Latest / Murder Files Unsealed / Man Allegedly Kills Wife With Animal Tranquilizers

Transcript

Man Allegedly Kills Wife With Animal Tranquilizers · Murder Files Unsealed

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to the deep Dive. Today, we are heading
• 0:02
  straight into the high country. Yeah, the Colorado Rockies, right
• 0:07
  specifically to a place called Maysville, And if you have
• 0:10
  ever been there, you really need to picture it. It
• 0:13
  is rugged, it is breathtakingly beautiful, and it's the kind
• 0:18
  of place people move to when they just want to
• 0:20
  escape the noise of the world. Absolutely, but today it
• 0:23
  is the setting for one of the most twisting, turning,
• 0:26
  and frankly heartbreaking mysteries of the last decade.
• 0:28
  Speaker 2: It really is. It's a case that feels like it
• 0:30
  was written for a dark psychological thriller, but unfortunately it
• 0:35
  is all too real. We are talking about the disappearance
• 0:38
  and death of Suzanne Morphew. And I know what some
• 0:41
  of you listening might be thinking. You might be saying,
• 0:43
  I remember that name. Didn't that happen years ago?
• 0:45
  Speaker 1: Exactly? And that is exactly why we are doing this
• 0:48
  deep dive today, Because if you think you know this
• 0:50
  story based on a headline you swiped past in twenty
• 0:54
  twenty or maybe twenty twenty two, you are looking at
• 0:57
  an outdated.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Map, a completely outdated map.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: The ground has shifted beneath our feet multiple times in
• 1:02
  this case, we aren't just looking at a missing person
• 1:04
  investigation anymore. We are looking at a looming murder trial,
• 1:08
  a family that has been torn completely in half, and
• 1:12
  a scientific breakthrough involving of all things, animal tranquilizers found
• 1:17
  in human bone marrow.
• 1:18
  Speaker 2: Which is just wild to think about. It is a
• 1:20
  lethal cocktail in every sense of the word. And the
• 1:23
  timing of our discussion today is critical. We are sitting
• 1:26
  here today February twenty seventh and twenty twenty six. Just
• 1:29
  a month ago, Suzanne's husband, Barry Morphew, pleaded not guilty
• 1:33
  to first degree murder again. The trial is set for
• 1:36
  October thirteenth of this year in Alamosa County.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: So the clock is really ticking down to what might
• 1:41
  be the final showdown in.
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: This whole saga precisely, and what we have to work
• 1:45
  with today is a massive stack of sources that covers
• 1:48
  the entire timeline. We are talking everything from the initial
• 1:52
  police reports back in twenty twenty through the failed first prosecution.
• 1:55
  Speaker 1: Oh Man, that dramatic dismissal.
• 1:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that dismissal, all the way to the discovery of
• 2:01
  Suzanne's remains in twenty twenty three, and the advanced toxicology
• 2:05
  reports that have completely changed the physics of this legal battle.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: And that is our mission today for you, the listener.
• 2:11
  We are going to unpack the timeline because you really
• 2:13
  have to understand the when, to understand the why. We're
• 2:17
  going to get into the weeds of the forensic science.
• 2:19
  Speaker 2: The bone marrow science is fascinating, it really is.
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: We'll look at specifically how bone marrow told a story
• 2:26
  that soft tissue just couldn't. And we also have to
• 2:28
  talk about the human element, which is incredibly difficult. In
• 2:31
  this case, the daughters who are actively defending their father
• 2:34
  against charges that he murdered their mother.
• 2:36
  Speaker 2: It is heavy, it is incredibly complex, and it challenges
• 2:39
  a lot of assumptions about how the justice system actually works.
• 2:42
  Speaker 1: So let's start where all good stories start. The setting Maysville, Colorado, right.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Picture the Salita area. It is about three hours southwest
• 2:51
  of Dender. It sits at about seven thousand to eight
• 2:54
  thousand feet elevation. So this is serious mountain country.
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you feel the altitude, you do.
• 2:59
  Speaker 2: It is quiet, it is a tight knit community. People
• 3:03
  move there for the lifestyle, you know, the hiking, the biking, hunting, skiing.
• 3:07
  It is not the kind of place where people just
• 3:09
  vanish into thin air without a trace. Usually the terrain
• 3:12
  is unforgiving, but the community is very watchful.
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: And that's where we find the mor Few family, Suzanne
• 3:17
  and Barry. On paper, if you looked at their Christmas
• 3:20
  cards or their social media profiles from say twenty eighteen
• 3:23
  or twenty nineteen, they look like the absolute poster couple
• 3:27
  for this rugged, affluent mountain lifestyle.
