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Barry Morphew, once charged in Suzanne Morphew’s presumed death: “I’ve done nothing wrong”
A man once charged with murder in the presumed death of his missing wife denied having anything to do with her disappearance in an interview broadcast on Monday.
In the interview with “Good Morning America,” Barry Morphew said authorities in Colorado have been wrong to focus on him as the person responsible for the death of Suzanne Morphew, who disappeared three years ago on Mother’s Day.
“They’ve got tunnel vision and they looked at one person, and they’ve got too much pride to say they’re wrong and look somewhere else,” he said, sitting between his adult daughters, who have defended him.
Suzanne Morphew’s disappearance made national headlines and the investigation was featured on the “48 Hours.”
Prosecutors dropped charges against Morphew last year just as he was about to go on trial after a judge barred them from calling most of their key witnesses for repeatedly failing to follow rules for turning over evidence in his favor. That included DNA evidence linked to sexual assault cases in other states that raised the possibility of a different person being involved.
At the time, prosecutors said they wanted more time to find Suzanne Morphew’s body. They have said he is still a suspect as recently as last month, when Morphew’s lawyers announced they had filed a complaint asking that the prosecutors be disciplined for allegedly intentionally withholding evidence in effort to convict him.
This month, Morphew filed a $15 million lawsuit against prosecutors and investigators, accusing them of violating his constitutional rights.
His lawyers previously asked for prosecutors to be disciplined for what they called intentionally withholding evidence in a bid to convict him. They allege in a complaint that District Attorney Linda Stanley and six prosecutors in her office pursued “a political agenda of locking up Mr. Morphew in response to a media frenzy that prosecutors themselves helped create” after his wife disappeared.
Stanley did not immediately return a phone call or email seeking comment.
The charges against Morphew were dismissed without prejudice, so prosecutors can still decide to bring charges against him again. Morphew said he realizes that’s a possibility, since he said he was innocent the first time he was arrested.
“But I don’t have anything to worry about. I’ve done nothing wrong,” Morphew said.
Suzanne Morphew disappeared after leaving her home for a bike ride on Mother’s Day 2020 and what happened next remains a mystery, CBS News Colorado reported. Her bicycle was found down a steep ravine and deputies said that the bicycle did not look like it was involved in a crash and there was not any blood at the scene. After she went missing, Barry Morphew told CBS News Colorado that he believed she was abducted.
During the investigation into her disappearance, friends told detectives that Suzanne and Barry had been arguing about finances and that Suzanne may have had a boyfriend.
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