Suzanne Morphew's husband left Denver hotel room reeking of chlorine day before she went missing: Co-worker
The husband of a missing Colorado woman allegedly spent the night before she disappeared at a budget hotel in Denver and left the room reeking of chlorine. As previously reported, 49-year-old Suzanne Morphew was reported missing on Mother's Day, May 10, after her two daughters Mallory and Macy weren't able to reach her on the phone. While her bike was found the same day near a bridge close to her luxury $1.5 million Salida, Colorado residence, she has not been heard from since May 8. Her husband Barry, at the time of her disappearance, was reportedly 150 miles away at his landscaping job in Broomfield, Colorado.
The couple's home became the subject of a police investigation in the days that followed, with photos showing CSI specialists seen carrying evidence bags out of the property two days after Suzanne went missing. Her 52-year-old husband claimed last week he gave nearly 30 hours of interviews to police and blamed them for botching the initial probe into his wife's disappearance.
But Suzanne’s brother Andy Moorman, 58, alleged the following day that Barry had refused to take a polygraph test and wasn't "fully cooperating" with the authorities. Now, a co-worker of Barry's has told the Daily Mail that he found Barry's Holiday Inn hotel room scattered with wet towels and stinking of chlorine when he took it over on May 10.
49-year-old Jeff Puckett of Salida, Colorado said Barry ordered him to get to Denver, but he didn't see him that morning as he had already left "due to a family emergency."
"I got there Sunday night and the room smelled like chlorine real bad," Puckett told the British newspaper. "It was his room and he’d taken a shower – his towels were all over the floor." Furthermore, a manager at the hotel clarified to the outlet that they didn't use chlorine to service guest rooms and revealed that they have handed over CCTV footage to the authorities. Puckett said he also discovered a pile of mail that included a letter about property insurance, which he later turned over to the FBI.
"I found some mail in the hotel room. His mail was in there and I gave it to the FBI. I thought it was kind of odd to have it there," he said. "Some of it was from an insurance company, like insuring your property, that kind of thing."
It also emerged that Barry was granted guardianship of Suzanne so they could sell a property in their native Indiana. Puckett recalled that he arrived to find no tools despite being told the landscaping work was urgent. Because of this, he waited around the hotel for two days and never actually visited the job site.
That said, Barry hasn't contacted Puckett after Suzanne's disappearance. "It’s kind of weird," Puckett told Daily Mail, adding that the experience had left him suspicious. "My first thought was that this must be like an alibi. That’s what it felt like. I hope they find her alive but it’s been a long time."
Meanwhile, Suzanne's brother Andy has claimed Barry is refusing to take a polygraph test. "He says, ‘she’s the love of my life, I could never do this," Andy told Fox 29. "The problem I have with that is I don’t feel like he’s fully cooperating with investigators. He should have taken a lie detector and a voice analysis, anything else they ask him to do. And he’s gone kinda quiet."