• 3:30
  Speaker 2: They really did. I mean they were high school sweethearts
• 3:32
  from Indiana, married way back in nineteen ninety four. They
• 3:35
  had a long history together. They moved to Colorado in
• 3:37
  twenty eighteen specifically for that rugged beauty. They wanted the dream.
• 3:41
  Speaker 1: Right and you look at the profiles and our source material. Suzanne,
• 3:44
  who was born Suzanne Mormon. She is described by everyone
• 3:48
  who knew her as this radiant presence, an avid cyclist,
• 3:51
  a fitness enthusiast by all accounts, a deeply devoted mother
• 3:55
  to their two daughters, Mallory and Macy.
• 3:57
  Speaker 2: She was the glue of that family.
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, where he fits the mold of the rugged provider.
• 4:02
  He worked as a landscaper and contractor. He was constantly
• 4:05
  traveling for jobs fixing up properties, moving earth. But his
• 4:09
  big passion, and this becomes the thread that pulls through
• 4:12
  the entire case. His passion was hunting and wildlife management.
• 4:16
  Speaker 2: Wildlife management. That's an interesting phrase for a landscaper, isn't it. It
• 4:20
  sounds a bit more official than just a guy who
• 4:23
  likes to hunt on the weekends.
• 4:24
  Speaker 1: It is. He wasn't just a casual hunter who went
• 4:26
  out for a week in November. He was deeply involved
• 4:29
  in managing deer populations. He was obsessed with growing trophy bucks.
• 4:34
  To do that, he wasn't just using a rifle. He
• 4:36
  was using dart.
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: Guns, dark guns.
• 4:38
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he owned tranquilizers to sedate deer on their property,
• 4:41
  to check their antlers or move them around.
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: Okay, I want everyone listening to put a pin in that,
• 4:45
  a giant red pin, because owning a dart gun and
• 4:49
  having a supply of tranquilizers is not your average homeowner's toolkit,
• 4:53
  even in a place like Colorado.
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: It definitely isn't It requires specific knowledge and access to
• 4:57
  specific highly regulated chemical.
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: So we have this image, right, the Morpheus, healthy, active,
• 5:04
  living the dream in a beautiful house tucked against the mountains.
• 5:08
  But as we always find in these deep dives. The
• 5:11
  social media highlight reel rarely matches the raw footage of
• 5:14
  real life.
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: That is the perfect way to put it. The sources
• 5:18
  indicate that behind the scenes, the foundation of this marriage
• 5:22
  was cracking badly. There are court documents alleging significant marital discord.
• 5:28
  We're talking about allegations of Barry having an extra marital affair.
• 5:32
  Speaker 2: And on the flip side, reports that Suzanne was increasingly
• 5:34
  unhappy right she.
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: Had confided in friends about wanting a separation. She felt trapped.
• 5:39
  There were text messages, conversations, you know, the kind of
• 5:42
  digital breadcrumbs that investigators always look for later suggesting she was.
• 5:46
  Speaker 2: Done, but outwardly to the community.
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: They were still the happy couple.
• 5:50
  Speaker 2: That tension, the gap between the public face and the
• 5:52
  private reality. That is often where the spark for tragedy lies.
• 5:56
  Speaker 1: So let's move to the day the clock stopped May tenth,
• 5:59
  twenty twenty.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: A day that should have been a celebration, a day
• 6:02
  for brunch for family.
• 6:04
  Speaker 1: According to Barry, his day starts incredibly early. He tells
• 6:08
  investigators he left the house at five.
• 6:10
  Speaker 2: Am, five am on a Sunday, on Mother's Day.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: That's a very early start.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: It is. He says he had to go to a
• 6:17
  landscaping job in Broomfield, which is about one hundred and
• 6:20
  twenty miles away. That is a significant drive. You are
• 6:23
  going from the Deep mountains all the way toward the
• 6:26
  Denver metro area.
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: So the narrative he presents is Barry leaves all it's dark,
• 6:31
  Suzanne is at home, presumably sleeping. Her plan for the
• 6:35
  day was to go for a bike ride. She loves cycling.
• 6:37
  It was her sanctuary.
• 6:39
  Speaker 2: And that is the last time supposedly, anyone accounts for her,
• 6:42
  because when Barry returns that evening, the house is empty.
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: He comes home, she's not there right.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: And he reports her missing that night. Now, very quickly
• 6:50
  a search is launched. This is a small community. When
• 6:52
  a mom goes missing on Mother's Day, people mobilize fast
• 6:56
  and they find something almost immediately. A bike, yes, Suzanne's
• 6:59
  purple bicycle and her helmet. They are found near a
• 7:02
  dirt road down a steep ravine, not too far from
• 7:05
  the house.
