained of her body out there in this county,
far from mountain Lions, by the way, in this isolated
area that you sit there and you scratch your head
about it. And this goes to the idea, the more
information you have, the more confused you are. How did
she even wind up there in this particular location because
(17:42):
it is so incredibly isolated.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I'm curious, Joe, because when they were talking about the
smell from the hotel room that he was in, now
there was a strong smell coming out of that hotel
room and there was. The idea was sold that it
could be chlorine, like the chlorine use in a swimming pool,
which most people know that it smells like bleach, and
(18:07):
that was something that seemed odd. Why would you have
bleach in a hotel room. Well, the story that Barry
Morphew told was that he left that morning, went to
do this work out of town, and that he they
had a hotel room, and but he was working on
the site, you know, all day, and then he came
back to the hotel room, tacked down and went back
(18:28):
home when he found out she was missing. That was
pretty much what he said. Well, they were able to
prove fairly early on that didn't happen, based on again
your cell phone technology and eyewitness accounts, and they were
able to figure out that, Yeah, he did go to
the hotel, but he and he went to a job site.
(18:48):
But he wasn't supposed to be at the job site
till late that afternoon, early evening. He said, he left
at five point thirty in the morning. He even had
he was supposed to pick up an employee to go
with him, but he decided I'm going to leave by myself.
So the employee's like, well, what the heck. So the
employee gets up there and nothing's been done, and he's like,
you've been up here all day, but nothing's done, and
(19:09):
your hotel room smells like bleach. You know, that's where
all this starts coming from. None of it made any
kind of sense, So police really did. They were zeroing
in on Barry Morphew based on his attempts to tell
a story that just didn't hold up well.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I think another as Tom went by, I think that
another red flag. And Dave, how many times have we
heard the same story? Kind of an apathetic view toward
getting the word out. You know, you're talking about people
putting up flyers and all this sort of thing, and
anytime you see it's you know, it's my analogy of
(19:47):
the hanging curveball. You know, it's like you leave it
out over the plate, they're going to hit it. You
know they're going to It's going to happen sooner or later.
And when you showed no interest in a case our
limited interest, you're kind of feigning you know, it's a
red flag for the police and all of the investigators
(20:10):
involved in a case like this, they're going to look
at you even harder. You know, you for people that
just in my experience, for people that are have been
on a team, particularly loved ones that are looking for someone,
and of course we when I would come into it,
it would always be they had found a body, and
(20:31):
you could and I've been around these teams of people
that had been looking, you know, hoping against hope that
it was going to be a missing person's case. And
you see this kind of it's almost a religious uh
uh fervency about this. You know, we're going to find
We're gonna you oh yeah, candlelight visuals, we're gonna move
heaven and hell, we're gonna do everything we can. And
(20:53):
then you've got the person that is most closely associated
with you in the world, that you've shared a life with,
that you've brought two lives into the world with, and
there's just kind of well yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah, and especially if you might have problems in the marriage,
you know, if maybe there's been some stuff going on.
Hey man, you know what, even if there were things
going on, if your spouse truly was missing, you're not
going to walk away from twenty five thirty years without
Hey where is she?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Look?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yes, I have a girlfriend, Yes she's talking to an
old boyfriend. But you know what, we're still living together.
Where's my wife? You know, you would lay all your
cards on the table just to get it out. You
wouldn't try hiding anything, because the most important thing is
not covering yourself. Scott Peterson, It's important to tell the truth.
Oh I have a girlfriend, but I didn't kill my wife, right,
(21:49):
you know anything that I just cannot imagine, Joe.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
I think what's interesting about it is that many times
in cases like this you have individuals that do it's
almost like their perception of reality is so skewed. They
don't think that they're going to be found out or
these things that they've been involved in are not going
to be found out. One way or another, evidence is
going to lead back to you. Whether it's electronic or
it's eyewitness evidence. It could be your your truck that
(22:15):
you're using, you know, with the data pack that's on there,
any number of things are going to wind up pointing
a finger back at you, or at least, you know,
compel people to ask you more specific questions because they're
not getting anywhere. Because when these cases start out as
a missing person's case, and particularly something so odd like this,
(22:38):
where you've got the bike that is in this odd area,
you know, And I think, if I remember correctly, there
was a helmet that was found at some point in time. Yeah,
and it was like a day or two later. And
then you go out and you start talking about mountain lions,
unless go to yeah, no kidding, and look, one of
I'm not saying that mountain lions are not a problem,
(23:00):
because one of the most horrible cases. When I was
attending the American Academy of Forensic Science meeting years ago,
this forensic odin Tyler's got up and told a story
or presented the case. I could have sworn David it
was in Boulder, Maybe it wasn't. A lady had gone
out jogging and the path ran through a forest and
(23:22):
there were these rock shelves and I've never seen anything
like this in my life. We don't have that many
mountain lines around these parts. And she had parked her
car and it was like this nature trail you could
jog on. There were these two guys that were going
to go it's like a lunchtime thing, and they saw
(23:42):
her leave and they were stretching because they were going
to get on the path and run to when they
were running together in tandem. The mountain lion was eating
this woman in front of them on the path, and
I saw the images for it. So and that was
in Colorado, of course, it's a great distance from where
this locale is. This local it seems as though that
(24:05):
it's more and I've seen the images. It's flatter, it's
kind of sage brushy looking. And I'm sure that the
area is quite beautiful. I hear that it is, and
I'm sure there's rolling hills and that sort of thing.
But around the area where Susan Morphew's body is finally discovered,
there's nothing like rock shells hanging over. You know, you
(24:26):
were talking about how mountain lions they want to hide.
They're solitary creatures, so that you know, you know, that
dog just didn't hunt.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
No, And Joe I mentioned earlier that you know, we
know that Barry was arrested, very more few he was arrested,
he was charged with her murder. A week away from trial.
They drop all the charges because they said two things. One,
we got to get rid of this prosecutor. We got
a problem there. But too is we think we know
where her body is. We know you know, because they
still didn't have her, and we can't get to every
(24:57):
body right now because of the snowpack. So they let
him go and he moves, you know, he moves away.
Actually he moved before then. He had moved to Indiana
right away, not long after she went missing. And that's
you know, there are so many things wrong with what
people do. But in this particular case, when they finally
(25:21):
did find her remains, Joe, they were shocked at what
they found, and I really I don't understand. I don't
understand a lot of what they found and the explanation
because of what we normally have with the remains when
they're found out in the woods. It's usually not a
full set. Usually it's a mandible, it's a bone here,
(25:42):
a bone there, and they're usually pretty scattered if a
body has just been deposited out in the middle of
nowhere because of wildlife and other things that take you know,
they don't just stay in one area. But even beyond that,
there were other aspects of this case that were kind
of small me with regard to what Barry Morphew was
into with using dark guns and tranquilizers on animals to
(26:07):
remove their horns or what have you. I'm not a
dear person, Okay, I don't understand all the things that
he claims to do with them, but there was one
thing in particular that he did that he was very
unique to this area.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
He used a product called Bam Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah. And this product in and of itself is going
to play into, I think, Dave, into this narrative that
prosecution has now come to believe you as to what happened.
