However, Barry Morphew “obtained and filled several prescriptions” in 2018 in Indiana, according to court records. As a deer breeder there, he used BAM in part to sedate the animals in order to either remove their antlers for sale or to transport the deer to game reserves for controlled hunting, according to family members who were familiar with his business.
The original arrest affidavit argued Morphew injected his wife of 26 years with a BAM-loaded dart to subdue her before he killed her. Investigators say he was angry that Suzanne was planning to leave him, according to the original arrest affidavit.
The case has been moved three times in the six years since Suzanne Morphew was first reported missing. The initial hearings started in the 11th Judicial District in Chaffee County, where she lived, and was moved to nearby Fremont County in a change of venue due to intense publicity and a small jury pool.
It moved a third time to the 12th Judicial District after Mrs. Morphew’s remains were discovered in Saguache County. Twelfth Judicial District Attorney Anne Kelly, who is prosecuting the case, declined to comment for this article.
Defense argument: Junk science
Morphew’s attorneys call the BAM theory “junk science” and during trial, will question the lab work.
In an interview with The Sun, Morphew’s attorney, Beller, referred to a “prosecution-sided narrative of what law enforcement wants the public to believe.”
He described the science developed by detectives and toxicologists as “incomplete” adding that they ignored evidence that points to Morphew’s innocence.
Morphew’s original attorney, Iris Eytan, says she left criminal defense practice due to witnessing prosecutorial misconduct by the first team of prosecutors in the 11th Judicial District. “I knew that I could do the most good by working to prevent similar egregious misconduct,” she said. Eytan founded Protect Ethical Prosecutors, a nonprofit founded to change the laws regarding prosecutorial misconduct which she believes is still a problem in Colorado and the US.
She continues to support Morphew’s innocence.
Barry Morphew leaves a Fremont County court building in Canon City with his daughters, Macy, left, and Mallory, after charges against him in the presumed death of his wife were dismissed April 19, 2022. (Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette via AP, File)Beller and Fisher-Byrialsen plan to file formal motions challenging the forensic work in the case in the next couple of months.
Questioning the validity of forensic science is not a new legal tactic for defense attorneys.
“It’s part of our job,” said criminal defense attorney Mary Claire Mulligan, who is not involved in the case. She questioned whether the prosecutors influenced findings from the El Paso County Coroner’s Office. “Any time you say to a scientist, ‘We think this happened and we want you to tell us if it did,’ you’re making an assumption and asking a scientist to prove it,” Mulligan said.
On the other hand, Eric Faddis, a former Arapahoe County felony prosecutor who is also not involved with the case, says the day Suzanne Morphew’s remains were found provided the lynchpin the prosecution had been waiting for in order to rearrest her husband for her murder. “The forensic analysis that these chemicals were reportedly found in the victim’s body is the smoking gun. It’s really what ties Barry Morphew and no other reported person to her death.”
Faddis says the presence of BAM eliminated other potential suspects.
Controls on BAM
BAM is a relatively new compound, developed by a Wyoming veterinarian named Bill Lance. The Department of Colorado Parks and Wildlife patented the compound and prescribed it for research in 2008 and used it that way until 2013, according to CPW spokesperson Travis Duncan. “At that time, CPW veterinarians started prescribing BAM to authorized biologists and wildlife officers for statewide use.”
BAM is a controlled substance strictly regulated by the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Food and Drug Administration.
According to Sam Pearce, a pharmacy technician with Wedgewood Pharmacy, the company that distributes BAM, the kits are delivered in a vial and then can be poured into a dart which is then shot into the animal to put it to sleep.
Pearce said that the weight of the animal being sedated is critical in measuring how much to insert into the animal. An adult deer can weigh as much as 300 pounds. Suzanne Morphew weighed 110 pounds when she went missing.
A pharmacology expert testified before the grand jury that BAM would render a human “wholly immobile, vulnerable and unable to resist any constrictions to the recipient’s ability to breathe.”
