Tag: Colorado

Colorado prosecutors in Barry Morphew's dismissed murder case accused of scheming against judge

Colorado prosecutors are facing new complaints related to Barry Morphew’s dismissed murder case.

In 2021, Barry was charged with murder in connection with his wife Suzanne Morphew’s May 2020 disappearance, but a judge dismissed the charges in April 2022. 

The Colorado Supreme Court’s Office of Attorney Regulation Counsel (OARC) has since filed formal complaints against 11th Judicial District Attorney’s Office prosecutors Robert Weiner and Mark Hurlbert, accusing them of withholding evidence in the Morphew case and plotting against District Judge Ramsey Lama in a text thread.

“It was well known that prosecutors in the Morphew case abused their authority and power to wrongly charge Mr. Morphew,” Iris Eytan, Barry’s lawyer, told Fox News Digital. “But, it is new news that these prosecutors also threatened the rule of law and our democracy by attempting to intimidate and threaten the presiding judge due to his rulings and sanctions for their pattern of misconduct.”

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Hurlbert, the lead prosecutor on the Morphew case, told FOX 31 Denver his “only comment is that we deny the allegations and will be filing a response.”

The complaints allege that Weiner and Hurlbert failed to turn over evidence in a timely manner, misstated facts in pleadings, violated court orders and attempted to intimidate Judge Lama in an “abuse of power.”

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A text thread between the prosecutors cited as evidence in the complaint began in response to a debunked theory stemming from a crime podcast called “True Crime with Julez.” The podcast host, Julez Wolf, started a petition claiming “the ex-wife of Judge Lama is an advocate of Suzanne Morphew and victims of Domestic abuse.” After 11th Judicial District Attorney Linda Stanley requested a criminal investigation into Lama’s conduct in the case, 11th Judicial District criminal investigator Andrew Corey found no “wrongdoing.” 

Lama’s wife told Corey that “never did any type of Domestic abuse happen in the relationship,” according to the complaint.

Stanley shared the petition with Weiner and Hurlbert in March 2022, writing, “You guys might want to read this…” Screenshots of texts between the three prosecutors included in the complaint show Stanley questioned the accuracy of the claims in the petition but suggested they investigate the judge. “[I]t could DEFINITELY explain why he hates us so much,” Stanley wrote of the judge.

“Holy crap! Let’s go after him! He should have disclosed this. We need to confirm asap,” Weiner wrote.

“Let’s pull his divorce case,” Weiner said of Lama in another text, adding later, “He should not be on the bench.” Hurlbert called the judge “obviously biased.”

The OARC does not comment on pending complaints.

The counsel filed a similar complaint against Stanley in October. The complaint accused Stanley of sharing information about the case with true-crime podcasters.

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The complaint also alleges that the district attorney failed to share discovery, including DNA-match evidence, with the defense in a timely manner, among other accusations of misconduct.

No signs of human remains or blood have ever been located near the Morphew home in Maysville or in their family vehicles. But DNA was found on Suzanne’s glove box. 

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The partial profile investigators were able to obtain matched profiles developed in sexual assault cases out of Chicago, Phoenix and Tempe, Arizona, Colorado Bureau of Investigation agent Joseph Cahill said during a hearing in 2021, as reported by the Denver Post. Barry’s DNA did not match that sample, his lawyers told KUSA-TV at the time.

In a July interview with FOX 21 Colorado Springs, Stanley called the OARC’s investigation “a witch hunt.”

“I stand up for people all the time, every day. So, me not being able to stand up for myself was difficult,” she told the outlet. “As of right now, the office is majorly underfunded.… If one person quits, it will set back everything, and that’s the kind of shoestring budget it is at this point.… But we have nothing but very, very experienced prosecutors in this office, and I’m so proud of that.”

In September 2023, authorities located Suzanne’s remains in a “shallow grave” in a desert about 45 miles south of Maysville while they were searching for another missing woman. Authorities have not named any other suspects in her murder since her husband’s case was dismissed nearly two years ago.

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Morphew’s bike was discovered on the same day she went missing in 2020 in a ravine along Highway 50 and County Road 225 in Chaffee County, near her family’s Maysville home. Barry said he was working in Broomfield, Colorado, a suburb of Denver, at the time.

FOLLOW THE FOX TRUE CRIME TEAM ON X

Text messages from Suzanne and Barry, who had been married 25 years, that were unsealed in June 2023 suggest they were both having affairs just before her disappearance.

Four days before her disappearance, Suzanne sent Barry a text saying she was “done.” “I could care less what you’re up to and have been for years,” she wrote, adding that they needed to figure things out “civilly.”

Earlier in 2023, Barry’s legal team filed a $15 million lawsuit against prosecutors and investigators, accusing them of violating his constitutional rights.

“Barry was the most scrutinized, dissected, surveilled individual, minute by minute, hour by hour, using law enforcement cameras posted by his home, phone taps and GPS devices placed on his car – all during the time frame of her disappearance and the years following,” Eytan said in a statement at the time.

