Found Deceased CO - Suzanne Morphew, 49, did not return from bike ride, Chaffee County, 10 May 2020 #52

[303gmf]

I hadn't seen that video yet, Lauren really is a blessing to this case. Constantly bringing it back up and focusing attention back on it.

I bet ehm whoever done it, gets really annoyed by her. And that I love.

Yes she is! I’m still wondering why Fox 21 has muzzled her though? Something fishy

 

[K9Enzo]

I would like if another reporter would take interest in this case and start to dig. For me, it would be nice to have a new set of eyes reporting on the case. Nothing against LS, but something definitely happened right before AM’s private search started. I would like to hear more than reporting on that stupid wall. I know it might be an alibi, but still...

Too bad reporter Bayan Wang is not in CO. I like him. He’s busy with the missing toddler brothers right now.

I think there’s enough intrigue in this case. Why is not being picked up by another reporter?

Does anyone think this case has been brought to a grand jury and they did not find enough evidence to bring charges against someone?

IMO

 

[susiQ]

Thank you for transcribing the show @swedeheart, much appreciated.

Now the the picture of all those bikes piled up that was posted on PE's site makes sense to me; IMO it was their way of rattling BM; letting him know that they know about the bike, maybe implying they found the needle in the haystack?

I want to know when, where and how the "parts bike" was acquired.

Was Suzanne's bike mechanic aware that she had acquired another bike for "parts"?

Was the bike purchased because someone just couldn't bring themselves to throw Suzanne's expensive bike down the ravine when a less costly bike would suffice?

MOPO (My opinions and ponderings only)

I like how you think!

MOPA (My Opinion and Ponderings Also)!

 

[DizzyB]

I would love to hear about the conversation between BM and the neighbor. He asked her to check for the bike, and she may have said it was there at the house. Then BM would have had to steer her into looking for a different bike, and checking for that. It could have been one of those first hinky things for LE. I would also love to know when that bike ended up down in the ravine. Maybe it was purchased and tossed. Maybe it never made its way to the Puma Path house. Maybe LE found info that BM had purchased a bike, the bike that was found, and that’s where the “for parts” story came from. I watch too much true crime to think that LE doesn’t have a lot of details that point to a particular person. They want to convict, not accuse.

 

[susiQ]

That crossed my mind too.
Also, if neighbor checked for bike, she would have seen Suzanne's new bike and would not have reported it was not there.

Wouldn’t it be awesome to have a transcript of the conversation between BM and his neighbour? I’d like to “analyze” that!!

 

[Ontario Mom]

I still think Friday is in the running, @Ontario Mom. MG said BM worked at the “beach” at the Salida job site Friday night. He was really anxious Saturday Morning. He called off work early. He was seen in town alone. He met JP on Saturday afternoon in town and asked him if he would be available to work on the Broomfield job. Any of this could also be a marker for premeditation but:
I think BM might have killed his wife Friday night in some type of rage. He panicked. He may have temporarily concealed her body that night. He needed to come up with an alibi. He couldn’t report her missing then, because he was there. So he went to the job site with MG Saturday morning trying to act as if everything was normal. His nerves couldn’t take it and he needed to get things done. He told MG he had to go home and make SM happy by taking her hiking or biking. This means SM was not happy. I think the hiking or biking line was a slip. I think he was planning the alibi. Could he shove her off a cliff somewhere? Or could she disappear on a bike ride? I think by the time he went into town and met JP he had settled on the bike ride and his Broomfield job alibi.
SM may have texted with her BFF on Friday night. The BFF texts on Saturday morning but SM either doesn’t answer or BM answers and says something generic like, “Can’t talk right now”. Later BFF tries to reach her again, but receives no response.

