Family members of murdered Colorado mom Kelsey Berreth, 29, say they are torn between wanted to ‘choke’ her murderer’s mistress or ‘hug’ her for admitting involvement in the brutal crime.
Idaho nurse Krystal Lee Kenney, 32, was sentenced last week for aiding Berreth’s fiance Patrick Frazee in covering up the young mother’s murder in November 2018. Berreth’s body has never been found.
Frazee, 33, was found guilty in November 2019 of first-degree murder in the death of Berreth, the mother of his one-year-old daughter Kaylee. He is appealing his conviction.
In an episode of NBC’s ‘Dateline’ airing this Friday, Berreth’s family reveal for the first time their grief and anger about her death and their conflicted emotions on the involvement of Frazee’s mistress Kenney in the investigation which led to his conviction.
Kelsey Berreth’s uncle Scott Morin was interviewed for NBC’s ‘Dateline’ to air on Friday
Patrick Frazee, left, is pictured with his murdered fiancee Kelsey Berreth and their one-year-old daughter Kaylee. He was convicted of Berreth’s brutal murder in November 2019
Krystal Lee Kenney, 32, was sentenced last week to three years for covering up the murder
During the two-hour broadcast, Berreth’s uncle Scott Morin opens up about Kenney, telling NBC News’ Andrea Canning: ‘Part of me wants to strangle her. Part of me wants to hug her… she could’ve stopped this from happening altogether, and for that, I wanna choke her.
‘But she finally fessed up. And for that, I wanna hug her. And thank her,’ he adds.
Kenney was slammed as ‘cold, calculating and devoid of any compassion’ as she was sentenced last week to three years for aiding Frazee in covering up the crime.
The upcoming ‘Dateline’ episode is named ‘Devil’s Bargain’ after El Paso District Attorney Dan May described Kenney’s controversial plea deal as a ‘deal with the devil’.
Kenney admitted to cleaning the bloody crime scene left behind after her ex, Frazee, bludgeoned Berreth to death in her condo in Woodland Park, Colorado and watching as Frazee burned Berreth’s body and bloody evidence at his ranch in Florissant.
But she was only charged with one count of tampering with evidence for taking Berreth’s cell phone to her home state of Idaho where she destroyed it in a bid to throw cops off the real scent and the fact that Berreth had never left Teller County.
Krystal Lee Kenney, 32, claimed that Frazee had asked her to kill his fiancee Berreth on several occasions and that she even drove to Colorado from her Idaho home with the intention
Kenney’s evidence was crucial in convicting Frazee because of the lack of evidence
Frazee received the maximum possible sentence – life with no hope of parole and 156 years to be served consecutively – at his trial last November. He was found guilty of first-degree murder, three counts of solicitation to murder, felony murder and tampering with a dead body.
According to CBS 4 TV he has filed an appeal to the conviction.
Last month he was reportedly moved to the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility, a medium security prison near Ordway, Colorado, from the maximum security Colorado State Penitentiary in Canon City, Colorado.
It is unclear why authorities moved Frazee.
Patrick Frazee received life with no hope of parole and 156 years to be served consecutively for the murder
Frazee’s motive has never been revealed but in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by Berreth’s family against him, they suggested he was driven by a looming custody battle.
They say they had broken up the day Berreth was murdered and that the pair were expected to fight over custody of their one-year-old daughter.
Berreth’s brutal murder became national headlines after she was last seen grocery shopping on Thanksgiving in 2018 with her daughter with Kaylee in anticipation of a holiday meal with Frazee.
Meanwhile Frazee was plotting to kill her and, just hours later, he beat her to death with a baseball bat, in an attack so brutal that even he later admitted, ‘I wouldn’t do it like that again. It was inhumane.’
But with little physical evidence investigators were forced to rely heavily on Idaho-based Kenney’s testimony to secure Frazee’s conviction. Lead CBI investigator Gregg Slater admitted under oath that he didn’t know where they would be with the investigation had Kenney not cracked.
She unlocked the case for them and admitted to traveling to Colorado on the night of 23rd November in response to Frazee’s request that she come and clean up ‘the mess’ that she understood to be Berreth’s murder.
Video of Kenney walking detectives through Berreth’s small home and recalling the scene of bloody horror that lay behind the front door, was played to the Teller County jury in a trial that lasted two weeks. It took them less than three hours to convict Frazee on all counts – murder, three counts of solicitation, and felony murder.
