One of the lead investigators looking into the disappearance of Suzanne Morphew has said the arrest of her husband for her murder was ‘premature,’ according to newly-filed court documents.
Suzanne’s husband Barry, 53, was arrested last May on suspicion of murder following a year-long search for his wife, Suzanne, 49, who disappeared from their home on Mother’s Day 2020. Her body has never been found, but police say she is most likely dead because she has not been heard from since then.
Barry denies the charges, and has submitted court documents to dismiss the case for ‘outrageous governmental conduct,’ claiming that former Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Joseph Cahill himself had said that Barry’s was ‘premature’ just four months ago, in December 2021.
The defense attorneys write in the court documents, obtained by 9 News, that Cahill ‘stated the case was not remotely ready for anybody to move the case forward’ when he was being interviewed by Internal Affairs on December 2 for accidentally firing his weapon while he was off-duty and at home.
They also claim in the documents, which were unsealed on Tuesday, that Cahill and his partner, Agent Derek Graham, had expressed their concerns about the case to their superiors – but they were ultimately ignored.
And, they claim, the prosecutors withheld ‘exculpatory evidence’ from the court during the preliminary hearing charging Barry for Suzanne’s murder. Further details on what that evidence is have yet to be shared, although defense previously accused prosecutors of omitting DNA evidence from disclosure.
If that evidence had been available at the time, Barry’s defense attorneys, Iris Eytan and Hollis Whitson, ‘it is certain that probable cause would not have been found.’
Barry Morphew, seen walking into court with his two adult daughters in December, is seeking to get the charges against him overturned, with his lawyers claiming that a former had doubts about his arrest
Morphew is accused of murdering his wife, Suzanne, right, who went missing on Mother’s Day in 2020. Her body has never been found
The court documents state that Cahill had repeatedly brought up concerns about Barry Morphew’s arrest one year after Suzanne went missing on May 10, 2020.
He reportedly told the Internal Affairs investigator that after putting the case together for a year, he saw an ‘erosion of framework’ while he was at school and off the case from March through May of 2021, KDVR reports.
The report said that on August 24, 2021, during the preliminary hearing testimony, Cahill claimed he only read nine pages of the Morphew arrest affidavit. At the time, Internal Affairs requested revisions to the affidavit, documents showed.
However, Internal Affairs claimed that multiple requests were made to Cahill for revisions to the affidavit between August 24, 2021 to January 25, 2022.
Then when Cahill and Graham’s supervisors, CBI Deputy Director Chris Schaefer and an Agent Kemper spoke with Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze about their concerns, Barry’s defense attorneys say, they were ultimately ignored.
‘Mr. Cahill stated that Sheriff Spezze did not heed CBI’s advice or opinions, and moved forward with Mr. Morphew’s arrest,’ the court documents released on Tuesday claim.
‘Mr. Cahill summed up by saying it “is what it is.”‘
In a rebuttal to the filing, the prosecution characterized the call for the dismissal of the case and trial as ‘utter nonsense,’ saying Cahill has been ‘thoroughly discredited.’
Prosecutors contend they have produced tens of thousands of pages of discovery and hours of video recordings, and says the defense has ‘stopped trying to confer with the People as their last request for discovery was made directly to the Court.’
Morphew was arrested last May – one year after Suzanne went missing
Authorities claim Barry killed Suzanne (pictured) with a dart gun filled with animal tranquilizer
Prosecutors have said Barry had murdered his wife using animal tranquilizer, after investigators found a dart gun near where she went missing.
They claimed that the animal tranquilizer killed Suzanne and that Barry had covered his tracks by disposing of her body – possibly in the remote Garfield Mine – and pointed to his phone being placed in airplane mode repeatedly over the weekend of May 9 and 10 as evidence.
According to court documents, CBI superiors expressed their concerns about Barry’s arrest with Chaffee County Sheriff John Spezze, who ‘did not heed CBI’s advice or opinions’
The prosecution also noted that he had left a Holiday Inn hotel room in Broomfield, Colorado, reeking of chlorine – a development first reported by DailyMail.com in September 2020.
But Barry’s defense attorneys claim that when investigators found the dart rifle, it was inoperable and had not been used in a long time.
They have also claimed that investigators intentionally omitted evidence of DNA belonging to an alleged sex offender found in Suzanne Morphew’s bike, helmet, car and bedsheets.
Barry’s defense lawyers have now subpoenaed the director of the CBI, the deputy director of the CBI and the head of the major crimes unit for the CBI to appear in court this Friday for a motion’s hearing before his trial begins on April 28.
They have previously announced they were filing a civil case against 26 individuals associated with the Chaffee Police Department, 11th Judicial District Attorney’s Office, the Colorado Bureau of Investigations and the FBI for intentionally omitting the evidence.
Barry’s defense team previously filed a lawsuit against 26 individuals in the investigation and prosecution of the case, alleging they intentionally with held evidence found at the crime scene
The lawsuit claims investigators and prosecutors withheld evidence of DNA from an alleged sex offender found in Suzanne’s property. Pictured, FBI and CBI officials at the scene in 2020
But Cahill’s reputation has been called into question in recent months.
He resigned from the CBI in December amid an internal affairs investigation into the accidental discharge of a gun while he was off-duty and in his own home. Cahill sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the hand as a result.
John Camper, the director of the CBI, called Cahill’s actions dealing with his service weapon ‘careless or imprudent’ in the aftermath, and an Internal Affairs memo obtained by 9 News states that Morphew lied to investigators looking into what happened.
‘I find that he was intentionally misleading in his statements,’ the Internal Affairs document from December 14 reads. ‘I am actually more troubled by the lengths he went to in order to support the falsehood.
Eventually, Internal Affairs found that Cahill was attempting to remove a gun light he had bought from his CBI-issued weapon because he was planning to resign from the service that day.
They said he bought a new gun light in an attempt to cover up his lie when he was interviewed by another CBI agent, and before admitting the truth ‘Cahill initially lied on four occasions upon being specifically asked when he purchased the new gun light before correction.’
