Long-awaited Suzanne Morphew toxicology report raises new questions in homicide case

A long-awaited toxicology report on Suzanne Morphew’s remains could upend the nearly four-year-old murder case.

A test found that Morphew had chemicals in her bones that do not appear naturally in humans, according to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the official autopsy report.

Specifically, a source who wished to remain anonymous stated that the tests came from the bone marrow of Suzanne Morphew's femur. 

Butorphanol, azaperone and medetomidine — the chemicals found in Morphew's femur, according to the report — are used by biologists, wildlife officers and hunters to anesthetize large-sized animals such as deer, bear, moose and horses. The report described the compound as an "injectable chemical immobilizer" for wildlife, the symptoms of which can be reversed.

The autopsy report, performed by the El Paso County Coroner's office, found Suzanne Morphew’s cause of death to be undetermined and the manner of death to be homicide.

The autopsy report was finished on Sept. 27, 2023, just days after Morphew's remains were discovered by accident by an investigative team from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation looking for a different person.

The autopsy results took a long time to be released — seven months — as investigators waited for test results. It's unclear whether the new information will lead to reopening the case. 

Butorphanol, azaperone and medetomidine are the same substances that Suzanne's husband, Barry Morphew, told investigators he routinely used to immobilize deer before he removed their antlers.

The chemical mixture is often sold in kit form with the acronym "BAM."

Barry Morphew's attorney, Iris Eytan, told The Denver Gazette that investigators should be looking past Barry Morphew as a suspect and concentrate on other people in the region who may have gotten a prescription and knew that Suzanne Morphew was "in her house alone that day." 

Eytan, who said that she has concerns about the integrity of the investigation, added, "Special veterinarians have the ability to prescribe these controlled substances. If they do their job and don’t have blinders on, they’ll be able to get the prescription record, which farmers and ranchers had it and especially in that area." 

She spoke of a "consistently troubled" relationship between the investigation and Barry Morphew and his daughters.

When asked if Barry Morphew is worried the new development could look bad for him, Eytan replied, "What do you mean? He wants to know who did it. He wants for them to pound the pavement and find out." 

According to the 129-page arrest affidavit, when investigators questioned Barry Morphew about the tranquilizer on May 5, 2021, he told them, “I’ve shot two deer with my tranq gun ‘cause I used to raise deer and I collect horns and I’ll tell you exactly what I did."

"They’re in the yard. I shoot them, they go to sleep. I cut their horns off and I wake 'em up and they go off with no horns on their head. ... You’re gonna find tranq darts around my property because I’ve done that,” he added. 

The chemicals were the crux of the prosecutors’ case in the high-profile trial, which 11th Judicial District Judge Ramsey Lama dismissed without prejudice nine days before it was scheduled to begin. Barry Morphew walked out of the courthouse a free man on April 19, 2022.

Dismissed without prejudice means that a case is dismissed but can be refiled at some point.

Suzanne Morphew’s bones were discovered scattered in a dry, high desert field south of the town of Moffat on Sept. 22 seven months ago, after the case against her husband was dismissed. 

Prosecutors theorized that Barry Morphew caught his wife at home sunbathing and texting her lover on May 9, 2020, and, enraged that his suspicions about the romance were true, injected her with the chemicals to put her to sleep and killed her later, according to testimony from the preliminary hearing in August 2021.

Morphew gave inconsistent answers in police interviews as to the last time he used the tranquilizer serum, the arrest document said. In the May 5 interview, he said the last time he used the chemicals to sedate deer was at the end of April 2020, just weeks before his wife was last seen alive. But on a subsequent interview on May 28, he said he only used them in Indiana to medicate white tail deer and “never in Colorado.”

The Morphew family moved to Maysville, near Salida, from Indiana, hoping for a fresh start and to be closer to their oldest daughter, Mallory, who was going to college. In May of that year, Suzanne Morphew's cancer, Hodgkin's lymphoma, returned. Macy, in high school, lived at home.

Barry Morphew has always maintained his innocence. 

The couple's two daughters, Macy and Mallory Morphew, have stood by their father throughout the years since their mother first disappeared, Eytan said.

"Of course, they’re sticking by their dad. They wouldn’t believe in a million years that he would have harmed her," Eytan said.

Tranquilizer cap in the dryer

Investigators searching the Morphew home 10 days after Suzanne Morphew disappeared found a tranquilizer cap, or sheath, in the dryer trap, according to arrest documents. Prosecutors argued that a set of sheets from the bed of Morphew's oldest daughter and the shorts Barry Morphew was wearing the day she was reported to have disappeared were also in the dryer. 

