As the search for missing Colorado mom Suzanne Morphew continues, new details are emerging about her husband, Barry, and a landscaper he hired the weekend his wife disappeared.
Suzanne Morphew, 49, was reported missing from her Salida, Colo., home by neighbors on Mother’s Day, May 10. She left in the morning on a bike ride and was never heard from again.
The leads in the case have largely led to dead ends, but rumors have taken on a life of their own.
Landscaper Morgan Gentile was accused of having an affair with Barry Morphew, an allegation she strongly denies.
“I got treated through all this just like I’m the other woman, even though I’m not the other woman. I just happen to be a woman,” she said.
But she said her boss, Morphew, was acting odd around the time his wife vanished, the Daily Mail reported. “I’m scared of Barry,” she said. “I don’t want to see him again, ever again.”
Gentile told Fox21News that Morphew was “acting really weird … I was like, ‘Barry, what’s up?”
She added that he “seemed stressed” and “definitely seemed weird on Saturday.”
Gentile agreed to work for an entire day, but Morphew dismissed her from the job early, around 11 a.m. “He said that he had to go make his wife happy — do some hiking or biking. And I found out, like, later that day that he was in town all day,” she said.
The following day – Mother’s Day – Gentile said she got a surprise call from Barry Morphew asking her to work on a project 150 miles away.
She claimed he sounded “frantic.”
She drove to the job site with another contractor, Jeff Puckett. But Barry Morphew told Gentile and Puckett there had been a family emergency and he needed to make the return trip home immediately.
Gentile and Puckett said they went to a Holiday Inn where Barry Morphew asked them to stay.
Puckett moved into Morphew’s then-vacant hotel room and told DailyMail.com when he entered he found wet towels saturated with the smell of chlorine scattered on the floor – something Gentile confirmed.
Morphew told Fox21 that he, too, smelled chlorine and believed it came from either the pool or used as a washing agent for the hotel’s linens.
He has denied having anything to do with his wife’s disappearance and said claims he cheated on her are false.
“Everybody’s out there saying, “Oh, you got a girlfriend, you must have had an affair,” he told Fox21. “…There’s nobody. There’s never been another love in my life.”
The day Morphew disappeared, the Morphews’ daughters were on a camping trip.
Morphew’s friends called one of her neighbors when they couldn’t reach her. That neighbor called the police to report her missing.
Barry Morphew has said he believes his wife may have been attacked by a mountain lion.
Suzanne Morphew’s brother Andrew Moorman isn’t sold on the theory and believes his sister’s disappearance involves foul play.
Investigators searched the area where Morphew was riding her bike. They found the bike, but not Morphew. “The bicycle was not ridden over the hill,” Moorman told Fox59. “It was thrown there by human hands.”
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On Sept. 24, Moorman will be organizing an independent search for his sister.
Several hundred volunteer searchers from nearby towns and neighboring states will pitch in to help find the missing Colorado mom.