That scenario would be entirely possible (and explain BM's weird behavior on Saturday morning on the job site with MG), but it all hinges on the actual timing of the convo online with her friend in IN. If they were chatting in the morning, before 11am when BM called it an early day and left for biking/hiking, then Friday's off the table. I sure wish we knew the actual time of day she was supposedly chatting with her friend, when the convo abruptly ended. That would eliminate a lot of speculation.

jmo

 

[fcavanaugh]

DBM

 

[steeltowngirl]

I would like if another reporter would take interest in this case and start to dig. For me, it would be nice to have a new set of eyes reporting on the case. Nothing against LS, but something definitely happened right before AM’s private search started. I would like to hear more than reporting on that stupid wall. I know it might be an alibi, but still...

Too bad reporter Bayan Wang is not in CO. I like him. He’s busy with the missing toddler brothers right now.

I think there’s enough intrigue in this case. Why is not being picked up by another reporter?

Does anyone think this case has been brought to a grand jury and they did not find enough evidence to bring charges against someone?

IMO

Great question! I would have thought the use of a grand jury would be made public, but doing some digging now...

1.1 How often are grand juries used in Colorado?
In Colorado, most felony indictments are done by “information” and the grand juror process is used sparingly.

4.1 Is the indictment a secret?
A district attorney may file a petition with the court requiring the court to seal the indictment. This means that no person may disclose the existence of the indictment until:

• the defendant is in custody; or
• the defendant has been admitted to bail; except
• as when necessary for the issuance of a warrant or summon.

The reason the district attorney may seal the indictment is to prevent a suspect from fleeing law enforcement after learning about pending criminal charges.

Grand Jurys & Indictments in Colorado Criminal Cases

 

[fcavanaugh]

That scenario would be entirely possible (and explain BM's weird behavior on Saturday morning on the job site with MG), but it all hinges on the actual timing of the convo online with her friend in IN. If they were chatting in the morning, before 11am when BM called it an early day and left for biking/hiking, then Friday's off the table. I sure wish we knew the actual time of day she was supposedly chatting with her friend, when the convo abruptly ended. That would eliminate a lot of speculation.

jmo

Right @Ontario Mom. Also, I wish we knew the source of the SM/BM sandwich sighting on Saturday afternoon. In addition to what you mentioned above, stating the obvious, if the Saturday afternoon SM sighting is valid, Friday is off the table.
So many details I wish we knew, I’m sure LE knows though.

IMHO

#FindSuzanne
#BringSuzanneHome
#JusticeForSuzanne

 

[Auntie Cipation]

I watched a Dateline the other night where a wife killed her husband who owned a small business. She told his employees that he was sick and wouldn’t be in for a few days. An employee texted the victim a few times and he said he could tell almost immediately that it didn’t seem like it was his boss that was texting him back. This surprised me a bit.
BM seems to neither speak nor write the Queen’s English from what little we’ve seen. SM was a teacher and probably had better writing skills. It may have been spelling or punctuation that raised the BFF’s hinky meter.

That is interesting (and surprising to me as well). I wish we knew how substantive those texts were for the employee to know right away.

I just can't help but think there is a threshhold of -- I guess it's not length of sentences necessarily, but maybe a combination of that plus the amount of emotion attempted to be conveyed, that would be the identifying feature.

So, if BFF says "oh, Bride looks so beautiful, here's a photo of her in her dress" there might be a big red flag between Suzanne's expected "aw..." and a poser's "cool" or "yeah" or worse.

But if it just so happened that the nature of the chat was such that clipped comments by SM seemed to fit, then it could have gone unnoticed for a while at first.

Once we see the arrest affidavit this will be one of the most interesting aspects to me.

IMO

 

[kittythehare]

Right @Ontario Mom. Also, I wish we knew the source of the SM/BM sandwich sighting on Saturday afternoon. In addition to what you mentioned above, stating the obvious, if the Saturday afternoon SM sighting is valid, Friday is off the table.

So many details I wish we knew, I’m sure LE knows though.

IMHO

#FindSuzanne
#BringSuzanneHome
#JusticeForSuzanne

I never found that sandwich, all I could find was MG's statement that she'd heard he was in town by himself wandering around or words to that effect and she was surprised because he'd told her he was going to be going home...