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Now Here is where it gets interesting. Usually, if you
• 7:09
  find a bike on the side of a trail and
• 7:11
  the rider is missing, you think crash, right, or maybe
• 7:15
  a hit and run.
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: You would think so if you go off a ravine
• 7:17
  in the Rockies, the bikes should be mangled, there should
• 7:20
  be skid marks, disturbed earth, maybe blood. But the sources
• 7:24
  note that there weren't immediate signs of a violent struggle
• 7:27
  or a massive crash at that specific spot.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: It looked what staged.
• 7:31
  Speaker 2: It looked abandoned or placed. It didn't look like the
• 7:35
  aftermath of a high speed accident.
• 7:37
  Speaker 1: And this leads to the initial theories. The community is
• 7:40
  scouring the canyons the river, people are thinking did she fall?
• 7:44
  Did she get lost?
• 7:45
  Speaker 2: And then there is the wildlife theory, and this is
• 7:47
  where Barry's input really stands out. He specifically suggested to
• 7:51
  investigators that maybe a mountain lion got her, which, to
• 7:54
  be fair, is a non zero possibility.
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: In that area. Sure mountain lions exist out there.
• 7:59
  Speaker 2: But then he mentioned a chipmunk.
• 8:00
  Speaker 1: A chipmunk.
• 8:01
  Speaker 2: Yeah, he suggested a chipmunk might have startled her, causing
• 8:05
  her to crash or fall, leading to some sort of
• 8:07
  accident or animal predation.
• 8:09
  Speaker 1: I mean, I have hiked a lot, I have biked
• 8:12
  a lot. I have never been taken out by a chipmunk,
• 8:15
  a deer, maybe a bear, sure, but a chipmunk. That
• 8:19
  feels like a very specific, very odd, detailed to throw
• 8:23
  into the mix when your wife is missing.
• 8:26
  Speaker 2: It is distinctive. It sounds like someone trying to construct
• 8:28
  a narrative with too much detail. But initially investigators had
• 8:31
  to treat everything as credible. Abduction was also on the table,
• 8:35
  but very quickly the lens started to focus on the husband.
• 8:38
  Speaker 1: Which statistically is standard procedure. The husband did it is
• 8:42
  a cliche for.
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: A reason, it is the most common outcome. But in
• 8:45
  this case, it wasn't just statistics. There were red flags
• 8:47
  popping up immediately.
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: Let's talk about the digital silence, because we live on
• 8:52
  our phones. If I drive two hours, my phone is
• 8:54
  pinging towers, I'm streaming music, I'm checking maps.
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly, and on that Sunday mother's Barry's phone behavior was well,
• 9:02
  let's call it irregular investigator's flag that his phone was
• 9:05
  an airplane mode or completely off for significant chunks of
• 9:08
  the day.
• 9:09
  Speaker 1: Which doesn't fit the worried husband trying to call his
• 9:11
  wife narrative, or even just a normal guy working a job.
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: Right, if you are a contractor running a business, your
• 9:18
  phone is your lifeline. Having it off for hours while
• 9:21
  driving and working is incredibly inconsistent with his usual habits.
• 9:25
  Speaker 1: Then you have the GPS data from his truck. He
• 9:28
  said he was going to Broomfield for work.
• 9:30
  Speaker 2: The telematics the computer system in modern trucks that tracks
• 9:34
  everywhere you go. It didn't fully align with a straightforward commute.
• 9:37
  There were deviations. The truck's movements were erratic in places.
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: Specifically, there was a stop that caught everyone's attention.
• 9:45
  Speaker 2: The landfill stop, the classic.
• 9:46
  Speaker 1: Stop at the dump on the day your wife goes missing.
• 9:49
  Speaker 2: It is a massive red flag in any investigation. The
• 9:53
  GPS showed he stopped near a trash receptacle, and when pressed,
• 9:57
  Barry admitted to it. He admitted he stopped to discard
• 10:00
  some items.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: And what were those items?
• 10:01
  Speaker 2: Unused tranquilizer darts.
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: Okay, stop, let's just pause there. His wife is missing,
• 10:06
  he is supposedly at work on a holiday, and he
• 10:09
  is making a pit stop to throw away tranquilizer darts.
• 10:13
  Speaker 2: That is what he told investigators. He claimed they were
• 10:15
  unused and he was just cleaning out his truck. But
• 10:18
  to an investigator, that looks like disposal of evidence. You
• 10:22
  don't usually decide to spring clean your specialized veterinary equipment
• 10:25
  on the way to a job site on Mother's Day
• 10:28
  unless there's a reason to get rid of it.
• 10:30
  Speaker 1: And this brings us to the BAM factor. I want
• 10:32
  to get into this now because it foreshadows everything that
• 10:35
  comes years later. What is BAM?