“What needs to be done instead of pointing fingers at Barry Morphew, is asking the officials about the number of missing people and number of human remains that have been recovered in or from Saguache County in the recent past,” Eytan continued.

Authorities are asking anyone with information about the case to contact 719-312-7530.

Colorado GOP asking US Supreme Court to overturn ruling disqualifying Trump from 2024 ballot

The Colorado Republican Party said it’s asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn a ruling that barred former President Donald Trump from appearing on the state’s 2024 ballot. 

Earlier this month, the Colorado Supreme Court, in a 4-3 vote, overturned a lower court ruling that allowed Trump to appear on the ballot as a presidential candidate. The initial ruling said a president is not among the officials subject to disqualification on a ballot. 

“By excluding President Trump from the ballot, the Colorado Supreme Court engaged in an unprecedented disregard for the First Amendment right of political parties to select the candidates of their choice and a usurpation of the rights of the people to choose their elected officials,” attorneys for the state Republican party wrote in a petition of the Dec. 19 ruling. 

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Fox News Digital has reached out to the Colorado GOP. 

In their opinion, the justices on the state’s high court wrote that Trump “incited and encouraged” the use of violence to prevent the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6, 2021, when many of his followers stormed the U.S. Capitol as congressional lawmakers were certifying President Biden’s election win. 

The case is being appealed based on three main arguments: whether the president is among those officials subject to disqualification by Section Three of the 14th Amendment, the so-called insurrection clause; whether Section Three is “self-executing,” meaning that it allows states to remove candidates from a ballot in absence of any congressional action. 

The last point rests on whether denying a political party the ability to choose a candidate of its choice in a presidential primary and general election violates the First Amendment Right of Association. The attorneys said by excluding Trump, Colorado’s highest court has concluded that individuals, courts and election officials can possess legal authority to enforce Section Three. 

“Rejecting a long history of precedent, a state Supreme Court has now concluded that individual litigants, state courts, and secretaries of state in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia have authority to enforce Section Three of the Fourteenth Amendment,” the state party wrote.

The party also said that other states may follow Colorado’s lead and exclude Trump from their ballots as well. Disqualification lawsuits relating to Trump’s appearance on the ballot are pending in 13 states, including Texas, Nevada and Wisconsin.

“With the number of challenges to President Trump’s candidacy now pending in other states, ranging from lawsuits to administrative proceedings, there is a real risk the Colorado Supreme Court majority’s flawed and unprecedented analysis will be borrowed, and the resulting grave legal error repeated,” the petition states. 

In the lower court ruling, Colorado District Judge Sarah B. Wallace allowed Trump to stay on the ballot, but found that he “engaged in insurrection” for his role in the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

Biden won Colorado by 13.5 points in 2020.

On Wednesday, the Michigan Supreme Court rejected an attempt to remove Trump from the state’s 2024 Republican primary ballot.

“Significantly, Colorado’s election laws differ from Michigan’s laws in a material way that is directly relevant to why the appellants in this case are not entitled to the relief they seek concerning the presidential primary election in Michigan,” Justice Elizabeth Welch wrote Wednesday, explaining the court’s ruling.

Sister of Colorado girl who went missing at 14 became investigator in already bungled case

On Aug. 16, 1983, teenager Beth Miller left her Idaho Springs, Colorado, home for a jog and never returned.

For weeks, there was a massive community search effort for the 14-year-old as neighbors and law enforcement came together to bring her home, but that never happened.

“I’m not young anymore, and I’d like to know what happened to Beth,” Miller’s sister, Lynn McLaughlin, told Fox News Digital. “And I want to be able to tell Mom, who’s not a spring chicken, either — I’d like to be able to tell her, ‘This is what happened to Beth, and this is where she’s buried. Let’s go get her and give her a good Christian burial.'”

McLaughlin was so determined for answers after her sister’s disappearance that she became directly involved in the case in the 1990s when she joined local law enforcement, and doing so led her down an even more complicated path toward answers.

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“That’s really why I got into law enforcement. I wanted to find my sister,” McLaughlin told Fox News Digital.

But when she began sorting through the evidence in her sister’s case, she was confronted with an unsalvageable mess.

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“When I went to the Idaho Springs Police Department, I was told that I was about a month too late — that most of the reports and everything they didn’t think was important had been destroyed,” she said. “There was very little left of this case.”

Leads that would have previously taken up a “bathroom-sized room” full of papers — pre-computers — now only took up two drawers, she said.

McLaughlin began her law enforcement career with the Idaho Springs Police Department and then went on to the Clear Creek County Sheriff’s Office (CCCSO), which told Fox News Digital it is still actively investigating the case but could not comment further on developments at this time.

“When I started working on the case, and that publicity drew a lot of new leads to us. So, we were able to take a lot of that information and those leads and investigate those leads. And through that, we found a couple of very good suspects that we dug a lot further into,” McLaughlin explained. “…It’s frustrating.”

Another girl said she saw Miller jogging on Aug. 16, 1983 and waved to her. That witness told investigators that she saw a red pickup truck drive by Miller near the same area where search dogs eventually lost her scent, according to McLaughlin.