Two Colorado Parks and Wildlife veterinarians who were familiar with BAM told investigators that a full dose of the compound could be fatal if used on a human. Lisa Wolfe, a retired vet with CPW who was interviewed in April 2021, determined that a dose of BAM would take 8 to 12 minutes for “a female of Suzanne’s size” to be fully sedated and that that she would remain immobile for two to eight hours depending on her position, according to the arrest affidavit.
Investigators who spoke on condition of anonymity said that too much time has passed to know the exact dose of BAM that was injected into Suzanne Morphew’s body, but the indictment contended that she did not die right away because “her body had begun to metabolize the drug” and that it would have “taken several minutes to take effect.”
Dr. Jeff
Besides CPW, The Colorado Sun was able to identify one other source who had a prescription for BAM around the time that Suzanne Morphew disappeared. Conifer veterinarian Dr. Jeff Young remembered ordering it for an Animal Planet program called “Dr. Jeff: Rocky Mountain Vet.” On the show, he performed surgeries on exotic wildlife like alligators, yaks and camels. He said that early on, an investigator on the Morphew case paid him a short visit and indicated that he was not a suspect. He never heard from the investigator again and forgot about it.
In a phone interview with The Sun, Young said that the opioid BAM is so highly regulated that he was required to account for every drop. “Once it was delivered to the clinic, it went under lock and key. We logged every bottle, put a number on it and the bottles had to match. You just don’t go out to CVS or Walgreens and buy this stuff.”
Young said that he rarely used BAM on his show.
Morphew’s BAM usage
Investigators interviewed Barry Morphew at length about his BAM kits, which he told them disappeared from his workbench after his wife went missing.
During several interviews he admitted that he used tranquilizers to put deer to sleep so that he could take their antlers, according to the first arrest affidavit.
“The first thing I thought of when I came and saw deer in my yard with big horns, I’m like ‘I’m gettin’ them horns,” he told FBI and Colorado Bureau of Investigation agents, according to the affidavit.
“You’re gonna find tranq darts around my property because I’ve done that,” he told an FBI special agent in March 2021, 10 months after his wife disappeared. When asked when was the last time he used a dart gun to sedate a deer, he answered that it was around the end of April 2020, according to the affidavit, weeks before Mother’s Day weekend of the same year when Suzanne Morphew was last seen alive.
Suzanne Morphew flashes a peace sign during one of her bouts with chemotherapy for lymphoma, photographed in 1991 or 1992. (Photo provided by Melinda Moorman Balzer.)However, when investigators searched the family home in the days after Suzanne Morphew vanished, they did not find a drop of BAM.
They did discover a tranquilizer rifle in the Morphews’ gun safe and packages of tranquilizer darts which included capped hypodermic needles. In the family dryer, they found one of those caps along with the pair of shorts Morphew was seen wearing on May 9, 2020.
That day records show Mrs. Morphew and her lover shared 59 messages between them, leading up to the moment investigators believe Barry Morphew murdered her. Just after 2 p.m., she messaged her lover with a selfie, which would be the last piece of evidence that showed Suzanne Morphew alive.
The jury
Rural Alamosa County will be under an intense spotlight when Morphew’s trial begins Oct. 13. The jury will be chosen from a pool of at least 10,000 Alamosa County residents.
The San Luis Valley’s 12th Judicial District is under pressure after the original prosecution team failed to prosecute Morphew.
Linda Stanley, the 11th Judicial District district attorney who led the first attempt, was disbarred in September 2024 after Colorado state regulators found that her management of the case resulted in the prosecution “running aground.” She is appealing that ruling.
On the other side, Morphew’s attorneys are tasked with saving Morphew from a lifetime in prison for a crime they insist that he did not do.
“An intelligent jury will be of utmost importance,” said Mary Claire Mulligan, the defense attorney. “You want jurors who are not going to swallow the state’s evidence hook, line and sinker.”
However, Eric Faddis, the former Arapahoe County prosecutor, pointed out that though juries may not be familiar with BAM, they should be familiar with poisoning as a murder weapon.
“It’s not an untested theory in science, like DNA or AI, which are less established,” he said.
The forensics of toxicology was first used in 18th-century England when a woman was found guilty of fatally poisoning her father with arsenic.
Morphew’s next hearing is Monday in Alamosa.
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