By COLLEEN SLEVIN and MEAD GRUVER

DENVER (AP) — The husband of Colorado woman Suzanne Morphew, whose remains were discovered over three years after she was reported missing on Mother’s Day 2020, was arrested again Friday on a first-degree murder charge, authorities said.

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Barry Morphew was arrested Friday in Arizona after a Colorado grand jury returned an indictment Wednesday, three years after the initial case was dropped due to prosecutorial issues with evidence.

His bond was set at $3 million, cash only, according to court documents. The district attorney’s office said in a statement that it is seeking to bring him back to Colorado.

A 2024 autopsy report said Suzanne Morphew died of “unspecified means” but ruled it a homicide. While there was no indication of trauma in her remains, a drug cocktail used to tranquilize wildlife was found in one of her bones, the report said.

A tranquilizer gun and accessories were found in the Morphews’ home, according to investigators.

Barry Morphew has maintained his innocence since his wife disappeared, and his attorney David Beller blasted the new indictment.

“Yet again, the government allows their predetermined conclusion to lead their search for evidence,” Beller said in a statement. “Barry maintains his innocence. The case has not changed, and the outcome will not either.”

The first case was dropped in 2022

Morphew was first charged with murder in May 2021, but prosecutors dropped that case the following year just as Morphew was about to stand trial.

A judge barred prosecutors from calling key witnesses for repeatedly failing to follow rules for turning over evidence in Morphew’s favor. That included DNA from an unknown male that was found in Suzanne Morphew’s SUV. At the time, prosecutors said they wanted more time to find her body.

The judge agreed to drop the case against Morphew but allowed prosecutors the option of filing charges against him later.

Barry Morphew filed a $15 million lawsuit against county officials, accusing them of violating his constitutional rights. His lawyers also filed a complaint asking that the prosecutors be disciplined for allegedly intentionally withholding evidence.

Iris Eytan, who was Morphew’s attorney in 2021 but no longer represents him, said prosecutors “fumbled” the case.

“Not only is he is a loving father, but he was a loving husband,” Eytan told The Associated Press on Friday.

Suzanne Morphew disappeared on Mother’s Day

The mystery surrounding Suzanne Morphew began when the 49-year-old mother of two daughters, who lived near the small town of Salida, was reported missing on Mother’s Day 2020. Suzanne Morphew’s mountain bike and helmet were found in separate spots not far from her home, but investigators suspected the bike had been purposefully thrown down into a ravine because there was no indications of a crash. A week after she went missing, Barry Morphew posted a video on Facebook pleading for her safe return.

“No questions asked, however much they want, I will do whatever it takes to get you back,” he said.

When he was initially charged, the arrest affidavit laying out investigators’ case against Barry Morphew said his wife insisted on leaving him. He later changed his statements as evidence developed.

Morphew, an avid hunter, did not initially tell investigators that he went out of his way as he left for work on Mother’s Day, driving toward the place where his wife’s bicycle helmet was eventually found. Later, he said he went that way because he had seen an elk cross the road, according to the initial arrest affidavit.

Suzanne Morphew’s remains were found in 2023

Colorado Bureau of Investigation agents stumbled upon Suzanne Morphew’s skeletal remains in September 2023 in a shallow grave during an unrelated search near the small southern Colorado town of Moffat, about 40 miles south of the Morphews’ home.

Most of Suzanne Morphew’s bones were recovered and many were “significantly bleached,” according to the affidavit.

Investigators removed a port through which Morphew could receive medicine to treat follicular lymphoma, a type of blood cancer, and found clothing similar to bicyclist clothes she was known to wear. Based on the status of the remains and clothing, a forensic anthropologist theorized that the body decomposed elsewhere, the affidavit says.

Toxicology testing revealed all three drugs in a sedative used for wildlife called “BAM” were in the bones. The presence of a metabolite for one of the drugs, butorphanol, suggested the remains would not have been contaminated with BAM after death, the affidavit says.

The coroner’s office determined the cause of death was “homicide by unspecified means” through intoxication of the three drugs, butorphanol, azaperone and medetomidine.

Investigators linked Barry Morphew to the drugs

Barry Morphew obtained and filled several prescriptions for BAM while living in Indiana, shortly before the Morphews moved to Colorado in 2018. Barry Morphew was a deer farmer in Indiana and allegedly told investigators he used BAM to tranquilize deer in Indiana and Colorado, according to the indictment.

In the area surrounding their home in Colorado, no private citizens or businesses, only Colorado Parks and Wildlife and National Park Service officials, had obtained BAM between 2017 and 2020, records show. No government officials reported missing BAM supplies.

“Ultimately, the prescription records show that when Suzanne Morphew disappeared, only one private citizen living in that entire area of the state had access to BAM: Barry Morphew,” the indictment concluded.

Gruver reported from Cheyenne, Wyoming. Associated Press reporter Jaimie Ding in Seattle contributed.

