NEED TO KNOW
- Barry Morphew was arrested in June and charged with the murder of his wife Suzanne Morphew for the second time, after his first case never made it to trial before being dismissed
- Barry, 58, had been in jail for almost three months when supporters managed to raise the $300,000 needed to cover his bail and secure his release to house arrest
- Barry and Suzanne’s two daughters, Mallory and Macy, have supported their father ever since their mother’s disappearance, but prosecutors have listed both as potential witnesses
Barry Morphew is currently awaiting trial after being charged with murdering his wife Suzanne Morphew.
This is now the second time that Barry, 58, has faced murder charges in the death of his wife, who went missing from their Colorado home on Mother’s Day 2020.
Barry was confined to a jail cell ahead of his trial with bail set at $3 million — which his supporters managed to raise, leading to his release from pretrial detention on Sept. 19.
The Alamosa County Sheriff’s Office announced the news and said that no additional details would be provided, and Barry’s lawyer would only say that the money to secure his client’s bond came from his friends and supporters.
It was just a few weeks prior that the judge agreed to change Barry’s bail from $3 million cash to $3 million cash, surety or property, meaning he needed to secure just $300,000 to be released from jail.
After his supporters raised the money they were able to find a bail bondsman to sign off on the transfer of Barry from jail to house arrest.
Barry is required to wear a GPS monitoring device at all times, cannot own a weapon or use drugs or alcohol, and is only allowed to leave the home to meet with his lawyers or doctors and in the event of a medical emergency, according to an appearance bond sheet filed in court and obtained by PEOPLE.
Barry and Suzanne’s daughters Macy and Mallory were both in court for the Sept. 2 hearing during which the judge agreed to modify their father’s bail.
The two young women have been unwavering in their support of their father, with at least one of the daughters appearing at all of their father’s court appearances.
At the Sept. 2 hearing, the judge noted the fact that the two women were in attendance and listed their support as a key reason why she modified Barry’s bail — even as prosecutors have listed both daughters as potential witnesses.
Barry will be back in court on Nov. 3 for a pretrial appearance, where the judge may finally announce a tentative start date for his murder trial.
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His first case was dismissed just two weeks before his trial at the request of prosecutors, who filed their motion without prejudice in the event they wanted to arrest Barry again and retry the case.
On June 18, 2025, they did just that, arresting Barry and charging him with first-degree murder.
His second arrest came in the wake of the El Paso County Medical Examiner’s Office completing their autopsy of Suzanne, whose manner of death was determined to be homicide.
The autopsy also noted that there was evidence of “butorphanol, azaperone and medetomidine intoxication,” something that members of law enforcement requested the medical examiner check for during their examination of Suzanne’s remains.
That specific request was made because those three drugs combine to make BAM, a powerful animal sedative that authorities allege Barry used to kill his wife.
The indictment filed in June stated that “law enforcement found one of these needle caps in the dryer” after Barry dried the shorts he was wearing on the day of Suzanne’s disappearance.
Barry said that he had used the sedative on a deer farm he owned in Indiana approximately a month before his wife’s murder.
Investigators then began to research the prevalence of the sedative and found records which “showed that no other private citizens or private businesses in any of the surrounding counties had purchased BAM prescriptions from 2017-2020,” according to the indictment.
Those same records also showed that the only other purchases of BAM in the state of Colorado had been from the Colorado Parks and Wildlife agency and the National Parks Service — both of which maintained careful records of any use of the drug, per the indictment.
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Barry was arrested in Arizona on June 20 and then extradited to Colorado.
He has not yet entered a plea as his lawyers say they still need time to sort through all the evidence and information in the case. They are expected to provide the judge with a status update at the Nov. 3 hearing.
Barry previously entered a not guilty plea after his first arrest and has maintained that he is innocent of any wrongdoing ever since his wife’s disappearance.
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The disappearance remained a mystery for over three years until a separate investigation hoping to locate another missing woman came upon the remains of Suzanne approximately 50 miles from where she went missing.
The discovery of the body reinvigorated the investigation, with prosecutors previously building their case against Barry before Suzanne’s body had been discovered.
Both his lawyers and prosecutors did not respond to requests for comment.
Read the full article here


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