Suzanne Morphew’s friend Tisha Leewaye still believes Barry Morphew killed her, although murder charges against him were dismissed without prejudice. And she gives CrimeOnline’s Nancy Grace her theory of how it went down.

“I think she was in the backyard. [Barry Morphew] may have seen her on the phone with Jeff Libler,” Leewaye said on CrimeStories. “And I think that’s where he shot her with a tranquilizer gun. I think she got up. I think she ran. I think that that’s all that pinging was, you know, her running and him chasing her. I think she ran up to Mallory’s room.”

Mallory is the Morphews’ adult daughter. The sheets from her bedding were found in the dryer — but Mallory was away at college.

Morphew, 52, vanished on Mother’s Day in 2020, and her remains were found in September 2023 scattered in a remote area in Saguache County, as CrimeOnline reported. Reports indicated that she may have been buried in a shallow grave. An autopsy released this week determined that she was murdered — and that she died of “undetermined means in the setting of butorphanol, azaperone, and medetomidine intoxication.”

Those drugs, the medical examiner said, “are marketed as a compounded injectable chemical immobilizer for wildlife providing pharmacologically reversible analgesia, sedation, and immobilization.”

Barry Morphew was arrested and charged with his wife’s murder, but the case was dismissed without prejudice in 2022, meaning it can be reopened if evidence warrants.

“Honestly, I was thinking that that’s how it was going to come back anyway,” Leewaye said. ” … right after they found her, I, you know, I said, I have a feeling that the autopsy is going to come back and she was tranquilized. I have my own theories of how it went down, but it didn’t surprise me, to be honest.”

In addition to Mallory Morphew’s bedding, investigators found a needle cap used with a tranquilizer gun in the dryer, CrimeOnline reported.

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