November 8, 2023 • 58 mins
Susanne Morphew, mother of two went missing on Mother's Day 2020 and hadn't been seen since – until her body was found Sept. 22, 2023.
In this episode of Zone 7, Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum, is joined with retired NYPD detectives Tom Smith and Dan Murphy to discuss disappearance and murder of Suzanne Morphew. They analyze the case details and evidence surrounding her husband Barry Morphew, the prime suspect.
Show Notes:
- [0:00] Welcome back to Zone 7 with Crime Scene Investigator, Sheryl McCollum.
- [1:10] Overview of case involving Susanne Morphew
- [8:40] Sheryl introduces Dan Murphy and Tom Smith to the listeners
- [12:15] “It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has facts.”
- [14:18] Question: Was it a flag for y'all at all that this was mother's day?
- [19:00] Investigative strategies in cases like Susanne’s
- [23:48] “Inexperienced killers tend to make mistakes”
- [25:00] Potential motives in the case
- [30:32] Question: Can we discuss Barry’s personality especially during the beginning of the case?
- [35:00] Susanne’s body was found September 22, 2023
- [43:00] A Stranger's Luck..?
- [51:00] Unknown DNA is discussed
- [57:45] “No friendship is an accident.” -O.H
- Thanks for listening to another episode! If you’re loving the show and want to help grow the show, please head over to Itunes and leave a rating and review! How to Leave an Apple Podcast Review: First, Open the podcast app on your iPhone, Mac, or iPad. Then, hit the “Search” tab at the bottom right-hand corner of the page and search for Zone 7. Select the podcast, scroll down to find the subheading “Ratings & Reviews”. and select “Write a Review.” Next, select the number of stars you’d like to leave. Please choose 5 stars! Using the text box which says “Title,” write a title for your review. Then in the text box, write the review itself. The review can be up to 300 words long, but doesn’t need to be much more than: “Love the show! Thanks!” or Once you’re done select “Send” in the upper right-hand corner.
---
Sheryl “Mac” McCollum is an Emmy Award winning CSI, a writer for CrimeOnLine, Forensic and Crime Scene Expert for Crime Stories with Nancy Grace, and a CSI for a metro Atlanta Police Department. She is the co-author of the textbook., Cold Case: Pathways to Justice. Sheryl is also the founder and director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, a collaboration between universities and colleges that brings researchers, practitioners, students and the criminal justice community together to advance techniques in solving cold cases and assist families and law enforcement with solvability factors for unsolved homicides, missing persons, and kidnapping cases.
You can connect and learn more about Sheryl’s work by visiting the CCIRI website https://coldcasecrimes.org
Social Links:
- Email: coldcase2004@gmail.com
- Twitter: @ColdCaseTips
- Facebook: @sheryl.mccollum
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
As y'all know, I was born with four older sisters,
so the minute I got here, I had four best friends.
The first time I ever went to school was first grade.
I didn't vote with kindergarten. I remember Sissy comes running
up to me one day and says, hey, my mom
said you could spend the night. So right after school Friday,
(00:29):
you can come home with us and we're gonna watch movies,
we're gonna go on hikes, we're gonna have a great time.
Well I was kind of taken aback, and I was like,
that sounds fabulous, Like what is the occasion? Is it
a birthday? A holiday? Like why are we doing this?
This was new to me. She said, because we're best friends.
That's the first time anybody had ever called me that.
(00:52):
And we are still best friends today. By the way,
over fifty years we've been friends. And I remember that
feeling that I didn't just have a friend, I had
a best friend. All right, let's get in this thing
about Susan Morphew. Suzanne Moorefew got married in nineteen ninety
four to Barry. They eventually had two daughters, Macy and Mallory.
(01:16):
In twenty eighteen, they moved to Colorado from Indiana. They
wanted a fresh start. They had had some issues. Suzanne
had had cancer it had returned. Macy was in high school.
Mallory was leaving for college, so if they went to
Colorado they could be closer to Mallory. In September, Suzanne's
(01:36):
best friend visited. Her name is Sheila Oliver. Well, as
best friends do, they talked. They talked most of the night,
most of the day the next night, and Suzanne told
her about her marriage that it was failing. Thanksgiving, Suzanne
visited with her best friend in Indiana. In February, Suzanne
(01:59):
started to talk to a friend from high school, Jeff Leebler.
That September, Suzanne started to confide in her friend more
and more about her wanting to leave her marriage, to
leave her husband Barry. This is one quote from a
text message. I sort of wish he would just get
(02:20):
fed up with me and leave. I told him I'm done.
Valentine's Day twenty nineteen, Suzanne and Jeff became more than
platonic in New Orleans. They met several more times. Later.
Barry would tell a law enforcement and he didn't know
anything about the relationship. In February, Suzanne and Sheila met
(02:43):
up for a girl's Super Bowl weekend. Suzanne again started
to talk about her marriage. She wanted out. In late February,
Suzanne met up with Leebl, her in person, in Florida
while she was visiting her dad. May sixth, twenty twenty,
at ten seventeen am, Suzanne told Barry their marriage was over.
(03:07):
Quote this is a text message from Suzanne to Barry.
I'm done. I could care less what you're up to.
We just need to figure this out civilly. Barry writes back,
sort of a suicidal stunt. Quote. When I'm dead, which
won't be long, you and the girls will be taken
(03:30):
care of. May seventh, Suzanne and Barry they have pizza,
but she's texting Leebler. Quote it was kind of a
fine night. End quote. February May eighth, seven o two am.
Suzanne makes a list of grievances. One, Barry is accusing
(03:52):
her of having a boyfriend. Now remember later on down
the road, he's telling the police he didn't know anything
about an affair. Two Barry acts like I'm intruding when
I come into the garage. Later we find out that
Barry thinks she's got cameras in the garage. She texts
her sister quote dealing with the harsh abrasiveness and showing respect.
(04:19):
Ten am, Susanne and Barry have a series of phone calls.
Barry textes her I love you Suzanne. Saturday May ninth,
Suzanne texas Leebler quote, we need to be husband and wife.
Now there's about fifty nine text messages between them. At
eleven thirty am, Barry comes home for lunch, but then
(04:42):
he leaves to go change the blade on a bobcat.
At two seven pm, Suzanne sends a selfie to Leebler,
and it's the last known moment she's alive. At two
forty two, Barry returns home and his phone shows he's
moving all around outside. He later tells law enforcement between
(05:05):
the two forty two and two forty four, he's chasing chipmunks.
At six point forty, her best friend Oliver told investigators
she tried to reach Suzanne with no luck. At nine
twenty four to nine fifty two, the black box that's
in Berry's truck shows that the doors are opening and
(05:28):
closing over and over and over. At nine twenty five, specifically,
according to that black box in the truck. The gears
went into reverse and the truck backed up ninety six
feet to the edge of the driveway. May ninth and
tenth to forty seven PM until four thirty seven am,
(05:50):
Barry's phone is in airplane mode. Three twenty five to
three fifty two, the doors of Barry's truck are opening
closed again repeatedly. At four twenty three am, Suzanne her
cell phone pings for the last time. Her phone has
(06:11):
never been found. At four thirty am, Barry told the
police he woke up. At five am, Barry told the
police that he left to fix a retaining wall. He
said that Suzanne was sleeping in their bed when he left.
He's the last known person to see her alive. At
(06:32):
five thirty eight in the morning, Barry texted his mom
Happy Mother's Day. At six fifty six am, Barry was
near Bailey on his way to Broomfield.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
At eight ten, there's a video showing him throwing away trash.
At eight thirty five, he's walking into the hotel. At
eight forty one, he tries texting Suzanne Happy Mother's Day,
but got no response. At ten ten, Barry left the hotel.
He's seen on video throwing away trash at a McDonald's,
(07:08):
a car wash, and a men's warehouse. The job site
is about twenty minutes away, but he couldn't do any
work because he didn't have a work permit to work
on Sunday. And again keep in mind, this is Mother's Day.
Twelve forty two to five point fifty five, Barry did
(07:30):
not leave the hotel room at three point thirty. During
that time, he takes Suzanne to call him. At five
point fifteen, a neighbor, Jean Ritter, called Barry to say
Suzanne was missing. At five thirty eight, the DA's office
was notified there's a woman missing and police say they
(07:50):
found her bike down a ravine. At five forty five,
Barry got a second call from Ritter about Suzanne being missing.
At six, Barry made several trips to his truck bringing
in tools to the hotel. At six pm, Miles Harding,
a friend of Macy's, drove to the house looking for Suzanne.
(08:11):
Police arrived and he told them, yes, she rides bikes,
but she would never go up that trail. It's too
steep and it's too hard. She'd never make it. At
eight forty six, Barry arrives home, and the first thing
he says when he sees police is, have y'all saw
any cats on the road? I'm going to bring in
(08:33):
two guests that we need bust it down to the
most elementary thing. What do we have? So I'm going
to bring in Tom Smith and Dan Murphy. Now, let
me tell y'all about them. Tom Smith NYPD stellar career.
The first assignment he had was the three to zero
and Harlem Honey, he was playing clothes. That's no joke
(08:56):
when you're working in the busiest precinct in New York City.
He worked narcotics, He worked gangs, He worked robbery. He
was a part of the FBI Joint Task Force after
nine to eleven. He received the Medal of Valor Exceptional Merit,
three commendations twice. He was Cop of the Month in NYPD.
(09:18):
He's joined today by Dan Murphy. Dan Murphy thirty five
year career. He's an author. He's a retired detective sergeant, Narcotics,
organized Crime, Major Case, gang Unit, Joint tares Wars. After
nine eleven, he was also the National Associational Police Organization's
top cop. He responded to the World Trade Center after
(09:42):
nine to eleven, and I want you all to keep
something in mind after nine to eleven occurred, they had
to be perfect in their defense of this country so
that that never happened again. Ladies and gentlemen, I am
overwhelmed with gratitude and admiration for Tom Smith and Dan Murphy. Gentlemen,
(10:05):
Welcome to Zone seven.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Cheryl, thank you so much. This is Dan. It is
a it's a privilege to be here in an honor
with you. Your career is something we can get into at
a later date. We're just honored to be on the
show with you.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Thank you and did it for me, Cheryl, thank you
so much for those overwhelmingly kind words and the opportunity
to be on this great show.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And you know, on a personal note, I got to
watch all work at Crime Con and just your care
and concern for everybody there, victims, fellow officers, and it's.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
One thing that Tom and I the reason why we
do the work that we do in many reasons, for
many reasons, but one of the main reasons is because
we have a love and affection and a care and
a genuine concern for the men and women who are
out there protecting us. Twenty four to seven, and we
took our oath and we're doing our partner as retired.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Amen. If this was your case and you're standing there
and a husband shows up with his wife that's been missing,
and the first thing he asked you is if y'all
see any cats out here? Like did A? Did A?
I mean, I can't say it with a straight face.
He's concerned about a mountain lion. He's given y' all
(11:19):
the reason she's missing.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
When I picked my jaw up off the floor because
my Joe would drop at such a bizarre, ridiculous statement
coming out of your mouth. It reminds me of OJ
when he was called in the hotel in Chicago and
told his wife was dead. He said, oh my god,
I'll get it in the next flight. He never asked
what happened.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And OJ never asked about his kids because he knew
they were okay.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Right, So something stinks right away when that's the reaction, right,
Is it hard evidence?
Speaker 1 (11:48):
No?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
But it could certainly lead you in the right direction.
And I think there's a tendency to immediate, look immediately,
look at the spouse because in many cases of homicides,
in situations such as this, it is the spouse. But
you always have to be open minded. You have got
to follow the evidence and not what you think. One
of my favorite sayings is from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
(12:11):
the author of the Sherlock Holmes Mysteries, and he famously said,
it is a capital mistake to theorize before one has facts.
