Kelsey Berreth: Murder, Frazee’s Trial, and Kenney’s Role

The Kelsey Berreth murder case ended with her fiancé, Patrick Frazee, convicted of beating her to death inside her Woodland Park, Colorado, condominium on Thanksgiving Day 2018 and burning her body on his ranch. A Teller County jury found Frazee guilty of first-degree murder in November 2019, and he is serving life in prison without the possibility of parole plus 156 additional years. The Colorado Supreme Court upheld the conviction on February 10, 2025.¹ Berreth’s body has never been found.

Who Kelsey Berreth Was

Berreth was a 29-year-old flight instructor and mother. She had moved to Colorado in May 2016 and, by mid-2017, was working at Doss Aviation at Pueblo Memorial Airport, training aspiring U.S. military pilots.² She and Frazee met around 2015 and became engaged but kept separate homes: Berreth in a Woodland Park condo, Frazee on his family’s ranch about 20 minutes away in Florissant. Their daughter, Kaylee, was born in October 2017.³

What Happened on Thanksgiving Day 2018

On November 22, 2018, a Safeway surveillance camera in Woodland Park recorded Berreth leaving the store at about 12:27 p.m. with one-year-old Kaylee.⁴ Frazee was captured on camera at a nearby Walmart around the same time. Investigators later established that the two met so Berreth could hand off Kaylee for a holiday visit. A neighbor’s camera then showed a person matching Frazee’s description entering Berreth’s apartment at 1:24 p.m., and the same camera recorded Frazee alone with the baby at 4:27 p.m. — contradicting his later claim that he was never at the condo after the custody exchange.⁵

Inside that apartment, according to trial evidence, Frazee beat Berreth with a baseball bat. A bloodstain pattern analyst told jurors the spatter indicated she had been struck with a blood-soaked object roughly 15 times or more.⁵ Blood had seeped between the living room floorboards, and one removed floorboard bore two deep indentations consistent with a bat impact.⁶

Two days later, on November 24, Frazee and his longtime girlfriend Krystal Lee Kenney transported Berreth’s body, stored in a black plastic tote, to Frazee’s Florissant property. They placed the tote in a 100-gallon trough and burned the contents — the body, the baseball bat, and other evidence — using motor oil, five gallons of gasoline, and wood.⁴

In the days that followed, someone used Berreth’s phone to send messages designed to make her appear alive, including a text to Doss Aviation saying she would not be at work the following week. Her phone pinged a cell tower near Gooding, Idaho, on November 25. Investigators eventually identified 19 faked calls and texts sent from her phone that weekend.⁷

How Investigators Uncovered the Crime

Berreth’s mother, Cheryl Berreth, called the Woodland Park Police Department on December 2 to request a welfare check after more than a week of silence.⁴ Officers found the apartment empty. Both of Berreth’s cars were parked at home, and a batch of cinnamon rolls sat in the kitchen.⁸ Police announced the search publicly on December 10 and released the Safeway footage the next day.

The Woodland Park Police Department, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, and the FBI worked the case jointly. Cheryl Berreth noticed blood at the base of a toilet in her daughter’s condo; investigators returned, tested it, and matched it to Berreth by DNA. Cadaver dogs detected the scent of human decomposition in the driveway near her car. Cell phone records showed that Berreth’s and Frazee’s phones had traveled together on Thanksgiving.⁷ Police arrested Frazee at his ranch on December 21, 2018, and formally charged him on December 31 with murder and solicitation counts.⁹

Krystal Lee Kenney’s Role

The case broke open when Kenney, an Idaho nurse, agreed to cooperate. She and Frazee had first met at a dance in Lake George, Colorado, in 2006, dated briefly, and rekindled an affair in 2015 while Kenney was married. She testified that she traveled to Colorado to visit Frazee about ten times during the affair.¹⁰

Kenney told investigators that Frazee had asked her to kill Berreth on three separate occasions in the fall of 2018. One plan involved poisoning a caramel macchiato from Starbucks; as a nurse, Kenney discussed with Frazee what drugs might be used. The other two involved a steel rod and a baseball bat. She said she brought Berreth the drink once but did not taint it, and she backed out of all three attempts. According to Kenney, Frazee’s stated motive was that Berreth was abusing Kaylee and that “he wanted her not to be a problem any more.”¹¹

After Frazee killed Berreth himself, he called Kenney to come clean the scene. She scrubbed blood from the apartment and disposed of evidence, including Berreth’s phone, which she carried back to Idaho.¹² The FBI interviewed her twice before she agreed to a plea deal. On February 8, 2019, she pleaded guilty to one felony count of tampering with evidence.⁸

The Trial and Evidence Against Frazee

Frazee’s trial began on November 1, 2019, before Judge Scott A. Sells at the Teller County Courthouse in Cripple Creek.⁹ Kenney was the prosecution’s star witness. She walked jurors through the cover-up, described the three earlier solicitation attempts, and told the courtroom that Berreth’s final words were “please stop.”⁶ Body-camera footage played for jurors showed Kenney pointing investigators to blood spatter on fireplace rocks, kitchen appliances, walls, and beneath a toilet. She also identified the spot on Frazee’s ranch where she said he burned the body.⁵

At that burn site, investigators unearthed melted black plastic — remnants of the tote — and fragments of a human tooth. DNA testing confirmed one fragment came from a human female.⁵

Prosecutors also introduced evidence that, between September and October 2019, Frazee had passed handwritten notes to a fellow inmate on napkins and paper towels, soliciting the murders of trial witnesses. The notes named more than ten targets, including Kenney, her parents, her ex-husband, a friend named Joe Moore, and CBI Agent Gregg Slater.¹³ One note read: “I’d really like to see Krystal with a bullet in her head. No video, no weapon, no body, no forensics.” Another said the witnesses “all need to disappear or be unseen until at least Nov. 22 until after the trial.”¹⁴ Frazee had told the inmate to flush the notes, but the inmate kept them and gave them to authorities.

