Barry Morphew 'hunted and controlled' wife Suzanne and told cops he was 'chasing chipmunks' at home

Barry Morphew sought to ‘hunt and control’ his missing wife Suzanne after realizing he wouldn’t be able to stop her from leaving him, court documents claim.

The documents were released by Colorado law enforcement during Morphew’s bail hearing as he prepares to stand trial for the murder of his wife, who disappeared on Mother’s Day 2020.

Barry has pleaded not guilty and was released from jail on Monday after posting a $500,000 cash bond ahead of his May 2022 trial.

After discovering his wife’s LinkedIn-fueled affair, investigators said he ‘resorted to something he has done his entire life – hunt and control Suzanne like he had hunted and controlled animals.’

The explosive affidavit contains other shocking revelations, including text messages where Suzanne refers to her husband as ‘Jekyl [sic] and Hyde,’ referring to the fictional two-faced doctor.

‘I feel like I’m crazy. I just had a conversation with him. Pretty much told him I can’t be healthy and stay in this,’ she wrote to a friend. 

The affidavit also reveals how Morphew tried to explain various unexplained stops he made in the days after 49-year-old Suzanne mysteriously disappeared.

Officers believe that between May 9 and 10 of last year, ‘he took steps to dispose of evidence of Suzanne’s disappearance and death,’ after surveillance video, Google Maps photos and cell phone pings show he stopped to throw trash away multiple times.

He excused the stops as a result of run-ins with a variety of wild animals.

‘Since January 2021, Barry has admitted to: chasing a chipmunk with a gun around the house while Susan was outside sunbathing, shooting a deer with a tranquilizer dart to explain a dart and needle cap in the dryer, disposing of the tranquilizer solution during this trip to Broomfield, following a bull elk down Highway 50 in the 4:00 AM hour on the May 10th to explain why his truck would be headed west (where [a] helmet was discarded), and finally stating to the FBI on April 22, 2021 that he looks guilty from the evidence and God allowed these things to happen,’ according to the affidavit.

A ‘bikini selfie’ that Suzanne sent to her lover the day before she disappeared and an image of her alleged killer-husband Barry carrying two shovels the following day were also unsealed on Monday.

The shocking evidence was part of an arrest affidavit released by Colorado law enforcement during Morphew’s bail hearing as he prepares to stand trial for the murder of his wife.

Suzanne, 49, sent the ‘bikini selfie’ via LinkedIn on May 9, 2020, to Jeff Libler – a married father of six children from Indiana with whom she was having an affair – the day before she disappeared, according to the report.

In the arrest affidavit, police refer to the photo as ‘Suzanne’s last proof of life.’ She wore the swimsuit while ‘laying out’ at home, according to the document.

While questioning Barry, police said he looked at the photograph and said: ‘Well, look at her. She’s obviously drunk. Look at her eyes. Do you know what drunk eyes look like?

‘I mean, would you say those eyes are drunk eyes?’ 

The affidavit also included a surveillance photo of Barry carrying two shovels into a Holiday Inn hotel in Broomfield, Colorado the day Suzanne was reported missing by a neighbor after heading out on a bike ride. 

Barry has denied any wrongdoing inside his hotel suite following claims his co-worker, Jeff Puckett, made alleging that he arrived to the room on May 10, 2020, to find it scattered with wet towels and mail belonging to Barry. 

The room is also alleged to have reeked of chlorine.

Barry has pleaded not guilty and was released from jail on Monday after posting a $500,000 cash bond.

Television footage showed him walking out of jail with his two daughters with Suzanne. 

Barry 53, was in court in Salida, Colorado, on Friday to hear closing arguments from the prosecution who said Suzanne’s ‘road to being murdered’ began when she told him she wanted a divorce days before she vanished and described it as ‘a domestic violence homicide’.  

A judge ruled there is enough evidence for the case to proceed nearly a year after his wife was reported missing after going for a bike ride on Mother’s Day 2020. 

Barry tried to convince police that his wife ran away from home and that he had nothing to do with her disappearance, according to the affidavit. 

Police did not believe him and started a frantic search on May 10, 2020, for Suzanne, who failed to return to the family home in Maysville, Colorado.