So you have to fight that tendency to immediately look
at him and say guilty.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I think one of the first things you do is
use technology to your advantage and your benefit and what
technology can give to a detective. Like Dan said, the
immediate reaction is to look at one particular party in
this and then what you do is you start working backwards.
Now you can have an opinion on a case, because
(12:47):
that drives where you're going to go, you know, and
what you're going to do, and the evidence you're going
to try to gather. And my initial thing, and Dan
and I did it together on numerous times, you know,
is to use technology as you're friend, and the immediate
thing is the phones and to get his location at
certain times. One of the most important things when it
(13:10):
comes to the situation like this is the dates. You
start working backwards with dates where was he at this point,
Where was he at this point? Where was she at
this point? You know? And then more the technology comes
into play with the text messages, then you start building
on that initial opinion you have, and then you just
go from there where the evidence that you start to
(13:32):
gather is going to lead you.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
I think also if I can just jump on the
back of that, it's kind of a two prong thing. Simultaneously.
You want to know immediately all the technology the answers
you can get from that, but you want to put
him on record as soon as possible. You want to
interview him extensively about his whereabouts, what he knows. First
of all, right, now we're talking about a missing person's case.
At this point. It's a missing person's case, but you
(13:56):
always have to treat those cases as though they could
turn out to be the world case scenario. In this case,
it did. But get him on record, where were you,
who were you with, who saw you, what times, why
we're there? Well, explain your behaviors for the last forty
eight seventy two, whatever it takes.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Was it a flag for y'all at all? That this
was Mother's Day could.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Be a trigger?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, that could be You can certainly have it in
your head, but things just happen sometimes and dates just
line up with certain days. But it would be something
on your mind for sure, especially you know what you
had said during your opening, Cheryl, and how far how
long in the day it took him to finally shoot
(14:43):
her a text message of happy Mother's Day, you know,
normally with me, with Dan, that's the first thing in
the morning, you know, as you wait and you wait,
because what's going on in his head. He's thinking of
how to cover his butt, you know, Oh, let me
do that, and maybe that thought doesn't come until later
on in the day, you know. So now the mother's
(15:04):
Day thing certainly comes into.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Play, and especially I mean he didn't wake her up
and say Happy Mother's Day before he left. There's no flowers,
there's no restaurant reservation, the daughters are off camping. So
it's Mother's Day. And you have chosen, I mean, you
own the company, so you've chosen to work today. So
it just seems like there would have been more of
(15:27):
a acknowledgment of the mother's day to meet Now when
he did text her at eight forty six or whatever
and got no response, it seems like by the time
Ritter would have contacted him, there would have been much
more alarm because hey, I hadn't heard from her either
since eight forty six this morning.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
As I said before, you really do have to fight
the tendency. You have to focus on everybody because everybody's
a suspect. You don't know what the outcome is going
to be because it's just a missing person's case. But
you don't know the full story yet. But you have
to talk to as many witnesses as possible to figure
out what's going on. Granted, his behaviors in retrospect now
(16:07):
look really weird. Well, why would you go up to
work on Mother's Day? Well, that could have been an
answer for that. Why did you not wake her up?
That could have been a good answer for that. They're
having trouble in their marriage, racial relationship. Maybe he just
wanted to get away from the house from Mother's Day
because it's an emotional day for him. I'm not making
excuses of him. I'm just that you have to be
(16:29):
as objective and open minded as possible in these cases
and not just zero in on the person you feel
gives you the hebgbis because he said something stupid.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Now, do y'all hear Dan being logical and you know, brilliant,
and let's not jump. He's doing exactly what a detective
sergeant should be doing. So he's absolutely right that you
don't want to just take one, two, and three and
you think you're at nine. We're not at nine. But
(17:00):
I do think if I were to call and say, hey, Tom,
Dan's being reasonable, So I don't want to talk to
him anymore. I want I want somebody to tell me,
not logically, not reasonably, but as a mama, I would
expect a little more than a text at eight forty six,
(17:20):
especially when you know you can't work on a Sunday
because you don't have that permit. So are you just
going somewhere to have an affair or you just not
want to hang out with me? Are you going to
set up so that y'all aren't off this timetable? And
you're setting things up anyway so that Monday you can
get right to work. Like like Dan said, maybe that's logical.
(17:41):
Maybe he went to get things into place so that
they're not really losing Sunday.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
No, I agree, and you know, just saying that's that's
why Dan was the sergeant, you know, to control a
detective like me, would you know, just kick him up.
We need to do this, this and this, and Dan
having the you know, where he is and the experience
he has to go, Okay, hold on, let's do a
B and C. And that's how you have to work,
(18:06):
you know, that's how you have to be patient with
these because the more patient you are, the more you
see clearly, the more the better plan you have going
forward with an investigative plan. You know, when you when
you're rushing around and you have one thought, it gets clouded,
you know, So when you when you have these cases,
(18:28):
it is the team concept is so important, you know,
to have two, three, four detectives and a sergeant to
bounce things off because everyone has a different idea, everyone
has different experiences, and you put that together to create
an investigative plan. You know, maybe two guys do one thing,
two guys do another thing. Switch up interrogators, you know,
(18:51):
to throw them off a little bit, to get a
different voice in there. You know. So there's there's that
concept of going forward. The good thing with this you
shouldn't say a good thing, but one of the interesting
things with this is you had multiple people involved in
a situation, so you can take that kind of storyboard,
(19:13):
you know, and start listing who is and then, like
Dan said, immediately start talking to people and doing intel
interrogations and interviews, and then you start matching stories up
and that gives you a pretty clear a good clear
view of what might have taken place once you start
(19:34):
eliminating certain things, and you're only going to do that
through talking to people. That's the only way you're going
to do it is to get people's stories of where
they were, what's going on, and then you start pinpointing mistakes,
you know, in what had happened, and that that kind
of gets you on a better road to solving.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
This this So this guy he comes in, he makes a
statement about mountain lion on the road, which is bizarre.
So it is okay to let that register that his
reaction was we'll call it inappropriate or just difficult to
wrap your head around why would he say that? And
(20:15):
then you know, over time it'll hit you, Okay, he's
trying to create some kind of an alibi, and you know,
maybe she was eaten by it. If somebody's legitimately missing
and you really care about and love them. You're not
offering up alternate theories to their demise, You're helping the
police find them.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
That's an excellent point. And there's a video. It's bodycam
from the officers that are on the scene searching for her.
Now they have found her bicycle. On the body cam,
they are calling her name, seeing as she landed somewhere hurt,
you know, did she hobble away from the bicycle but
she couldn't make it any further, thinking maybe she can,
(20:52):
you know, holler I'm over here, you know, I broke
my leg or whatever. So they are literally these strangers
are calling for her name. When Barry hops out of
the truck, he never once hollers her. He doesn't call
for her, he doesn't jump in and start going down
the ravine and walking into the woods looking for her.
He's offering them exactly what you said, Dan, something that
(21:15):
is remarkable. It's unbelievable that himself would jump to a
mountain lion. I mean, has a mountain lion ever attacked somebody?
Of course, but it is so rare. Why would that
ever even enter your mind?
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Right now? Thinking about his mindset he is, if he
is responsible for her disappearance, and ultimate we find out homicide,
if he's responsible for it, He's got a million things
going on in his mind. He's trying to figure out
how to play this, and he's gonna make mistakes. He's
under enormous pressure. He's never been in this situation before.
(21:52):
This is not an experienced killer. This is a guy
whose emotions. If he did it, it's crazy. He couldn't
handle it anymore. And now he's playing cover up. And
the cover up is where they mess up. It's because
he will. He will say the wrong thing. He will
contradict himself, his text messages, his phone records will not
(22:14):
drive with where he said he was and doing what
he was. And you look at the behaviors that you
described earlier, the many stops too. And I've heard my
research on this case, A says Tom, the many stops
he made into garbage dumpsters. There's really not a lot
of good explanation for that. But does that mean that
you're guilty of a homicide? Not necessarily. Could it be
(22:34):
one piece of a bigger picture that you put together
in a case. Yeah, but you got to be very
careful in the beginning at this point, because you have
there's a couple of things. One people will distract and
try to get you to look another way. Clearly he
tried that right away. And the other is they will
attach themselves to you and want to become intimately involved
(22:55):
with everything you're doing so they can guide it. And
that's what you have to look out for with a
guy like this. And we've seen i think another missing
person's cases where the wife is missing and the husband
is all over the police offering all kinds of alternative
theories as to what might have happened. That's distraction, but
it could also be a genuine effort to find them.
(23:15):
So you have to see if there's a difference there.
People who are not guilty of anything generally don't trip
themselves up with their statements.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
And I think one of the best things Dan just
said was, you know, when you have these they're not
professional killers. This is the first time he probably did this,
and he's not experienced in it. You know, he's not
a serio killer. He's a one time actor in a
bad situation. Those mistakes are going to get made. And
(23:43):
the best thing is when you start pinpointing, like Dan said,
the movements, you know on the phone, the movements of
his car. Those are all things he has to explain,
you know, that's part of the interrogation. Now you have
all this information, and he has to explain, why did
you do this? And those are the points where a
(24:04):
lot of times they screw up because, like like we
said in the beginning, he immediately started with the reasoning
of her being, you know, her disappearance, you know, the
Mountain Lion and all this. But now he has to
explain everything he's done for the next day and a
half two days, and that's where they get tripped up.
(24:25):
And that's what you count on because of the lack
of experience. You know, we drive into dumpsters and McDonald's
and all that, not realizing that there is a camera
everywhere on this planet now that's going to track everything
everyone does. He's not thinking like that, you know, so boom,
there's a mistake. He's not thinking that there's a box,
(24:47):
a black box in his car, to the amount of
feet he backed up drove here, he's not thinking on
those lines. That's all ammunition for detectives and investigators to
you to go after him.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Okay, so let's talk about mistakes if it's him, and
this is the reason law enforcement looked at him in
the first place many reasons. But when they do the
search warman at his home, they find a tranquilizer dark
cap in the drier. Now that's not something you're going
to ever find in a dryer for a legitimate reason.
(25:21):
So now they're thinking, did he shoot her with a
tranquilizer so that she couldn't fight back and then do
something the faari is to her? And then the other
thing they found, and I want y'all both to talk
about these two things is a spy pin. Now, Suzanne
supposedly bought this pen to try to catch Barry, but
(25:43):
it ended up she was on the recording talking about
her affair with a married man, Leebler, So now law
enforcement knows, okay, she was absolutely having an affair. They
talked to Leebler, he tells them the truth. So now
they know is this motive?
Speaker 3 (26:01):
It's absolutely a motive. If a man or a woman
feels their whole world is about the cave in, it's
absolutely a motive. There may be other motives, you know.
The text messages between them are very telling. The text
messages between her and Leebler are very telling. What I
read in the case is that Leebler did not voluntarily
come forward, correct, It was probably what four or five
(26:24):
months before he was interviewed and came forward. Now you
can explain that away as being a married man afraid
to have this blow up in his face, or it
could be he has something to hide, you know, But
I think he was eliminated as a suspect at some point.
But when you know your question has to do with
(26:46):
the pen, the spy pen, things like that. This is
this is a marriage that's not in a good place right.
Obviously she's having a relationship with somebody else. She wants
to leave. She's made that clear. What I've read about
him as his personality as such that he's a control
kind of guy. He likes to make the decisions. He
wants to be in control. That's very hard for a
(27:06):
person like that to take when somebody decides they want
to break off with you. Oh, they've decided they want
somebody else. It sounds like he lied about the whole
knowledge of the relationship. And again we're at the very
very beginning of this investigation and we don't know if
she's alive someplace yet, we haven't found the body. All
(27:29):
we know is she's missing. The phone activity has been
cut off, nobody has seen her. We have a missing
person's case with an asterisk next to it that it
might be moving on to the homicide category, but we
don't know. So his posture, his entire posture, should be
regardless of whether or not the relationship was falling apart.