• 10:37
  Speaker 2: BAM is an acronym for a specific chemical compound. It
• 10:41
  stands for buttrophenol, a zaparone, and metatomidine.
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: But sound like heavy hitters.
• 10:46
  Speaker 2: They are incredibly heavy. This isn't something you buy at
• 10:48
  the local pharmacy. This is a veterinary cocktail designed for
• 10:52
  large wildlife. We're talking elk, deer, moose, animals that weigh
• 10:57
  five hundred and six hundred pounds.
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: Break it down for us, what is each part actually do?
• 11:01
  Speaker 2: Sure? But Torphenyl is a synthetic opioid. It provides heavy
• 11:05
  pain relief and sedation. A zaparone is a tranquilizer often
• 11:09
  used to reduce anxiety in pigs or wildlife when they
• 11:12
  are being moved. And metatomidine is a powerful sedative and analgesic.
• 11:17
  When you mix them you get a synergistic effect. It
• 11:20
  hits the central nervous system hard and fast. It is
• 11:23
  designed to drop a large animal quickly so you can
• 11:25
  work on it safely.
• 11:26
  Speaker 1: And Barry had access to this he did.
• 11:29
  Speaker 2: He admitted to purchasing these chemicals, often from out of
• 11:31
  state suppliers because they are highly regulated in Colorado, and
• 11:35
  mixing them himself for his dart gun.
• 11:37
  Speaker 1: So in the days following the disappearance, police have a
• 11:40
  missing woman, a husband with a wonky GPS history, a
• 11:44
  trash run involving tranquilizer equipment, and a phone that went dark.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: It was enough to build a theory. But remember they
• 11:51
  didn't have a body, and that is.
• 11:52
  Speaker 1: The hardest hurdle in a murder case. No body, no
• 11:55
  crime scene, no cause of death.
• 11:57
  Speaker 2: Exactly without a body, the defense can arg you anything.
• 12:00
  They can argue she ran away, They can argue she
• 12:02
  was abducted. They can argue she is still alive somewhere.
• 12:05
  Speaker 1: But the pressure was mounting. A year goes by May
• 12:08
  twenty twenty one, the authorities make their move. They arrest
• 12:12
  Barry Morphew and charge him with first degree murder.
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: I remember this vividly. It was huge news dateline forty
• 12:18
  eight hours. Everyone was covering it. The prosecution's theory was
• 12:22
  entirely circumstantial. They argued that he used that tranquilizer equipment,
• 12:26
  the stuff found in the home, and the stuff he
• 12:27
  threw away to incapacitate.
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: Her, but they couldn't actually prove it.
• 12:31
  Speaker 2: They had the means, the bam, they had the opportunity,
• 12:33
  the timeline gaps, and they argued motive, the marital issues,
• 12:37
  but without the body. It was a puzzle with the
• 12:40
  centerpieces missing. They were asking a jury to infer death
• 12:44
  and infer murder based purely on behavior.
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: And then the system imploded.
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: It really did. We are looking at April twenty twenty two,
• 12:51
  the trial is about to start, jury's selection is looming,
• 12:54
  and then Judge Stanley E. Moseley drops a bombshell. He
• 12:58
  dismisses the charges.
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: And let's pause and regroup. Kind of dismissal. This was serious.
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: It was dismissed without prejudice, meaning the state could refile
• 13:06
  charges later if new evidence came to light. But the
• 13:09
  reason for the dismissal was damning. The judge cited prosecutorial misconduct,
• 13:14
  specifically the failure to disclose exculpatory evidence.
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: For our listeners, who aren't lawyers, let's unpack exculpatory evidence.
• 13:22
  This is the Brady rule right correct.
• 13:24
  Speaker 2: In the American justice system, the prosecution has to play
• 13:27
  with its cards face up. If they find evidence that
• 13:30
  suggests the defendant might be innocent, say DNA pointing to
• 13:34
  someone else or a witness who saw something contradictory, they
• 13:38
  represent the state, so they are legally required to hand
• 13:41
  that over to the defense. The judge ruled they had
• 13:43
  repeatedly failed to do so, they were hiding things. It
• 13:46
  was a massive blow to the state's credibility.
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: So Barry walks free.
• 13:50
  Speaker 2: He walks free, and not only does he walk free,
• 13:52
  he goes on the offensive. He files a fifteen million
• 13:55
  dollars civil rights lawsuit against the investigators and prosecutors.
• 13:58
  Speaker 1: He is basically saying, you framed me, you ruined my life,
• 14:02
  You ignored the real.
• 14:03
  Speaker 2: Killer, and he had support. This is crucial. His daughters,
• 14:07
  Mallory and Macy went on national television Good Morning America,
• 14:10
  and stood by him. They were clear, They said, we
• 14:12
  know our dad. He didn't do this. The police are incompetent.
