TELLER COUNTY — The murder trial of Patrick Frazee is entering its fourth day in Teller County Wednesday morning. As cameras, live tweeting and live blogging are not allowed during these proceedings, the following information is drawn from extensive notes made by News 5's Sam Kraemer in the courtroom. Follow his updates online and on-air on News5 at 5, 6 and 10 p.m.
Kenney talks about how she cleaned up the scene
On day four of the Patrick Frazee murder trial, key witness Krystal Kenney took the stand explaining how she helped clean up the crime scene.
Kenney said after getting the keys to Berreth's townhome and at Frazee's direction, she parked at the WP Cultural Center a little after 7 a.m. on November 24.
She said she put the cleaning items in a bag in the back seat. Kenney stated she took those items, walked up the street and then down the sidewalk toward the door of the house. When she opened the door, Kenney said she saw a lot of blood. She said she saw it on the living room floor, on the walls, on stuffed animals, the stove and the dishware. Kenney said the majority of the blood was on the living room floor.
When she walked in and saw it, Kenney said she shut the door and stood there. "I was thinking about how bad it was. I thought I was probably next. I didn’t know what to do. Nobody else needed to see that,” Kenney said.
While crying on the stand, Kenney said “her mom and that little girl never needed to see what Patrick did to her. I didn’t know he was capable of that. I didn’t think he was capable of what happened, and I didn’t do anything to stop it."
Kenney said Frazee called and told her to look for a tooth in the vent. She said Frazee told her to look at the fridge, cookie cutters. Kenney then hung up, put on the painting suit and started cleaning.
“I wasn’t very prepared because I didn’t bring anything to wipe it with,” Kenney said. She said she went into the closet across from the bathroom, grabbed rags and an empty spray bottle, which she put bleach inside
Kenney said she the moved the couch and got behind the wall because some blood did run behind it. She moved a stand with a lamp cleaned it as well as the couch. According to Kenney, Frazee wanted her to clean up as much as she possibly could.
According to Kenney, there were bloody foot prints up the stairs and saw the bloody candles up there. She said the bloody foot prints were by the bed upstairs and then down the stairs. When she was asked about the footprints, Kenney described the size of the footprints as bigger boot-looking prints. Not cowboy footprints, but noted there was tread on them.
Kenney also added she saw them all over the kitchen and into the bathroom. She remembered there was blood on the baby gate laying next to the wall by her table. She said the bathroom was one of the last things she got to. She said she ran water in the shower and then took a rag and wiped off the back and cover to the toilet.
According to Kenney, there was a sweater in the middle of the floor in the living room. She says there was blood on it and it was tied in a knot with the sleeves, which she threw in the trash. She said she saw bloody footprints in the bathroom. She says the bathroom was the last place she wiped and cleaned down before she started mopping the floor.
When she met up with Frazee, Kenney said he asked "did you get it done,” to which she responded, “I did the best I could do.” Kenney said Frazee responded and said “You better hope you did because our lives depend on it.”
Kenney said she remembers telling Frazee that it was a lot to clean up. According to Kenney, she said Frazee told her he brought in a tote from the back of his truck that he usually keeps horse supplies. Frazee allegedly said he brought the tote in, put the bat in it. According to Kenney, Frazee said he washed his pants while he was there, and that he tried cleaning some up with baby wipes.
According to Kenney, on November 25 Frazee brought her Berreth's phone, gave her the password, told her to drive back to Woodland Park and send Berreth's mom a text saying she'd call her tomorrow.
Kenney said whe she met up with Frazee he told her they were going to get the tote, adding that her gun was with it. Frazee then allegedly said “We started this. We’re going to finish it." Kenney said they went to property Frazee leases for cattle on Nash Ranch.
When they got to Nash Ranch, Kenney said they parked next to a big red hay barn. Kenney said Frazee moved a tractor over to a haystack and she held a ladder while he climbed on top of the haystack.
According to Kenney, Frazee pushed the tote onto the forks, then came back down. Kenney said they got the tote on the tractor forks and put it in the back of Frazee's pickup. Kenney said he told him he took it there on Thanksgiving and set it on top of the haystack. She said the gun was in the vicinity of the tote.
She said she saw him put the tractor back, shut the barn doors and lock it up. They then drove back to the Frazee Ranch.