But according to a complaint filed by Mr. Morphew's attorney with the office of the Supreme Court, which investigates alleged attorney misconduct, the sheath was found after clothes had been removed.

"The needle sheath was found on its own in the dryer bin after the household laundry (including a pair of Mr. Morphew’s shorts, Morphew family clothing, and sheets) had already been removed from the dryer bin more than a week prior," attorney Iris Eytan pointed out in the complaint. 

"Most importantly, there was no tranquilizers, tranquilizer serum, or evidence of tranquilizer serum, found in the garage or anywhere in the house," Eytan wrote. 

Investigators admitted to attorney Dru Nielsen during the August 2021 evidentiary hearing that Barry Morphew's DNA was excluded from the plastic tranquilizer cap found in the dryer drum. 

Still, when investigators asked Barry Morphew on April 2, 2021 about the actual tranquilizer chemicals, he told them that he kept them on a work bench in the garage but that he “might have” thrown them away during a trip to Broomfield the day Suzanne Morphew was reported missing, according to the arrest affidavit. Investigators documented five trash runs that day, the arrest document reported. 

Barry Morphew was known to throw trash in public bins to save money, and, according to the arrest document, he explained to investigators: “I’ve done that my whole entire life. My truck is a mess. I’m a tightwad and I don’t want to pay to throw away trash.”

Barry Morphew was arrested for his wife's murder on May 5, 2021, almost a year to the day after Suzanne Morphew, 49, disappeared. She was last known to be alive May 9, 2020, and wasn’t reported missing from the family home in Maysville until the next afternoon, which was Mother’s Day.

Her last "proof-of-life" photo was a selfie she took at 2:07 and sent to her lover, Jeff Libler, who lived in Michigan.

Barry Morphew was the last known person to see his wife alive. He told investigators that his last view of her was a lump in their bed when he left for a landscaping job in Broomfield at 5 a.m. on Mother's Day, May 10, 2020. He told investigators in multiple interviews over the weeks and months after she went missing that the last time he saw his wife, she was snoring, according to testimony during the preliminary hearing. 

Investigators tied Morphew's memory about the snoring to symptoms Suzanne Morphew would have shown had she been injected with the animal tranquilizer, according to the arrest affidavit. 

Scheduled to testify in the doomed trial was a retired Colorado Parks and Wildlife biologist named Lisa Wolfe. During the preliminary hearing, investigators testified that they interviewed Wolfe about how butorphanol, azaperone and medetomidine would affect a human being. 

She told them that the chemical compound known as BAM had never been tested on humans, but if it were, she said that a female who was Suzanne Morphew’s size would be fully sedated in 10-12 minutes and would remain in complete sedation for 2-8 hours, according to the arrest affidavit. Wolfe told investigators that upon first receiving the drug, a woman of Suzanne Morphew's size would feel wobbly and unstable, not unlike the feeling of being drunk.

If she were on her back, her breathing would sound like a snore, Wolfe told detectives, adding that a full dose of BAM would be fatal to a human being. 

Wolfe authored a report on BAM as a safe and effective way to immobilize black bears.

Wolfe was one of 14 expert witnesses struck by 11th Judicial District Judge Ramsey Lama in the weeks before the trial. In a 20-page order, Lama gave a scathing rebuke to the prosecution for what he called a "sloppy" and "reckless" pattern of discovery violations.

Lama did not find a discovery violation regarding Wolfe's testimony, but considered the tranquilizer injection theory "too speculative" and "too tenuous" and thought that its admission would be an "error" according to Eytan's complaint. 

Also ousted from testifying as experts were witnesses who were going to give their opinions on cellphone records, DNA, and telematix, which tracks vehicle movement. With such a weakened case, prosecutors asked Lama to dismiss it without prejudice and the request was granted. 

Whether the toxicology findings will bring new life to what has at times appeared to be a doomed case is unclear. There is a good possibly that if the Morphew case is retried, that it won't happen in the 11th Judicial District, where the investigators believe Suzanne Morphew was killed. An alternative would be to start over in the neighboring 12th District, where her remains were found.

The 12th is run by District Attorney Anne Kelley, who has refused comment on the the investigation in the past. 

Barry Morphew, 56, now lives in Indiana and as next of kin, received the results of his wife's autopsy report last week. He is planning a celebration of her life on Saturday, May 4. 

 Tuesday would have been Suzanne Morphew's 53th birthday.