That's the mother of my children. I will do anything,
(27:49):
and I will let you look at anything. And apparently
he was open to being interviewed many times. He didn't
say no. He was open to, you know, come in
search my house. They got a warm but he still
he didn't play games. He tried to be open. But
if you shoot somebody with a tranquilizer dart, it's actually
a very ingenious way to eliminate a messy crime scene
(28:11):
in the house. So there's thinking. That takes a lot
of thinking. I hate to say, probably listen to podcasts,
so watch true crime shows to learn about these things.
But he may have for all we know, But that
takes thinking and planning. Tom your thoughts on this, That's
what jumped out at me.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Oh yeah, if he has an inkling of the affair,
now the motive starts to creep into his head. Then
the planning starts, The premeditation starts of how do I
get away with this? Is it even possible to get
away with? You know, when you start mapping out ways
you can do it, and a lot of times it's
(28:51):
then it becomes an impulse. All right, I think I
can do it. You're not thinking rationally, obviously, as someone
who's gonna possibly commit a murder, especially to his wife,
So you're not thinking rationally, so that does creep into
his head. But the premeditation definitely starts when you know
(29:13):
he has the thought of the affair as a detective
is as sergeant, you capitalize on that because of the inexperience,
because it is an impulse and the driving around is
a mistake, and that's part of the not being experienced.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
And another thought about that, just to tag onto the
back of Adam's just saying, it depends upon who you're
dealing with when it comes to certain things like, for example,
what I've learned about reading about Barry Morphew sounds as
though he may have narcissistic and or sociopathic tendencies. I'm
not a forensic psychologist. I just know enough about people
to know there are certain people who exist for their
(29:53):
own pleasure, in their own you know, if someone doesn't
make them feel like the sun rises on them, then
they're no good in my life anymore. And watching interviews
with Barry Morphew and he's been open with them since
he was arrested and all that other stuff, sitting with
his children and very confidently proclaiming his innocence. Now, there
are people who are guilty as hell who can do that,
(30:17):
and then there is the rest of the population who
the guilt of a knee jerk emotional reaction will haunt
them for their life and they will crumble. This guy
doesn't seem to be that person.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
If he did it, well, let's talk about how narcissistic
he might be. So he was arrested May fifth, twenty
twenty one, for first degree murder, tampering with evidence, and
attempting to influence a public servant. But there's one other
thing I want y'all to talk about. Your wife is
(30:51):
missing this person. You know, she's had cancer, she got better,
the cancer came back. You've got a beautiful home with her,
you've got two beautiful daughters with her, and you don't
know where she's at. With all that going on, though,
you take it upon yourself to use her vote to
(31:14):
vote in the presidential election.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
That's a different category of human being right there. We're
not talking of it about a person who is going
to be remorseful for their actions unless it helps them.
These are the people who are completely without remorse until
the sentencing and they break down in front of the
judge to try to prove that they really care, when
in reality they're only crying for themselves. That is a
(31:37):
very bizarre There's a lot of bizarre things that he did,
and all that stuff adds up to a cloud of suspicion.
What you've got to do is you've got to find
concrete evidence to corroborate actions. You know, they arrested him
before the body was found. That is a very difficult
case for a prosecutor to make. They have been made,
(32:00):
but it's very very difficult because you have to present
the theory to the jury as to what happened. And
if you can't present the theory, you can't even present
a cause of death. You don't have officially, you don't
have a medical examiner's report to show the person was
a victim of a homicide. How do you do that.
You can do it with a lot of circumstantials. So
(32:20):
circumstantial homicide cases have been made. But in this case,
they didn't have a messy crime scene at the house,
They didn't have a messy crime scene in the car.
They didn't seem to have a lot by my estimation
to charge him and I originally when I read it,
thoughts to myself, you know, there's always more that we
(32:43):
don't know, Right, Tom and I didn't work the case.
We don't know it. The prosecutors, the detectives, they know
the inside of baseball. They know why they charged, and
it probably was for a valid reason. But in retrospect,
I think I would have liked give them them more time.
Give people time, let them unravel, let them talk. People
(33:06):
will talk like I like him is going to talk
to somebody about this. You can't keep it in. And
if he gets away with it, he's proud of it.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
You know, when you give people time, remember his entire
life once this started has been a lie. People forget
their own lies after a while. So if you let
like Dan said, you let them settle in, you let
them kind of quote unquote get back to his life,
then you start asking him again about past stuff, and
(33:38):
people forget their lies if you get what they said,
and that's when you start, you know, digging it a
little more and getting more information. But you know, that's
a great point, you wait, and I agree with Dan
with with waiting instead of jumping on. It's very hard.
A nobody homicide. That is extremely hard because, like Dan
(33:59):
said it, the theory you're working on. Yes, you can
have all the pinpoints in this and that all you want,
but when you don't have a body, you're given the defense.
You know, they can come up with any excuse they
want for anything you're presenting. You know, because you can't
prove it. You know, it's still you know, because you
(34:19):
still have that zero zero point one percent that maybe
she just took off. You know, that's still out there.
You know probably you know, as detectives and investigators, you know,
and looking at evidence, you're going to come to an
investigative decision and outcome in your mind of what you
think you know the end is. But there is still
(34:40):
that zero zero point one percent that you know, she
just went into hiding and she's gone. So that's why
it becomes a very difficult case and I agree with Dan.
I would have waited myself also and given him time to,
like he said, unravel and go back at him with
some some pinpointed question and see if he trips himself up,
(35:02):
which normally does happen.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
And you know, I went out there with Nancy Gray,
she was doing a special and I took my daughter
with me, Caroline, because Caroline was exactly Susanne Morphew's height,
and she was not a big person at all. She
was tiny. And I mean, I know I'm from the South,
(35:25):
but y'all, when I tell you the snow banks and
the vastness of this area where they lived, it was
some of the most beautiful land I've ever seen. But
Caroline asked me, she said, Mom, where would you put
a body? And I was like, standing right here there
there there over there would be good. Right, there's good.
(35:47):
I mean, there was so many places in these mountains
with all this snow, I don't know how you would
ever find her. And so that was one of the
first things that kind of really resonated with me walking
that area. When you drive away from their home, which
was beautiful, you didn't have to go very far and
there was nothing and the idea that you know, you
(36:10):
could find a place where people didn't hike, and they
weren't skiing, and they weren't camping, and they weren't going
for a picnic. You had all the places in the
world to put her, no doubt about it. April nineteenth,
twenty twenty two, they dismissed his you know, charges without prejudice.
I thought it was the right call. I thought having
her remains are going to be the ticket to decide
(36:33):
whether he had something to do with it or a stranger.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Right. And now the remains were just found not long ago.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Correct, the twenty second of September.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Yeah, two weeks ago, literally, and we have I think
the public has yet to be made aware of the
findings of the medical examiners or examination, and so we
can all hypothetically discuss what may or may not have
happened to her, but we have to wait until that
comes in. Got to be a determination of homicide. While
(37:02):
we're still waiting for a medical examiner's report. You can't
deny that her being found in a shallow grave is
evidence of a human being who's alive involved in her demise,
or at least her or at least the disposal of
her body.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yep, the other big part of the MS report is
going to be the cause of death, you know, if
it's a blunt trauma to any part of her body,
if it's a stable, if it's something like that, you
have to remember the amount of tools that he had
at his hands, you know, and then you start, you know,
(37:39):
going into what he had in the home, in his car,
So again you start down that evidentiary road again after
you determine the cause of death, which hopefully they're able
to do with probably so much decomposition of the body,
but hopefully they can get to that determination.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
This guy sounds like he probably he was pretty calculated
about how he did this. If he did, in fact,
let's go into the theoretical, if he did, in fact,
use some form of tranquilizer on her in order to
remove her peacefully, without mess and without resistance from the house,
backed up the truck, puts her in the truck, takes
(38:19):
her someplace. She's still sort of unconscious. He's not going
to put a bullet in her head from a gun
that's in his closet at that point. With that level
of planning, I mean, never put anything past a criminal
criminals do stupid stuff all the time. This guy, if
he did it, let's keep that caveat he's planned it.
And if he's planned it, he wants to make sure
(38:40):
the homicide is done in such a way that doesn't
directly make it easy to be linked to him. Doesn't
mean he's thought everything out, but I just would think
that that would be it's not going to be a
knife wound where a serration matches the knives on his
kitchen countertop and one's missing. That is probably not going
(39:01):
to be his emo. There are a lot of ways
to do somebody in without having that level of direct
forensic Lincoln.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
That's a great point, you know, And I think if
if the three of us were in the war room
just throwing things out, you know, to me, if there's
clothing found with the remains, that's going to be the ticket.
If she's wearing that bathing suit from the last selfish
she ever took, then that tells you the timeline. That
(39:30):
means she didn't have dinner wearing that, she didn't go
to bed wearing that. So that's going to throw his statement,
like you said earlier, keep him talking where he said
they grilled out, they made love, they went to bed,
and he left. Well she's still sleeping, not if she's
in a bathing suit.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
And you know that the crime scene going back to
the house, the crime scene in the house and the
crime scene in the car. Being husband and wife living together,
it presents the challenge of of course you're going to
find my prints in my DNA in the house. Of
course you're going to find her prints in some of
her DNA, possibly in my car. So that that creates
that challenge. It's got to be convincing. It can't just
(40:06):
be you know, we found DNA from skin cells of
hers or hair of hers in your car. Well, she's
in my car all the time. So that's that's a hurdle.
Let the defense at the prosecution has to overcome with
more convincing forensic evidence.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
And the other part of the evidence is the crime scene.
You know, right now, the crime scene is where they
found her. So they're going to have to hopefully they
did this just she got to that area somehow, dragged,
carried in a bag, whatever the case is. But there's
a way that she got to that location. Somebody dug
(40:43):
that hole, so maybe they cut themselves. Maybe you know
something fell out of someone's pocket. You know, anything like
that is possible. That's why the preservation of that scene
is going to be critical in this investing. Everything surrounding
that area, the road, you know, you know, all of
(41:06):
that is going to be part of the cause of
death and possibly the purpose.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
You know, And going back to the crime scene. Crime
scene integrity is unbelievably important in these cases, and the
first persons on the scene have got to make sure
that a crime scene is established that's much bigger than
you think you would need. You can always make it tighter,
you can never bring it out again once you lose
that integrity. So make it a very large crime in
and out autor area like this. It should be a
(41:31):
very big area. And you should pick up and put
into evidence each and every item you see, whether it
be an empty beer can, a candy wrapper, a cigarette,
whatever it is. Save it, amen, you never know what
you're going to need it for. Don't throw anything out,
don't look past if there's a pile of garbage, take
(41:52):
all of it.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
I worked to say not long ago and I collected something,
and one of the officers standing there said, why are
you taking that? It's not a part of it. I said,
I don't know yet. I'm taking it because I don't
know how it fits. That's why I need it.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
I worked on a homicide once. It was a press
case in New York City and there was four gang
members in a car. It was a robbery homicide on
Park Avenue. They passed around for courage, little airline bottles
of booze, and they committed their robbery homicide and they
took off. They left the car there. They stole the
(42:29):
car for the robbery. They wore gloves, they were very professional,
but they left these bottles there. Now, the original investigating
detective discarded them at the scene. He thought they were useless.
He scooped up. There was a slew of cigarette bus
they'd nervous. They're smoking on the way to do this.
The cigarette buds had amalase, which is a constituent of saliva,
which has DNA. So that was a very effective tool
(42:52):
for that prosecution. But throwing away the little liquor bottles,
he probably just was like, God, who who these are?