When they got to the ranch, Kenney said Frazee backed the truck up to a galvanized water trough. Kenney said Frazee then dragged the tote into the trough, where there was also pallets. Kenney said Frazee then grabbed a red gas can and he poured it on the tote and pallets. According to Kenney, Frazee then opened the lid of the tote and poured gas inside.
Kenney then said he lit it on fire by throwing a match into it. According to Kenney, Frazee then went back to the north side of where they were, grabbed some tin roofing and put it over the top of it to try and tame the fire. After the tin, Kenney said Frazee threw a bottle of motor oil in so that it would burn hotter.
At one point, Kenney said Frazee toldher he wanted to make it look like Berreth left and that Kenney needed to get the phone as far away as possible. Kenney also added that Frazee told her to take Berreth's purse and her gun. He allegedly told her a story about Berreth putting the gun up to her head in front of Kaylee, so he thought that would be believable.
According to Kenney, Frazee told her to drive as far as she could, then text Berreth's employer that she wasn’t going to come to work so she could go visit her sick grandmother. She said Frazee instructed her to text him from Berreth's phone saying “do you even love me?” She then drove home back to Idaho.
Frazee also allegedly told Kenney to send him photos from Berreth's phone. Kenney told Frazee she didn’t leave Berreth’s phone on the entire drive home. She pointed out he was texting himself and Berreth's mom off of Berreth's phone, and said the phones would ping together.
Kenney said she turned Berreth’s phone on in Grand Junction so that it would ping with hers. She said she turned the phone off shortly after and turned it back on in Salt Lake City. According to Kenney, Frazee called her on Berreth's phone. She said she felt uncomfortable talking on that phone, so he called Kenney's phone.
On the night of November 25, Kenney said that's when she sent the "do you even love me?" text from near Malad State Gorge Park, which is about 45 minutes from her home. She said she also sent the text to Berreth's boss and shut off the phone.
Kenney said she then drove five miles and called Frazee from her phone and told him "that it was done." Kenney said she knew she was supposed to get rid of all the evidence, so police couldn’t find the phone, purse and gun. According to her, Frazee told her to get rid of that.
To get rid of the phone, Kenney said she burned it at her house in Kimberly, Idaho. She said she burned her purse at the same time, the same evening she got back, November 25. Kenney said she took the gun to his friend Mark Pearson, saying it was her aunt’s and that she was suicidal.
Kenney said when she burned the purse and phone, she put the ashles in a silver box, then into a plastic bag that she threw in the trash on her way to work.
On November 26, Kenney said she and Frazee talked about sticking to the story about her wanting to look at horses. Kenney said Frazee would call from his cell phone and from a restricted phone number.
Then on November 27, Kenney said Frazee called her more than once. Kenney said she believes Frazee called her up until December 4. On December 4 Frazee told her he was going to be questioned by the FBI the next day and that they took his phone. According to Kenney, Frazee asked if she destroyed the evidence, to which she replied she said. Kenney also said Frazee asked her about her phone and she took that as she needed to destroy it.
On December 5 Kenney said she burned her phone at a different spot on her property.
Kenney said that on December 14 she was contacted by an FBI agent while she was at a national rodeo event in Las Vegas. She said she wasn't surprised because her husband Chad called her the night before saying the FBI came to his dad's house looking for her.
Kenney said she lied to that agent because she was scared of the whole situation. She said she was scared that if she didn’t cooperate with Frazee, something would happen to her or her daughter.
She said she figured it wouldn’t be long before the FBI showed up at her house. Kenney said when she got home from Las Vegas Sunday night, the FBI showed up to her home first thing Monday morning with a search warrant. Kenney said the FBI told her she could be helpful and she said she wanted to cooperate.
Kenney said she provided her statement on December 20 and then they went on a site tour on December 21 where she showed them Nash Ranch, the Frazee Ranch and Berreth's home.
When she was asked on the stand if Frazee told her what Berreth's last wrods were, she said they were "please stop."
Kenney details Frazee's attempts to solicit murder
As a witness in the case, Krystal Kenney is expected to detail how Patrick Frazee attempted to get her to kill Kelsey Berreth. Her testimony is part of a plea agreement with prosecutors to avoid jail time.
Kenney continued her testimony after a lunch break by explaining she came to meet Frazee in Colorado bearing a bag of baby items. The gift was her way of letting Frazee know she was aware he had a daughter with Berreth.
She told the court he did not want to talk about it at the time, but later he started making comments about 'the mother of his child' and how he wanted to 'protect the innocent.' According to Kenney, he frequently told her of incidents where Berreth intentionally hurt their child, by slamming a refrigerator door on a hand, and not properly securing a baby gate. Soon the conversations about how to address the abuse began, according to Kenney.