Barry’s defense lawyer Dru Nielsen has questioned the  police’s timeline of events leading up to the disappearance as he argues that the case should be thrown out before it goes to a full-scale murder trial.

But investigators have revealed holes in Barry’s story that they say prove he murdered his wife. 

Barry told police that a man from whom his wife was buying drugs ‘off the street’ could be behind her disappearance, according to an arrest affidavit.

He also has speculated that his wife’s body was washed up in a river after either being abducted or falling in an accident and ‘hit a rock with her head.’ 

He did admit to police that he had been physically abusive toward his wife on one occasion when he ‘clipped her nose.’

He said that his wife would ‘physically come’ at him whenever she felt ‘frustrated.’

‘She physically came at me several times through my life and I took it,’ Barry is alleged to have told investigators.

‘And I’m a man and I’m touch and I can take it.’

Barry told police that he would lie to friends and neighbors about scratch marks that were visible on his face, which he alleges were caused by Suzanne. 

Four days before she went missing, Suzanne wrote in a text to Barry, ‘I’m done. I could care less what you’re up to and have been up to for years. We just need to figure this out civilly.’ 

The day she went missing, investigators also noted that the cutting blade on the bucket of Barry’s Bobcat loading machine were newly replaced.

One of the couple’s daughters, who was not named specifically, told police that her parents were ‘not doing well,’ argued a lot and she thought it best for parents to separate because they were both in an ‘unsafe place’ emotionally.

Police interviewed Suzanne’s sister Melinda Baumunk, who revealed a text Suzanne sent her two days before her disappearance that read, ‘It’s hard dealing with the harsh abrasiveness and having to show respect. He’s been so abusive, emotionally and physically. There’s so much… I went thru a period of acceptance and I feel more angry now. Anger at what I’ve allowed.’

Baumunk told police that this was the first time she was hearing that Barry was physically abusive and when she heard of Suzanne’s disappearance three days later, she said ‘damn it, damn it damn it’ to herself because she was certain that Barry had killed her.

Baumunk added that Suzanne had inherited about $208,000 from their mother Adrienne, when she died in 2013, and another $217,000 from her grandmother-in-law Helen Burnette, who died in 2017. 

Suzanne’s phone included a list of shorthand notes detailing the abuse she alluded to in her texts to Baumunk. 

The notes include, ‘Stalking Sheila and me in house without telling,’ ‘Chased me around resort and threatened,’ ‘Not safe alone with you. Can’t be trusted,’ ‘Oppressive,’ ‘Slam on breaks when angry,’ ‘Threaten to jump out of car’ and ‘Gun.’ 

Police revealed in court that Suzanne had been having a two-year fling with Libler, while Barry had accessed porn website Celebrity Jihad and extramarital dating site Ashley Madison. 

A judge allowed the release of the arrest affidavit laying out investigators’ case against Barry after ruling last week that there was enough evidence for him to stand trial for murder in the presumed death of Suzanne.  

Barry looked disheveled but happy as he walked to his car after leaving the Chaffee County Probation Department. 

He was ordered to wear an ankle monitor ahead of his trial for murder and evidence tampering, which is scheduled for May 2022. 

He will also be required to live in and largely remain in Chaffee County and will be barred from contacting a number of people involved in the case. 

However, he is still permitted to be in contact with his and Suzanne’s two daughters – Mallory and Macy.  

Barry was released on the same day Colorado cops published a photo of Suzanne’s abandoned bike on Monday. 

Details about the couple’s troubled marriage were previously discussed in court during a hearing on the evidence in the case. 

In the affidavit, investigators said that after Barry realized he could not control Suzanne’s insistence on leaving him ‘he resorted to something he has done his entire life – hunt and control Suzanne like he had hunted and controlled animals.’

Barry refused to take a polygraph test in the days after his wife was reported missing on May 10, 2020, which was Mother’s Day, the affidavit said.

Barry, an avid hunter and outdoorsman, did not initially tell investigators that he went out of his way as he left for work that morning, driving toward the place where his wife’s bicycle helmet was eventually found. 

Later, he said he went that way because he had seen an elk cross the road, the affidavit said.

Suzanne’s body has not been found.