That might have been the owner of the car that's
reported stall Never never assume, I mean that case was
successful without them, but keep everything.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Means mode of opportunity. He had it. He's the last
person to see her alive. He's the person that gave
a ridiculous reason for her to be missing on this bicycle.
I don't think there's any evidence she was ever on
the bicycle except the bike was missing. But again, how
would a stranger know that was her bike to go
stage that? And the bike's in one direction, the helmet's
(43:37):
in another. It's you know, how would a stranger know
the girls weren't there? I mean, none of it makes
any sense, and most strangers do not cause themselves more headache.
So you're driving one direction to throw the bike, another
direction to throw the helmet, another direction to hide her body.
Stranger wouldn't have to do any of that. And another
thing that I will tell people to walk if they
(44:00):
want to. There is body cam of when they take
him into the house to look for the clothes that
she would be wearing if she were on a bike.
He walked straight in, goes straight to the bedroom, go
straight to their closet where the hamper is looking for
these clothes. If it were me and my husband was missing,
by the time I hit that doorway, I'm looking around.
(44:22):
What's not right? If I left walk m column in
the bed, all I gotta do is look at that
coffee pot, and I can tell you, honey, there ain't
no coffee. They took him by five o'clock in the morning.
I'm telling you. If there is no coffee, he's dead.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
I sha'n't tell you.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
But he doesn't do that. There's a glass on the
counter that looks like a glass you would have for
like orange juice or water, like a regular drinking glass.
He doesn't look at it, doesn't say, hey, she had
to be up and she at least had orange juice.
He doesn't look at dishes in the sink or on
the stove. Nothing.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
He is a to be right.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
And the reason for that, Charlotte, is all he's thinking
is a one dimensional thinking of staging an area. That's
the only thing on his mind, not the questions that
can come from that staging. It's just staging something. So
someone has a quick optic of that's here, that's here,
Maybe she wrote a bike, maybe she did this. You know,
(45:19):
the thought process of, all right, what if someone questions
me about this? What if someone says it is not
on his mind? And that's why you know, those those
weird things happen that he just bypasses things that you
would normally do. Like you just said, you know, that's
when when you again you start making notes and mental
(45:40):
notes and stuff like that. But you know, when people
are staging crime scenes, that's the sole thing on their mind.
Make sure it looks good.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
And when they show up at the crime scene, they
don't ask the questions you think they would because they
know the answers back to OJ And that's one of
the common screw ups. They're so thinking about that stuff
time said, how do I stage it? They're not asking
the questions or doing the actions of a normal person.
Think to yourself, if you forget your keys, I always
keep my keys here, they're not here. Where could they be?
(46:11):
You get that semi panic right? Or your cell phone?
Where is it? Where did I leave it? Yeah, you
would ask normal questions. Was I in the car?
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Was it?
Speaker 3 (46:17):
You know when you don't see that out of somebody,
you know that's very unusual. Again, this is circumstantial stuff,
But we're painting a picture, and when you have a
broad enough picture of a person acting very unusual, then
you have reason to really dig in. And I can
tell they did that this case, which it was the
right thing to do.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
And you know, when we're talking about motive Suzanne and
Barry med in hoschoal, So for her to choose to
have an affair with somebody that she knew from high school,
that might be a little more sting to somebody's ego
as well, because you know, Walton I'm met in high school,
and you know, I might ask him, hey, do you
(46:58):
remember Lorraine? He doesn't remember her. You know she was
in the chess club, you know she was in the
debate team. He don't remember her. But if I say,
do you remember you know Sasha, the big cheerleader, you
know that can hardly fit in the sweater if you
know what I'm talking about. Oh, he remember Sasha immediately.
You know, knows her class schedule. So I'm saying there,
(47:22):
if Walt was paying more attention to Sasha, it might
be a little more of a why are you talking
to her at I reunion so much? You know what
I mean? So for Bury, the big you know, athlete,
the big you know, the man that's made such a
great way in the world, having this leebler again may
add to if he walked back home and that's who
(47:44):
she's facetiming with or texting while she's wearing a bathing suit.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
And again, if we're talking about somebody who has narcissism
in their heart and soul and they're a sociopath and
they just are really, really ego driven, this kind of
stuff is devastating to anybody, but to a person like that,
it is soul crushing, and it requires an action that
puts you back in a position of control and makes
(48:08):
you feel like you righted the world. A lot of
people would just would just suffer, feel terrible, get self
destructive when this happens, but some people decide it's time
for action. You know that there's a lot of interesting
plots to this case. If you don't mind not just
kicking with something that I was reminded of. No, please,
his daughters. Their daughters seem very very very much behind
(48:31):
the father. That could be for a reason of dynamics
within the family. It can be because he was a
great father to them. It can be for a lot
of reasons. But that's usually pretty telling. Now when kids
are in a situation like this where one parent has
allegedly killed the other, a lot of times they don't
know who to side with. But a normal tendency for
(48:52):
a kid is to side with mom because mom is
the nurturer. And it just I watched these press conferences
and daughters are hand in hand with him and they're
absolutely convinced he's innocent, and that can be very powerful
to public opinion. Doesn't mean a thing in the court,
but it can be very powerful to public opinion, and
it makes you scratch your head.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Well, I want to piggyback on that, because I've got
a friend Betsy Ramsey. She always talks about the two theory.
Too angry, too rich, too good looking, too mad, too religious,
whatever it is, you better flag that. So when you
see the daughters literally, like you said, holding hands with him,
walking out of court, holding hands, always sitting as close
(49:36):
as they possibly can, holding his hand, that's a flag.
It's actually too much. I mean in the beginning, Shore,
but now your mom has been missing all this time,
and when she is recovered, her remains are recovered, you
put out a statement saying, we're grieving. We thought she
was going to walk back in the door. Where did
(49:57):
you think she was. Mamma would not leave you, Your
mama wouldn't miss a cancer appointment. She wouldn't do that,
so that statement does not ring true to me.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
One in a very interesting little twist to this case
is during the examination of the truck, Barry's truck, they
found DNA unknown DNA, it says, found on the glovebox. Sorry,
it's Suzanne's range rover, wasn't Barry's. It was similar similar
to the DNA of one mail with three sexual assaults
(50:32):
when it was put into CODIS. So now, first of all,
I don't understand how similar works in DNA. It's a
hit or it's not. But the male with three sexual assaults?
Who is this person? Was there any relation to this
person being in that area at that time? Or is
this a person who lives in is die or is
(50:53):
sitting in a prison in Missouri? We don't know. And
so that hasn't come out that I have read you
no more. I'd love to hear it. But DNA that
didn't match them found on a glove box. It's not
It's a question, right, And that's the kind of thing
a defense can hang on to. But who is this
person that they're I mean for them to throw up
(51:15):
that it was similar to one male with three sexual
assaults in their history. That's bizarre, and it opens the
door to during the course of the medical examiner's examination,
is it going to come back that she was sexually assaulted?
And if so, is there DNA found there and does
it match this? If that's the case, You've got a
whole different perspective on this case. Right. You have somebody
(51:37):
did something to her. It doesn't come back to Leebler,
doesn't come back to the husband, comes back to this
same strand that was found in her car. Then we
have Houston. We have a problem. But if the person
was in her car, how does the bike come into
the situation that it's thrown off the mount It's weird, right,
Everything about this case is weird.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Yeah, And to me, you have to look at how
lucky is this person with the unknown DNA that Barry
is going to be out of town when he arguably
should not have been on Mother's Day on a Sunday
where he can't work his hotel room spelling like Clorox.
He's throwing trash in all these different places. The bike
(52:20):
is in one direction, the helmet's in another. And I'm
going to maintain I do not know many men that
are going to make a job more difficult. So if
you snatch this woman her bike is not necessary. Nobody
knows who you are anyway, take her, take her into
this unknown place, try to dig a grave in that
rock hard dirt, and get on with your life. This
(52:43):
person didn't do this. This person took the time to
get her, drive her thirty something miles from the house,
take her bike and put it in one place, take
her helmet, put it in another. I mean, that's a
lot of work for somebody that's not associated with her.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
So if you think about where that DNA could have
come from, there's a million reasons why somebody. She could
have gotten her car service. She could have been to
a car wash and had you a full service. Somebody
comes in and washes, you know, you never know what
It would be good to look at her records for
her credit card statements, etc. Have you had car service,
who works at that car service? That these kind of things.
(53:21):
And I'm not saying they didn't do that. I don't
know the insides of the case, but these are angles
to look at to either eliminate or shift to a
different suspect.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
You know, and you bring up DNA DAN you know,
one of the things that I thought of earlier. With
the hotel room and the tools that were accessible, I
would have listen. A lot of bad guys clean off
their own property, you know, if it's used in the
commission of a crime. I would have torn all those
(53:50):
pipes apart in that hotel room to see if they
were cleaned, if anything's in the pipes, if anything's in
the bathtub, anything around there could have been, you know,
a DNA catch. You know, I was thinking of that before,
and then you just brought the DNA up. So I
went back to the hotel room. I would have been
all over that those pipes.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
To me again, let's go back to the unknown person.
How lucky is that guy that Barry Morphew decided, I'm
going to put my phone on airplane mode. I'm going
to have no contact with my wife on Mother's Day.
I'm not going to plan anything for Mother's Day. I'm gonna,
you know, come off with a mountain lion. First thing.
I'm not going to search for her. I'm going to
(54:34):
offer a reward for one hundred thousand dollars, but it's
got an expiration day. How lucky is this stranger that
he murdered Susanne Morphew, and Barry's going to act this way.
Speaker 3 (54:47):
Rights, it's illogical, Right, It doesn't make any sense that
it would be anybody else with him. It just doesn't
sound like it. But remember, we still got to have
that evidence. You've got to have some thing to charge
somebody with a homicide in this country, you have to
have more. You have to have compelling evidence, clear because
(55:08):
you're looking at the rest of a person's life in prison,
and you're looking at an answer for a dead person,
and you want to get the right answer.
Speaker 1 (55:15):
Amen, And I think her remains are going to do that.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
If you're going to do it, do it and get
them good, you know, don't kind of halfway around it.
You know, we say it all the time, Dan, We've
said on other things. If you're going to do it,
do it, take your time doing it, and get all
that's needed to keep him in.
Speaker 3 (55:35):
And you know, when they arrested him the first time,
before the body was found, there might have been a strategy.
I'm sure there was. Maybe they had hoped that he
would crumble during an interrogation. This is real. We got you.
You can sit somebody down and you can tell them
you're done your toast, and psychologically it's very impactful. But
if this guy truly is narcissistic and sociopathic, any room
(55:59):
he's in, he thinks, because he's the smartest person in
the room, he thinks that you're all, you know, subordinate
to him. So he looks at you and he's laughing
at So yeah, whatever, you know. And I have no
idea what took place during any any post arrest interrogation,
or if there even was one, if you lawyer it up,
I don't know, but I just I just know that
with a guy like this, that might have not been
the move that would work well.
Speaker 1 (56:20):
Tom Smith and Dan Murphy, I cannot thank y'all enough
for being with us tonight. It is just an honor
for me to talk to y'all and to call y'all friends.
And I'm going to tell you, Tom, I love what
you said about Dan about you know, keeping you on
the right path and let's not you know, violate somebody's
civil rights, get in trouble. But I tell people all
(56:42):
the time this is why I call it zone seven.
You know, those people that are in your zone seven,
have your back, have your best interest, cheer for you, support, you,
love you, tell you when you're wrong. So Tom Smith
and Dan Murphy thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (56:57):
Well, thank you for the opportunity, and just absolutely love
being here. And you know we have a thing an
the NYPD. Cheryl, like you mentioned earlier, now you're in
our world, You're in part of our family.
Speaker 3 (57:09):
You're screwed and you're not getting rid of us. Good done. Yeah,
your life as you know it is over.