I feel she was set up and I got the impression that she knew it too. But she gave her phone to LE, she wasn't afraid.
I think Friday is a definite runner depending upon the nature of the alleged conversation with her friend and whether it was verbal or via text. And the time.
LE will know the time.
They're very tight.
I think they have strong cards but I don't know why I think that...
I reckon the GJ is a runner too.
Suppose it happened Friday and was disposed on Friday...
On Saturday he started having second thoughts about some aspects of the disposal site.. it needed to be altered...
But the machinery didn't start moving until very late at night.. a job he thought he could do by hand suddenly needed a machine???

 

[kshultz06082]

Thanks @swedeheart for posting the video.

I agree with everybody who said it was interesting.

What a surprising info about the bike. I wonder what was about that cheaper bike Suzanne might have needed for her more expensive bike, which would have been cheaper to buy inclusive a bike than just order the part.
I have a hard time imagining what that would have been.

What I also found interesting was the comment of one of the experts (sorry wasn’t taking notes) about if you are investigating a house fire you should check if there were some valuables taken out just before the fire. (Not verbatim)
And here we have a bike which was the cheapest one thrown down from the road and the expensive one sitting home safe. Hmmm. Unless her own bike was really not in any shape to ride, which LE would already know.

I also completely agree that we don’t have a strong denial from BM with an “I didn’t “ sentence. At least I haven’t seen one yet.

And the revelation that he seems to be a true crime fan... Wow. If that’s true, I bet he was sure he thought about everything, that he is smarter than the police, LE would just see he wasn’t there (he has a hotel reservation to show for and is on video) and he will be in the clear in no time.

ALL IMHO

It always amazes me to hear that a true crime fan allegedly committed a crime. As a true crime fan myself, my biggest take away has always been that I could never commit a crime and get away with it. There are way too many ways to get caught. I guess I always assume that criminals don't have the forensic files host whisper them to sleep every night like i do,, because if they did, they would know that they would/could get caught by the smallest piece of evidence. Jmo

 

[fcavanaugh]

I never found that sandwich, all I could find was MG's statement that she'd heard he was in town by himself wandering around or words to that effect and she was surprised because he'd told her he was going to be going home...

I feel she was set up and I got the impression that she knew it too. But she gave her phone to LE, she wasn't afraid.
I think Friday is a definite runner depending upon the nature of the alleged conversation with her friend and whether it was verbal or via text. And the time.
LE will know the time.
They're very tight.
I think they have strong cards but I don't know why I think that...
I reckon the GJ is a runner too.
Suppose it happened Friday and was disposed on Friday...
On Saturday he started having second thoughts about some aspects of the disposal site.. it needed to be altered...
But the machinery didn't start moving until very late at night.. a job he thought he could do by hand suddenly needed a machine???

RBBM
You make excellent points kitty, it’s definitely possible.
The Saturday afternoon SM/BM sandwich sighting on Saturday afternoon was mentioned by Suzanne’s brother, AM, I believe during his Doctor Phil show appearance in early October, after his big search concluded, but he did not say who the source of that information was. I’d post the Dr. Phil episode video, except I’m on my i-phone atm and it doesn’t cooperate with me too well. You should be able to find the Dr. Phil video on the Media Thread if you wish to listen.

IMHO

#FindSuzanne
#BringSuzanneHome
#JusticeForSuzanne

 

[Blue Amethyst]

^RSBM

Or perhaps someone else was adept at hiding bodies. Leaving BM just one job to do - work the alibi.
And it didn’t go smoothly.

jmo

Interesting thinking. It had never occurred to me that he could have done the crime and someone else hid the body. That would give him so much more time.

I still wonder if the crime scene wasn’t at his home but out in the woods close by. They could have gone for a walk off his property and SM never returned.

He could have hidden her temporarily and a friend then hid her better. Just speculation.

 

[susiQ]

I believe another member posted this a couple weeks ago. It appears Linda Stanley may utilize the Grand Jury process a bit more than it has been used in the past.

“Stanley said Jones will be helping to get the county court case numbers back down to a reasonable amount.”

“He’s also great for staffing homicides and other major cases because he has done several of them, as well as grand juries which haven’t been utilized in this district,” Stanley said. “We certainly need to look into doing that more often.”