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: So by twenty twenty two, it looks like this case
• 14:18
  is cold. The charges are dropped, Barry issuing the cops.
• 14:22
  Suzanne is still missing. It felt like it was over.
• 14:26
  The narrative was cemented a botched investigation and a missing
• 14:30
  woman who might never be found.
• 14:32
  Speaker 2: But the Rockies have a way of revealing their secrets eventually.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: September twenty two, twenty twenty three, the turning point.
• 14:37
  Speaker 2: Hikers are in Sawatch County.
• 14:39
  Speaker 1: Now map this for us. How far is this from
• 14:42
  the Morphew home.
• 14:43
  Speaker 2: We are talking about the San Luis Valley, roughly forty
• 14:45
  to forty five miles southeast of the Morphew residence in Maysville.
• 14:49
  It is remote. It is rugged sagebrush country and not
• 14:52
  a place you just stumble upon unless you're really out there.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: And these hikers find a shallow.
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: Grave, skeletal remains, and DNA testing confirms what everyone Wan feared.
• 15:00
  It was Suzanne.
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: I can't imagine that moment for the family, even if
• 15:04
  you expect it. The confirmation changes everything. It shifts the
• 15:07
  tense from Issi to wash She.
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: It shifts reality entirely suddenly. This isn't a missing person case.
• 15:14
  It is a death investigation with a body and the
• 15:17
  scene itself told a story. The analysis indicated that her
• 15:20
  body had been moved at least twice post mortem, moved
• 15:24
  twice that implies a frantic attempt to hide her. It
• 15:27
  wasn't just leave her where she fell. Someone moved her,
• 15:30
  realized it wasn't a good spot and moved her again.
• 15:33
  It speaks to concealment. It speaks to a desperate need
• 15:36
  to ensure she wasn't found.
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: But the real bombshell, the thing that brings us to
• 15:40
  where we are today in twenty twenty six, was the autopsy.
• 15:43
  Speaker 2: Yes, the El Paso County Coroner's Office completed the autopsy
• 15:47
  in late twenty twenty three, and the findings were released
• 15:50
  to the public in April twenty twenty four. This is
• 15:53
  the absolute core of our deep dive today.
• 15:55
  Speaker 1: So what did they find? Because you mentioned earlier there
• 15:57
  was no gunshot, no stabbing, right.
• 15:59
  Speaker 2: No obvious blome forced trauma to the skull. If you
• 16:01
  just looked at the bones with the naked eye, you
• 16:03
  might not see the cause of death. But forensic science
• 16:06
  goes much deeper than that. They tested the bone marrow.
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: Why bone marrow? Why not the liver or the.
• 16:11
  Speaker 2: Hair Because of the timeline, she had been missing for
• 16:14
  over three years. When a body is exposed to the
• 16:16
  elements for that long, soft tissue decomposes the liver, the kidneys,
• 16:21
  the blood, it's all gone. But bone marrow is protected
• 16:25
  inside the hard calcium casing of the bone. It acts
• 16:28
  like a time capsule for toxicology. It preserves drugs much
• 16:33
  longer than soft tissue ever could.
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: And what did the marrow reveal.
• 16:37
  Speaker 2: It revealed the presence of butorphenol, a zeppyarone, and metatomidine,
• 16:43
  the exact chemical cocktail found in various tranquilizer darts.
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: That is I mean, that is the cindrella slipper of evidence,
• 16:49
  isn't it? It fits perfectly.
• 16:50
  Speaker 2: It is incredibly specific. If they have found just an opioid,
• 16:53
  you could argue she took a painkiller. If they found
• 16:56
  just a sedative, maybe she took a sleeping pill. But
• 16:58
  this specific three drug combination is unique to large animal
• 17:02
  veterinary medicine. You don't take a zaparone for a headache.
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: But the science gets even more damning. It wasn't just
• 17:07
  that the drugs were present. The toxicology found metabolites of
• 17:11
  these drugs.
• 17:11
  Speaker 2: This is the key, This is the aha moment for
• 17:14
  the prosecution.
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: Okay, explain that what is a metabolite and why does
• 17:17
  it matter so much?
• 17:18
  Speaker 2: When you take a drug, say aspirin, your body starts
• 17:22
  to break it down. That process is called metabolism. Your
• 17:27
  liver enzymes attack the foreign substance and turn it into
• 17:30
  other chemicals to process it out of your body. Those
• 17:34
  breakdown products are called metabolites.
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: Okay, I follow.