It's going to tell the tale of the tape. Because
even though when Susanne Morphew was discovered, all that was
(26:48):
left of her, all that remains, if you will, gave
us clues that this substance was still present in her skeletons.
(27:12):
Section eighteen three, Dash one two. Murder in the first degree,
a person commits the crime of murder in the first
degree if after deliberation and with intent to cause the
(27:34):
death of a person other than himself, he causes the
death of that person or another person. I got to
tell you, Dave, they have charged very more few with
first degree in Colorado, and that's another level. And this
(27:56):
this is going to if he has found guilty of
this charge, they are going to put him into the
state penitentiary for the rest of his natural life. They
have enough evidence to believe that he formed intent, and
it's called a variety of things in other states. You know,
you can think about premeditative event, intend to do bodily harm.
(28:22):
You know that winds up in someone's death. But you
have to form specific intent in order to do this.
And that's what the grand jury has come back with
in this case. That's pretty strong. And you know, many
times we can I think that you can look at
a case and see what they are charged with and
you get an idea, you can at least get a
(28:44):
peek behind the curtain as to the strength of the
evidence that might exist. And therein rest this this great
mystery up until you know, this past week. I don't
know about you. I didn't see this coming. I did
not see us arrest coming. I figured that something was
going to happen eventually. But you know, with everything we've
(29:05):
been covering lately with Lisk and you know, would help
us the Idaho four and all these other cases that
are popping in the news, this came out of left field.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
As far as I'm it was.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
It was a surprise because we weren't watching for it.
But we also had a gunshy because of when they
dropped the charges.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
You know, you had it going it.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
It really looked like the case might have been corrupted enough,
to be honest with you, when you've got prosecutor and
misconduct being alleged and being proved to a degree when
the prosecutor is disbarred, you might have bigger problems.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
So when they came back with this indictment, you know
that they have crossed every t and dotted every eye.
Her body was not found in Chafee County where she
went missing. Her body was found in what it's called,
Saywatch County, and it's not spelled that way, just so
you know, if you say it as a spelled it's
going to come out Sagawatchee.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
You know Watch.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
And when they did finally find her remains, and this
is a very happenstance, you realize that when her remains
were found in Sewatch County, about forty five miles from
her home, I believe it was the FBI that found
them and they were not looking for her out.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
There, No, they weren't.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
They were looking for a different body.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, this area apparently was known to the FEDS as
a location where people that are involved in nefarious acts
might go to dump someone, and they had information. I
think that was in regards to another completely unassociated case.
(30:43):
Can you can you imagine going out to work a
case and you're maybe you're looking for a body or
you're looking for evidence, and all of a sudden you
come across something that you think might be associated with
your case, and it turns out to be. The remains
have been one of the most high profile homicides or deaths,
(31:04):
let's say that, you know, in the last decade, certainly
in that area of the country, but I think in
all of Colorado. I mean, people were buzzing about this
for years, Dave, I mean it, it was on the
news constantly.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
It boggles my mind, you know that the way these
things turn, you know, have how they're not looking there
for her, but they find her and.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Then Joe, please explain, because I can't.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I've tried to. I've tried to understand this. But I
thought when they were talking about the condition of the remains,
that that maybe she had been buried someplace else, was
disinterred and moved to this location.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
But that isn't apparently what happened at all? Is it?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Well, it's it's really hard to you know, kind of
understand the nature of the deposition of the remains. I've heard,
I've heard a couple of things that have floated about now.
One of the one of the really fascinating issues was,
or comments that someone has made recently, was did he
(32:14):
allow her? See how can I put this? Did he
allow her? Did he sequester her remain somewhere where she
was allowed to decompose in a contained area so that
you're not going to lose anything relative to any of
her mortal remains than after a period of time, grab
(32:38):
those remains and take them into posit them somewhere else.
And this is where the term that I had mentioned
previously comes up, because it's so odd, because I don't
know how to read it when I'm looking when I'm
looking at this document, Dave, they use the term bleached. Well,
(32:58):
because we know the history of what had happened with
the hotel room, and we know that bleach was involved there.
You have to really wonder if perhaps, just perhaps when
they say the bones were bleached, are they saying that
literally the bones had been bleached by a chemical chemical
(33:23):
bleaching or were the bones bleached by the sun, and
you know, because they're laid out in this particular area,
I don't know. It's confusing to me.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
I don't thought that was bleached by the sun. That's
what I thought.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
But well, I had someone else say the other day.
They said, well, you know he's used bleach, and listen,
I got to tell you that at that early stage,
I want to, you know, kind of put this idea aside.
At that early stage in this case, if you're going
to use bleach to bleach skeleton remains, how are you
(34:01):
going to get them down or render them down to
a skeletal condition At that point in time when the
whole thing went down with the hotel, because it was
such a tight window, you would literally, this is so
ghastly to say, you would literally have to strip all
of the soft tissue off of her bones in order
to facilitate applying bleach to them. So for me, it
(34:22):
came down to the fact that the bones were in
fact laid out and bleached. Now as to where her
remains had been for all of this period of time,
one of the interesting things that comes up in this
document is that the entomologist who you know the forensic entomologists.
(34:43):
This is a person that you know studies insect life
as it applies to human remains. By the way, a
plug for one of the best entomologists that I know.
If you if you really want to check out somebody's
really fascinating. He's actually a crime con a couple of
years ago. He's a friend of mine. We've been friends
for a number of years. That a guy named doctor
(35:04):
Jason Bird b y r d. And he works at
the Maple Center at the University of Florida, and he's
one of the best forensic entomologists anywhere. But one of
the things that you look for at a scene where
you have decomposed or having previously decomposed remains is you're
going to look for things like maggot husk out there
(35:26):
and from flies, and so flies are multi generational, so
you will have that will go through their life cycle
multiple times where eggs will be laid, they'll burst forth
from these eggs, you'll have the maggot maggot shed's a husk,
and then you can see multiple generations of these things
(35:48):
out there and they'll surround the body. You can't miss them.
If you go out there, there's no evidence of that.
There's no evidence, So how do you how do you
explain that? And I think that that's one of the
big big questions. Also, clothing that is found most of
the Tom Dave is going to have some type of
(36:08):
decompositional staining, and that should be very pronounced. One of
the things that has been put forward was a body
undressed and redressed at some point in time. Ore was
clothing that was found with a body. Is it just
simply there to throw investigators off the scent, if you will.
