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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.”
Suzanne Morphew/Facebook
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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Kash Patel, Trump’s pick for FBI director, targeted in possible Iran-backed cyberattack, sources say
Kash Patel, President-elect Donald Trump’s pick to lead the FBI, was recently notified that he was the target of a potential Iran-backed cyberattack, two people familiar with the matter confirmed to CBS News.
The apparent hackers targeted his communications, but whether they succeeded and how much access they had to the data is still being investigated, the people said.
The FBI declined to comment. CBS News had also reached out to the Trump campaign for comment.
The news of Iran’s potential targeting of Patel was first reported by Semafor.
This comes after months of warnings from the FBI and other federal agencies of Iranian cyber activity targeting Trump campaign staff leading up the 2024 presidential election. In September, Justice Department prosecutors charged three members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps with launching a broad hacking campaign against U.S. officials, including those close to Trump.
In August, Microsoft said that Iran was increasing its efforts to influence the November election, and in one case had targeted a presidential campaign with an email phishing attack.
Trump and his allies, including members of his first administration, have been targets of Iran since the 2020 killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in a U.S. airstrike in Baghdad, and U.S. officials continued to warn of those cyberattack campaigns in recent months.
The 44-year-old Patel served in intelligence and defense roles in Trump’s first term, including chief of staff to the secretary of defense. He was also designated by Trump to be a representative to the National Archives and Records Administration and fought a subpoena to testify before a federal grand jury in the Mar-a-Lago classified documents case.
He is an attorney and staunch Trump loyalist who rose to prominence as an aide to former Republican Rep. Devin Nunes of California, fighting the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.
He served on Trump’s National Security Council, then as a senior adviser to acting Director of National Intelligence Ric Grenell, and later as chief of staff to acting Defense Secretary Christopher Miller.
President-elect Donald Trump is considering selecting Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis as his pick for defense secretary to potentially replace embattled Fox News host Pete Hegseth, two sources familiar with the transition told CBS News Tuesday night.
This comes after Trump and DeSantis attended a memorial for fallen law enforcement officers Tuesday in Florida.
The Wall Street Journal was first to report this story.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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