TELLER COUNTY, CO — A judge in Teller county has ruled there is probable cause to charge Patrick Frazee, 32, with the murder young Colorado mother and flight instructor, Kelsey Berreth, 29. Frazee, 32, is accused of killing his fiancée on Thanksgiving Day 2018 and soliciting the help of his girlfriend, an Idaho nurse, the court heard Tuesday.
Putting together a narrative of cell-phone pings and surveillance video, prosecutors said Frazee beat Berreth to death with a baseball bat on Thanksgiving Day in her Woodland Park townhome and demanded that Krystal Lee Kenney– an Idaho woman with whom he had been romantically involved– clean up the bloody mess.
Prosecutors previously said Frazee had tried to bully Kenney into poisoning Berreth’s coffee and beating her to death with a metal rod, Denver7 reported.
Frazee was arrested Dec. 21 and charged with first-degree murder, three counts of solicitation for first-degree murder and tampering with a deceased body. He has not filed a plea with the court and has been held in the Teller County jail. Berreth’s body has not been found.
According to media accounts of the hearing, Sheila Frazee, Patrick’s mother, was called to the stand Tuesday morning, but refused to testify, citing Fifth Amendment protections against self-incrimination . A judge granted her request.
Kenney had previously told the court Feb. 8 that she took Berreth’s cell phone in an attempt to “impair the phone’s availability in the investigation.”
The court heard from Woodland Park police Commander Christopher Adams and Colorado Bureau of Investigation Agent Gregg Slater, the Denver news station reported.
Adams laid out a timeline for the court that involved cell phone data of Frazee’s and Kenney’s cell phones, as well as Berreth’s cell phone before and after she disappeared.
On Nov. 22, Thanksgiving Day, Berreth was seen on video in the early afternoon at a grocery store in Woodland Park with her 1-year-old child Kaylee. Police said Tuesday that a neighbor’s surveillance video captured Kelsey, Frazee and the baby outside Kelsey’s Woodland Park townhouse, Denver7 reported.
Investigators, citing testimony from Kenney, said they believed Frazee blindfolded Berreth with a sweater and asked her to smell a scented candle, then beat her to death with a baseball bat inside her home around 4:30 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day, Denver7 reported.
Police said they believed Frazee took Berreth’s cell phone and left the townhome, and the two phones pinged together around 4:45 p.m. at a cell tower nearby. The two cell phones would ping again together numerous times until Kenney allegedly removed the phone and drove to Idaho, prosecutors said. The phone’s last ping was on Nov. 25, from a cell tower near Gooding, Idaho, when a text came from Kelsey’s cell phone to Frazee’s that read, “Do you even love me?” Denver7 reported.
CBI Agent Slater said Kenney told agents that she was intimately involved with Frazee beginning in May of 2018, and at first she didn’t know about his fiancée or the baby. Kenney told agents she was urged and bullied by Frazee to kill Berreth, whom he claimed was a terrible mother who abused their child and was an alcoholic.
Kenney told the court she proposed poisoning Berreth’s coffee, then posed as a neighbor whose dog was found by Berreth and offered her a cup of coffee that Frazee had asked her to poison. She said she had not put any contaminates in the coffee. She then said Frazee told her to beat Berreth to death with a metal rod, and a baseball bat on two separate occasions, but she lost her nerve.
On Thanksgiving Day, when she was in Idaho, Kenney told investigators she got a call from Frazee who said, “You need to get here now. You’ve got a mess to clean up,” Denver7 reported. Kenney drove to Colorado with “a protective suit, gloves, hair net, booties and trash bags,” the TV channel reported. Berreth’s townhouse was “horrific” with “blood everywhere,” Kenney said. She spent more than three hours cleaning up the house, but said she left blood splattered for investigators to find.
Woodland Park police initially missed the blood spatters when they first inspected the house, but CBI agents found blood in the bathroom on “the toilet, bath tub, trash can, parts of the floor and wall, vanity area, bathroom door hinges and electrical outlet,” Denver7 reported.
Kenney told the court Frazee had Thanksgiving dinner with his family, then took Berreth’s body in a black tote bag to the Nash Ranch in Fremont County, where he threw it onto a pile of hay. Kenney told the court she and Frazee returned to the ranch on Nov. 24, two days after the murder where Frazee took the bag with Berreth’s remains and returned to Frazee’s home where, “where he burned the body with gasoline,” Denver7 reported.
Kenney said she took the phone to Idaho where she impersonated Berreth in various texts to Frazee, Berreth’s mother and Berreth’s employer, a Pueblo flight school. She then destroyed the phone and her own burner phone, she told the court.
Frazee’s next court hearing is scheduled for April 8, 2019.
Read the Denver7 report here.
Read prosecutors complaint here:
Images via Teller County Sheriff, Woodland Park Police
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