She says Frazee claims he went to Child Protective Services to seek help, but the abuse was too subtle to notice. In October 2018 is when Kenney says Frazee shared with her a plan to poison a coffee to deliver to Berreth while posing as someone who had lost their dog recently. Kenney says she never put Abmien and Valium in the drink as Frazee suggested, yet went to see Berreth under false pretenses anyway. The two women had an awkward conversation before Berreth kept the cup of coffee. During this whole incident Kenney was with her aunt, who did not know what was going on.
Frazee called Kenney the next day very upset about the incident, according to Kenney. She says he called her on a burner phone, bought per his instructions, to communicate with him. Kenney says she also gave that phone number, plus a false name, to Berreth; so she threw the phone in a pond on the way back to Idaho.
We've heard about Frazee's alleged attempts to have Kenney beat Kelsey to death with a pipe and baseball bat. She told the court Frazee kept painting a picture of his daughter being in imminent danger from Berreth. Kenney says she spoke to a coworker about the situation, specifically wanting to help the child.
According to Kenney, Frazee told her to hit Berreth in the back of the head with a pipe from the bed of his truck. She told the court he said, “it’s not that hard," “make sure there wasn’t a lot of blood," and “make sure no one sees you.” Kenney says she did go to Berreth's townhome, but when a dog barked she got back in her car and left, eventually leaving the pipe at the front gate of Frazee's property and sleeping in her car at a gas station.
A week later she was back outside Berreth's townhome armed with a bat, watching as Frazee and Berreth exchanged custody of their daughter. Kenney says she was expected to "swing away", yet she left instead. Throughout all of these events Kenney maintains Frazee warned her he had people watching her and he threatened her life in subtle ways.
On Thanksgiving Day, Kenney says she was at home managing her livestock when she received several phone calls from Frazee that she ignored. When she did answer, “he told me I have a mess to clean up,” says Kenney. Frazee is described as being "rattled" during this conversation and one the following day as he tells her to get cleaning supplies and head to Colorado.
According to the testimony, Frazee never came right out and said Berreth was dead. Kenney says she was told to wipe off some candles upstairs, make sure the bathroom “looked good” and get the living room, specifically “getting the foot prints”. She says Frazee gave her enough detail to know what she needed to do. She says she was asked to look in a vent for a tooth.
At this point in the testimony, the court is taking a short break. News 5's Sam Kraemer is in the courtroom, providing updates when allowed during breaks.
Kenney reveals she was pregnant with Frazee's child
Krystal Lee Kenney was called to the stand just before lunch. She told the court she was pregnant with Frazee's child back in March 2016 when they had an affair as she was married, but had an abortion. (Editor's note: Kenney says she no longer goes by her maiden name of Kenney.)
Kenney explains she's known Frazee since 2006 when the two met at a ranch in Lake George. During the next four years the two kept in touch as Kenney was engaged to another man, which strained the relationship. According to Kenney, Frazee called her the day before her wedding to tell her not to go through with it. She says she did not hear from Frazee again until 2013 and the two started an affair in 2015 when she visited Florissant.
Kenney told the court that even while married to Chad Lee she always loved Frazee, describing a giddy, happy feeling with him that she didn't feel with anyone else.
Soon the two began talking about having a family together as Kenney considered filing for divorce from her husband. However, she explains Frazee was already concerned about her cheating on him just like she had with her husband. When Kenney learned she was pregnant, Frazee did not react positively, calling the child a "bastard" and making references to her having an abortion, according to her testimony.
Kenney says, “I made the decision that a baby can’t come into this world,” but told Frazee she had an abortion, which he did not believe. Keep in mind Kenney does have children from her marriage. That fact was an issue in the development of their relationship as she could not leave Idaho without voiding a custody agreement. Soon Kenney and Frazee stopped communicating. Kenney did not file for divorce from Chad Lee until May 2016, after she had an abortion.
They texted and talked again in October 2017, the same month Kelsey Berreth gave birth to her child with Frazee. Kenney says Frazee never mentioned his relationship with Berreth or the child. Once again the two met in the Spring and Summer of 2018 in Colorado. At one point during a conversation with her former bosses they asked how she felt about Patrick having a little girl. According to Kenney's testimony, she was surprised to learn this from someone other than Frazee.
