The judge presiding over Barry Morphew’s murder case will not allow prosecutors to introduce testimony from a friend of Suzanne Morphew about alleged domestic violence in the Morphew couple’s troubled marriage.

District Judge Ramsey Lama on Thursday also decided that the trial would begin April 29 rather than May 3.

Prosecutors said Suzanne Morphew and Sheila Oliver communicated frequently by text message and in conversation in the months before her disappearance.

During last summer’s evidentiary hearing in the high profile case, former Deputy District Attorney Jeff Lindsey asked FBI Special Agent in Charge Ken Harris to explain text messages between the two women from his interviews with Oliver.

Sheriff's body cam video reveals first hours of Suzanne Morphew mystery

“Did anything change between September 2019 and March 2020 regarding the relationship she (Suzanne Morphew) had with Sheila?”

Harris said: “They are talking more about Suzanne getting out of the marriage. This happened around Feb. 4, 2020.”

“I wouldn’t feel safe (alone) with him,” Suzanne Morphew told Oliver in a text message. She also texted Oliver that her husband was unstable and that he would change character like Jekyll and Hyde. None of those text messages will be discussed during the trial, the judge ruled Thursday.

Oliver is expected to be a key witness at trial as well as several of the couple’s friends, relatives and a slew of investigators. The Morphews met in Indiana, where they spent most of their lives and raised their two daughters.

Suzanne Morphew disappeared in May 2020. Her body has never been found, and her cellphone has never been recovered. Investigators used Oliver’s phone and Suzanne Morphew’s iCloud account to retrieve messages between the two.

At one point, Suzanne Morphew texted Oliver that her husband held a gun to his head and asked, “Is this what you want?” That text and others like it show manipulative and aggressive behavior, prosecutors said.

Oliver told investigators that Suzanne Morphew confided to her that her husband hit her in the nose, causing it to bleed. During interviews with investigators, Barry Morphew, 54, said he only clipped her nose and that he said he was sorry.

Some of the comments about possible domestic violence were made verbally, according to prosecutors and Oliver. Prosecutors said these conversations occurred after the couple moved to Colorado in 2018, but they couldn’t give exact dates of when the alleged abuse happened, which was partly why Lama ruled that they would be inadmissible.

Legal observers say the judge’s decision is a blow to the prosecution.

“This ruling really guts the prosecution’s theory on motive and renders inadmissible some alarming context for the relationship. The case is somewhat circumstantial as is, so this development is surely a setback for the DA,” said Denver defense attorney Eric Faddis, who has also been a felony deputy DA. “That being said, domestic violence is usually something that happens behind closed doors, so it may be difficult to find a witness with firsthand knowledge of it.”

In addition to not providing dates or specific times, prosecutors also did not provide any circumstantial information about what led up to the alleged incidents.

“We don’t believe that the allegations are true,” one of Barry Morphew’s defense attorneys said.

The defense argued that the jury should not hear prejudicial information when “there is no proof that the allegations are true.”

“The court has a duty to protect Mr. Morphew’s right to a fair trial,” one defense attorney said.

Thursday’s hearing was the first in the Morphew case to be held in the Fremont County Courthouse in Cañon City. Lama granted a change of venue last week, moving the case from the tiny courthouse in Salida because of frenzied media coverage of the investigation, arrest and ensuing court hearings.

Barry Morphew is charged with first-degree murder, tampering with a human body, tampering with physical evidence, possession of a dangerous weapon and attempting to influence a public servant.

He has suggested that his wife might have been dragged off by a mountain lion. His attorneys said in court that it’s possible she was abducted by someone else or ran off to Ecuador to meet with her lover, a former high school friend with whom she had connected in the two years before she went missing.