Found Deceased CO - Suzanne Morphew, 49, did not return from bike ride, Chaffee County, 10 May 2020 #6

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I was thinking more like the ashes may be mixed in the dirt he used. Would they need to search more if they had found evidence of that in the home fire place? Perhaps the fireplace was recently cleaned??

I had this same thought earlier, but couldn’t bring myself to type it. It would eliminate the possibility of someone down the line uncovering a buried body, bones, etc, under the slab (ie, other people doing some of this work). Using the home’s fireplace would not raise a red flag like outdoor burning during a fire ban would. IMO, it would be more difficult to clean a wood chipper. Yikes.
 
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Could the trailer dirt just be residue off the scooper-digger thingie?

"Just", I see myself saying. It could indeed be from the s-d-t, but it could have dirt from the site currently being searched....
The wording in this post makes me so happy. We are instantly friends, FYI.
 
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I’m not saying BM is the prime suspect-but something led LE to this site. Other people involved in construction/landscaping are connected to the Morphews and may have been involved in work there. Keeping an open mind. Who knows exactly what was found at Suzanne’s home.
bbm
It certainly did !
There's no way LE would break up concrete and sift through huge piles of dirt on a whim.
And likely much more evidence already bagged and tagged --re. the search at the residence.
When this is over and someone's trial starts, we'll be amazed at the amount of evidence LE had.
 
I had this same thought earlier, but couldn’t bring myself to type it. It would eliminate the possibility of someone down the line uncovering a buried body, bones, etc, under the slab (ie, other people doing some of this work). Using the home’s fireplace would not raise a reg flag like outdoor burning during a fire ban would. IMO, it would be more difficult to clean a wood chipper. Yikes.

Would burning a person in a fireplace or fire pit react to luminol spray?
 
So you are proposing that he slipped in Sunday night and buried the body, replacing all of the insulation exactly, so that the people who laid it wouldn't notice Monday morning? I'm not asking if it would be impossible, but it seems to me like a stupid plan. If he did it, he's a moron; and if he did it and got away with it, he's got to be the luckiest sub-contractor in Colorado. IMO

No. That he would have mixed her ashes in the dirt he moved around allegedly on 5/10 or before. Then the concrete guys were there Monday and did the insulation and had inspector come by.
 
The trouble I'm having with the thought of BM burning a body, where would he do this? After I looked at the home via the helicopter camera, there really are no cleared areas around the home. So relatively comfortable it didn't happen there. Plus as someone said, CO has been in stage two (no burn status). Fire would also draw attention.
A wood chipper however could be towed to a remote area, say maybe an area dirt was pushed up to be loaded and hauled away.

I don't know, with so few details to work with it's difficult to suss out workable theories.

Wood burning fire place?
 
Could the trailer dirt just be residue off the scooper-digger thingie?

"Just", I see myself saying. It could indeed be from the s-d-t, but it could have dirt from the site currently being searched....

It's hard to be sure of scale, but the s-d-t doesn't look nearly big enough to have done the job at the search site, and the trailer certainly doesn't hold enough dirt.

Could have put dirt into the trailer to be moved to the site along with other material, though.
 
Wouldn't ground penetrating radar show skeletal remains and wouldn't they be able to go directly above where the remains are? I am obviously having difficulty figuring out what kind of evidence they are sifting for and why haven't they found whatever was big enough for the ground radar to identify to choose that exact spot.


As horrible as it sounds, they may not be looking for an intact body.
 
Paying for Damage to Property, Caused by LE Action. Other COL Case
The law review article I linked goes over state by state what different courts have said on the issue. ...
@Alethea :) sbm bbm Thanks for link to law review article analyzing who should pay for ^ damages. I haven't searched COL statutes or case law. Your MSM link re Greenwood, COL case was interesting as well. A Mar 2020 MSM article w links to ct filings: SWAT Team House Destruction Case Could Land at U.S. Supreme Court . From article: "...Redfern [atty] predicts that the U.S. Supreme Court will decide whether or not to hear the case sometime in June...Click to read the U.S. Supreme Court petition in the case of Leo Lech et al., v. City of Greenwood Village et al., as well as the original Greenwood Village SWAT team lawsuit and the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling."

From article below re Greenwood case w house damaged w 2015, homeowner paid "...$28,000 in legal fees he also incurred as he pursued compensation from the city and police..." Police Owe Nothing To Man Whose Home They Blew Up, Appeals Court Says
 
I don't know that he could have been working on Mother's Day. If I read the permitting right, they asked for and got inspection of Insulation Under Slab and Plumbing in Floor Tube on Monday 5/11/2020 prior to pouring the slab and had the inspector back on 5/14/2020 to inspect caissons and piers. My guess is that the general contractor laid the insulation on Sunday, and the plumbing sub may have laid in the encased piping on the same day. If not, the plumber did it earlier and asked for inspection with the insulation inspection. That time window is the least likely time that I can imagine a landscaper buzzing his bobcat all around moving dirt.
Building Department Permit Detail

Yes - the chief fire officer (I think his surname is Bertram) gave an interview this week in response to the question as to whether there had been any fire training in Denver, which is what was reported across multiple MSM sites as BM's reason for being away from home on Mother's day and prior to that.
The CFO replied to the effect that there wasn't any training going on - due to COVID-19, so unless BM had paid for some private training, there wasn't any fire training going on Denver. The fire chief then added that it was his understanding that BM was working on a landscaping job that day.
 