New District Attorney assembles team, gets right to work – Canon City Daily Record

 

[Hair of the Dog]

Maybe a shocked/confused family member who observed the bike found in the ravine, blurted out on scene that Suzanne didn't own such a bike or she would never ride that bike because it wasn't safe/operable/just for parts and that got LE's attention. Maybe the bike was dusty in places it shouldn't have been if it had been ridden.

MOPO (My Opinion and Ponderings Only)

 

[Lilypad13]

Did anyone watch the latest Dateline about a Florida mother named Bonnie Haim that disappeared in 1993? Her son was only three years old when she vanished and in interviews with child psychologists and social workers it became evident to them that he had witnessed his father kill his mother. They were having marital problems and she possibly told him that night that she wanted a divorce.

When they asked her little boy if he remembered what she was wearing the night she disappeared he whispered “red blood” and eventually he told them his father shot his mommy with a gun and buried her in the ground but he could not remember where. None of this could be proven and the father said his son was making it up so even though the husband was under suspicion for years, without a body he was never arrested.

The little boy went to live with foster parents who loved him and ended up adopting him and he had a wonderful childhood with them but this poor child used to ask them to take him out searching for his mother’s grave.

When he was a young man his father, who had moved to another state, remarried and had more kids, died. The father still owned the home (the fact that he never sold it should have been a red flag) but when he died the son inherited the house where they lived when his mother vanished. He didn’t want to live in the house so he rented it out for several years and then decided to do a lot of work himself to restore and update the home in order to sell it. And low and behold when he was using a machine to dig up the pool and underground pipes he found his mother’s remains buried in the backyard...she had been there all along for 21 years!!

It was really sad that the son was the one who found his mother’s decomposed remains...he found her skull first and her teeth and LE recovered her the rest of her bones and even her wedding ring was there. She was buried right by the house under an outdoor shower and her body had remained there the rest of the time the father and son lived there and throughout several more decades even when renters lived in the house. How creepy is that?! The house and yard had been searched back when she disappeared but they missed her. They didn’t say if a cadaver dog had been used.

But anyway you can see where I’m going with this...could Suzanne actually be buried on the property or in the woods somewhere near the PP house? Maybe BM is not afraid to sell it because she is hidden so well he doesn’t think she will ever be found AND maybe he thinks no one will suspect she is there since he has put the house up for sale. OR maybe Suzanne was buried on the construction site property under where the house is now or near the river and she was not found during the search by LE. Chances are that she is in some remote location but I have this nagging thought that she could be closer and she might have been missed. Evidently it does happen.

 

[kittythehare]

RBBM
You make excellent points kitty, it’s definitely possible.
The Saturday afternoon SM/BM sandwich sighting on Saturday afternoon was mentioned by Suzanne’s brother, AM, I believe during his Doctor Phil show appearance in early October, after his big search concluded, but he did not say who the source of that information was. I’d post the Dr. Phil episode video, except I’m on my i-phone atm and it doesn’t cooperate with me too well. You should be able to find the Dr. Phil video on the Media Thread if you wish to listen.

IMHO

#FindSuzanne
#BringSuzanneHome
#JusticeForSuzanne

Aha. I did see that but didn't take it in fully.
I didn't know how much he actually knew as fact.
It may well not be a thing at all.
a small local journalist might know more but if there is one they're keeping a low profile, possibly because LE want it that way.

 

[swedeheart]

"They are probably embarrassed how they handled the situation and they just wanna crawl under a rock about it. I have no idea. The sheriff has a lot of explainin' to do on what they are doing now and what they did then. I have searched trail after trail after trail on that dirt bike..."

Now he starts to disparage the very entity that has the ability to search for his wife and bring her justice, as well as the entity that can clear his name. He is re-directing the responsibility from himself, and the predicament he's in, onto LE, saying, basically, it's their fault.

"I'm in the dark here. I don't know what they're investigatin', who they're investigatin', I know they're investigatin' me bc they destroyed my family and my life.