McLaughlin named two potential suspects in Miller’s disappearance who were never charged as Edward Apodaca, a former law enforcement officer, and his former girlfriend, Viola Moya. Apodaca lived nearby and owned a red pickup truck similar to the one the witness described at the time of Miller’s vanishing.

Moya apparently gave a statement to an investigator in 1993 saying they had dismembered the 14-year-old and buried her remains.

So McLaughlin, as a CCCSO investigator, went to the alleged burial site with other investigators, began to dig and eventually found a “t-shirt similar to the one Beth was wearing at the time of her disappearance.” 

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She went to the sheriff at the time and told him what she had discovered. When she returned to the scene, a large piece of equipment had been moved over the apparent burial site, obstructing McLaughlin’s access to anything of potential importance in her sister’s case. The man operating the equipment told McLaughlin that he was taking “orders from the sheriff,” she said. 

“I can’t remember if it was a bulldozer or a backhoe or what it was, but it was covering up everything, and it completely — the trees, bushes, everything was gone where we had markers [that] the bloodhounds had alerted,” she recalled. 

When McLaughlin confronted the sheriff, she was told she “would be charged with interfering with an investigation, with trespass and a list of charges” if she “ever went back to that site again.”

“That was the end,” she said.

In 2006, a grand jury was called to investigate several witnesses over the course of 10 months. 

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Apodaca’s wife and her mother killed him in New Mexico in 1990, according to The Denver Post. Moya had grown old and was considered too incapacitated to be questioned or charged, McLaughlin said.

The grand jury concluded that there was a “clear lack of professionalism and cooperation in the investigating bodies,” including the Idaho Springs Police Department, CCCSO, the Denver Police Department, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation (CBI) and the FBI. They also found a “lack of meaningful investigation at the outset of this case.” As a result, the jury could not formally indict any suspects.

“Jurisdictional disputes were particularly at fault in slowly and eventually sabotaging the investigation. During the [then-24-year-old] investigation involving five agencies many documents and statements became hard to corroborate, and others were destroyed,” the grand jury stated.

Now, more than anything, McLaughlin says she just wants to find Miller’s remains and give her a proper burial.

“I know whoever did it — they’ll still face their best judgment time when they die,” she said.

Colorado cancels plans to send migrants to NYC, Chicago amid outcry from Democratic mayors

Democratic Colorado Gov. Jared Polis will stop sending migrants to New York City, Chicago and other major Democrat-run cities after mayors expressed outrage at the plan in recent weeks.

Polis had agreed to work with local authorities in Denver to help send migrants to their final destinations. While Colorado is not a border state, it has seen a major influx of migrants seeking passage to elsewhere in the country. Mayors Eric Adams of New York City and Lori Lightfoot of Chicago called on Polis to end his assistance last week as their cities also struggle with a surge in migrants.

“People fleeing violence and oppression in search of a better life for themselves and their families deserve our respect not political games and we are grateful we have been able to assist migrants to reach their final destination,” Polis had said of the program. “We refuse to keep people against their will if they desire to travel elsewhere.”

Adams and Lightfoot wrote to Polis in a joint letter, urging him to halt his bussing program after it sent just a few hundred migrants.

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“We have seen your statements in the media that you are simply accommodating the wishes of migrants to come to cities like New York City and Chicago,” the pair wrote. “However, you are sending migrants and families to New York City and Chicago that do not have any ties, family members or community networks to welcome them.”

Adams was outraged at Polis’ bussing program during a press conference appearance last week, comparing it to similar programs that Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis used to flood his city with some 30,000 migrants last year.

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“One time we had to deal with Republican governors sending migrants to New York. Now we’re dealing with Democratic governors sending migrants to New York,” Adams said Wednesday.

“What’s callous is how we have been ignored as a city. And now I have to make tough decisions on the resources of New York … it is time for the federal government to step up,” he added.

Adams’ plea for federal assistance comes as President Biden makes his first trip to the U.S.-Mexico border Sunday. The White House also unveiled a handful of policies aimed at stemming the flow at the border last week. They include expanding a humanitarian parole program for Venezuelan nationals to include Haitians, Cubans and Nicaraguans, as well as increasing refugee resettlements.

Biden acknowledged the changes aren’t up to the task, however.

“These actions alone that I’m going to announce today aren’t going to fix our entire immigration system but they can help us a good deal in managing what is a difficult challenge,” he said Thursday.

Colorado Dem gov slams DeSantis for ‘socialist attacks’ on Disney, GOP gov hits back at ‘baseless allegations’

Polis criticized Florida in a Tuesday tweet over his support of the state legislation stripping Disney of its special self-governance powers and for DeSantis saying he was looking into legislation regarding Twitter’s poison pill to Elon Musk’s offer.

Colorado governor criticized by 2 district attorneys for intervening in trucker's sentencing

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis faced criticism from two district attorneys in the state – a Democrat and a Republican – who said his steep commutation of a truck driver convicted in a crash that led to four deaths before a judge weighed in could set a “troubling precedent,” according to reports.