The one confirmatory thing that they did find out there.
(36:31):
And I still remember this reflectively when we had talked
about I can't remember we've done one or two episodes
on Susan Morphew, but the found that the cancer port,
you know, because she's been treated and that's something that's
very resilient. So we know that that part that bit
was intact and it would stand out and they're you know, there,
(36:53):
it's a man made it's not naturally everything, it's plastic, uh,
and so that port would still be there and that's
uniquely identifiable back to her. I suspect that that was
one of the things that we're looking for, at least
as a peripheral part of their process of identification of
her remains.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
You know, it's one of the things that they found.
And this is really important, and it shows up in
It showed up in the bones, it showed up in
the autopsy, and it shows up in all the reports
now very Morephew used tranquilizers to tranquilize their dark gun,
and tranquilizers to sedate animals, big animals like deer that
(37:30):
he would then remove their antlers and things like that.
And when they searched the home they found this. They
found a dark gun in a gun case. They found
hypodermic needles that are used to inject the drug. And
he used a very specific drug. It's called it's a
combination of drug. It's called BAM when it's used in
(37:51):
this order of beutrophenol, a, z opera, A, zaparone, and metatomidine.
Those three together combined make up this. It's a elixir
of BAM. Yeah, cocktail. And there are some interesting things
to know about BAM. First of all, it is used
(38:13):
for large animals like deer too, okay, but it is
so controlled you can't get it without a prescription from
a veterinarian. And at the time that Susanne moreph You
went missing, there was one person in the state of
Colorado that had filled prescriptions for BAM, had a prescription
(38:35):
for BAM, and that one person.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Was Barry Morphew. When they did the autopsy.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Oh, by the way, at the house where they found
the dark gun and the hypodermic needles, they found something
in a dryer where it closed man's Perry shorts and
the the cap. So what would one believe. I mean,
I'm just asking you to use some common sense. Let's see,
(39:08):
I have to have my shorts on. I took the
cap off, put it in my pocket, used it for whatever,
And because I don't normally wash my own clothes, I
left the cap and I ain't checked my pockets first.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Certainly plausible. Yeah, that's an interesting It's an interesting take
on it because you know you're always going to forget something.
I say, you h they them will always always leave
something behind when you begin to think. But the one
thing that was left behind and just kind of give
you a breakdown on this, this cocktail chemical cock well,
(39:43):
these drugs are meant for sedation, Okay, so you've got
one drug that is actually, ah, it's almost like an
anti anxiety kind of thing that's blended in with another
drug that's used as an anesthetic. So when this has applied,
(40:04):
first off, the ideas and I think that you know
his previously, in the previous life, he had had a
deer park, and that may have been in Indiana, I think,
and he would sedate these deer and he would you know,
take the antlers off of them for a variety of reasons.
I'm sure you know. Deer hunters actually use antlers to
(40:24):
create scraping sounds, you know, if they're up in a
tree stand. I'm not a deer hunter. A hunt duck
every now and then, but it's deer hunting. It has
never been my thing. I don't believe in freezing my
tail off, you know, early in the morning, I'd sit
in a blonde with a bunch of guys and laugh.
But you know, you think about you think about that
(40:45):
that he would have had experience with that, and then
the application of it. How are you going to put
it into her system? And I think one of the
interesting things we will hear about in this particular case
is how how exactly did they know to examine her
bones and I'm talking about at a chemical level where
(41:07):
they knew that they could find a remnant of this?
Because I got to tell you, Dave, I think that
that's the only conclusion I can draw. Did they take
a core out of the marrow of the bones, spin
it down and then I don't This is the thing.
I don't think they could get a quantitative amount, Like
you can't say that she had this much on board.
(41:29):
It's not like doing a direct blood draw, but you
can get a qualitative amount. And this this drug, this
is not like like when you think about the Casey
Anthony case, where you know they've talked about chloroform and
all that thing, and chloroform is a naturally occurring thing.
You know, it's given off by decomposing plants. So not
(41:52):
that that has anything to do with it, but it's
that these drugs are not naturally occurring. So what what
does that leave us with relative to an explanation. Did
they did Were they able to render this down from
like the marrow of the bone that would still be
kind of protected and they found a qualitative amount of
(42:14):
the drug. Because you can't explain this. The other thing
that it leads you to is that in order for
it to be in dwelling in the bone, Dave is
that she would have had to have metabolized it, Okay,
and that tells us a lot about the nature of
her death. So if she is injected with the stuff,
(42:37):
whether it's visaly a dark gun, or whether it's a
direct hypodermic im which is intermuscular injection, which you know,
if you're talking about with big animals, you're not going
to go into First off, you're terrified of them. Darry
will kill you if he's got antlers. You want to
at a distant shoot it, and you're not going to
shoot it into a vessel. You're going to go im
(42:59):
which is muscular, and it's going to take them down
after a few seconds. How how has it imparted into
her body? And we know that it was in there
long enough so that she would have had to have
metabolized it in order for it to actually get into
her skeleton. Okay. If that's what they're saying, and it's
(43:21):
it's really you know, it's kind of mind blowing. You know,
at that point when you begin to think about it,
that they were able to just blind luck find her body,
and then on top of it, be able to test
the remains and find this stuff on board with her.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
The one guy in the entire state that actually has
that prescription, and it's his wife who's missing, whose remains
are accidentally found, and lo and behold, she has metabolized
this drug before death.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Yeah, and that and again we don't we don't necessarily
have and I don't know that anybody can say, Dave,
what her actual cause of death is. My suspicion is
is that it will be left kind of hanging out there.
The cause will be listed as homicidal trauma or homicidal
(44:16):
circumstances or something like that, and it's kind of a
it's very unfulfilling, you know, from a scientific standpoint, because
you don't have any other scientific evidence to draw that conclusion.
I think as this case moves forward, you're going to hear.
First off, we're going to hear a lot of toxicology.
In this case, You're going to have U and you'll
(44:37):
probably have maybe even a veterinarian h and maybe a
veterinary toxicologist because they have these special special people that
do this to talk about the nature of this drug.
And then You're going to have somebody else, probably a
forensic pathologist, that will go into is there there has
to be a lethal level of this drug? Is this?
(44:58):
Is it possible that she could have been injected with
enough of this stuff to kill her, but it wouldn't
have been an immediate death. She would have had to
have metabolized it. What she injected with the stuff long
enough for somebody to try to think about, Okay, she's out,
she's sleeping. I know how long this lasts. What do
I do with her now? How do I kill her?
And and what do I do with her? Remains a
(45:20):
lot of this stuff remains a mystery. But it's like
the old saying, you know, the journey of one thousand
miles starts with the first step. There's already been missteps here,
but it sounds as though they're on the right path now.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body Backs.
