Barry Morphew ‘flipped a switch’ before Suzanne vanished then displayed ‘messed up’ behavior after she went missing

BARRY Morphew erupted into a violent rage and allegedly attacked a colleague at work before his wife Suzanne went missing – with the coworker claiming to The U.S. Sun he saw “evil in his eyes” during the scuffle.

Another former colleague of Barry’s also claimed that the now 55-year-old exhibited such strange and “disturbing” behavior in the aftermath of Suzanne’s disappearance on May 10, 2020, that he too was scared to work with him again.

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John Schmitz, a general contractor, first crossed paths with Barry Morphew in December 2017 when they were working on the same construction site in Indianapolis.

Barry was assigned to the project as a landscaper and shared a number of verbal altercations with Schmitz and others working on the site, cussing them out and throwing his weight around, Schmitz claimed.

Tensions reached a boiling point at the close of day on December 10, 2017, when Schmitz and his crew were just about to start taking down some scaffolding after completing a dumpster enclosure.

“We got to the point where we got everything done, but our scaffold was still up,” recounted Schmitz.

“So we started taking our scaffold down – and this would literally take us 10 minutes – when [Barry] starts coming around there […] and I was trying to leave to go to another job when one of my guys comes out and says: ‘There’s a crazy person back here with a pitchfork and he’s throwing our tools out into the road.’

“So I go back there and sure enough [Barry] is ranting and raving. I don’t remember what he said, he was just so mad [and] he was cussing me and everyone else. So, I said, ‘We’re not doing this, I’m going to get the superintendent.’”

As Schmitz went to walk away, a snarling Morphew allegedly came rushing over to him and “body bumped him” full force.

Hoping to avoid a fight, Schmitz said that he continued on to go and find the superintendent but couldn’t locate him.

“I started thinking: ‘I’ve left my guys out there with this crazy person.’ So I start taking down the last of the scaffold and all of a sudden he just comes in and pushes me down […] and I came back up and I just grabbed him.

“I put a chokehold on him and pinned him up against the wall, just out of instinct really.

“And man, he started crying like a baby, ‘You’re going to jail.’”

The police were called and took statements from both men.

In an affidavit relating to Barry’s 2021 arrest for the murder of Suzanne, Schmitz told police that he had seen “evil” in Barry’s eyes as he rushed him.

Elaborating on that observation more than five years later, Schmitz said: “If you can picture a bull with steam coming out of its nose – a cartoon bull – well then he looked like that.

“He was coming at me […] and I just thought he’s gonna rip my head off. Literally, rip my head off.

“I was in defense mode so I wasn’t scared but I probably should have been.

“He was fired up. He was angry. So, you know, I think about that. And you wonder how some of the stuff you start seeing about Suzanne, it seemed like she’d had enough of it.

“And I got to think that if he can act like that with a total stranger, how’s he going to be at home or whatever?”

‘DISTURBING BEHAVIOR’

Suzanne Morphew was reported missing on Mother’s Day 2020, having apparently left her family‘s home in Salida, Colorado, for a bike ride but never returned.

Very few physical clues were recovered in the case but police believe the mom-of-two was murdered sometime between the afternoon of May 9 and May 10 – several hours before a 911 call was made by a neighbor.

Barry Morphew, now 55, is the only person to have been publicly named as a suspect in connection with her presumed death.

He had been 150 miles away in Broomfield, Colorado, when the call to report Suzanne missing was made.

Suzanne’s bike was later found a short distance from the family home in a scene investigators believe to have been staged.

Suzanne likely never went on a bike ride the morning she vanished, police claimed, and had most likely been killed the day prior.

In the months preceding her disappearance, Suzanne was having an affair with an old high school boyfriend, Jeff Libler.

Messages recovered from her cellphone indicated that she was planning to leave Barry and had often confided in friends about his allegedly controlling and abusive behavior.

I only had one dealing with him, and I told my friends afterward I would never go back because of how strange Barry was … [he was] a messed up person

Ex-colleague

In one message to a friend, Suzanne likened Barry to “Jekyll and Hyde,” court records show.

In another message addressed to Barry on May 6, she wrote: “I’m done, I could care less what you’re up to have been for years. We just need to figure this out civilly.”

In other messages, Suzanne said that he was becoming increasingly volatile. In one exchange, she claimed that Barry had put a gun to his head and threatened to pull the trigger if she left him.

The theory shared by prosecutors at the time of his arrest was that Barry had discovered Suzanne’s affair with Libler, murdered her in a rage sometime between May 9 and May 10, and disposed of her remains before driving to Broomfield.

Barry was questioned by police over a series of months before he was arrested and charged with murder in May 2021.

The charges were later dropped by a judge at the request of the prosecution, who wanted to find Suzanne’s body before advancing to trial.

