DENVER (AP) — The husband of a woman who disappeared on Mother's Day 2020 appeared in court in Colorado on Tuesday for the first time since being charged again with murder in her death.
Barry Morphew was arrested June 20 in Arizona after being newly indicted in the death of Suzanne Morphew, three years after the initial case against him was dropped because of prosecutorial issues with evidence.
Authorities announced Monday that he had arrived at the jail in the small southern Colorado city of Alamosa, not far from where Suzanne Morphew's skeletal remains were found off a dirt road in September 2023.
Morphew, wearing an orange and white jail uniform, sat next to his two attorneys, David Beller and Jane Fisher-Byrialsen, at the defense table for the approximately 30-minute hearing before Chief Judge Amanda Hopkins. Morphew waived his right to be advised of his legal rights and was not asked to speak. Much of the hearing was focused on requests made by his lawyers, such as making sure they are given all evidence in the case and their objection to the judge allowing a television camera in court.
Suzanne Morphew's remains were discovered accidentally as authorities were searching for another missing woman a year after prosecutors dropped their initial prosecution of Morphew.
A 2024 autopsy report said Suzanne Morphew died of “unspecified means” but ruled her death a homicide. While her remains showed no signs of trauma, investigators found in her bone marrow a drug cocktail used to tranquilize wildlife that her husband had a prescription for, according to the indictment.
Barry Morphew has maintained his innocence since his wife disappeared.
Beller and Fisher-Byrialsen did not return telephone and email messages seeking comment. Beller has previously criticized prosecutors for allowing “their predetermined conclusion to lead their search for evidence.”
At Morphew’s request, Hopkins agreed to appoint the state-funded public defender’s office to represent him because he is in jail. However, Beller said the state public defender’s office has a conflict of interest preventing it from representing Morphew and he expects Fisher-Byrialsen and himself to ultimately be appointed to represent Morphew by another state office that pays private attorneys to defend people who can’t be represented by the public defender’s office.
Morphew, who owned a landscaping company when his wife disappeared, was represented by a different private attorney the first time he was prosecuted.
Morphew sold the family home in the mountains near Salida, Colorado, for $1.6 million in 2021. According to jail records, Morphew is self-employed and his home address is in Noplesville, Indiana.
The mystery surrounding Suzanne Morphew began when the 49-year-old mother of two daughters was reported missing on Mother’s Day 2020.
Her mountain bike and helmet were found in separate spots not far from her home, but investigators suspected the bike was purposefully thrown into a ravine because there were no indications of a crash. A week after his wife went missing, Barry Morphew posted a video on Facebook pleading for her safe return and the case quickly drew attention.
In May 2021, prosecutors charged him with murder. They subsequently dropped the case in 2022 just as Morphew was about to stand trial.
A judge had barred prosecutors from calling key witnesses after the attorneys repeatedly failed to follow rules for turning over evidence in Morphew’s favor.
The latest case is being prosecuted by a different prosecutor in a separate judicial district where Suzanne Morphew's remains were found, a rural area about 40 miles (65 kilometers) south of the Morphews’ home.
Investigators found at the site a port through which Suzanne Morphew could receive medicine to treat follicular lymphoma, a type of blood cancer that she had. They also found biking clothes similar to what she was known to wear.
Based on the condition of the remains and clothes, a forensic anthropologist theorized that the body likely decomposed elsewhere before being moved to the site, according to Morphew's new indictment.
FILE - Barry Morphew leaves a Fremont County court building in Canon City, Colo., with his daughters, Macy, left, and Mallory, after charges against him in the presumed death of his wife were dismissed, on April 19, 2022. (Jerilee Bennett/The Gazette via AP, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — Reviving a campaign pledge, President Donald Trump wants a one-year, 10% cap on credit card interest rates, a move that could save Americans tens of billions of dollars but drew immediate opposition from an industry that has been in his corner.
Trump was not clear in his social media post Friday night whether a cap might take effect through executive action or legislation, though one Republican senator said he had spoken with the president and would work on a bill with his “full support.” Trump said he hoped it would be in place Jan. 20, one year after he took office.
Strong opposition is certain from Wall Street in addition to the credit card companies, which donated heavily to his 2024 campaign and have supported Trump's second-term agenda. Banks are making the argument that such a plan would most hurt poor people, at a time of economic concern, by curtailing or eliminating credit lines, driving them to high-cost alternatives like payday loans or pawnshops.
