Barry Morphew, a longtime suspect in his wife’s disappearance and murder, was arrested in Arizona on June 20, 2025, two days after he was indicted on a first-degree murder charge in the case of his wife Suzanne Morphew’s death. This was the second time Barry Morphew has been arrested and charged in her death. The initial charges were dismissed without prejudice, meaning authorities reserved the right to charge him again.
CBS 
The latest grand jury indictment reveals new details that are surprising even to those who’ve been following the case since Suzanne Morphew disappeared on Mother’s Day, 2020. Barry Morphew has long stated he had nothing to do with his wife’s murder, and the couple’s two adult daughters have stood by their father.
After the initial charges against Barry Morphew were dismissed, authorities continued to search for her body and on September 22, 2023, Suzanne Morphew’s remains were found in and around a “shallow, clandestine grave … less than an hour south of the Morphew residence,” according to the indictment.
KKTV 
“The majority of her bones were recovered,” the indictment states, and a board-certified anthropologist, a botanist, and an entomologist were brought in to analyze the remains and concluded that “it was unlikely Suzanne decomposed from a fresh body to a skeleton at this location.”
Dan “Dan R” Ridenour, who lives in the Salida area of Colorado where the Morphews lived when Suzanne Morphew went missing, is the news director and operations manager of the Heart of the Rockies Radio. He told “48 Hours” that it was hard to make sense of the indictment’s allegations against Barry Morphew. “Why would he do that?” Ridenour asked. “Why would he move the body?”
For one thing, Ridenour noted that Barry Morphew has been under heavy scrutiny since Suzanne Morphew was reported missing. “There is not a more recognizable face in Salida than Barry Morphew,” Ridenour said. “He’s going to take that chance and drive 70 miles to the south and dig a shallow grave? There are too many questions.”
But the indictment is unequivocal: Suzanne Morphew’s bones were moved to that location after her body had decomposed elsewhere, meaning it had to have been moved at least twice after her murder. “She was not initially killed in the San Luis Valley,” Ridenour said. “She was moved there. That was not her first grave.”
In addition, tests revealed that in Suzanne Morphew’s bone marrow, the chief toxicologist found a mixture of three chemicals known as BAM. The compound is used to tranquilize wildlife and, the indictment noted, that Barry Morphew has admitted using those drugs to tranquilize deer. He had even admitted to authorities that, one month before Suzanne Morphew disappeared, he had used those chemicals to tranquilize a deer near the breezeway of the Morphew residence.
The chemical compound takes several minutes to cause “sedation” the indictment states and tests found “that [Suzanne’s] death was not immediate following BAM exposure because Suzanne Morphew’s body had begun to metabolize the drug before she died.”
CBS 
Authorities have long suspected that Barry Morphew chased Suzanne Morphew around their house after somehow injecting her with the BAM compound. According to texts, Suzanne Morphew had told Barry Morphew she wanted to divorce “civilly” and it was later revealed she was having a two-year affair with a former schoolmate.
The indictment links Barry Morphew to purchases of the BAM compound which is a highly controlled drug. It concludes: “The prescription records show that when Suzanne Morphew disappeared, only one private citizen living in that entire area of the state had access to BAM: Barry Morphew.”
“48 Hours” correspondent Peter Van Sant updates the case in “The Suzanne Morphew Case: Nothing is What It Seems,” airing Saturday, July 5 at 9/8c on CBS and streaming on Paramount+.
“This case is incredibly unique,” says Aya Gruber, now a law professor at the University of Southern California School of Law. “When you started to dig a little bit deeper, nothing is what it seems.”
Gruber studied thousands of pages of public documents from the prosecutor, investigators and defense attorneys.
Suzanne Morphew was reported missing on May 10, 2020. She’d been alone that day because her daughters, Macy, 16, and Mallory, 20, were off on a church-sponsored camping trip and planned to return home later that Mother’s Day.
After Suzanne Morphew was officially reported missing by a neighbor, investigators began to examine Barry Morphew’s story. Friends and relatives told investigators that the marriage was troubled, and agents found a deleted text from Suzanne to Barry on his phone that read: “I’m done. I could care less what you’re up to and have been for years. We just need to figure this out civilly.”
But 10 days after Suzanne Morphew disappeared, agents were pulled in a different direction when they found a so-called spy pen belonging to Suzanne. The spy pen has a long battery life and is designed to look and write like an ordinary pen.