Kenney drove Berreth’s cellphone to Idaho to make it seem like she had left Colorado
Surveillance footage shows the last time Berreth was seen in a grocery store in November 2018
In her often-distressing testimony during the first week of the December trial, Kenney recalled blood on the floor, on the walls, on the fireplace an on one-year-old Kaylee’s toys that lay scattered in the living room where her mother was killed.
She told of bloody footprints that tracked up the stairs, blood in the bathroom, blood on kitchen appliance and drapes so drenched in Berreth’s blood she did not even attempt to clean them but removed them entirely and took them to burn.
Kenney also revealed that Frazee had tried to solicit her to kill Berreth on three separate occasions in the months leading up to the murder. He suggested she take a baseball bat and ‘swing away,’ or that she beat Berreth with a metal pipe or poison her favorite Starbucks coffee, a caramel macchiato.
Kenney who told friends that Frazee was her first love had rekindled an on-off sexual relationship with him some three years ago. She admitted that she had driven from her home in Idaho, where she worked as a nurse, to Colorado three times with the intention of killing Berreth. She claimed she had just never been able to go through with the deed despite Frazee pushing and painting Berreth as an abusive mother with drug and alcohol problems.
In victim impact statements read out by Berreth’s uncle, Scott Morrin, following Frazee’s conviction Berreth’s mother, Cheryl, expressed her dismay at the leniency of Kenney’s potential sentence.
She wrote, ‘The only thing she didn’t do was swing the bat.’
The family also asked for a no contact order to be put in place barring the Frazee family from Kaylee and all of Berreth’s family and condemning them for showing ‘cowardice.’ As far as they were concerned, Morrin stated, Kenney and Frazee’s family chose to support a murderer rather than his victim.
The body of murdered mother-of-one Kelsey Berreth (pictured) was never found
A vigil held for Kelsey Berreth in Colorado in 2018 before her murder was revealed
Bodycam footage obtained by DailyMail.com following Frazee’s sentencing appeared to confirm just how pro-active that support was.
The video shows Kenney walking investigators through the grounds of the Frazee ranch in Florissant, Colorado, where they believe he disposed of Berreth’s body after bludgeoning her to death in her home in nearby Woodland Park.
During the walk-through Kenney can be heard stating that Frazee’s mother, Sheila, 65, stepped out onto the decking in front of her home as, cops believe, Frazee set about burning Berreth’s body and a host of other blood spattered evidence removed from the murder scene by his ex-mistress.
Lead CBI investigator Gregg Slater prompted Kenney, ‘You had also mentioned that at one point Patrick’s mom came out and stood on the deck? Looking over towards the house can you tell me where you saw his mom?’
Kenney, 32, who was filmed standing near to the burn site where forensics experts found tell-tale signs of a human body having been consumed, replied, ‘I could just see her step out between the two trees, there’s the wire dog kennel, straight past that, she came out, stood there and then turned and went back into the house.’
Kenney went onto describe how she watched Frazee load wood around the black plastic tote in which investigators believe he had stored Berreth’s body. Her remains have never been found.
Kenney recalled how she helped gather kindling and unloaded two white and four black trash bags of belongings and blood-soaked evidence that she had removed from Berreth’s home earlier that day.
She claimed that Frazee added gasoline and motor oil to speed the blaze and ‘poured gasoline into [a] bucket and pitched it into the fire.’
Patrick Frazee (pictured in April 2019) brutally beat his fiancee Kelsey Berreth to death
Asked to list the items she threw into the fire Kenney said, ‘Curtains, pillows, stuffed animals, cleaning supplies, the towels..everything I took from her house. I also threw in all the clothing I was wearing and the shoes I was wearing…a white jumpsuit, grey sweater, black pants, hair and shoe covering and gloves.’
She did not relate where Sheila Frazee was at this point or if she re-emerged from her home at any time during the grisly proceedings.
Mrs Frazee has consistently refused to comment on the case and pleaded the Fifth rather than testify at her son’s trial.
Patrick Frazee has also filed an appeal against his conviction in the murder
‘Devil’s Bargain’ also features exclusive interviews with jurors in the Frazee trial, as well as video evidence and crime scene photos that have never been seen on television.
Additionally, the special includes notes of a solicitation to murder key witnesses set to testify at Frazee’s trial.
‘Devil’s Bargain’ airs this Friday at 9pm ET/8pm CT.