Quality times, but Joseph's gotten more. Sometimes there's just cases
that stay with you over a protracted period of time,
and either it happens as a result that you're getting
(00:23):
I call it assaulted your ears assaulted every day by
the media, or it's something that puts a hook in
you and you can't get it out of your mind.
It's kind of been that way with the Susanne Morphy case.
From me started covering this thing, I don't know. I
(00:48):
guess it was in twenty twenty when it first dropped.
The first person I ever covered it with was Nance Grace,
and I didn't understand all the ends and that, but
there were so many layers to this thing relative to
how everything went down, her missing them, coming from Indiana
(01:10):
to Colorado, which always struck me as odd, and then
not being able to find her remains, and then to
add this one little piece that no one has ever
actually been held to account for her death. Well, as
(01:35):
of the last few days, that's changed. There's been an arrest,
there will be a prosecution, I think, of course, a
trial and finally maybe an outcome. But I wanted just
(01:58):
to briefly have a conversation with you today about some
insights that we now have as a result of court filing.
We're going to discuss it today. I'm Josephcott Morgan and
this is Bodybacks. Brother David, I think you've been on
(02:18):
this journey with me all along. I mean, you you
covered this case. It was Mother's Day, am I correct?
It was twenty twenty, Correct, it was twenty twenty and
Mother's Day and Mother's Day is a big deal around
my house, you know, we it's a big deal. I
think that's you know it kind of it had that
(02:41):
effect on me, you know, relative to my wife and
the things that we we we always go to church
on Mother's Day. We try to go to church every Sunday,
but we go to church. There's always a meal. Mom
doesn't have to cook, you know, those sorts of things,
and we flowers, car you know, everything along those lines
(03:03):
that you know, and she should be made to feel
special because in my world, Kimmy Sue does everything for
all of us and rarely, if ever complains. She will
complain if there's a sense of ingratitude about the things
that she's doing that maybe people take for granted. We
(03:26):
always try not to take it for granted.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
But you know, it's usually the complaint is when it's
not for her, it's for you being taken for granted.
She'll fuss about somebody being taken for granted, but not herself.
Speaker 3 (03:40):
Yeah, that's the selfless nature of a mother.
Speaker 1 (03:43):
It is, It truly is. And with my wife, she's
the finest mama I've ever known. And I'd argue that
point with anybody. She would do anything for her kids,
and you know, by extent, she should do anything for me.
Speaker 3 (04:00):
She's a mama bear too.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
She is mam bear. Well, we'll be into the person
that falls in her lot of sight. She'll rip you
to shreds. But yeah, but she's she's good hearted, you know,
and that's what I love about her. She's good hearted
and patient.
Speaker 2 (04:14):
I was actually looking behind this case, Joe, because I
knew that i'd covered it since it began, and it
was May of twenty twenty, so we're five years into
this now. And I remember when on Nancy Grace we
were talking about the case because it was a missing
person's case. It was a woman, Susanne Morphew, who gets
(04:39):
up on Mother's Day. She has two daughters, young adults
their college age, and her husband her husband, Barry, had
left early that morning for a job out of town.
He does construction stuff, and she had recently taken up
mountain bike riding and so that's what, you know, that's
what she was going to do. So it's Mother's Day
(05:01):
and she's by herself, and it's late in the afternoon
and the daughters are trying to call their mother. They're
on a camping thing that we can some special event
that they've been planning, and they talk to their mother
on a regular basis. They're all very close and they
can't get her on the phone, and so the daughters
reach out to a neighbor and says, hey, I can't
(05:24):
find you know, can't get up with mom. You know,
do you know she home or And the neighbor calls Barry. Hey, Barry,
your daughters are looking for mom. But they're looking for Suzanne.
They can't find her anywhere. And he's on the phone saying, okay,
go check my house, go over and you know, see
if her car is there. See if And that's when
Barry more few it's like five point thirty in the afternoon.
(05:45):
He says, you know, see if her mountain bike's there.
She's been bike riding and that's when the neighbor comes back.
She's not home. Her car is here, but her bike
is gone. That's when the missing person's case began. She
must have gone on a bike ride, but she never
made it back. So boom Berry's on his way back
home and police are called. Then they show up and
(06:07):
their report was she goes on a bike ride and
let's trace the area she would have gone. Now, Barry
meanwhile gets back and they have found her bike. It's
not that far from their home. And it's not a
biking on a trail that she would not, like, a
dirt trail, but a road. We're not talking massive highways here.
It is out of the country, but you know it's
on a road.
Speaker 3 (06:27):
And having.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
The actual police bodycam footage of this event, Barry Morphew
shows up right after they have found the bike. He's
standing there and these two officers are saying, yeah, we
found the bike down the hill down there, and Barry
Morphew says, well, where is she? Do you think a
mountain lion got her? What a mountain lion?
Speaker 3 (06:54):
Huh?
Speaker 2 (06:55):
And so Barry Morphew was the one that suggested she
must have been attacked by an animal and drug off. Well,
I'm gonna give you a little heads up here. Mountain
lions in that area are rare. They do tend to
be solo artists. You know, they play by themselves and
they have a certain area that they play in and
that's it. And there aren't any in this area. So
(07:17):
his whole salesmanship on the mountain lion, any word you
have of that, came from Barry Morphew. While the her
bike is still in the dirt. Okay, fast forward. Police
start looking into this, can't find Suzanne anywhere. The whole
idea of her bound mountain bike being found and her
being abducted. Hey, man, put up missing posts, you know,
(07:40):
missing persons posters. Well, people in town do it. Barry's
not real involved in it. Berry's involved with his girlfriend, oops,
Joshana Dark I think it was her name. Anyway, as
they start, they break down the thing with Barry early on.
(08:00):
You know, where were you? What kind of timetable? And
you know this is a This is an interesting point
for us nowadays, Joe. For those who think they can
lie their way out of anything, pay attention, because whether
it's Arry Morphew, Alec Murda, Brian Coberger. There's one thing
(08:22):
all three of these guys have in common. Only one
is convicted too, are accused, but it was their cell
phone data.
Speaker 1 (08:30):
Yep, because single Tom.
Speaker 3 (08:34):
If you think turning your cell phone off.
Speaker 2 (08:38):
For a very important part of time, you know, out
of the blue, is going to work, it doesn't. Because
if you always have your cell phone on on a
regular basis, but on this one particular day, at one
very very important time in question, your phone is turned
off and then it gets turned back on an hour later.
(08:59):
And that happened it two or three times, always at
very important times of well, we're looking for your wife,
but your phone was off for this hour. Your phone
was off here again, And that's never ever happened in
the history of you having a cell phone. It's never
been turned off at those times.