• 17:37
  Speaker 2: For your body to create metabolites, your liver has to
• 17:40
  be working, your blood has to be circulating, your heart
• 17:43
  has to be beating. Metabolism is a biological function of life.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: I see exactly where you were going with this.
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: If someone killed Suzanne, say by strangulation, and then poured
• 17:54
  these drugs on her body to stage the scene or
• 17:57
  confuse investigators, the drugs would so oken to the bones, sure,
• 18:01
  but the body wouldn't metabolize them. You would find the
• 18:04
  parent drug, but absolutely no metabolite. They found the metabolize exactly.
• 18:08
  The fact that Suzanne's marrow contained metabolites proved she was
• 18:11
  alive when these tranquilizers entered her system. She processed them.
• 18:15
  She didn't die instantly. She survived long enough for her
• 18:18
  biology to try to fight the toxin that is chilling.
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: It paints a picture of her being incapacitated but alive.
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: It rules out accidental contamination of the remains entirely. It
• 18:28
  rules out post mortem staging. It points directly to deliberate
• 18:32
  administration while she was still breathing.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: So the coroner rules it a homicide.
• 18:37
  Speaker 2: Homicide by unspecified means in the setting of intoxication, that
• 18:41
  is the official.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Ruling, unspecified means. That is a lot of legal wiggle room,
• 18:46
  isn't it It is?
• 18:47
  Speaker 2: And the defense is going to drive a truck through
• 18:49
  that wiggle room. It means the drugs were there, they
• 18:52
  contributed to her death, But the coroner can't say one
• 18:55
  hundred percent if the drugs stopped her heart, or she
• 18:58
  was suffocated while sedated, or if exposure killed her while
• 19:01
  she was unconscious. They know the what, the intoxication, but
• 19:05
  not the mechanical how.
• 19:07
  Speaker 1: And this brings it right back to Barry.
• 19:08
  Speaker 2: The prosecution looks at this and says, who has this cocktail?
• 19:11
  It is not common. You don't have this in your
• 19:13
  medicine cabinet. I don't have it in mind.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: I certainly don't have ELK tranquilizers at home.
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: Right. It is a veterinary cocktail for ELK. Barry admitted
• 19:21
  to buying it. Barry admitted to mixing it. The prosecution
• 19:24
  argues he had exclusive or near exclusive access to this
• 19:27
  exact formulation.
• 19:29
  Speaker 1: So with the body found and the toxic called you
• 19:31
  report in hand, the legal gears start grinding all over again.
• 19:35
  The dismissal in twenty twenty two doesn't matter anymore because
• 19:38
  the facts.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: Have changed exactly. June twenty twenty five, a grand jury
• 19:42
  in the twelfth Judicial District looks at this new evidence,
• 19:45
  the body, the BAM, the metabolites, and the hand down
• 19:49
  an indictment.
• 19:50
  Speaker 1: Barry gets arrested again.
• 19:51
  Speaker 2: June twenty, twenty twenty five. He is pulled over in
• 19:54
  a traffic stop in Gilbert, Arizona.
• 19:56
  Speaker 1: It had moved out of Colorado.
• 19:58
  Speaker 2: It appears he was living in Arizona at the time.
• 20:00
  He was arrested and extradited back to Colorado to face
• 20:03
  the music once more, and.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: The indictment was for first degree murder again.
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: Yes, the indictment cited his possession of BAM, the timelining consistencies,
• 20:11
  the evidence of body movement, and the extreme rarity of
• 20:14
  this drug cocktail in human toxicology, which.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Brings us to the present day or well extremely recent history.
• 20:20
  January twenty twenty six.
• 20:22
  Speaker 2: Barry enters his plea not guilty.
• 20:24
  Speaker 1: And he is out on bail right now.
• 20:25
  Speaker 2: He is. He was released in September twenty twenty five
• 20:28
  on a three million dollar bond. He has to wear
• 20:30
  a GPS monitor, but he is a freeman pending trial.
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: And he waved his right to a speedy trial.
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: Which is deeply strategic. A speedy trial usually forces the
• 20:39
  prosecution to rush. By waiving it, the defense is saying,
• 20:43
  we need time. They need time to find their own
• 20:46
  experts to attack the borne merrow science. They need time
• 20:49
  to build a narrative that explains the tranquilizers without implicating Barry.
• 20:54
  So the trial is set for October thirteenth, twenty twenty six.
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: It is going to be a long autumn in almost.
• 21:00
  Speaker 2: Expected to last four to six weeks. It will be
• 21:02
  an absolute battle of experts.
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: Now, I want to pivot to something we touched on
• 21:06
  earlier because it is the most heartbreaking part of this
• 21:09
  entire story. The family.
• 21:11
  Speaker 2: The more few daughters, Mallory and.