Before the arrest was made, a colleague of Barry’s in Salida told The U.S. Sun how he had worked on an installation job with Barry just weeks after Suzanne went missing and was left so disturbed by his behavior and demeanor that he wanted “nothing to do with him again.”

Speaking on grounds of anonymity, he said: “I only had one dealing with him, and I told my friends afterward, I would never go back because of how strange Barry was.

“He was just so odd; a messed up person who was clearly disturbed.

“Whether or not he killed her, the whole thing definitely messed him up.

“But I just really didn’t get a good feeling from him.”

‘FLIPPED A SWITCH’

Schmitz said that he also had a bad feeling when he read about Suzanne’s disappearance a few days after news of her vanishing first broke.

He opened a newsletter in his email and saw a report of a missing woman in Salida and said one thought popped into his mind: “Oh, please don’t be Barry Morphew’s wife.”

It was, and Schmitz said that he was overcome with the feeling that something terrible had happened to Suzanne.

“The first thing I thought was, ‘Oh, he’s killed his wife.’ And then we see more stuff coming and [Barry’s alibi] is starting to make no sense,” he claimed.

“I’ve seen him go berserk over scaffolding not being away.

“I could see if your wife was going to leave you that might tip the scale.”

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Schmitz traveled to Salida to take part in searches for Suzanne in the months following her disappearance.

During one search, he crossed paths with Barry again and confronted him about the incident on the Indiana works site three years prior.

“I approached him and asked him what the deal was, and he just said he was having a bad day, and we talked about a couple of other things too.

“But it was more than a bad day. Something else was eating at that guy.

“It seemed he made a mountain out of a molehill.

“I’ve been careful not to say, ‘I think he did it or I think he didn’t’, […] but I just know that his actions that day lead me to think he could be capable of doing something.”

FIRING BACK

Last week, Barry filed a $15million lawsuit against prosecutors and other local officials, accusing them of violating his human rights when they arrested him for Suzanne’s murder two years ago.

The suit, filed by three different law firms, alleges that investigators lied and withheld and manufactured information to suit a hastily-drawn theory that Barry murdered Suzanne in a fit of rage over the affair she was having with Libler and hid her body sometime between the morning of May 9 and early May 10.

It also alleges that the named officials “conspired to deprive” Barry of his constitutional rights and later tried to “conceal the knowing and reckless misconduct and to protect one another from liability for depriving Barry Morphew of his constitutional rights.”

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“As result of the Defendants’ conduct Barry was charged, arrested, and prosecuted, and his property seized, for a crime he did not commit,” the lawsuit said. 

“As [a] result of the Defendants’ conduct, Barry spent five months in jail, approximately six more months wearing a GPS ankle monitor with severe restrictions on his movement, and almost a year defending against the criminal charges. To this date, Barry’s property remains in the CCSD’s possession.”

In a statement, Attorney Jane Byrialsen said: “Barry Morphew’s Constitutional Rights were trampled on, he and his daughters have suffered great harm, and we will not tolerate such abuses of power.”

A source close to Barry exclusively revealed to The U.S. Sun that while he works to “finally clear” his name, he remains completely broken over the disappearance of his wife and is struggling to move on without definitive answers as to what happened to her.

“He’s holding onto hope that she will be found but he also knows that while law enforcement has the means to do that, they aren’t doing it, they’re not searching for her,” said the source, a close friend who asked to remain anonymous.

“But at the same time, I’d say he’s broken. These last few years have broken him in a lot of ways.

“Barry is trying to rebuild his life […] he’s working but also taking time to spend with his daughters and heal together.

“But with the anniversary and everything else coming up, that brings all these emotions back up again – and still there’s no closure.

“That’s been very challenging, not knowing what happened to Suzanne, and we don’t know if we ever will.

“It’s harder to move forward without closure. It’s been three years, and time does help, but there’s still a lot going on and it’s all very complicated.”

‘BARRY’S NOT A KILLER’

The friend also asserted that the Barry they know – whom they described as calm and level-headed with a big heart – is simply incapable of committing a violent crime.

“He’s been a very consistent person throughout the time I’ve known him,” they said.

“Of course, I’ve seen him stressed but never anything that was like a ‘Jekyll and Hyde’ to the point where I’ve had to ask, who is this person? Do I even know this person?

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“Obviously, he’s not a perfect person and gets stressed and in a hurry from time to time, but I wouldn’t describe him as that. I’d describe him as a pretty calm, steady, and strong person.

“I’ve never felt unsafe in his presence. In fact, quite the opposite – he’s very easy to be with and spend time with.

“I’ve only felt very comfortable with him.”

They continued: “I’ve never questioned his claims of innocence.

“He and his family are such beautiful people. They’re just a very close family and they have very high standards and morals.

“I don’t think he’s capable of doing something like this. He’s a person with a very big heart.

“He’s not a details man either. He can be messy, so he’d leave a trail.

“I don’t see him as being detailed enough to think of everything.”

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