Frazee’s public defender, Adam Steigerwald, pressed the jury on what was missing: no body, no murder weapon. The defense attacked Kenney’s credibility, arguing that her plea deal — capped at three years instead of the potential life sentence she could have faced as an accomplice — gave her strong reason to shape her testimony.⁶ Defense attorneys also flagged the inmate witness as a twice-convicted felon whose own burglary charge had been reduced to a misdemeanor shortly before he testified.¹³ Frazee did not testify.

Verdict, Sentence, and Appeal

On November 18, 2019, the jury found Frazee guilty on all counts: first-degree murder after deliberation, tampering with a deceased human body, and three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder.⁹ Judge Sells sentenced him to life without parole plus 156 additional years.¹⁵

Frazee appealed to the Colorado Supreme Court. His central argument concerned a December 26, 2018, interview at the Teller County jail with Mary Longmire, a Department of Human Services caseworker looking into child welfare matters related to Kaylee. Frazee argued the statements should have been suppressed because Longmire had questioned him without Miranda warnings while effectively acting as a law enforcement agent.¹⁶

The court rejected the argument on February 10, 2025. It found that Longmire had no law enforcement training or authority to detain anyone, that police did not direct or script the interview, and that her purpose was to gather information for child placement under the Interstate Compact on the Placement of Children rather than to build a criminal case.¹ With that ruling, Frazee’s direct appeals are exhausted.¹⁷ He is incarcerated at the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility in Ordway, Colorado.¹⁸

What Happened to Krystal Lee Kenney

Kenney was sentenced in January 2020 to three years in the Colorado Department of Corrections, the aggravated-range maximum for evidence tampering. In February 2021, the Colorado Court of Appeals vacated that sentence, ruling it was not Blakely-compliant because Kenney had not been properly advised of her right to have a jury determine aggravating factors.¹⁹ She was resentenced to 18 months, the presumptive maximum, and paroled from the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility on March 23, 2021.²⁰ Had she been charged as an accomplice rather than allowed to plead to tampering, she could have faced more than 100 years.²¹

Kaylee and the Berreth Family

Kaylee, who was 13 months old when her mother was killed, went into the care of her maternal grandparents after Frazee’s arrest. Cheryl and Darrell Berreth were granted temporary custody in February 2019.²² Frazee’s mother, Sheila Frazee, contested the arrangement, and a January 2020 hearing was closed to the public. Later reporting indicates Kaylee has been raised by Berreth’s parents.²³

In January 2019, the Berreths also filed a federal wrongful death suit against Frazee, alleging he had killed their daughter and that a custody dispute over Kaylee was a motive. Frazee’s attorneys moved to dismiss on the ground that Colorado law bars parents from bringing a wrongful death claim when the decedent is survived by a child.²⁴

Berreth’s Remains

Kelsey Berreth’s body has never been recovered. Kenney testified that she never saw the body directly but believed she saw human remains in the fire after the tote melted.⁴ A search of the Midway Landfill in Fountain, Colorado, ended in April 2019 without finding any remains. The only physical trace ever recovered was the tooth fragment from the burn site on Frazee’s ranch.²⁵

1
KKTV. Colorado Supreme Court Upholds Murder Conviction of Teller County Man
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The Pueblo Chieftain. Missing Woman Is Doss Instructor
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Denver7. Inside the Patrick Frazee Trial
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Denver7. Kelsey Berreth Case: A Timeline of Everything Investigators Have Uncovered
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The Gazette. Patrick Frazee Trial: 6 Key Pieces of Evidence Released by Prosecutors
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ABC News. Patrick Frazee Trial: 10 to 15 Blows With Baseball Bat
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CBS News. The Murder of Kelsey Berreth: What Does Krystal Lee Know
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The Denver Post. Kelsey Berreth Disappearance Death Timeline
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Denver7. Jury Finds Patrick Frazee Guilty of Murdering Fiancee Kelsey Berreth
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The Gazette. Star Witness Krystal Lee Tells of Longtime Affair in Patrick Frazee Trial
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CBS News Colorado. Krystal Lee Kenney Patrick Frazee Kelsey Berreth Murder Trial
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ABC News. Sentence Vacated for Girlfriend Who Helped Clean Kelsey Berreth Murder
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NBC News. Murder Suspect Patrick Frazee Asked Help in Bid to Kill Witness
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Oxygen. Patrick Frazee Allegedly Wanted to Kill Witnesses in Kelsey Berreth Murder Trial
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NBC News. Patrick Frazee Found Guilty of First-Degree Murder
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FindLaw. Frazee v. People
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KOAA. Colorado Supreme Court Upholds Conviction of Teller County Man
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Yahoo Entertainment. Where Kelsey Berreth Killer Patrick Frazee Is Now
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Good Morning America. Sentence Vacated for Girlfriend Who Helped Clean Kelsey Berreth Murder
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Colorado Sun. Kelsey Berreth Murder Witness Released
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CBS News Colorado. Krystal Lee Kenney Sentence Vacated
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CBS News Colorado. Kelsey Berreth Parents Custody Child Patrick Frazee
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People. Kelsey Berreth Murder: Everything to Know
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ABC News. Kelsey Berreth Fiance Wrongful Death Lawsuit
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ABC News. Cadaver Dogs Center Stage at Patrick Frazee Murder Trial