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: Macy, they are in an impossible position. I think about
• 21:16
  this constantly. They have lost their mother and the state
• 21:19
  is telling them their father did.
• 21:20
  Speaker 2: It, and their stance is not wavered from day one
• 21:23
  through the first arrest, the dismissal, the discovery of the body,
• 21:26
  and this new indictment. They have stood beside their father.
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: They actually sit with him in court.
• 21:30
  Speaker 2: They do they advocate for his bond. They have been
• 21:33
  quoted saying, we just know our dad better than anyone else.
• 21:36
  They view the prosecution as a witch hunt. And you
• 21:39
  have to remember, from their perspective, the system has already
• 21:42
  failed them once the twenty twenty two dismissal validated their
• 21:46
  belief that the police were corrupt or incompetent.
• 21:49
  Speaker 1: It creates a fortress mentality us against the world exactly.
• 21:53
  Speaker 2: And recently there was a legal battle that really illustrates
• 21:56
  how deep this division goes, the battle over Suzanne's remains.
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: This was in early twenty twenty six, right.
• 22:02
  Speaker 2: Yes, the daughters filed emotion see. After the autopsy, the
• 22:07
  bones had been released to a funeral home in Colorado Springs.
• 22:10
  The family wanted to hold a memorial.
• 22:12
  Speaker 1: To finally say goodbye, to have a proper funeral exactly.
• 22:16
  Speaker 2: But before the service could happen, investigators sees the remains again.
• 22:19
  Speaker 1: They took them back.
• 22:20
  Speaker 2: They did as evidence. With the trial coming up, the
• 22:23
  prosecution likely argued they couldn't risk the chain of custody
• 22:26
  being broken or the evidence being buried.
• 22:29
  Speaker 1: That is just brutal.
• 22:30
  Speaker 2: The daughter's attorney called it outrageous, cruel, and shocking. He
• 22:35
  argued it violated their religious rights and their right to grieve.
• 22:38
  It just adds another layer of trauma to these young women.
• 22:41
  But on the other side, on the other side, you
• 22:43
  have Suzanne's siblings, her brother David Mormon. They have filed
• 22:47
  victim impact statements opposing Barry's release. They believe he is
• 22:51
  completely guilty. They look at the tranquilizers, the timeline the affair,
• 22:56
  and they see a murderer.
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: So you have the victim's children defending the accused and
• 23:01
  the victim's siblings condemning him.
• 23:03
  Speaker 2: It is a family at war. And imagine the trial
• 23:05
  in October. There is a very real possibility that the
• 23:08
  prosecution calls the daughters as.
• 23:10
  Speaker 1: Witnesses, forcing them to testify.
• 23:12
  Speaker 2: Potentially forcing them to defend their father under oath, or
• 23:16
  pitting their recollections against the forensic evidence. It is a
• 23:19
  nightmare scenario for any child. If the prosecution asks, did
• 23:23
  you ever see your dad with a tranquilizer gun? And
• 23:25
  they have to answer. It's devastating.
• 23:26
  Speaker 1: Let's look ahead to October thirteenth, twenty twenty six, the
• 23:29
  trial begins. We have two sides digging in. What is
• 23:33
  the strategy here. Let's play defense attorney first.
• 23:35
  Speaker 2: Let's do it. The defense strategy has to be creating
• 23:39
  reasonable doubt. They don't have to prove he's innocent. They
• 23:42
  just have to prove the state hasn't met the burden.
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: Which they have done successfully before.
• 23:46
  Speaker 2: Well, the previous case was dismissed for misconduct, not because
• 23:49
  a jury actually acquitted him. But the defense will lean
• 23:53
  heavily on the circumstantial nature of the case. They will say,
• 23:56
  you have bones and drugs. You don't have a murder weapon,
• 23:59
  you don't have a witness, you don't have.
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: A confession, even with the drugs.
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: Even with the drugs, they will point out, there is
• 24:05
  no video of him injecting her. There is no DNA
• 24:10
  of Barry on the body in a way that proves murder.
• 24:13
  Remember they live together. His DNA would naturally be on
• 24:17
  her clothes or her bike.
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: And they will probably attack the unspecified means ruling.
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: One hundred percent. They will argue, you say he poisoned her,
• 24:25
  but you can't tell us exactly how she died. Was
• 24:27
  it accidental? Did she get into the tranquilizers herself? Was
• 24:30
  she depressed? Did a third party do it?
• 24:32
  Speaker 1: Could they realistically argue someone else did it?
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: They might. They might argue that someone else found the tranquilizers,
• 24:39
  or they might argue accidental contamination, although the metabolite science
• 24:43
  makes that very, very hard. But they will definitely leverage
• 24:46
  the twenty twenty two dismissal. They will say, these are
• 24:49
  the same prosecutors who hid evidence before. Can you trust
• 24:52
  them now?
