The Evil Story Of Patrick Frazee

On Thanksgiving Day, November 22, 2018, 29-year-old Kelsey Berreth — a flight instructor and mother of a 1-year-old daughter — was beaten to death with a baseball bat by her fiancé, Patrick Frazee, inside her Woodland Park, Colorado home [citation:2][citation:6]. Her body was never found. The case that unfolded became one of Colorado's most horrific murder trials, marked by a cover-up involving a secret girlfriend, a burned body, and a jailhouse plot to kill witnesses [citation:1][citation:10].**The Relationship**Patrick Frazee, a 32-year-old rancher from Florissant, Colorado, had been in a relationship with Kelsey Berreth for several years. They shared a young daughter, Kaylee. However, unbeknownst to Berreth, Frazee was also carrying on an affair with a former girlfriend, Krystal Lee Kenney, a nurse from Idaho [citation:3][citation:9].Prosecutors argued that Frazee wanted full custody of the couple's daughter, and viewed Berreth as a "problem that he needed to go away" [citation:10]. Witnesses testified that Frazee had accused Berreth of abusing their daughter, though investigators found no evidence to support this claim [citation:6].**The Murder Plot**In the months leading up to Thanksgiving, Frazee made three separate attempts to solicit Kenney to kill Berreth. The proposed methods included drugging a caramel macchiato, using a metal pipe, and finally a baseball bat. Kenney traveled to Berreth's home on multiple occasions but each time backed out, becoming increasingly suspicious that Berreth "was probably doing nothing wrong" [citation:7].When Kenney refused to do the killing, Frazee took matters into his own hands.**The Thanksgiving Day Murder**On the morning of November 22, 2018, Berreth spoke with her mother by phone. Later that day, surveillance footage from a Safeway grocery store showed Berreth shopping with her daughter [citation:3].That afternoon, Frazee came to Berreth's townhome. According to Kenney's testimony, Frazee later told her what happened: he covered Berreth's eyes with a sweater and asked her to guess the scent of candles. Then, while their 1-year-old daughter sat in a playpen in an adjacent room, Frazee beat Berreth repeatedly with a baseball bat [citation:5][citation:8].Kenney testified that Frazee told her Berreth's last words were "Please stop" [citation:6][citation:10].**The Cover-Up**Following the murder, Frazee placed Berreth's body in a black plastic storage tote and loaded it into the back of his pickup truck. He then drove to his mother's home for Thanksgiving dinner, with Berreth's body in the tote in his truck parked in the driveway [citation:8].After dinner, Frazee stored the tote on a haystack at a nearby property.On November 24, two days after the murder, Frazee called Kenney and told her: "I need your help, and I need your help now. You have a mess to clean up" [citation:10]. Kenney drove 12 hours from Idaho to Colorado.When she entered Berreth's home, she described the scene as "horrific" — blood all over the living room floor and walls, "like somebody had flicked paint at the walls" [citation:7][citation:8]. She spent hours cleaning, though she later told investigators she purposely left small blood spots behind so that police would find them [citation:9].After cleaning, Kenney met Frazee. Together, they retrieved the tote containing Berreth's body, transported it to Frazee's ranch in Florissant, and placed it in a rusted water trough. Frazee poured gasoline and motor oil over the tote and lit it on fire, burning Berreth's body "like a piece of trash" [citation:8][citation:9].Kenney then took Berreth's cellphone and drove back to Idaho. From there, at Frazee's instruction, she sent text messages from Berreth's phone to her employer and to Frazee himself — including a message reading "Do you even love me?" — to create the false impression that Berreth was still alive [citation:2][citation:7].**The Investigation**On December 2, 2018 — ten days after Berreth was last heard from — her mother, Cheryl Berreth, filed a missing persons report [citation:3]. She and Berreth's brother flew to Colorado and found disturbing signs in Berreth's home: smears on the couch, stale cinnamon rolls on the stove, and on December 6, blood on the underside of the toilet [citation:7].On December 14, authorities executed a search warrant at Frazee's ranch but initially found no evidence. However, on December 20, Krystal Kenney came forward and told investigators everything [citation:3].On December 21, 2018, Patrick Frazee was arrested and charged with first-degree murder [citation:1].**The Trial**Frazee's trial began in November 2019 in Cripple Creek, Colorado. The prosecution's case relied heavily on Kenney's testimony, cellphone records, surveillance footage, and forensic evidence [citation:2][citation:9].Key evidence included:- A neighbor's surveillance camera showing Frazee at Berreth's front door at 1:23 p.m. and again at 4:27 p.m. on Thanksgiving Day — contradicting his claim that he left at 12:30 p.m. [citation:9]- The same camera showing a black plastic tote in the back of Frazee's truck — a tote that changed position between the time of the murder and the following day [citation:8]- Blood stains found between the slats of Berreth's living room floorboards, confirmed by DNA testing to likely be Berreth's blood [citation:9]- Melted black plastic and a human tooth fragment found at the burn site on Frazee's ranch [citation:2][citation:9]- Cellphone records showing Berreth's phone traveling to Idaho with Kenney's phone [citation:8]The defense argued that Kenney was an unreliable witness who had lied to save herself, noting that no DNA evidence tied Frazee to the crime scene and that Berreth's body and the murder weapon were never found [citation:8][citation:10].On the final day of testimony, a jail inmate testified that Frazee had asked him to arrange the killings of Kenney, her family members, and the case's lead investigator — offering financial compensation. Notes written on napkins and paper towels were introduced as evidence, including one that read: "I'd really like to see Krystal with a bullet in her head" [citation:8][citation:10].**The Verdict and Sentence**On November 18, 2019, the jury deliberated for approximately four hours before finding Patrick Frazee guilty of first-degree murder, tampering with a deceased human body, and three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder [citation:7][citation:8].Less than an hour later, Judge Scott Sells sentenced Frazee to life in prison without the possibility of parole, plus an additional 156 years [citation:2][citation:4]."Your actions were vicious, senseless, without reason or explanation," the judge told Frazee. "Kelsey spent her last night caring for you — you repaid that kindness by viciously beating her to death. After you beat her, you burned her body like a piece of trash" [citation:8].Berreth's mother, Cheryl, read a letter in court: "He not only killed our daughter — his child's mother — but he chose a horrible death for her. He tortured her to death and left his young granddaughter to call out for mama in the middle of the night" [citation:6][citation:10].Krystal Lee Kenney pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence and was sentenced to up to three years in prison [citation:3][citation:7].**The Aftermath**Kelsey Berreth's body has never been recovered. Her daughter, who was one year old at the time of the murder, now lives with Berreth's parents [citation:2][citation:6].Patrick Frazee remains incarcerated at a Colorado correctional facility, serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole. His story stands as a chilling reminder of the evil that can hide behind a seemingly ordinary facade.