Speaker 1 (57:15):
For Yeah, you have no idea how long I've waited
to hear that. But I adore you both, and absolutely
we are family now.
Speaker 3 (57:25):
Yes, yep, absolutely, Cheryl, thank you so much for this opportunity.
It's an honor to be on Zone seven with you,
and we look forward to having a great many more
conversations with you about cases in the future and talking
about so many more interesting things because you are absolutely
an expert in what you do and we will learn
a lot from you, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (57:44):
And y'all, I'm going to end Zone seven the way
that I always do with a quote, no friendship is
an accident. Oh, Henry, I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is
Zone seven at the TA
As y'all know, I was born with four older sisters,
so the minute I got here, I had four best friends.
The first time I ever went to school was first grade.
I didn't vote with kindergarten. I remember Sissy comes running
up to me one day and says, hey, my mom
said you could spend the night. So right after school Friday,
(00:29):
you can come home with us and we're gonna watch movies,
we're gonna go on hikes, we're gonna have a great time.
Well I was kind of taken aback, and I was like,
that sounds fabulous, Like what is the occasion? Is it
a birthday? A holiday? Like why are we doing this?
This was new to me. She said, because we're best friends.
That's the first time anybody had ever called me that.
(00:52):
And we are still best friends today. By the way,
over fifty years we've been friends. And I remember that
feeling that I didn't just have a friend, I had
a best friend. All right, let's get in this thing
about Susan Morphew. Suzanne Moorefew got married in nineteen ninety
four to Barry. They eventually had two daughters, Macy and Mallory.
(01:16):
In twenty eighteen, they moved to Colorado from Indiana. They
wanted a fresh start. They had had some issues. Suzanne
had had cancer it had returned. Macy was in high school.
Mallory was leaving for college, so if they went to
Colorado they could be closer to Mallory. In September, Suzanne's
(01:36):
best friend visited. Her name is Sheila Oliver. Well, as
best friends do, they talked. They talked most of the night,
most of the day the next night, and Suzanne told
her about her marriage that it was failing. Thanksgiving, Suzanne
visited with her best friend in Indiana. In February, Suzanne
(01:59):
started to talk to a friend from high school, Jeff Leebler.
That September, Suzanne started to confide in her friend more
and more about her wanting to leave her marriage, to
leave her husband Barry. This is one quote from a
text message. I sort of wish he would just get
(02:20):
fed up with me and leave. I told him I'm done.
Valentine's Day twenty nineteen, Suzanne and Jeff became more than
platonic in New Orleans. They met several more times. Later.
Barry would tell a law enforcement and he didn't know
anything about the relationship. In February, Suzanne and Sheila met
(02:43):
up for a girl's Super Bowl weekend. Suzanne again started
to talk about her marriage. She wanted out. In late February,
Suzanne met up with Leebl, her in person, in Florida
while she was visiting her dad. May sixth, twenty twenty,
at ten seventeen am, Suzanne told Barry their marriage was over.
(03:07):
Quote this is a text message from Suzanne to Barry.
I'm done. I could care less what you're up to.
We just need to figure this out civilly. Barry writes back,
sort of a suicidal stunt. Quote. When I'm dead, which
won't be long, you and the girls will be taken
(03:30):
care of. May seventh, Suzanne and Barry they have pizza,
but she's texting Leebler. Quote it was kind of a
fine night. End quote. February May eighth, seven o two am.
Suzanne makes a list of grievances. One, Barry is accusing
(03:52):
her of having a boyfriend. Now remember later on down
the road, he's telling the police he didn't know anything
about an affair. Two Barry acts like I'm intruding when
I come into the garage. Later we find out that
Barry thinks she's got cameras in the garage. She texts
her sister quote dealing with the harsh abrasiveness and showing respect.
(04:19):
Ten am, Susanne and Barry have a series of phone calls.
Barry textes her I love you Suzanne. Saturday May ninth,
Suzanne texas Leebler quote, we need to be husband and wife.
Now there's about fifty nine text messages between them. At
eleven thirty am, Barry comes home for lunch, but then
(04:42):
he leaves to go change the blade on a bobcat.
At two seven pm, Suzanne sends a selfie to Leebler,
and it's the last known moment she's alive. At two
forty two, Barry returns home and his phone shows he's
moving all around outside. He later tells law enforcement between
(05:05):
the two forty two and two forty four, he's chasing chipmunks.
At six point forty, her best friend Oliver told investigators
she tried to reach Suzanne with no luck. At nine
twenty four to nine fifty two, the black box that's
in Berry's truck shows that the doors are opening and
(05:28):
closing over and over and over. At nine twenty five, specifically,
according to that black box in the truck. The gears
went into reverse and the truck backed up ninety six
feet to the edge of the driveway. May ninth and
tenth to forty seven PM until four thirty seven am,
(05:50):
Barry's phone is in airplane mode. Three twenty five to
three fifty two, the doors of Barry's truck are opening
closed again repeatedly. At four twenty three am, Suzanne her
cell phone pings for the last time. Her phone has
(06:11):
never been found. At four thirty am, Barry told the
police he woke up. At five am, Barry told the
police that he left to fix a retaining wall. He
said that Suzanne was sleeping in their bed when he left.
He's the last known person to see her alive. At
(06:32):
five thirty eight in the morning, Barry texted his mom
Happy Mother's Day. At six fifty six am, Barry was
near Bailey on his way to Broomfield.
Speaker 2 (06:45):
Now.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
At eight ten, there's a video showing him throwing away trash.
At eight thirty five, he's walking into the hotel. At
eight forty one, he tries texting Suzanne Happy Mother's Day,
but got no response. At ten ten, Barry left the hotel.
He's seen on video throwing away trash at a McDonald's,
(07:08):
a car wash, and a men's warehouse. The job site
is about twenty minutes away, but he couldn't do any
work because he didn't have a work permit to work
on Sunday. And again keep in mind, this is Mother's Day.
Twelve forty two to five point fifty five, Barry did
(07:30):
not leave the hotel room at three point thirty. During
that time, he takes Suzanne to call him. At five
point fifteen, a neighbor, Jean Ritter, called Barry to say
Suzanne was missing. At five thirty eight, the DA's office
was notified there's a woman missing and police say they
(07:50):
found her bike down a ravine. At five forty five,
Barry got a second call from Ritter about Suzanne being missing.
At six, Barry made several trips to his truck bringing
in tools to the hotel. At six pm, Miles Harding,
a friend of Macy's, drove to the house looking for Suzanne.
(08:11):
Police arrived and he told them, yes, she rides bikes,
but she would never go up that trail. It's too
steep and it's too hard. She'd never make it. At
eight forty six, Barry arrives home, and the first thing
he says when he sees police is, have y'all saw
any cats on the road? I'm going to bring in
(08:33):
two guests that we need bust it down to the
most elementary thing. What do we have? So I'm going
to bring in Tom Smith and Dan Murphy. Now, let
me tell y'all about them. Tom Smith NYPD stellar career.
The first assignment he had was the three to zero
and Harlem Honey, he was playing clothes. That's no joke
(08:56):
when you're working in the busiest precinct in New York City.
He worked narcotics, He worked gangs, He worked robbery. He
was a part of the FBI Joint Task Force after
nine to eleven. He received the Medal of Valor Exceptional Merit,
three commendations twice. He was Cop of the Month in NYPD.
(09:18):
He's joined today by Dan Murphy. Dan Murphy thirty five
year career. He's an author. He's a retired detective sergeant, Narcotics,
organized Crime, Major Case, gang Unit, Joint tares Wars. After
nine eleven, he was also the National Associational Police Organization's
top cop. He responded to the World Trade Center after
(09:42):
nine to eleven, and I want you all to keep
something in mind after nine to eleven occurred, they had
to be perfect in their defense of this country so
that that never happened again. Ladies and gentlemen, I am
overwhelmed with gratitude and admiration for Tom Smith and Dan Murphy. Gentlemen,
(10:05):
Welcome to Zone seven.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
Cheryl, thank you so much. This is Dan. It is
a it's a privilege to be here in an honor
with you. Your career is something we can get into at
a later date. We're just honored to be on the
show with you.
Speaker 2 (10:17):
Thank you and did it for me, Cheryl, thank you
so much for those overwhelmingly kind words and the opportunity
to be on this great show.
Speaker 1 (10:27):
And you know, on a personal note, I got to
watch all work at Crime Con and just your care
and concern for everybody there, victims, fellow officers, and it's.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
One thing that Tom and I the reason why we
do the work that we do in many reasons, for
many reasons, but one of the main reasons is because
we have a love and affection and a care and
a genuine concern for the men and women who are
out there protecting us. Twenty four to seven, and we
took our oath and we're doing our partner as retired.
Speaker 1 (10:57):
Amen. If this was your case and you're standing there
and a husband shows up with his wife that's been missing,
and the first thing he asked you is if y'all
see any cats out here? Like did A? Did A?
I mean, I can't say it with a straight face.
He's concerned about a mountain lion. He's given y' all
(11:19):
the reason she's missing.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
When I picked my jaw up off the floor because
my Joe would drop at such a bizarre, ridiculous statement
coming out of your mouth. It reminds me of OJ
when he was called in the hotel in Chicago and
told his wife was dead. He said, oh my god,
I'll get it in the next flight. He never asked
what happened.
Speaker 1 (11:38):
And OJ never asked about his kids because he knew
they were okay.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Right, So something stinks right away when that's the reaction, right,
Is it hard evidence?
Speaker 1 (11:48):
No?
Speaker 3 (11:48):
But it could certainly lead you in the right direction.
And I think there's a tendency to immediate, look immediately,
look at the spouse because in many cases of homicides,
in situations such as this, it is the spouse. But
you always have to be open minded. You have got
to follow the evidence and not what you think. One
of my favorite sayings is from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,
(12:11):
the author of the Sherlock Holmes Mysteries, and he famously said,
it is a capital mistake to theorize before one has facts.
So you have to fight that tendency to immediately look
at him and say guilty.
Speaker 2 (12:23):
I think one of the first things you do is
use technology to your advantage and your benefit and what
technology can give to a detective. Like Dan said, the
immediate reaction is to look at one particular party in
this and then what you do is you start working backwards.
Now you can have an opinion on a case, because
(12:47):
that drives where you're going to go, you know, and
what you're going to do, and the evidence you're going
to try to gather. And my initial thing, and Dan
and I did it together on numerous times, you know,
is to use technology as you're friend, and the immediate
thing is the phones and to get his location at
certain times. One of the most important things when it
(13:10):
comes to the situation like this is the dates. You
start working backwards with dates where was he at this point,
Where was he at this point? Where was she at
this point? You know? And then more the technology comes
into play with the text messages, then you start building
on that initial opinion you have, and then you just
go from there where the evidence that you start to
(13:32):
gather is going to lead you.
Speaker 3 (13:33):
I think also if I can just jump on the
back of that, it's kind of a two prong thing. Simultaneously.
You want to know immediately all the technology the answers
you can get from that, but you want to put
him on record as soon as possible. You want to
interview him extensively about his whereabouts, what he knows. First
of all, right, now we're talking about a missing person's case.
At this point. It's a missing person's case, but you
(13:56):
always have to treat those cases as though they could
turn out to be the world case scenario. In this case,
it did. But get him on record, where were you,
who were you with, who saw you, what times, why
we're there? Well, explain your behaviors for the last forty
eight seventy two, whatever it takes.
Speaker 1 (14:17):
Was it a flag for y'all at all? That this
was Mother's Day could.
Speaker 3 (14:21):
Be a trigger?