Speaker 3 (09:14):
You got a.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Problem, Yeah, you really do, because you can be tracked
and I always and this is not about tracking. Well,
it's not about turning off cell phone. But I don't
know if you remember, because we did cover this case
because it's so heartbreaking. Do you remember the young Mennonite
woman that was kidnapped I think it was in New
(09:37):
Mexico and she was by the airman, the guy that
was in the Air Force, and he kidnapped her from
their little Mennonite community and took her from there. She
was going in if I remember correctly, to set up
set up for Sunday school or something. You know, she
(10:00):
he was one of these folks that would she taught.
And in addition to that she was going to do
I think it was Sunday school. I'm not really sure. Anyway,
he snatched her from that location. And the thing about
their cell phones, she had a cell phone on her.
He had a cell phone on him, David, I'll never forget.
I can't remember which one of our friends. That's the
(10:20):
digital forensics guy. I saw the map they created, and the.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
Name is Sasha Kraus, by the way.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
That's miss Kraus, that's right. And their phones were traveling
in tandem through the great wide open out there out west.
And you know, she she was later found, you know,
deposited out in Sage, you know, in Arizona, somewhere in
this isolated, horrible area. And of course he had, if
I remember correctly, he had popped her once in the
(10:48):
back of the head with a rifle.
Speaker 2 (10:50):
And blackstaff Arizona. She was from Farmington, New Mexico. Yeah, Staff, Arizona.
If you're on the interstates, that would be on I
forty goes through Flagstaff and I think.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
Yeah, and Flagstaff location, I've always wanted to visit up
in northern Arizona. Unbelievable. Yeah, here, it's there now. Yeah,
and the heat here, the you know. And that's the
thing about it is you can be tracked anywhere. And
we're seeing this more and more, but with more few
(11:21):
going back during that period of time. Isn't it interesting
how it's not so much about I think that there's
going to be a whole sub specialty that will develop
in human the study of human behavior as it relates
to digital interaction and what they can assess about your
(11:43):
whereabouts or about your activities relative to these boat anchors
that we carry around our pockets everywhere we go. And
this is a great example of that. One thing that
was yeah, I'm sorry. One thing that was important that
you guys know, because you followed this podcast, another Crime
through Crime podcast, you know that Suzanne Morpheu's husband, Barry
(12:05):
was charged.
Speaker 3 (12:06):
He was put in jail. His daughters, their daughters stood
beside him as.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
He was awaiting trial, and then a week before the trial,
by the way, the charges were dismissed without prejudice.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
Without prejudice. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
Now the prosecutor a woman named Linda Stanley. Yeah, I'm
making sure I got in the eight isn Linda Stanley.
She as a prosecutor. They have certain rules they have
to abide by. One of those would be turning over
information that could be exculpatory.
Speaker 1 (12:38):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (12:38):
You know when you get into discovery. Friends, Hey, you've
got a lot going against you if you're the suspect,
and they got a lot of stuff to bear, but
you have a right to know everything they got and
they have to turn it over to you. And if
they don't, there is there actually are real there's help
to pay. Linda Stanley actually then went after the judge
in the case and it became a whole fiasco, and
(13:02):
that was one of the reasons that led to them
dropping the charges. And then Linda Stanley was later disbarred. Okay,
so the former district attorney that originally prosecuted was going
to prosecute Barry Morphew ends up getting disbarred. So the
other reason they cut him loose the first time they
(13:23):
hadn't found Suzanne Morphu's body. It was a missing person,
no body homicide case. And to be honest with you,
that's always a tough sell because no matter what, no
matter what you have, no matter what type of evidence
you think you have, I can still stand up as
(13:43):
the defense and say he didn't do it. She's hiding.
She could walk in this door two days after you
convict him, you sentenced him to death.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
She could walk through the door.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yep.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
And based on the problems they had with the prosecutor,
based on the fact that they thought they knew where
her body was but they couldn't get to it because
of the snow, they decided, okay, well we'll drop this.
A week before trial begins in April, they dropped the
charges and they find her body several months later. And
(14:18):
what they found, Joe, you're going to have to explain
because I didn't understand it then, Yeah, and I know
less now, even though he's been the rest of The.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
More knowledge you acquire, the more confused you become. I've
had that happen to me at several points along along
my career, and I think that that this is this
is a piece to this and there's some interesting terminology
that's going to come up, you know, as we have
this discussion. One one word in particular stands out because Dave,
(14:51):
being the best producer in the business bar none, He's
provided me with the rendering from the grand jury, and
it's fascinating, to say the very least. But there's a
term that's used in this document that has elicited quite
a bit of confusion about what exactly it means. I'll
(15:14):
give you a hint. It has to do with household
cleaning as opposed to a result from being left in
the sun. We heard early on Dave and I have
(15:45):
a distinct memory of this of very Morphew having been
in a hotel room at some point in time along
this timeline, and one witness had stated that relative to
his motel hotel room, there was a strong odor of
(16:10):
bleach in that room. And I never could make heads
or tails of that really, because you know, I'm thinking
generally at a crime scene when people use bleach, they're
trying to eradicate blood in some way. They're trying to
because bleach is so very caustic it can certainly destroy
(16:33):
certain things. I don't think that it is as effective,
as many criminals believe that it is. However, there was
always this specter that raised its head in a more
few case that something had happened in a hotel room
that may or may not have been associated with Suzanne's
disappearance at that particular time. Or could it been he
(16:56):
was just doing cleaning of his own in his hotel room,
did he have clothes that needed to be cleaned, or
something like this. So we were a bit confused, and
still to this day, I think that there's a bit
of confusion relative to the timeline. However, things became or
came into focus relative to her body finally being discovered,
(17:19):
or what remained of her body out there in this county,
far from mountain Lions, by the way, in this isolated
area that you sit there and you scratch your head
about it. And this goes to the idea, the more
information you have, the more confused you are. How did
she even wind up there in this particular location because
(17:42):
it is so incredibly isolated.
Speaker 2 (17:46):
I'm curious, Joe, because when they were talking about the
smell from the hotel room that he was in, now
there was a strong smell coming out of that hotel
room and there was. The idea was sold that it
could be chlorine, like the chlorine use in a swimming pool,
which most people know that it smells like bleach, and
(18:07):
that was something that seemed odd. Why would you have
bleach in a hotel room. Well, the story that Barry
Morphew told was that he left that morning, went to
do this work out of town, and that he they
had a hotel room, and but he was working on
the site, you know, all day, and then he came
back to the hotel room, tacked down and went back
(18:28):
home when he found out she was missing. That was
pretty much what he said. Well, they were able to
prove fairly early on that didn't happen, based on again
your cell phone technology and eyewitness accounts, and they were
able to figure out that, Yeah, he did go to
the hotel, but he and he went to a job site.