Lauren then asks him if he will be there for Suzanne's vigil: "Absolutely."

We know that's not true.

"She's a meth-head just like Jeff. She's mad at me because I fired her. She's mad, so she's not gonna say anything good about me. I'm 100 percent innocent, and social media and the news media has made it seem like I'm a bad guy..."

This was Barry's prime opportunity to make a reliable denial about being involved in SM's disappearance, and he didn't do it. What he did, instead, was he attacked those making allegations against him. He attacked the messenger. He had the opportunity to say emphatically "I didn't kill my wife, I didn't have anything to do with her disappearance," but he did not do that. This lack of a denial is a sign of deception. Barry is the victim, who has been victimized by everyone around him. It's no longer about Suzanne.

He also assassinates the characters of his workers so that people will not believe them. And yet, he's the one who hired them. (We all said this).

"Jeff was in prison for 9 years..."
More character assassination. Why should he care? If he was innocent, he wouldn't be disparaging the very employees he hired.

"Listen, I need to do this job, I will pay you good money... I gave him a job and they jumped on it."
Building himself up to be the good guy. Who builds themselves up? People who need to rehab themselves to the public or to whoever is listening.

By suddenly saying "they jumped on it," he's not just referring to Jeff anymore, but he's now introduced another person into the mix. This makes the investigators ears perk up and wonder now if there is more than one person involved in this.

He also says "I am 100 percent innocent" but never makes a blatant denial like "I did not hurt my wife," or "I did not have anything to do with the disappearance of my wife," or anything specific for us to know what he's innocent of. What is he innocent of? It's a detached statement. It's evasive.

 

[DizzyB]

"They are probably embarrassed how they handled the situation and they just wanna crawl under a rock about it. I have no idea. The sheriff has a lot of explainin' to do on what they are doing now and what they did then. I have searched trail after trail after trail on that dirt bike..."

Now he starts to disparage the very entity that has the ability to search for his wife and bring her justice, as well as the entity that can clear his name. He is re-directing the responsibility from himself, and the predicament he's in, onto LE, saying, basically, it's their fault.

"I'm in the dark here. I don't know what they're investigatin', who they're investigatin', I know they're investigatin' me bc they destroyed my family and my life.

Lauren then asks him if he will be there for Suzanne's vigil: "Absolutely."

We know that's not true.

"She's a meth-head just like Jeff. She's mad at me because I fired her. She's mad, so she's not gonna say anything good about me. I'm 100 percent innocent, and social media and the news media has made it seem like I'm a bad guy..."

This was Barry's prime opportunity to make a reliable denial about being involved in SM's disappearance, and he didn't do it. What he did, instead, was he attacked those making allegations against him. He attacked the messenger. He had the opportunity to say emphatically "I didn't kill my wife, I didn't have anything to do with her disappearance," but he did not do that. This lack of a denial is a sign of deception. Barry is the victim, who has been victimized by everyone around him. It's no longer about Suzanne.

He also assassinates the characters of his workers so that people will not believe them. And yet, he's the one who hired them. (We all said this).

"Jeff was in prison for 9 years..."
More character assassination. Why should he care? If he was innocent, he wouldn't be disparaging the very employees he hired.

"Listen, I need to do this job, I will pay you good money... I gave him a job and they jumped on it."
Building himself up to be the good guy. Who builds themselves up? People who need to rehab themselves to the public or to whoever is listening.

By suddenly saying "they jumped on it," he's not just referring to Jeff anymore, but he's now introduced another person into the mix. This makes the investigators ears perk up and wonder now if there is more than one person involved in this.

He also says "I am 100 percent innocent" but never makes a blatant denial like "I did not hurt my wife," or "I did not have anything to do with the disappearance of my wife," or anything specific for us to know what he's innocent of. What is he innocent of? It's a detached statement. It's evasive.

Distancing. All about him. Blame. I don’t remember much MSM accusing Barry. How was his family destroyed by others? Sure, the murderer destroyed his family by killing his wife, but what other aspects of his family were destroyed? It didn’t seem like he had much of a relationship with Andy before. Is his side doubting him?