By JOSH FUNK

Air traffic controllers in Florida briefly lost their radar Friday after a fiber optic line was cut, but the outage didn’t lead to disruptions like what happened after similar outages around the Newark, New Jersey, airport this spring.

Controllers were able to continue directing planes across five states in the Southeast because a backup system kicked in as designed. The Federal Aviation Administration said no flights were disrupted.

The FAA said the radar center in Jacksonville, Florida, continued operating but on alert status because its primary communication line went down. A contractor was working on repairing the severed fiber line Friday afternoon. Authorities didn’t specify what caused the severed fiber line or where it happened.

The FAA didn’t say exactly how long the radar was offline, but when air traffic controllers in a different facility in Philadelphia lost radar twice this spring it took 90 seconds for their systems to reboot after the system went down. Those incidents led to major disruptions at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey because five controllers went on trauma leave after those outages, and that facility in Philadelphia directs planes in and out of the airport.

Hundreds of flights had to be cancelled in Newark because the remaining controllers couldn’t safely handle every flight on the schedule. Operations at that airport have since improved significantly

An FAA spokesperson said there was “no loss of critical air traffic service” in Jacksonville because the backup system kicked in. That center is responsible for planes flying across roughly 160,000 square miles of airspace across most of Alabama, Georgia, Florida, North Carolina and South Carolina.

The problems in Newark were blamed on the failure of aging copper wires that much of the nation’s air traffic control system still relies on. Transportation officials said the Newark problems demonstrated the need for a multi-million-dollar overhaul of the system that they are lobbying Congress to approve.

By GREGORY BULL

SAN DIEGO (AP) — About a dozen religious leaders from the San Diego area visited federal immigration court Friday to serve as witnesses to “what goes down” as some cases arising from the Trump administration’s migration crackdown are heard, an organizer said.

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Some migrants have been arrested at the court by federal immigration officers. The Rev. Scott Santarosa, a Jesuit priest who was lead organizer of the group, said the purpose of the visitation “is more than anything just to provide some sense of presence.”

“People are longing for people of faith to walk with vulnerable migrants,” added Santarosa, the pastor of San Diego’s Our Lady of Guadalupe Church. “Our goal is not trying to prevent arrests — but we can witness it.”

The visit was preceded by a Mass at San Diego’s Catholic Cathedral with bishops and other clergy — including Bishop Michael Pham, the top-ranking official in the group and one of the first bishops to be appointed by Pope Leo XIV after his election as pontiff — offering prayers for refugees and migrants on World Refugee Day. Pham himself is a refugee; he came to the United States unaccompanied as a boy from Vietnam.

The idea for the court visit started during a diocese-wide call to plan events for World Refugee Day, in addition to each church holding a Mass to pray for migrants and refugees, Santarosa said.

The priest said he hopes that visiting the court helps migrant communities — both more recent arrivals and those without legal status to be in the country who have lived in the San Diego area for decades.

“They’re feeling like people just want them to disappear,” Santarosa said, adding that a woman told him, in Spanish: “Father, we feel as if we were hunted, as if we were animals.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

By JOHN O’CONNOR

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. (AP) — A judge has denied singer R. Kelly ‘s request to be freed from prison, saying she lacks jurisdiction to consider the convicted sex offender’s allegations that federal prison officials plotted to murder him.

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U.S. District Judge Martha M. Pacold canceled Friday’s scheduled arguments in Chicago, and instead issued a five-page ruling denying his emergency request to serve his time on home detention during a temporary furlough.

Born Robert Sylvester Kelly, the 58-year-old Grammy-winning R&B singer is serving sentences at a prison in Butner, North Carolina, for child sex crimes and racketeering.

Pacold noted that federal courts have only limited power in such cases, and one by one she examined and rejected various ways Kelly’s request could be considered.

“Jurisdictional limitations must be respected even where, as here, a litigant claims that the circumstances are extraordinary,” Pacold wrote. “Kelly has not identified (nor is the court aware of) any statute or rule that authorizes the court to exercise jurisdiction. Thus, the court cannot award relief in this case.”

Kelly claimed in a series of filings this month that prison officials solicited white supremacist leaders to kill him, to halt the disclosure of information damaging to prison officials.

Kelly’s attorney says he was then moved to solitary confinement and purposely given an overdose of medication, which required hospitalization and surgery for blood clots.

Pacold noted that Kelly offers no evidence to back up his claims. Government lawyers suggested Kelly had spun a “fanciful conspiracy.”

Known for such hits as “I Believe I Can Fly,” Kelly was found guilty in Chicago in 2022 of three charges of producing child sexual abuse images and three charges of enticement of minors for sex. In New York in 2021, he was found guilty of racketeering and sex trafficking. He is serving most of his 20-year Chicago sentence and 30-year New York sentence simultaneously.

His appeals have been unsuccessful, including to the U.S. Supreme Court. Kelly has also sought President Donald Trump’s help.