Speaker 2 (14:21):
Yeah, that could be You can certainly have it in
your head, but things just happen sometimes and dates just
line up with certain days. But it would be something
on your mind for sure, especially you know what you
had said during your opening, Cheryl, and how far how
long in the day it took him to finally shoot
(14:43):
her a text message of happy Mother's Day, you know,
normally with me, with Dan, that's the first thing in
the morning, you know, as you wait and you wait,
because what's going on in his head. He's thinking of
how to cover his butt, you know, Oh, let me
do that, and maybe that thought doesn't come until later
on in the day, you know. So now the mother's
(15:04):
Day thing certainly comes into.
Speaker 1 (15:06):
Play, and especially I mean he didn't wake her up
and say Happy Mother's Day before he left. There's no flowers,
there's no restaurant reservation, the daughters are off camping. So
it's Mother's Day. And you have chosen, I mean, you
own the company, so you've chosen to work today. So
it just seems like there would have been more of
(15:27):
a acknowledgment of the mother's day to meet Now when
he did text her at eight forty six or whatever
and got no response, it seems like by the time
Ritter would have contacted him, there would have been much
more alarm because hey, I hadn't heard from her either
since eight forty six this morning.
Speaker 3 (15:47):
As I said before, you really do have to fight
the tendency. You have to focus on everybody because everybody's
a suspect. You don't know what the outcome is going
to be because it's just a missing person's case. But
you don't know the full story yet. But you have
to talk to as many witnesses as possible to figure
out what's going on. Granted, his behaviors in retrospect now
(16:07):
look really weird. Well, why would you go up to
work on Mother's Day? Well, that could have been an
answer for that. Why did you not wake her up?
That could have been a good answer for that. They're
having trouble in their marriage, racial relationship. Maybe he just
wanted to get away from the house from Mother's Day
because it's an emotional day for him. I'm not making
excuses of him. I'm just that you have to be
(16:29):
as objective and open minded as possible in these cases
and not just zero in on the person you feel
gives you the hebgbis because he said something stupid.
Speaker 1 (16:39):
Now, do y'all hear Dan being logical and you know, brilliant,
and let's not jump. He's doing exactly what a detective
sergeant should be doing. So he's absolutely right that you
don't want to just take one, two, and three and
you think you're at nine. We're not at nine. But
(17:00):
I do think if I were to call and say, hey, Tom,
Dan's being reasonable, So I don't want to talk to
him anymore. I want I want somebody to tell me,
not logically, not reasonably, but as a mama, I would
expect a little more than a text at eight forty six,
(17:20):
especially when you know you can't work on a Sunday
because you don't have that permit. So are you just
going somewhere to have an affair or you just not
want to hang out with me? Are you going to
set up so that y'all aren't off this timetable? And
you're setting things up anyway so that Monday you can
get right to work. Like like Dan said, maybe that's logical.
(17:41):
Maybe he went to get things into place so that
they're not really losing Sunday.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
No, I agree, and you know, just saying that's that's
why Dan was the sergeant, you know, to control a
detective like me, would you know, just kick him up.
We need to do this, this and this, and Dan
having the you know, where he is and the experience
he has to go, Okay, hold on, let's do a
B and C. And that's how you have to work,
(18:06):
you know, that's how you have to be patient with
these because the more patient you are, the more you
see clearly, the more the better plan you have going
forward with an investigative plan. You know, when you when
you're rushing around and you have one thought, it gets clouded,
you know, So when you when you have these cases,
(18:28):
it is the team concept is so important, you know,
to have two, three, four detectives and a sergeant to
bounce things off because everyone has a different idea, everyone
has different experiences, and you put that together to create
an investigative plan. You know, maybe two guys do one thing,
two guys do another thing. Switch up interrogators, you know,
(18:51):
to throw them off a little bit, to get a
different voice in there. You know. So there's there's that
concept of going forward. The good thing with this you
shouldn't say a good thing, but one of the interesting
things with this is you had multiple people involved in
a situation, so you can take that kind of storyboard,
(19:13):
you know, and start listing who is and then, like
Dan said, immediately start talking to people and doing intel
interrogations and interviews, and then you start matching stories up
and that gives you a pretty clear a good clear
view of what might have taken place once you start
(19:34):
eliminating certain things, and you're only going to do that
through talking to people. That's the only way you're going
to do it is to get people's stories of where
they were, what's going on, and then you start pinpointing mistakes,
you know, in what had happened, and that that kind
of gets you on a better road to solving.
Speaker 3 (19:55):
This this So this guy he comes in, he makes a
statement about mountain lion on the road, which is bizarre.
So it is okay to let that register that his
reaction was we'll call it inappropriate or just difficult to
wrap your head around why would he say that? And
(20:15):
then you know, over time it'll hit you, Okay, he's
trying to create some kind of an alibi, and you know,
maybe she was eaten by it. If somebody's legitimately missing
and you really care about and love them. You're not
offering up alternate theories to their demise, You're helping the
police find them.
Speaker 1 (20:30):
That's an excellent point. And there's a video. It's bodycam
from the officers that are on the scene searching for her.
Now they have found her bicycle. On the body cam,
they are calling her name, seeing as she landed somewhere hurt,
you know, did she hobble away from the bicycle but
she couldn't make it any further, thinking maybe she can,
(20:52):
you know, holler I'm over here, you know, I broke
my leg or whatever. So they are literally these strangers
are calling for her name. When Barry hops out of
the truck, he never once hollers her. He doesn't call
for her, he doesn't jump in and start going down
the ravine and walking into the woods looking for her.
He's offering them exactly what you said, Dan, something that
(21:15):
is remarkable. It's unbelievable that himself would jump to a
mountain lion. I mean, has a mountain lion ever attacked somebody?
Of course, but it is so rare. Why would that
ever even enter your mind?
Speaker 3 (21:31):
Right now? Thinking about his mindset he is, if he
is responsible for her disappearance, and ultimate we find out homicide,
if he's responsible for it, He's got a million things
going on in his mind. He's trying to figure out
how to play this, and he's gonna make mistakes. He's
under enormous pressure. He's never been in this situation before.
(21:52):
This is not an experienced killer. This is a guy
whose emotions. If he did it, it's crazy. He couldn't
handle it anymore. And now he's playing cover up. And
the cover up is where they mess up. It's because
he will. He will say the wrong thing. He will
contradict himself, his text messages, his phone records will not
(22:14):
drive with where he said he was and doing what
he was. And you look at the behaviors that you
described earlier, the many stops too. And I've heard my
research on this case, A says Tom, the many stops
he made into garbage dumpsters. There's really not a lot
of good explanation for that. But does that mean that
you're guilty of a homicide? Not necessarily. Could it be
(22:34):
one piece of a bigger picture that you put together
in a case. Yeah, but you got to be very
careful in the beginning at this point, because you have
there's a couple of things. One people will distract and
try to get you to look another way. Clearly he
tried that right away. And the other is they will
attach themselves to you and want to become intimately involved
(22:55):
with everything you're doing so they can guide it. And
that's what you have to look out for with a
guy like this. And we've seen i think another missing
person's cases where the wife is missing and the husband
is all over the police offering all kinds of alternative
theories as to what might have happened. That's distraction, but
it could also be a genuine effort to find them.
(23:15):
So you have to see if there's a difference there.
People who are not guilty of anything generally don't trip
themselves up with their statements.
Speaker 2 (23:23):
And I think one of the best things Dan just
said was, you know, when you have these they're not
professional killers. This is the first time he probably did this,
and he's not experienced in it. You know, he's not
a serio killer. He's a one time actor in a
bad situation. Those mistakes are going to get made. And
(23:43):
the best thing is when you start pinpointing, like Dan said,
the movements, you know on the phone, the movements of
his car. Those are all things he has to explain,
you know, that's part of the interrogation. Now you have
all this information, and he has to explain, why did
you do this? And those are the points where a
(24:04):
lot of times they screw up because, like like we
said in the beginning, he immediately started with the reasoning
of her being, you know, her disappearance, you know, the
Mountain Lion and all this. But now he has to
explain everything he's done for the next day and a
half two days, and that's where they get tripped up.
(24:25):
And that's what you count on because of the lack
of experience. You know, we drive into dumpsters and McDonald's
and all that, not realizing that there is a camera
everywhere on this planet now that's going to track everything
everyone does. He's not thinking like that, you know, so boom,
there's a mistake. He's not thinking that there's a box,
(24:47):
a black box in his car, to the amount of
feet he backed up drove here, he's not thinking on
those lines. That's all ammunition for detectives and investigators to
you to go after him.
Speaker 1 (25:01):
Okay, so let's talk about mistakes if it's him, and
this is the reason law enforcement looked at him in
the first place many reasons. But when they do the
search warman at his home, they find a tranquilizer dark
cap in the drier. Now that's not something you're going
to ever find in a dryer for a legitimate reason.
(25:21):
So now they're thinking, did he shoot her with a
tranquilizer so that she couldn't fight back and then do
something the faari is to her? And then the other
thing they found, and I want y'all both to talk
about these two things is a spy pin. Now, Suzanne
supposedly bought this pen to try to catch Barry, but
(25:43):
it ended up she was on the recording talking about
her affair with a married man, Leebler, So now law
enforcement knows, okay, she was absolutely having an affair. They
talked to Leebler, he tells them the truth. So now
they know is this motive?
Speaker 3 (26:01):
It's absolutely a motive. If a man or a woman
feels their whole world is about the cave in, it's
absolutely a motive. There may be other motives, you know.
The text messages between them are very telling. The text
messages between her and Leebler are very telling. What I
read in the case is that Leebler did not voluntarily
come forward, correct, It was probably what four or five
(26:24):
months before he was interviewed and came forward. Now you
can explain that away as being a married man afraid
to have this blow up in his face, or it
could be he has something to hide, you know, But
I think he was eliminated as a suspect at some point.
But when you know your question has to do with
(26:46):
the pen, the spy pen, things like that. This is
this is a marriage that's not in a good place right.
Obviously she's having a relationship with somebody else. She wants
to leave. She's made that clear. What I've read about
him as his personality as such that he's a control
kind of guy. He likes to make the decisions. He
wants to be in control. That's very hard for a
(27:06):
person like that to take when somebody decides they want
to break off with you. Oh, they've decided they want
somebody else. It sounds like he lied about the whole
knowledge of the relationship. And again we're at the very
very beginning of this investigation and we don't know if
she's alive someplace yet, we haven't found the body. All
(27:29):
we know is she's missing. The phone activity has been
cut off, nobody has seen her. We have a missing
person's case with an asterisk next to it that it
might be moving on to the homicide category, but we
don't know. So his posture, his entire posture, should be
regardless of whether or not the relationship was falling apart.
That's the mother of my children. I will do anything,
(27:49):
and I will let you look at anything. And apparently
he was open to being interviewed many times. He didn't
say no. He was open to, you know, come in
search my house. They got a warm but he still
he didn't play games. He tried to be open. But
if you shoot somebody with a tranquilizer dart, it's actually
a very ingenious way to eliminate a messy crime scene
(28:11):
in the house. So there's thinking. That takes a lot
of thinking. I hate to say, probably listen to podcasts,
so watch true crime shows to learn about these things.
But he may have for all we know, But that
takes thinking and planning. Tom your thoughts on this, That's
what jumped out at me.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
Oh yeah, if he has an inkling of the affair,
now the motive starts to creep into his head. Then
the planning starts, The premeditation starts of how do I
get away with this? Is it even possible to get
away with? You know, when you start mapping out ways
you can do it, and a lot of times it's
(28:51):
then it becomes an impulse. All right, I think I
can do it. You're not thinking rationally, obviously, as someone
who's gonna possibly commit a murder, especially to his wife,
So you're not thinking rationally, so that does creep into
his head. But the premeditation definitely starts when you know
(29:13):
he has the thought of the affair as a detective
is as sergeant, you capitalize on that because of the inexperience,
because it is an impulse and the driving around is
a mistake, and that's part of the not being experienced.