(18:48):
But he wasn't supposed to be at the job site
till late that afternoon, early evening. He said, he left
at five point thirty in the morning. He even had
he was supposed to pick up an employee to go
with him, but he decided I'm going to leave by myself.
So the employee's like, well, what the heck. So the
employee gets up there and nothing's been done, and he's like,
you've been up here all day, but nothing's done, and
(19:09):
your hotel room smells like bleach. You know, that's where
all this starts coming from. None of it made any
kind of sense, So police really did. They were zeroing
in on Barry Morphew based on his attempts to tell
a story that just didn't hold up well.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
I think another as Tom went by, I think that
another red flag. And Dave, how many times have we
heard the same story? Kind of an apathetic view toward
getting the word out. You know, you're talking about people
putting up flyers and all this sort of thing, and
anytime you see it's you know, it's my analogy of
(19:47):
the hanging curveball. You know, it's like you leave it
out over the plate, they're going to hit it. You
know they're going to It's going to happen sooner or later.
And when you showed no interest in a case our
limited interest, you're kind of feigning you know, it's a
red flag for the police and all of the investigators
(20:10):
involved in a case like this, they're going to look
at you even harder. You know, you for people that
just in my experience, for people that are have been
on a team, particularly loved ones that are looking for someone,
and of course we when I would come into it,
it would always be they had found a body, and
(20:31):
you could and I've been around these teams of people
that had been looking, you know, hoping against hope that
it was going to be a missing person's case. And
you see this kind of it's almost a religious uh
uh fervency about this. You know, we're going to find
We're gonna you oh yeah, candlelight visuals, we're gonna move
heaven and hell, we're gonna do everything we can. And
(20:53):
then you've got the person that is most closely associated
with you in the world, that you've shared a life with,
that you've brought two lives into the world with, and
there's just kind of well yeah.
Speaker 2 (21:07):
Yeah, and especially if you might have problems in the marriage,
you know, if maybe there's been some stuff going on.
Hey man, you know what, even if there were things
going on, if your spouse truly was missing, you're not
going to walk away from twenty five thirty years without
Hey where is she?
Speaker 3 (21:26):
Look?
Speaker 2 (21:26):
Yes, I have a girlfriend, Yes she's talking to an
old boyfriend. But you know what, we're still living together.
Where's my wife? You know, you would lay all your
cards on the table just to get it out. You
wouldn't try hiding anything, because the most important thing is
not covering yourself. Scott Peterson, It's important to tell the truth.
Oh I have a girlfriend, but I didn't kill my wife, right,
(21:49):
you know anything that I just cannot imagine, Joe.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
I think what's interesting about it is that many times
in cases like this you have individuals that do it's
almost like their perception of reality is so skewed. They
don't think that they're going to be found out or
these things that they've been involved in are not going
to be found out. One way or another, evidence is
going to lead back to you. Whether it's electronic or
it's eyewitness evidence. It could be your your truck that
(22:15):
you're using, you know, with the data pack that's on there,
any number of things are going to wind up pointing
a finger back at you, or at least, you know,
compel people to ask you more specific questions because they're
not getting anywhere. Because when these cases start out as
a missing person's case, and particularly something so odd like this,
(22:38):
where you've got the bike that is in this odd area,
you know, And I think, if I remember correctly, there
was a helmet that was found at some point in time. Yeah,
and it was like a day or two later. And
then you go out and you start talking about mountain lions,
unless go to yeah, no kidding, and look, one of
I'm not saying that mountain lions are not a problem,
(23:00):
because one of the most horrible cases. When I was
attending the American Academy of Forensic Science meeting years ago,
this forensic odin Tyler's got up and told a story
or presented the case. I could have sworn David it
was in Boulder, Maybe it wasn't. A lady had gone
out jogging and the path ran through a forest and
(23:22):
there were these rock shelves and I've never seen anything
like this in my life. We don't have that many
mountain lines around these parts. And she had parked her
car and it was like this nature trail you could
jog on. There were these two guys that were going
to go it's like a lunchtime thing, and they saw
(23:42):
her leave and they were stretching because they were going
to get on the path and run to when they
were running together in tandem. The mountain lion was eating
this woman in front of them on the path, and
I saw the images for it. So and that was
in Colorado, of course, it's a great distance from where
this locale is. This local it seems as though that
(24:05):
it's more and I've seen the images. It's flatter, it's
kind of sage brushy looking. And I'm sure that the
area is quite beautiful. I hear that it is, and
I'm sure there's rolling hills and that sort of thing.
But around the area where Susan Morphew's body is finally discovered,
there's nothing like rock shells hanging over. You know, you
(24:26):
were talking about how mountain lions they want to hide.
They're solitary creatures, so that you know, you know, that
dog just didn't hunt.
Speaker 2 (24:35):
No, And Joe I mentioned earlier that you know, we
know that Barry was arrested, very more few he was arrested,
he was charged with her murder. A week away from trial.
They drop all the charges because they said two things. One,
we got to get rid of this prosecutor. We got
a problem there. But too is we think we know
where her body is. We know you know, because they
still didn't have her, and we can't get to every
(24:57):
body right now because of the snowpack. So they let
him go and he moves, you know, he moves away.
Actually he moved before then. He had moved to Indiana
right away, not long after she went missing. And that's
you know, there are so many things wrong with what
people do. But in this particular case, when they finally
(25:21):
did find her remains, Joe, they were shocked at what
they found, and I really I don't understand. I don't
understand a lot of what they found and the explanation
because of what we normally have with the remains when
they're found out in the woods. It's usually not a
full set. Usually it's a mandible, it's a bone here,
(25:42):
a bone there, and they're usually pretty scattered if a
body has just been deposited out in the middle of
nowhere because of wildlife and other things that take you know,
they don't just stay in one area. But even beyond that,
there were other aspects of this case that were kind
of small me with regard to what Barry Morphew was
into with using dark guns and tranquilizers on animals to
(26:07):
remove their horns or what have you. I'm not a
dear person, Okay, I don't understand all the things that
he claims to do with them, but there was one
thing in particular that he did that he was very
unique to this area.
Speaker 3 (26:20):
He used a product called Bam Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:22):
Yeah. And this product in and of itself is going
to play into, I think, Dave, into this narrative that
prosecution has now come to believe you as to what happened.
It's going to tell the tale of the tape. Because
even though when Susanne Morphew was discovered, all that was
(26:48):
left of her, all that remains, if you will, gave
us clues that this substance was still present in her skeletons.