Barry also is charged with tampering with a human body, tampering with physical evidence, possession of a dangerous weapon and attempting to influence a public servant. 

The 130-page arrest affidavit unsealed by police includes details of notes Suzanne kept on her phone about her husband Barry’s alleged ‘abuse.’

New details in the case against Barry include secretly recorded notes and recordings documenting his abuse and a text Suzanne sent him four days before she went missing saying she was ‘done, let’s handle this civilly.’ 

Prosecutors told the court that they believe Barry killed his wife on the night of May 9 and could have disposed of her body at the remote Garfield Mine, 12 miles from Salida. 

In police interviews, Barry admitted driving close to the turn-off to the mine in the early hours of May 10 – but claimed he had done so because he had spotted a bull elk.  

The decision to send Barry to trial came after a four-day preliminary hearing in August that shattered the portrait he had painted of a happy, problem-free marriage. Morphew has not yet been asked to enter a plea. 

In court, prosecutors presented text messages between her and a friend from 2019 and 2020 in which she complained that her husband was picking fights and putting their children in the middle.

Cops said the pair had been fighting for years, with Barry accusing his wife of being a habitual drunk and a drug addict who bought cannabis from street dealers.

But they also said he was desperately fighting to save his marriage but to no avail with Suzanne texting him on May 8 to say – ‘I’m done’.

That evening, Suzanne had a pizza from Moonlight Pizza and Brew Pub, telling Libler that she had enjoyed herself.

The following morning, Suzanne and Barry had discussed going hiking but she spent most of the morning sending photos to Libler while he worked.

Barry returned home at 2.40pm. Just seven minutes later, his phone was put in airplane mode where it stayed until 10.17pm that evening.

Suzanne sent a final message to Libler just after 2.30pm and made one last call. The phone was not used again.

Police and prosecutors say it was that afternoon that Suzanne was killed, with witnesses revealing Barry had a dart gun that investigators said was the murder weapon.

Agent Johnny Grusing of the CBI told the court that the animal tranquilizer it contained would have knocked Suzanne out in around 10 minutes and then caused breathing difficulties and hypoxia. 

Grusing said the heavy breathing caused by the drug would have sounded like snoring. Barry repeatedly told investigators that the last sound he heard from his wife was ‘light snoring’.

On the morning of May 10, data from Barry’s white truck shows the door was opened seven times between 3.25am and 3.49am.

At 5am, the truck left the Morphew home and drove close to the Garfield Mine before being picked up on camera in nearby Poncha Springs at 5.14am.

Barry then drove to Broomfield, near Denver, for a landscaping job but truck data showed he stopped several times and he was picked up on camera dumping trash in dumpsters along the way – including at a McDonalds and at a Men’s Wearhouse.

He then headed to a Holiday Inn in Broomfield, where he left the room reeking of chlorine and littered with wet towels according to co-workers Morgan Gentile and Jeff Puckett.

Puckett told DailyMail.com in an exclusive interview last September that he had also found ripped up insurance documents stuffed in the trash can. 

In police interviews, Gentile said the job – which Barry claimed was urgent – was scheduled for the following day and that he had been due to pick her up to drive to Denver at 5.30pm on May 10.

Instead, she received a call at 11am telling her he was already there and to drive herself up, and to bring an extra worker. 

By the time Gentile and Puckett arrived, Barry had already left citing a family emergency.

The next morning, she received another call from Barry at 7.30am in which he said Suzanne had vanished and suggested a mountain lion could be to blame.

Undersheriff Rohrich described the video Barry made pleading for his wife’s safe return as ‘crocodile tears’.

He told the court: ‘I thought of it like crocodile tears. He acted like he was crying but no tears.’

When police searched the home, they found it ‘perfectly clean’ but found a live .22 caliber bullet lying on the floor next to Suzanne’s side of the bed in the master bedroom.

They also discovered the charred remains of ring binders and a lacquered piece of wood in the fireplace – despite firewood placed nearby – and discovered an empty tranquilizer casing in the dryer, along with a pair of Morphew’s khaki shorts.

Police also revealed that the door of the master bedroom bore marks consistent with being forced open, while Barry himself was found with scratches to both hands and his upper left arm.