Speaker 3 (29:31):
And another thought about that, just to tag onto the
back of Adam's just saying, it depends upon who you're
dealing with when it comes to certain things like, for example,
what I've learned about reading about Barry Morphew sounds as
though he may have narcissistic and or sociopathic tendencies. I'm
not a forensic psychologist. I just know enough about people
to know there are certain people who exist for their
(29:53):
own pleasure, in their own you know, if someone doesn't
make them feel like the sun rises on them, then
they're no good in my life anymore. And watching interviews
with Barry Morphew and he's been open with them since
he was arrested and all that other stuff, sitting with
his children and very confidently proclaiming his innocence. Now, there
are people who are guilty as hell who can do that,
(30:17):
and then there is the rest of the population who
the guilt of a knee jerk emotional reaction will haunt
them for their life and they will crumble. This guy
doesn't seem to be that person.
Speaker 1 (30:29):
If he did it, well, let's talk about how narcissistic
he might be. So he was arrested May fifth, twenty
twenty one, for first degree murder, tampering with evidence, and
attempting to influence a public servant. But there's one other
thing I want y'all to talk about. Your wife is
(30:51):
missing this person. You know, she's had cancer, she got better,
the cancer came back. You've got a beautiful home with her,
you've got two beautiful daughters with her, and you don't
know where she's at. With all that going on, though,
you take it upon yourself to use her vote to
(31:14):
vote in the presidential election.
Speaker 3 (31:16):
That's a different category of human being right there. We're
not talking of it about a person who is going
to be remorseful for their actions unless it helps them.
These are the people who are completely without remorse until
the sentencing and they break down in front of the
judge to try to prove that they really care, when
in reality they're only crying for themselves. That is a
(31:37):
very bizarre There's a lot of bizarre things that he did,
and all that stuff adds up to a cloud of suspicion.
What you've got to do is you've got to find
concrete evidence to corroborate actions. You know, they arrested him
before the body was found. That is a very difficult
case for a prosecutor to make. They have been made,
(32:00):
but it's very very difficult because you have to present
the theory to the jury as to what happened. And
if you can't present the theory, you can't even present
a cause of death. You don't have officially, you don't
have a medical examiner's report to show the person was
a victim of a homicide. How do you do that.
You can do it with a lot of circumstantials. So
(32:20):
circumstantial homicide cases have been made. But in this case,
they didn't have a messy crime scene at the house,
They didn't have a messy crime scene in the car.
They didn't seem to have a lot by my estimation
to charge him and I originally when I read it,
thoughts to myself, you know, there's always more that we
(32:43):
don't know, Right, Tom and I didn't work the case.
We don't know it. The prosecutors, the detectives, they know
the inside of baseball. They know why they charged, and
it probably was for a valid reason. But in retrospect,
I think I would have liked give them them more time.
Give people time, let them unravel, let them talk. People
(33:06):
will talk like I like him is going to talk
to somebody about this. You can't keep it in. And
if he gets away with it, he's proud of it.
Speaker 2 (33:14):
You know, when you give people time, remember his entire
life once this started has been a lie. People forget
their own lies after a while. So if you let
like Dan said, you let them settle in, you let
them kind of quote unquote get back to his life,
then you start asking him again about past stuff, and
(33:38):
people forget their lies if you get what they said,
and that's when you start, you know, digging it a
little more and getting more information. But you know, that's
a great point, you wait, and I agree with Dan
with with waiting instead of jumping on. It's very hard.
A nobody homicide. That is extremely hard because, like Dan
(33:59):
said it, the theory you're working on. Yes, you can
have all the pinpoints in this and that all you want,
but when you don't have a body, you're given the defense.
You know, they can come up with any excuse they
want for anything you're presenting. You know, because you can't
prove it. You know, it's still you know, because you
(34:19):
still have that zero zero point one percent that maybe
she just took off. You know, that's still out there.
You know probably you know, as detectives and investigators, you know,
and looking at evidence, you're going to come to an
investigative decision and outcome in your mind of what you
think you know the end is. But there is still
(34:40):
that zero zero point one percent that you know, she
just went into hiding and she's gone. So that's why
it becomes a very difficult case and I agree with Dan.
I would have waited myself also and given him time to,
like he said, unravel and go back at him with
some some pinpointed question and see if he trips himself up,
(35:02):
which normally does happen.
Speaker 1 (35:04):
And you know, I went out there with Nancy Gray,
she was doing a special and I took my daughter
with me, Caroline, because Caroline was exactly Susanne Morphew's height,
and she was not a big person at all. She
was tiny. And I mean, I know I'm from the South,
(35:25):
but y'all, when I tell you the snow banks and
the vastness of this area where they lived, it was
some of the most beautiful land I've ever seen. But
Caroline asked me, she said, Mom, where would you put
a body? And I was like, standing right here there
there there over there would be good. Right, there's good.
(35:47):
I mean, there was so many places in these mountains
with all this snow, I don't know how you would
ever find her. And so that was one of the
first things that kind of really resonated with me walking
that area. When you drive away from their home, which
was beautiful, you didn't have to go very far and
there was nothing and the idea that you know, you
(36:10):
could find a place where people didn't hike, and they
weren't skiing, and they weren't camping, and they weren't going
for a picnic. You had all the places in the
world to put her, no doubt about it. April nineteenth,
twenty twenty two, they dismissed his you know, charges without prejudice.
I thought it was the right call. I thought having
her remains are going to be the ticket to decide
(36:33):
whether he had something to do with it or a stranger.
Speaker 3 (36:36):
Right. And now the remains were just found not long ago.
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Correct, the twenty second of September.
Speaker 3 (36:41):
Yeah, two weeks ago, literally, and we have I think
the public has yet to be made aware of the
findings of the medical examiners or examination, and so we
can all hypothetically discuss what may or may not have
happened to her, but we have to wait until that
comes in. Got to be a determination of homicide. While
(37:02):
we're still waiting for a medical examiner's report. You can't
deny that her being found in a shallow grave is
evidence of a human being who's alive involved in her demise,
or at least her or at least the disposal of
her body.
Speaker 2 (37:17):
Yep, the other big part of the MS report is
going to be the cause of death, you know, if
it's a blunt trauma to any part of her body,
if it's a stable, if it's something like that, you
have to remember the amount of tools that he had
at his hands, you know, and then you start, you know,
(37:39):
going into what he had in the home, in his car,
So again you start down that evidentiary road again after
you determine the cause of death, which hopefully they're able
to do with probably so much decomposition of the body,
but hopefully they can get to that determination.
Speaker 3 (37:58):
This guy sounds like he probably he was pretty calculated
about how he did this. If he did, in fact,
let's go into the theoretical, if he did, in fact,
use some form of tranquilizer on her in order to
remove her peacefully, without mess and without resistance from the house,
backed up the truck, puts her in the truck, takes
(38:19):
her someplace. She's still sort of unconscious. He's not going
to put a bullet in her head from a gun
that's in his closet at that point. With that level
of planning, I mean, never put anything past a criminal
criminals do stupid stuff all the time. This guy, if
he did it, let's keep that caveat he's planned it.
And if he's planned it, he wants to make sure
(38:40):
the homicide is done in such a way that doesn't
directly make it easy to be linked to him. Doesn't
mean he's thought everything out, but I just would think
that that would be it's not going to be a
knife wound where a serration matches the knives on his
kitchen countertop and one's missing. That is probably not going
(39:01):
to be his emo. There are a lot of ways
to do somebody in without having that level of direct
forensic Lincoln.
Speaker 1 (39:09):
That's a great point, you know, And I think if
if the three of us were in the war room
just throwing things out, you know, to me, if there's
clothing found with the remains, that's going to be the ticket.
If she's wearing that bathing suit from the last selfish
she ever took, then that tells you the timeline. That
(39:30):
means she didn't have dinner wearing that, she didn't go
to bed wearing that. So that's going to throw his statement,
like you said earlier, keep him talking where he said
they grilled out, they made love, they went to bed,
and he left. Well she's still sleeping, not if she's
in a bathing suit.
Speaker 3 (39:45):
And you know that the crime scene going back to
the house, the crime scene in the house and the
crime scene in the car. Being husband and wife living together,
it presents the challenge of of course you're going to
find my prints in my DNA in the house. Of
course you're going to find her prints in some of
her DNA, possibly in my car. So that that creates
that challenge. It's got to be convincing. It can't just
(40:06):
be you know, we found DNA from skin cells of
hers or hair of hers in your car. Well, she's
in my car all the time. So that's that's a hurdle.
Let the defense at the prosecution has to overcome with
more convincing forensic evidence.
Speaker 2 (40:21):
And the other part of the evidence is the crime scene.
You know, right now, the crime scene is where they
found her. So they're going to have to hopefully they
did this just she got to that area somehow, dragged,
carried in a bag, whatever the case is. But there's
a way that she got to that location. Somebody dug
(40:43):
that hole, so maybe they cut themselves. Maybe you know
something fell out of someone's pocket. You know, anything like
that is possible. That's why the preservation of that scene
is going to be critical in this investing. Everything surrounding
that area, the road, you know, you know, all of
(41:06):
that is going to be part of the cause of
death and possibly the purpose.
Speaker 3 (41:11):
You know, And going back to the crime scene. Crime
scene integrity is unbelievably important in these cases, and the
first persons on the scene have got to make sure
that a crime scene is established that's much bigger than
you think you would need. You can always make it tighter,
you can never bring it out again once you lose
that integrity. So make it a very large crime in
and out autor area like this. It should be a
(41:31):
very big area. And you should pick up and put
into evidence each and every item you see, whether it
be an empty beer can, a candy wrapper, a cigarette,
whatever it is. Save it, amen, you never know what
you're going to need it for. Don't throw anything out,
don't look past if there's a pile of garbage, take
(41:52):
all of it.
Speaker 1 (41:53):
I worked to say not long ago and I collected something,
and one of the officers standing there said, why are
you taking that? It's not a part of it. I said,
I don't know yet. I'm taking it because I don't
know how it fits. That's why I need it.
Speaker 3 (42:07):
I worked on a homicide once. It was a press
case in New York City and there was four gang
members in a car. It was a robbery homicide on
Park Avenue. They passed around for courage, little airline bottles
of booze, and they committed their robbery homicide and they
took off. They left the car there. They stole the
(42:29):
car for the robbery. They wore gloves, they were very professional,
but they left these bottles there. Now, the original investigating
detective discarded them at the scene. He thought they were useless.
He scooped up. There was a slew of cigarette bus
they'd nervous. They're smoking on the way to do this.
The cigarette buds had amalase, which is a constituent of saliva,
which has DNA. So that was a very effective tool
(42:52):
for that prosecution. But throwing away the little liquor bottles,
he probably just was like, God, who who these are?
That might have been the owner of the car that's
reported stall Never never assume, I mean that case was
successful without them, but keep everything.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Means mode of opportunity. He had it. He's the last
person to see her alive. He's the person that gave
a ridiculous reason for her to be missing on this bicycle.
I don't think there's any evidence she was ever on
the bicycle except the bike was missing. But again, how
would a stranger know that was her bike to go
stage that? And the bike's in one direction, the helmet's
(43:37):
in another. It's you know, how would a stranger know
the girls weren't there? I mean, none of it makes
any sense, and most strangers do not cause themselves more headache.
So you're driving one direction to throw the bike, another
direction to throw the helmet, another direction to hide her body.
Stranger wouldn't have to do any of that. And another
thing that I will tell people to walk if they
(44:00):
want to. There is body cam of when they take
him into the house to look for the clothes that
she would be wearing if she were on a bike.
He walked straight in, goes straight to the bedroom, go
straight to their closet where the hamper is looking for
these clothes. If it were me and my husband was missing,
by the time I hit that doorway, I'm looking around.
(44:22):
What's not right? If I left walk m column in
the bed, all I gotta do is look at that
coffee pot, and I can tell you, honey, there ain't
no coffee. They took him by five o'clock in the morning.
