Barry Morphew and his two adult daughters held hands and shed tears Friday in their first public statements since Colorado prosecutors dropped murder charges against him last month.
Morphew had been charged with killing his wife, Suzanne Morphew, but after a judge barred 14 of 16 witnesses the prosecution planned to call and significant evidence they planned to present, Chaffee County District Attorney Linda Stanley asked that the charges be dismissed without prejudice — meaning they could be reinstated at a later date, as CrimeOnline previously reported.
Stanley specifically mentioned that investigators believe they were close to finding Suzanne Morphew’s body, but that the location was under five feet of hard packed snow.
Speaking just days before the two-year anniversary of Suzanne Morphew’s Mother’s Day disappearance, Barry Morphew and his daughters, Mallory and Macy, told ABC News they were happy the charges were dropped and hoped to begin healing.
“I just love my girls,” Barry Morphew said. “And I love my wife, and I just want her to be found.”
“We’ve been silent for a long time, and we’ve decided that we finally want to break the silence,” Mallory Morphew told the network as her sister and father nodded beside her. “It’s been an emotional roller coaster. but we finally feel like we can take our first steps in healing. which is a blessing.”
Barry Morphew plans to file a complaint against the district attorney over allegations that her office mishandled evidence that might have been to his benefit.
“Prosecutors need to be held responsible and they need to pay for the damage they’ve caused to Barry, which is frankly nearly irreparable, because it’s hard for anybody to believe that Barry is not who they claim he was,” Morphew’s attorney, Iris Eytan, told ABC.
Suzanne Morphew allegedly went on a bike ride on Mother’s Day 2020 and never returned. Barry Morphew was arrested for her presumed murder last May. Investigators believe Barry Morphew killed her the night before after learning she’d had an affair. His trial was set to begin on April 28, but Stanley asked that the charges be dropped just days before — and days after Judge Ramsey Lama scuttled the case, crippling it so badly that a deputy district attorney wrote in a motion asking the judge to reconsider his order barring the prosecution’s witnesses because it was “tantamount to dismissal.”
Lama later agreed to dismiss the charges without prejudice, and Stanley noted that finding Suzanne Morphew’s body could deliver forensic evidence that could further incriminate her husband, or show that her killer was someone else entirely.
The remaining Morphews are indignant, however.
“I just hope that Linda will step up to the plate and do everything she can to find our mom because what they’ve done is not fair and we’re never gonna stop looking for our mom,” Macy Morphew told ABC.
The network noted that Suzanne’s birthday had just passed, and that her daughters would have preferred to celebrate it with her.
“If you want to honor Suzanne and you want to honor the daughters,” attorney Eytan said, “go find Suzanne.”
See more reporting on the Morphew story from CrimeOnline.
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[Featured image: Suzanne Morphew/handout and Barry Morphew/Chaffee County Sheriff’s Office]