• 24:53
  Speaker 1: That is a powerful narrative for a jury. The state
• 24:57
  is corrupt and they are targeting this man to cover
• 25:00
  their own past mistakes.
• 25:02
  Speaker 2: Exactly. It plays right into the skepticism people have of authority.
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: Now flip to the prosecution. Yeah, their strategy is the
• 25:09
  Cinderella slipper.
• 25:10
  Speaker 2: The bam. That is their strongest card.
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: They have to hammer home the sheer rarity of that cocktail.
• 25:15
  Speaker 2: They will say, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, what
• 25:17
  are the odds? What are the odds that a woman
• 25:19
  goes missing on the exact same day her husband does
• 25:21
  a trash run, and three years later is found with
• 25:24
  the exact rare animal tranquilizer in her marrow that her
• 25:27
  husband admitted to using and discarding that same day.
• 25:30
  Speaker 1: It connects the dots in a way that is hard
• 25:33
  to ignore. It overcomes the no witness problem by using
• 25:36
  probability and science, and.
• 25:38
  Speaker 2: They will use the biology the metabolites prove she was alive.
• 25:42
  It wasn't a mistake, it wasn't post mortem, It was homicide.
• 25:45
  They will argue that the only person with the knowledge,
• 25:48
  the access, and the motive to use that specific cocktail
• 25:51
  was very Morphew.
• 25:53
  Speaker 1: And they will weave in the behavior, the chipmunk story,
• 25:57
  the airplane mode phone, the trash run.
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: They will try to show a pattern of concealment. They
• 26:02
  will paint a picture of a man who treated his
• 26:04
  wife like one of the problems he managed in his
• 26:07
  landscaping business, something to be removed.
• 26:09
  Speaker 1: This case touches on so many broader themes, doesn't it
• 26:12
  It does.
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: It highlights the incredible difficulty of nobody homicides. For three years,
• 26:17
  Barry was a free man, largely because there was no body.
• 26:20
  The discovery changed the entire legal landscape. It reminds us
• 26:24
  that nobody doesn't mean no crime, but it makes it
• 26:26
  infinitely harder to prove.
• 26:28
  Speaker 1: And it shows the sheer power of forensic advancement.
• 26:31
  Speaker 2: Bone marrow toxicology. It is not something we talk about
• 26:33
  every day, but in cases where it remains are skeletal,
• 26:36
  it is becoming a crucial tool for justice. It speaks
• 26:39
  when the victim can't. It is giving a voice to
• 26:41
  Suzanne three years after she was silenced.
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: And we can't ignore the role of public perception in
• 26:46
  all this.
• 26:46
  Speaker 2: Now, between Dateline Specials and the previous dismissal, everyone in Colorado,
• 26:51
  and really the whole country, has an opinion on this.
• 26:54
  Finding an impartial jury in October is going to be
• 26:56
  a massive challenge. The defense will likely argue he can't
• 27:00
  get a fair trial in Alamosa.
• 27:02
  Speaker 1: So here we are February twenty seven, twenty twenty six.
• 27:06
  We are waiting for October.
• 27:07
  Speaker 2: The stakes couldn't be higher. Barry is facing life in
• 27:10
  prison without parole. Two daughters are standing between their parents' legacies,
• 27:14
  trying to save their father while grieving their mother.
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: And a trial that rests on the molecular structure of
• 27:19
  Elk tranquilizer.
• 27:21
  Speaker 2: It is a tragedy of Shakespearean proportions set right in
• 27:24
  the Rockies.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: I want to leave our listeners with a final thought
• 27:27
  to mull Over. We talked about the ruling homicide by
• 27:30
  unspecified means. Yes, even with the drugs identified, we don't
• 27:34
  know the mechanics. We know the what, we don't know
• 27:36
  the exact how.
• 27:37
  Speaker 2: That is the gap, That is the reasonable doubt gap.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Will a jury convict a man of first degree murder
• 27:43
  based on a lethal cocktail if the state can't explain
• 27:46
  exactly how the final moment happened. Is the science of
• 27:49
  bone marrow strong enough to overcome the shadow of that
• 27:52
  past prosecutorial misconduct.
• 27:54
  Speaker 2: That is the question that twelve jurors will have to answer,
• 27:57
  And whatever they decide, one part of this family is
• 27:59
  going to be devastated all over again.
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: We will be watching the trial starts October thirteenth, twenty
• 28:05
  twenty six.
• 28:06
  Speaker 2: Stay tuned, We will be here to break it down.
• 28:08
  Speaker 1: Thanks for joining us on this deep dive.
• 28:09
  Speaker 2: Stay curious.