I'm telling you. If there is no coffee, he's dead.
Speaker 3 (44:38):
I sha'n't tell you.
Speaker 1 (44:40):
But he doesn't do that. There's a glass on the
counter that looks like a glass you would have for
like orange juice or water, like a regular drinking glass.
He doesn't look at it, doesn't say, hey, she had
to be up and she at least had orange juice.
He doesn't look at dishes in the sink or on
the stove. Nothing.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
He is a to be right.
Speaker 2 (44:57):
And the reason for that, Charlotte, is all he's thinking
is a one dimensional thinking of staging an area. That's
the only thing on his mind, not the questions that
can come from that staging. It's just staging something. So
someone has a quick optic of that's here, that's here,
Maybe she wrote a bike, maybe she did this. You know,
(45:19):
the thought process of, all right, what if someone questions
me about this? What if someone says it is not
on his mind? And that's why you know, those those
weird things happen that he just bypasses things that you
would normally do. Like you just said, you know, that's
when when you again you start making notes and mental
(45:40):
notes and stuff like that. But you know, when people
are staging crime scenes, that's the sole thing on their mind.
Make sure it looks good.
Speaker 3 (45:50):
And when they show up at the crime scene, they
don't ask the questions you think they would because they
know the answers back to OJ And that's one of
the common screw ups. They're so thinking about that stuff
time said, how do I stage it? They're not asking
the questions or doing the actions of a normal person.
Think to yourself, if you forget your keys, I always
keep my keys here, they're not here. Where could they be?
(46:11):
You get that semi panic right? Or your cell phone?
Where is it? Where did I leave it? Yeah, you
would ask normal questions. Was I in the car?
Speaker 2 (46:17):
Was it?
Speaker 3 (46:17):
You know when you don't see that out of somebody,
you know that's very unusual. Again, this is circumstantial stuff,
But we're painting a picture, and when you have a
broad enough picture of a person acting very unusual, then
you have reason to really dig in. And I can
tell they did that this case, which it was the
right thing to do.
Speaker 1 (46:37):
And you know, when we're talking about motive Suzanne and
Barry med in hoschoal, So for her to choose to
have an affair with somebody that she knew from high school,
that might be a little more sting to somebody's ego
as well, because you know, Walton I'm met in high school,
and you know, I might ask him, hey, do you
(46:58):
remember Lorraine? He doesn't remember her. You know she was
in the chess club, you know she was in the
debate team. He don't remember her. But if I say,
do you remember you know Sasha, the big cheerleader, you
know that can hardly fit in the sweater if you
know what I'm talking about. Oh, he remember Sasha immediately.
You know, knows her class schedule. So I'm saying there,
(47:22):
if Walt was paying more attention to Sasha, it might
be a little more of a why are you talking
to her at I reunion so much? You know what
I mean? So for Bury, the big you know, athlete,
the big you know, the man that's made such a
great way in the world, having this leebler again may
add to if he walked back home and that's who
(47:44):
she's facetiming with or texting while she's wearing a bathing suit.
Speaker 3 (47:47):
And again, if we're talking about somebody who has narcissism
in their heart and soul and they're a sociopath and
they just are really, really ego driven, this kind of
stuff is devastating to anybody, but to a person like that,
it is soul crushing, and it requires an action that
puts you back in a position of control and makes
(48:08):
you feel like you righted the world. A lot of
people would just would just suffer, feel terrible, get self
destructive when this happens, but some people decide it's time
for action. You know that there's a lot of interesting
plots to this case. If you don't mind not just
kicking with something that I was reminded of. No, please,
his daughters. Their daughters seem very very very much behind
(48:31):
the father. That could be for a reason of dynamics
within the family. It can be because he was a
great father to them. It can be for a lot
of reasons. But that's usually pretty telling. Now when kids
are in a situation like this where one parent has
allegedly killed the other, a lot of times they don't
know who to side with. But a normal tendency for
(48:52):
a kid is to side with mom because mom is
the nurturer. And it just I watched these press conferences
and daughters are hand in hand with him and they're
absolutely convinced he's innocent, and that can be very powerful
to public opinion. Doesn't mean a thing in the court,
but it can be very powerful to public opinion, and
it makes you scratch your head.
Speaker 1 (49:14):
Well, I want to piggyback on that, because I've got
a friend Betsy Ramsey. She always talks about the two theory.
Too angry, too rich, too good looking, too mad, too religious,
whatever it is, you better flag that. So when you
see the daughters literally, like you said, holding hands with him,
walking out of court, holding hands, always sitting as close
(49:36):
as they possibly can, holding his hand, that's a flag.
It's actually too much. I mean in the beginning, Shore,
but now your mom has been missing all this time,
and when she is recovered, her remains are recovered, you
put out a statement saying, we're grieving. We thought she
was going to walk back in the door. Where did
(49:57):
you think she was. Mamma would not leave you, Your
mama wouldn't miss a cancer appointment. She wouldn't do that,
so that statement does not ring true to me.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
One in a very interesting little twist to this case
is during the examination of the truck, Barry's truck, they
found DNA unknown DNA, it says, found on the glovebox. Sorry,
it's Suzanne's range rover, wasn't Barry's. It was similar similar
to the DNA of one mail with three sexual assaults
(50:32):
when it was put into CODIS. So now, first of all,
I don't understand how similar works in DNA. It's a
hit or it's not. But the male with three sexual assaults?
Who is this person? Was there any relation to this
person being in that area at that time? Or is
this a person who lives in is die or is
(50:53):
sitting in a prison in Missouri? We don't know. And
so that hasn't come out that I have read you
no more. I'd love to hear it. But DNA that
didn't match them found on a glove box. It's not
It's a question, right, And that's the kind of thing
a defense can hang on to. But who is this
person that they're I mean for them to throw up
(51:15):
that it was similar to one male with three sexual
assaults in their history. That's bizarre, and it opens the
door to during the course of the medical examiner's examination,
is it going to come back that she was sexually assaulted?
And if so, is there DNA found there and does
it match this? If that's the case, You've got a
whole different perspective on this case. Right. You have somebody
(51:37):
did something to her. It doesn't come back to Leebler,
doesn't come back to the husband, comes back to this
same strand that was found in her car. Then we
have Houston. We have a problem. But if the person
was in her car, how does the bike come into
the situation that it's thrown off the mount It's weird, right,
Everything about this case is weird.
Speaker 1 (51:58):
Yeah, And to me, you have to look at how
lucky is this person with the unknown DNA that Barry
is going to be out of town when he arguably
should not have been on Mother's Day on a Sunday
where he can't work his hotel room spelling like Clorox.
He's throwing trash in all these different places. The bike
(52:20):
is in one direction, the helmet's in another. And I'm
going to maintain I do not know many men that
are going to make a job more difficult. So if
you snatch this woman her bike is not necessary. Nobody
knows who you are anyway, take her, take her into
this unknown place, try to dig a grave in that
rock hard dirt, and get on with your life. This
(52:43):
person didn't do this. This person took the time to
get her, drive her thirty something miles from the house,
take her bike and put it in one place, take
her helmet, put it in another. I mean, that's a
lot of work for somebody that's not associated with her.
Speaker 3 (53:00):
So if you think about where that DNA could have
come from, there's a million reasons why somebody. She could
have gotten her car service. She could have been to
a car wash and had you a full service. Somebody
comes in and washes, you know, you never know what
It would be good to look at her records for
her credit card statements, etc. Have you had car service,
who works at that car service? That these kind of things.
(53:21):
And I'm not saying they didn't do that. I don't
know the insides of the case, but these are angles
to look at to either eliminate or shift to a
different suspect.
Speaker 2 (53:30):
You know, and you bring up DNA DAN you know,
one of the things that I thought of earlier. With
the hotel room and the tools that were accessible, I
would have listen. A lot of bad guys clean off
their own property, you know, if it's used in the
commission of a crime. I would have torn all those
(53:50):
pipes apart in that hotel room to see if they
were cleaned, if anything's in the pipes, if anything's in
the bathtub, anything around there could have been, you know,
a DNA catch. You know, I was thinking of that before,
and then you just brought the DNA up. So I
went back to the hotel room. I would have been
all over that those pipes.
Speaker 1 (54:12):
To me again, let's go back to the unknown person.
How lucky is that guy that Barry Morphew decided, I'm
going to put my phone on airplane mode. I'm going
to have no contact with my wife on Mother's Day.
I'm not going to plan anything for Mother's Day. I'm gonna,
you know, come off with a mountain lion. First thing.
I'm not going to search for her. I'm going to
(54:34):
offer a reward for one hundred thousand dollars, but it's
got an expiration day. How lucky is this stranger that
he murdered Susanne Morphew, and Barry's going to act this way.
Speaker 3 (54:47):
Rights, it's illogical, Right, It doesn't make any sense that
it would be anybody else with him. It just doesn't
sound like it. But remember, we still got to have
that evidence. You've got to have some thing to charge
somebody with a homicide in this country, you have to
have more. You have to have compelling evidence, clear because
(55:08):
you're looking at the rest of a person's life in prison,
and you're looking at an answer for a dead person,
and you want to get the right answer.
Speaker 1 (55:15):
Amen, And I think her remains are going to do that.
Speaker 2 (55:17):
If you're going to do it, do it and get
them good, you know, don't kind of halfway around it.
You know, we say it all the time, Dan, We've
said on other things. If you're going to do it,
do it, take your time doing it, and get all
that's needed to keep him in.
Speaker 3 (55:35):
And you know, when they arrested him the first time,
before the body was found, there might have been a strategy.
I'm sure there was. Maybe they had hoped that he
would crumble during an interrogation. This is real. We got you.
You can sit somebody down and you can tell them
you're done your toast, and psychologically it's very impactful. But
if this guy truly is narcissistic and sociopathic, any room
(55:59):
he's in, he thinks, because he's the smartest person in
the room, he thinks that you're all, you know, subordinate
to him. So he looks at you and he's laughing
at So yeah, whatever, you know. And I have no
idea what took place during any any post arrest interrogation,
or if there even was one, if you lawyer it up,
I don't know, but I just I just know that
with a guy like this, that might have not been
the move that would work well.
Speaker 1 (56:20):
Tom Smith and Dan Murphy, I cannot thank y'all enough
for being with us tonight. It is just an honor
for me to talk to y'all and to call y'all friends.
And I'm going to tell you, Tom, I love what
you said about Dan about you know, keeping you on
the right path and let's not you know, violate somebody's
civil rights, get in trouble. But I tell people all
(56:42):
the time this is why I call it zone seven.
You know, those people that are in your zone seven,
have your back, have your best interest, cheer for you, support, you,
love you, tell you when you're wrong. So Tom Smith
and Dan Murphy thank you so much.
Speaker 2 (56:57):
Well, thank you for the opportunity, and just absolutely love
being here. And you know we have a thing an
the NYPD. Cheryl, like you mentioned earlier, now you're in
our world, You're in part of our family.
Speaker 3 (57:09):
You're screwed and you're not getting rid of us. Good done. Yeah,
your life as you know it is over.
Speaker 1 (57:15):
For Yeah, you have no idea how long I've waited
to hear that. But I adore you both, and absolutely
we are family now.
Speaker 3 (57:25):
Yes, yep, absolutely, Cheryl, thank you so much for this opportunity.
It's an honor to be on Zone seven with you,
and we look forward to having a great many more
conversations with you about cases in the future and talking
about so many more interesting things because you are absolutely
an expert in what you do and we will learn
a lot from you, that's for sure.
Speaker 1 (57:44):
And y'all, I'm going to end Zone seven the way
that I always do with a quote, no friendship is
an accident. Oh, Henry, I'm Cheryl McCollum, and this is
Zone seven at the TA
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