“We will no longer let the American Public be ripped off by Credit Card Companies that are charging Interest Rates of 20 to 30%,” Trump wrote on his Truth Social platform.
Researchers who studied Trump’s campaign pledge after it was first announced found that Americans would save roughly $100 billion in interest a year if credit card rates were capped at 10%. The same researchers found that while the credit card industry would take a major hit, it would still be profitable, although credit card rewards and other perks might be scaled back.
About 195 million people in the United States had credit cards in 2024 and were assessed $160 billion in interest charges, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau says. Americans are now carrying more credit card debt than ever, to the tune of about $1.23 trillion, according to figures from the New York Federal Reserve for the third quarter last year.
Further, Americans are paying, on average, between 19.65% and 21.5% in interest on credit cards according to the Federal Reserve and other industry tracking sources. That has come down in the past year as the central bank lowered benchmark rates, but is near the highs since federal regulators started tracking credit card rates in the mid-1990s. That’s significantly higher than a decade ago, when the average credit card interest rate was roughly 12%.
The Republican administration has proved particularly friendly until now to the credit card industry.
Capital One got little resistance from the White House when it finalized its purchase and merger with Discover Financial in early 2025, a deal that created the nation’s largest credit card company. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is largely tasked with going after credit card companies for alleged wrongdoing, has been largely nonfunctional since Trump took office.
In a joint statement, the banking industry was opposed to Trump's proposal.
“If enacted, this cap would only drive consumers toward less regulated, more costly alternatives," the American Bankers Association and allied groups said.
Bank lobbyists have long argued that lowering interest rates on their credit card products would require the banks to lend less to high-risk borrowers. When Congress enacted a cap on the fee that stores pay large banks when customers use a debit card, banks responded by removing all rewards and perks from those cards. Debit card rewards only recently have trickled back into consumers' hands. For example, United Airlines now has a debit card that gives miles with purchases.
The U.S. already places interest rate caps on some financial products and for some demographics. The Military Lending Act makes it illegal to charge active-duty service members more than 36% for any financial product. The national regulator for credit unions has capped interest rates on credit union credit cards at 18%.
Credit card companies earn three streams of revenue from their products: fees charged to merchants, fees charged to customers and the interest charged on balances. The argument from some researchers and left-leaning policymakers is that the banks earn enough revenue from merchants to keep them profitable if interest rates were capped.
"A 10% credit card interest cap would save Americans $100 billion a year without causing massive account closures, as banks claim. That’s because the few large banks that dominate the credit card market are making absolutely massive profits on customers at all income levels," said Brian Shearer, director of competition and regulatory policy at the Vanderbilt Policy Accelerator, who wrote the research on the industry's impact of Trump's proposal last year.
There are some historic examples that interest rate caps do cut off the less creditworthy to financial products because banks are not able to price risk correctly. Arkansas has a strictly enforced interest rate cap of 17% and evidence points to the poor and less creditworthy being cut out of consumer credit markets in the state. Shearer's research showed that an interest rate cap of 10% would likely result in banks lending less to those with credit scores below 600.
The White House did not respond to questions about how the president seeks to cap the rate or whether he has spoken with credit card companies about the idea.
Sen. Roger Marshall, R-Kan., who said he talked with Trump on Friday night, said the effort is meant to “lower costs for American families and to reign in greedy credit card companies who have been ripping off hardworking Americans for too long."
Legislation in both the House and the Senate would do what Trump is seeking.
Sens. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., and Josh Hawley, R-Mo., released a plan in February that would immediately cap interest rates at 10% for five years, hoping to use Trump’s campaign promise to build momentum for their measure.
Hours before Trump's post, Sanders said that the president, rather than working to cap interest rates, had taken steps to deregulate big banks that allowed them to charge much higher credit card fees.
Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., have proposed similar legislation. Ocasio-Cortez is a frequent political target of Trump, while Luna is a close ally of the president.
Seung Min Kim reported from West Palm Beach, Fla.
President Donald Trump arrives on Air Force One at Palm Beach International Airport, Friday, Jan. 9, 2025, in West Palm Beach, Fla. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson)
FILE - Visa and Mastercard credit cards are shown in Buffalo Grove, Ill., Feb. 8, 2024. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh, File)