(27:12):
Section eighteen three, Dash one two. Murder in the first degree,
a person commits the crime of murder in the first
degree if after deliberation and with intent to cause the
(27:34):
death of a person other than himself, he causes the
death of that person or another person. I got to
tell you, Dave, they have charged very more few with
first degree in Colorado, and that's another level. And this
(27:56):
this is going to if he has found guilty of
this charge, they are going to put him into the
state penitentiary for the rest of his natural life. They
have enough evidence to believe that he formed intent, and
it's called a variety of things in other states. You know,
you can think about premeditative event, intend to do bodily harm.
(28:22):
You know that winds up in someone's death. But you
have to form specific intent in order to do this.
And that's what the grand jury has come back with
in this case. That's pretty strong. And you know, many
times we can I think that you can look at
a case and see what they are charged with and
you get an idea, you can at least get a
(28:44):
peek behind the curtain as to the strength of the
evidence that might exist. And therein rest this this great
mystery up until you know, this past week. I don't
know about you. I didn't see this coming. I did
not see us arrest coming. I figured that something was
going to happen eventually. But you know, with everything we've
(29:05):
been covering lately with Lisk and you know, would help
us the Idaho four and all these other cases that
are popping in the news, this came out of left field.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
As far as I'm it was.
Speaker 2 (29:17):
It was a surprise because we weren't watching for it.
But we also had a gunshy because of when they
dropped the charges.
Speaker 3 (29:24):
You know, you had it going it.
Speaker 2 (29:26):
It really looked like the case might have been corrupted enough,
to be honest with you, when you've got prosecutor and
misconduct being alleged and being proved to a degree when
the prosecutor is disbarred, you might have bigger problems.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
Okay.
Speaker 2 (29:41):
So when they came back with this indictment, you know
that they have crossed every t and dotted every eye.
Her body was not found in Chafee County where she
went missing. Her body was found in what it's called,
Saywatch County, and it's not spelled that way, just so
you know, if you say it as a spelled it's
going to come out Sagawatchee.
Speaker 3 (30:00):
You know Watch.
Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
And when they did finally find her remains, and this
is a very happenstance, you realize that when her remains
were found in Sewatch County, about forty five miles from
her home, I believe it was the FBI that found
them and they were not looking for her out.
Speaker 1 (30:19):
There, No, they weren't.
Speaker 3 (30:20):
They were looking for a different body.
Speaker 1 (30:22):
Yeah, this area apparently was known to the FEDS as
a location where people that are involved in nefarious acts
might go to dump someone, and they had information. I
think that was in regards to another completely unassociated case.
(30:43):
Can you can you imagine going out to work a
case and you're maybe you're looking for a body or
you're looking for evidence, and all of a sudden you
come across something that you think might be associated with
your case, and it turns out to be. The remains
have been one of the most high profile homicides or deaths,
(31:04):
let's say that, you know, in the last decade, certainly
in that area of the country, but I think in
all of Colorado. I mean, people were buzzing about this
for years, Dave, I mean it, it was on the
news constantly.
Speaker 2 (31:16):
It boggles my mind, you know that the way these
things turn, you know, have how they're not looking there
for her, but they find her and.
Speaker 3 (31:25):
Then Joe, please explain, because I can't.
Speaker 2 (31:31):
I've tried to. I've tried to understand this. But I
thought when they were talking about the condition of the remains,
that that maybe she had been buried someplace else, was
disinterred and moved to this location.
Speaker 3 (31:47):
But that isn't apparently what happened at all? Is it?
Speaker 1 (31:52):
Well, it's it's really hard to you know, kind of
understand the nature of the deposition of the remains. I've heard,
I've heard a couple of things that have floated about now.
One of the one of the really fascinating issues was,
or comments that someone has made recently, was did he
(32:14):
allow her? See how can I put this? Did he
allow her? Did he sequester her remain somewhere where she
was allowed to decompose in a contained area so that
you're not going to lose anything relative to any of
her mortal remains than after a period of time, grab
(32:38):
those remains and take them into posit them somewhere else.
And this is where the term that I had mentioned
previously comes up, because it's so odd, because I don't
know how to read it when I'm looking when I'm
looking at this document, Dave, they use the term bleached. Well,
(32:58):
because we know the history of what had happened with
the hotel room, and we know that bleach was involved there.
You have to really wonder if perhaps, just perhaps when
they say the bones were bleached, are they saying that
literally the bones had been bleached by a chemical chemical
(33:23):
bleaching or were the bones bleached by the sun, and
you know, because they're laid out in this particular area,
I don't know. It's confusing to me.
Speaker 3 (33:36):
I don't thought that was bleached by the sun. That's
what I thought.
Speaker 1 (33:39):
But well, I had someone else say the other day.
They said, well, you know he's used bleach, and listen,
I got to tell you that at that early stage,
I want to, you know, kind of put this idea aside.
At that early stage in this case, if you're going
to use bleach to bleach skeleton remains, how are you
(34:01):
going to get them down or render them down to
a skeletal condition At that point in time when the
whole thing went down with the hotel, because it was
such a tight window, you would literally, this is so
ghastly to say, you would literally have to strip all
of the soft tissue off of her bones in order
to facilitate applying bleach to them. So for me, it
(34:22):
came down to the fact that the bones were in
fact laid out and bleached. Now as to where her
remains had been for all of this period of time,
one of the interesting things that comes up in this
document is that the entomologist who you know the forensic entomologists.
(34:43):
This is a person that you know studies insect life
as it applies to human remains. By the way, a
plug for one of the best entomologists that I know.
If you if you really want to check out somebody's
really fascinating. He's actually a crime con a couple of
years ago. He's a friend of mine. We've been friends
for a number of years. That a guy named doctor
(35:04):
Jason Bird b y r d. And he works at
the Maple Center at the University of Florida, and he's
one of the best forensic entomologists anywhere. But one of
the things that you look for at a scene where
you have decomposed or having previously decomposed remains is you're
going to look for things like maggot husk out there
(35:26):
and from flies, and so flies are multi generational, so
you will have that will go through their life cycle
multiple times where eggs will be laid, they'll burst forth
from these eggs, you'll have the maggot maggot shed's a husk,
and then you can see multiple generations of these things
(35:48):
out there and they'll surround the body. You can't miss them.
If you go out there, there's no evidence of that.
There's no evidence, So how do you how do you
explain that? And I think that that's one of the
big big questions. Also, clothing that is found most of
the Tom Dave is going to have some type of
(36:08):
decompositional staining, and that should be very pronounced. One of
the things that has been put forward was a body
undressed and redressed at some point in time. Ore was
clothing that was found with a body. Is it just
simply there to throw investigators off the scent, if you will.
The one confirmatory thing that they did find out there.