But it has one extra feature: it is voice-activated and records conversations. Suzanne Morphew had acquired it, she told a friend, because she suspected Barry Morphew was having an affair and she hoped to use the pen to gather evidence. But the plan backfired.
Investigators listened to what the pen had recorded and, although there was no evidence of Barry Morphew having an affair, they say they heard “intimate” conversations between Suzanne Morphew and someone named Jeff.
It was another twist in a case filled with them.
Without knowing who Jeff was or his location when Suzanne Morphew went missing, they could not eliminate him as a person or interest. It took FBI agents six months before they uncovered his identity: Jeff Libler, a man both Suzanne and Barry Morphew knew from their Alexandria, Indiana, high school. Libler and Suzanne Morphew had had a one-time fling after graduation, and she’d reached out to him in 2018 after the Morphews moved to Colorado with a Facebook message that read simply: “Howdy stranger.”
“And from that moment they had talked almost every single day nonstop,” said Ashley Franco, a former reporter for KKTV, the CBS affiliate in Colorado Springs, who has covered the story from the beginning.
That was enough to ignite a nearly two-year love affair. Libler had a wife and six children. He lived in Michigan and claimed to be there with his family on the day Suzanne Morphew vanished.
Agents eventually discovered the lovers had spoken to each other for dozens of hours, often communicating via secret accounts on WhatsApp and LinkedIn. Libler also admitted that they met for romantic rendezvous in New Orleans, Florida, Texas, Michigan and Indiana.
After Suzanne Morphew disappeared in May 2020, Libler did not contact authorities. Instead, agents say, he deleted the accounts where he had communicated with Suzanne Morphew.
“What he did was delete all his social media accounts that he had used to communicate with Suzanne,” said Gruber. “He’s got a lot to lose if revelations of this affair come out.”
Libler reportedly told agents he did not want to tarnish Suzanne Morphew’s memory, but he also told them he worried that he’d lose his wife, children and job. He also worried he might be considered a suspect. “He asks the agents, ‘Am I a target?'” said Gruber.
After agents confronted him, he did cooperate, providing a sample of his DNA and passwords to the deleted accounts. Investigators eventually were able to retrace the couple’s steps and recovered texts by tapping into the iCloud accounts of Libler and Suzanne Morphew.
Libler was able to provide receipts for a home goods store he’d visited in Michigan on the day Suzanne vanished and he was eventually cleared.
Investigators still had their suspicions about Barry Morphew. They never uncovered any evidence that he was having an affair, but investigators found his actions on that Mother’s Day weekend to be suspicious.
Chaffee County District Court 
They asked Barry Morphew why his phone seemed to be pinging all around his house on the day before Mother’s Day and he told them he must have been out shooting chipmunks, which he said were a constant nuisance at the house.
It was perhaps the world’s first chipmunk alibi, but Barry Morphew stood by it, saying he’d shot 85 chipmunks in the two years he owned that Colorado house.
“And then that confession to shooting chipmunks becomes a major piece of incriminating evidence against him,” said Gruber.
Van Sant asked why. “Because [agents are] saying, ‘Well, you know, now he’s admitting to having run around the house. And this is a ridiculous explanation, so it must be the explanation of a guilty person,'” Gruber replied.
What’s more, there was no evidence of any chipmunk shootings around the house and neighbors did not recall hearing any type of disturbance during that period of time.
Cases sometimes turn on the smallest of things and, in this case, agents seized upon just such a small item.
Agents had found a small clear plastic cap in the family’s dryer that they believed was from a syringe used to inject chemicals into a tranquilizer dart. Barry Morphew acknowledged he knew how to inject chemicals into a dart and that he’d shot many deer for trophies and so he could get their antlers. His garage was filled with deer heads and a pile of antlers. However, there was no working tranquilizer gun found in the home and authorities say Barry’s DNA was not on that plastic cap.
Even so, investigators developed a theory that Barry Morphew had shot Suzanne Morphew with a tranquilizer gun and then chased her around the house before she passed out. They found a door frame that was broken and suspected there had been a confrontation.
Agents also tapped into a new investigative tool called digital vehicle forensics. They pulled data from his Ford truck’s many computers and got the truck to “talk” to them. They learned that when Barry Morphew said he was sleeping, the truck’s doors were opening and closing.
He was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and other crimes in May 2021. Barry eventually pleaded not guilty.