The trouble I'm having with the thought of BM burning a body, where would he do this? After I looked at the home via the helicopter camera, there really are no cleared areas around the home. So relatively comfortable it didn't happen there. Plus as someone said, CO has been in stage two (no burn status). Fire would also draw attention.
A wood chipper however could be towed to a remote area, say maybe an area dirt was pushed up to be loaded and hauled away.

I don't know, with so few details to work with it's difficult to suss out workable theories.
So where is the woods chipper with human DNA? Is there hiding places for that in. the area?
 
There's also a large propane tank on the property. It is not installed next to the house. It may be used to fuel certain heavy landscaping equipment and/or it might be piped to the dwelling.

Th
Appears to be a gas stove as well.

The Morphew house is heated by radiant floor heating. That would be water heated by the propane tank. So the radiant floor heating, the hot water heating, the stove heating, and perhaps the hottub heating is all from the propane tank.

There would not be a natural gas line running to that house.
 
Could the trailer dirt just be residue off the scooper-digger thingie?

"Just", I see myself saying. It could indeed be from the s-d-t, but it could have dirt from the site currently being searched....
Ya know, if that s-d-t was used for dirt at the search-site, it could also have non-dirt debris of interest to investigators.
 
<modsnip: House number is not sourced in MSM > County Road 105, Salida, Colorado

38°31'8.85"N, 105°58'36.58"W

I'm not sure of the accuracy of the address here as there's no link verifying this address but Realtor.com photos for this address reveal there are a few existing concrete slabs at that address probably foundations for prefab, shop, or mobile home units previously housed there.

Interesting.

The building inspector was at the site inspecting piers and insulation under the slab on 5/11, 5/14 & 5/15. So exactly when would BM have brought something there?

Unfortunately, we don't have any info on who and when someone other than BM last saw Suzanne alive.

Any demolition, clearing permits, etc. in your research?
 
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For this they could have used magnets? Sifting wouldn't be necessary? I'm thinking bone fragments, or even ash.
I'm thinking LE used metal detector that signaled something made of metal may be underneath the cement slab they cut out. They knew the precise location to dig. But I just began to read about this case, so I may be off.
 
It's hard to be sure of scale, but the s-d-t doesn't look nearly big enough to have done the job at the search site, and the trailer certainly doesn't hold enough dirt.

Could have put dirt into the trailer to be moved to the site along with other material, though.

I'm thinking the trailer schlepped around the s-d-t, and that's how the dirt got on it. The dirt could have been from extra-curricular digging work at the search site.

Moving new dirt suitable for the pad maybe could have been accomplished with an s-d-t (scooper-digger-thingie for the as yet uninitiated in my creative vocabulary) to do the detail work, while a bigger piece of machinery (the kind that are generally gold-colored) would be needed to contour the whole lot.

My house just got built last year, and they did something like this. They had an adorable s-d-t for finesse like the gritty driveway and an ancient but serviceable monster to man-handle the lot, move felled trees, etc. My lot might actually be about the same size as the search-site lot. IIRC, my fellas dug the ditches by hand, but I had a virgin lot, and the search-site will have had utilities in situ.
 
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Wood burning fire place?
I heat my house with a wood burning fireplace insert that is the same set-up as theirs and I am pretty sure that you aren't going to be burning a human body in it. Just the dimensions of the stove itself makes it pretty unlikely not to mention you would need a really really hot fire to perform such a feat. Not totally impossible but not an easy task.
 
Interesting. I had assumed that trailer and the scooper-digger thingie at the Morphew residence was because there was ongoing hardscape work at the site.

But, that spot with the stairs, etc. is in a photo on Zillow, therefore pre-Morphew.... Maybe not current hardscaping work at all.

See what you think... https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/19057-Puma-Path-Salida-CO-81201/96847591_zpid/?mmlb=g,30

Maybe it's in a little bit different location? On the current flyover photo, though, it looks like there's new dirt on the ground. Recently turned over? Is it also different from the dirt on the trailer which may or may not have been at the building site currently being searched?

It's peculiar. It sure looks like police tape taking that odd little zig-zag at the beginning of that stone path. If you were doing your own landscaping work on that path because it had been damaged in the winter, for example, you wouldn't put caution tape up I don't think.

I can certainly believe LE would be looking at all the soil area around the property for signs of disturbance.

And yes to the mini scooper-digger thingie. My new favorite term
 
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