(36:31):
And I still remember this reflectively when we had talked
about I can't remember we've done one or two episodes
on Susan Morphew, but the found that the cancer port,
you know, because she's been treated and that's something that's
very resilient. So we know that that part that bit
was intact and it would stand out and they're you know, there,
(36:53):
it's a man made it's not naturally everything, it's plastic, uh,
and so that port would still be there and that's
uniquely identifiable back to her. I suspect that that was
one of the things that we're looking for, at least
as a peripheral part of their process of identification of
her remains.
Speaker 2 (37:09):
You know, it's one of the things that they found.
And this is really important, and it shows up in
It showed up in the bones, it showed up in
the autopsy, and it shows up in all the reports
now very Morephew used tranquilizers to tranquilize their dark gun,
and tranquilizers to sedate animals, big animals like deer that
(37:30):
he would then remove their antlers and things like that.
And when they searched the home they found this. They
found a dark gun in a gun case. They found
hypodermic needles that are used to inject the drug. And
he used a very specific drug. It's called it's a
combination of drug. It's called BAM when it's used in
(37:51):
this order of beutrophenol, a, z opera, A, zaparone, and metatomidine.
Those three together combined make up this. It's a elixir
of BAM. Yeah, cocktail. And there are some interesting things
to know about BAM. First of all, it is used
(38:13):
for large animals like deer too, okay, but it is
so controlled you can't get it without a prescription from
a veterinarian. And at the time that Susanne moreph You
went missing, there was one person in the state of
Colorado that had filled prescriptions for BAM, had a prescription
(38:35):
for BAM, and that one person.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Was Barry Morphew. When they did the autopsy.
Speaker 2 (38:46):
Oh, by the way, at the house where they found
the dark gun and the hypodermic needles, they found something
in a dryer where it closed man's Perry shorts and
the the cap. So what would one believe. I mean,
I'm just asking you to use some common sense. Let's see,
(39:08):
I have to have my shorts on. I took the
cap off, put it in my pocket, used it for whatever,
And because I don't normally wash my own clothes, I
left the cap and I ain't checked my pockets first.
Speaker 1 (39:17):
Certainly plausible. Yeah, that's an interesting It's an interesting take
on it because you know you're always going to forget something.
I say, you h they them will always always leave
something behind when you begin to think. But the one
thing that was left behind and just kind of give
you a breakdown on this, this cocktail chemical cock well,
(39:43):
these drugs are meant for sedation, Okay, so you've got
one drug that is actually, ah, it's almost like an
anti anxiety kind of thing that's blended in with another
drug that's used as an anesthetic. So when this has applied,
(40:04):
first off, the ideas and I think that you know
his previously, in the previous life, he had had a
deer park, and that may have been in Indiana, I think,
and he would sedate these deer and he would you know,
take the antlers off of them for a variety of reasons.
I'm sure you know. Deer hunters actually use antlers to
(40:24):
create scraping sounds, you know, if they're up in a
tree stand. I'm not a deer hunter. A hunt duck
every now and then, but it's deer hunting. It has
never been my thing. I don't believe in freezing my
tail off, you know, early in the morning, I'd sit
in a blonde with a bunch of guys and laugh.
But you know, you think about you think about that
(40:45):
that he would have had experience with that, and then
the application of it. How are you going to put
it into her system? And I think one of the
interesting things we will hear about in this particular case
is how how exactly did they know to examine her
bones and I'm talking about at a chemical level where
(41:07):
they knew that they could find a remnant of this?
Because I got to tell you, Dave, I think that
that's the only conclusion I can draw. Did they take
a core out of the marrow of the bones, spin
it down and then I don't This is the thing.
I don't think they could get a quantitative amount, Like
you can't say that she had this much on board.
(41:29):
It's not like doing a direct blood draw, but you
can get a qualitative amount. And this this drug, this
is not like like when you think about the Casey
Anthony case, where you know they've talked about chloroform and
all that thing, and chloroform is a naturally occurring thing.
You know, it's given off by decomposing plants. So not
(41:52):
that that has anything to do with it, but it's
that these drugs are not naturally occurring. So what what
does that leave us with relative to an explanation. Did
they did Were they able to render this down from
like the marrow of the bone that would still be
kind of protected and they found a qualitative amount of
(42:14):
the drug. Because you can't explain this. The other thing
that it leads you to is that in order for
it to be in dwelling in the bone, Dave is
that she would have had to have metabolized it, Okay,
and that tells us a lot about the nature of
her death. So if she is injected with the stuff,
(42:37):
whether it's visaly a dark gun, or whether it's a
direct hypodermic im which is intermuscular injection, which you know,
if you're talking about with big animals, you're not going
to go into First off, you're terrified of them. Darry
will kill you if he's got antlers. You want to
at a distant shoot it, and you're not going to
shoot it into a vessel. You're going to go im
(42:59):
which is muscular, and it's going to take them down
after a few seconds. How how has it imparted into
her body? And we know that it was in there
long enough so that she would have had to have
metabolized it in order for it to actually get into
her skeleton. Okay. If that's what they're saying, and it's
(43:21):
it's really you know, it's kind of mind blowing. You know,
at that point when you begin to think about it,
that they were able to just blind luck find her body,
and then on top of it, be able to test
the remains and find this stuff on board with her.
Speaker 2 (43:38):
The one guy in the entire state that actually has
that prescription, and it's his wife who's missing, whose remains
are accidentally found, and lo and behold, she has metabolized
this drug before death.
Speaker 1 (43:53):
Yeah, and that and again we don't we don't necessarily
have and I don't know that anybody can say, Dave,
what her actual cause of death is. My suspicion is
is that it will be left kind of hanging out there.
The cause will be listed as homicidal trauma or homicidal
(44:16):
circumstances or something like that, and it's kind of a
it's very unfulfilling, you know, from a scientific standpoint, because
you don't have any other scientific evidence to draw that conclusion.
I think as this case moves forward, you're going to hear.
First off, we're going to hear a lot of toxicology.
In this case, You're going to have U and you'll
(44:37):
probably have maybe even a veterinarian h and maybe a
veterinary toxicologist because they have these special special people that
do this to talk about the nature of this drug.
And then You're going to have somebody else, probably a
forensic pathologist, that will go into is there there has
to be a lethal level of this drug? Is this?
(44:58):
Is it possible that she could have been injected with
enough of this stuff to kill her, but it wouldn't
have been an immediate death. She would have had to
have metabolized it. What she injected with the stuff long
enough for somebody to try to think about, Okay, she's out,
she's sleeping. I know how long this lasts. What do
I do with her now? How do I kill her?
And and what do I do with her? Remains a
(45:20):
lot of this stuff remains a mystery. But it's like
the old saying, you know, the journey of one thousand
miles starts with the first step. There's already been missteps here,
but it sounds as though they're on the right path now.
I'm Joseph Scott Morgan, and this is body Backs.
Host
Joseph Scott Morgan
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