As of 12:00 p.m. court is in a lunch recess. We expect to hear more from Kenney on how the relationship developed and eventually led to her being asked to kill Kelsey Berreth, according to her prior interviews with detectives.
FBI Special Agent details phone records
The opening witness on Wednesday was FBI Special Agent Kevin Hoyland, a member of the team that analyzed the details from Patrick Frazee, Kelsey Berreth, and Krystal Kenney's cell phones. His analysis shows Frazee and Berreth’s phones traveling together in the immediate day following the presumed murder. The Verizon phones called each other from the same tower and sector serving the Frazee Ranch.
While detailing his team's Call Detail Record's analysis, Hoyland explains the majority of the data available includes phone calls made from all devices, not text message data. There are data points every time a phone communicates with the nearest tower when active and being used for texts, emails, and app usage depending on the provider.
Hoyland's continued testimony details what we've already seen and heard about in search warrant documents, that Kelsey's phone moved across Teller County the day she disappeared, then moved across state lines to Gooding, Idaho. The prosecution is working to place out a timeline for the jury to explain how all three phones were traveling together.
The FBI agent notes Frazee made some very lengthy calls, one nearly an hour, from the family ranch landline to Krystal Kenney on the night of Nov. 22. He’s also just starting to show Kenney’s phone travel down from Idaho on Nov. 23 and return early Nov. 25.
As of 10:30 a.m, the court is in morning break. The judge told the court another 80 witnesses are expected to be called in this case.
Money problems
On Tuesday, the court heard from a handful of police officers, special agents and Frazee's brother, who described Thanksgiving Day at the family ranch. Sean Frazee, the defendant's brother, testified that he and his siblings are still in a legal battle for their late father's assets with an estimated value of $400,000.
Combine that with documents seized from the Frazee Ranch showing Patrick essentially defaulted on a $70,000 loan, and other papers showing a possible custody arrangement, a picture emerges of money problems. For more on his testimony and the other testimonies from Tuesday, click here.
Background
Patrick Frazee is accused of first-degree murder for the death of his fiancee, Kelsey Berreth, despite investigators never recovering her body since she was last seen alive on surveillance video inside the Woodland Park Safeway on Thanskgiving 2018.
Woodland Park Police have not found Berreth's remains. Berreth, 29, is presumed dead after prosecutors said Frazee, 33, her fiancé, beat her to death on Thanksgiving 2018. In December of last year, Patrick Frazee was arrested and charged with first-degree murder and solicitation to commit first-degree murder.
He faces eight total charges — two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of solicitation to commit first-degree murder, one count of tampering with a deceased human body and two counts of a crime of violence — for the presumed murder of Kelsey Berreth on Thanksgiving 2018. Click here to see the criminal complaint and arrest affidavit.
Cameras and any live coverage of the trial are forbidden per judge's orders. News5 will bring you the latest on-air and online as it comes in during breaks in the proceedings.
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Monday was filled with testimonies from Berreth's mother, brother, supervisor and among others.
Berreth's brother, Clint, explained how he found the blood on the underside of the toilet in her home. This turned the investigation from missing person to homicide. You can read more on his testimony and the rest of the testimonies from Monday here .
Based on opening statements, prosecutors plan to describe Frazee as a man who manipulated his fiancee, his girlfriend, his family, and those around him to get what he wanted. He's accused of asking his girlfriend, Krystal Kenney, to kill Berreth by using the argument that she was an unfit, abusive mother, and that their child would be safer with him.
On Frazee's behalf, the defense is arguing he is not the person who carried out this killing, citing how Kenney made a deal with authorities early in the case to avoid serious charges.
Click here to read opening statements made by prosecutors and the defense Friday.
The entire case is expected to wrap up before Thanksgiving week.
RELATED:
Visit our Frazee Trial section of the site for complete coverage
Breaking down the case against Patrick Frazee for the murder of Kelsey Berreth
Kenney primed for key witness role in Frazee murder trial
Berreths seek justice; Frazee supporters optimistic ahead of trial
Patrick Frazee arrested for first-degree murder in Kelsey Berreth case
Warrants reveal cell phone evidence in Frazee case
Arrest affidavit released in case against Patrick Frazee
Drone video shows area where investigators searched Frazee property
All public documents in the Patrick Frazee case
Cameras and any live coverage of the trial are forbidden per judge's orders. News5's Sam Kraemer is covering the trial during breaks in proceedings. Be sure to follow him on social media for the latest.
