The murder trial for Barry Morphew will not begin until 2027, a judge ruled Wednesday, further delaying the court proceedings against the Colorado man accused of killing his wife in a meandering case that has drawn widespread attention for years.
Morphew, 58, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Suzanne Morphew, 49, who disappeared from the family’s Chaffee County home in 2020. Barry Morphew initially was charged in 2021 with his wife’s death, but the case was dropped in 2022 after extensive misconduct by prosecutors.
Suzanne Morphew’s body was discovered in a shallow grave near Moffat in 2023, and Barry Morphew was again charged with her murder in June 2025.
Barry Morphew had been scheduled to stand trial in October, but 12th Judicial District Chief Judge Amanda Hopkins on Wednesday granted a defense request to push back the trial date into the first half of 2026 because the defense attorneys have not had enough time to go through the voluminous discovery in the case.
“There is an almost unprecedented amount of discovery,” the judge said. She did not set a new trial date Wednesday but instructed the prosecution and defense to schedule a trial before the end of July 2027.
The delay means Barry Morphew, who has maintained his innocence, will not stand trial in his wife’s death until nearly seven years after her disappearance. Both 12th Judicial District Attorney Anne Kelly and Suzanne Morphew’s siblings objected to the delay in court Wednesday.
Tom Grant, an attorney for Suzanne’s siblings, said the siblings already booked travel arrangements in Colorado for the scheduled October trial, that they feared Barry Morphew would run and that they need closure.
“They are objecting for a number of reasons,” Grant said. “The most clear and obvious one being they live every day with the grief and the pain of missing their sister and they’re tormented thinking about what has happened to her. They are just desperately needing some closure for this case.”
Kelly said the prosecution would seek a trial date in January.
A defense attorney for Barry Morphew, Jane Fisher-Byrialsen, suggested that a trial date in May was more realistic when asked by Hopkins at what point the trial needed to go forward.
“Not to be crass, but at the point we are ready to render effective assistance of counsel,” Fisher-Byrialsen said. “Our motion is based in large part on the bulk of discovery that was gotten originally. Working to organize that, catalogue it, review it, cross-reference it with other things… has just been very, very, very time-consuming and a task that has had some hurdles.”
She declined to discuss the specifics, noting that doing so would reveal defense strategy.
In the first case against Barry Morphew, prosecutors argued he killed his wife on May 9, 2020, after discovering her nearly two-year extramarital affair, then disposed of her body and staged a bike crash before leaving for work in Broomfield early the next day.
He has maintained that he left his wife sleeping in bed. The couple’s two daughters — who have since supported their father — were out of town at the time. Before her death, Suzanne Morphew told a friend she did not feel safe alone with her husband and that she was contemplating divorce.
Suzanne’s body was found with traces of prescription animal tranquilizers in her bones. Barry Morphew had access to the chemicals used — a formulation known as BAM — and admitted to using the tranquilizer mix to sedate deer, the prior case showed.
Barry Morphew has been free on bail while awaiting trial. He is next due in court July 6.
