Frazee trial: Arson analyst, Frazee friend testify
Posted: 11:17 AM, Nov 12, 2019
Updated: 7:06 PM, Nov 12, 2019
By: Stephanie Butzer and Blair Miller | Denver 7 and Sam Kraemer | KOAA
Prosecutors then called
Laurie Luce to the stand, a woman whose horses Frazee cared for for about 5 ½ years, she said.
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She testified that she found out Frazee had a daughter when she walked by his truck and saw Kaylee inside when she was about 4 months old. She testified that Frazee told her he had a relationship with the girl’s mother but didn’t learn she was pregnant until she had the baby – something the court had previously heard during the trial.
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Luce told the court that Frazee went to her house on Dec. 20, and that she felt concerned for him and asked how he was doing. She testified that Frazee told her some details about the search of his property that had occurred days earlier and said he felt some of what the investigators did to his property “seemed a little mean and unnecessary.”
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Luce testified that Frazee told her he went to Berreth’s to pick up their daughter before he went to run errands and to give Berreth her gun back, claiming to Luce that Berreth had threatened suicide. He claimed that he didn’t want to give it back but did anyway, she said. Luce said in court Tuesday that Frazee expressed frustration of telling the story “so many times” but she told him she had never heard it before.
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She said she offered to him that maybe Berreth tried going home but died by suicide, or that maybe Berreth was coming back.
“Oh, she’s never coming back,” Luce testified that Frazee told her, though she admitted in court that she did not initially tell the story and only told prosecutors a few weeks ago when she was subpoenaed.
Luce told the court that sometime between August and October 2019 [2018?], Frazee told her he wanted to raise his daughter with someone else. Later, she testified, Frazee told her: “I wanted her (Berreth) to help with medical expenses before. Now I just want her gone.”
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The jury was kept outside the courtroom for the next witness as a juror had an issue. Prosecutors called
Kayla Daugherty, a personal and professional acquaintance of Frazee’s, who said she and Frazee had dated in the spring of 2016 for a couple of months.
She testified that Frazee told her about the vastness of Teller County and that it would be hard to find a body during a discussion in 2015.
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Viehman asked her if Frazee told her that somebody could carry a body on a horse somewhere no one could find it, to which she replied, “Yes.”
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The court then worked to decide if the testimony was admissible in court since the jury was left outside....
But Judge Scott Sells ruled the testimony was admissible despite Stiegerwald’s objections because it established Frazee’s knowledge of the Teller County area.
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The state then called
Savannah Greasby to the stand, for whom Frazee had been shoeing horses for about nine years, she said.
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The messages showed she texted Frazee “hey” at 10:44 a.m. on Nov. 23 and that he didn’t respond until 2:33 p.m., also saying “hey.” The messages showed she asked him how his day went, to which he responded that it was long but life was about to slow down.
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Daugherty told Viehman she was not aware Berreth was missing while they talked but later learned she was. She also testified that she knew little about Frazee and Berreth’s daughter and that she didn’t remember Frazee saying much about Berreth other than claiming she was bipolar and in rehab, and saying he wanted full custody of Kaylee
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The state called
Kathryn Donahue next – another woman for whom Frazee shoed horses.
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She said that after Kaylee was born, Frazee would bring the baby around during farrier work, but that he never had anything good to say about Berreth.
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She said she called a tip in for the case, saying Frazee told her Berreth took off shortly after their daughter was born and that Frazee described Berreth as absolutely crazy.
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Donahue testified Tuesday that Frazee told her Berreth’s employer had called him and said their daughter’s health insurance was going to expire at the end of January because Berreth hadn’t maintained it, and that he told her employer that Berreth was getting up for work every day but evidently not going. She said he also told her Berreth went to rehab.
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Prosecutors told the judge they were ahead of schedule and needed to work on getting witnesses to Cripple Creek days before they expected to originally testify.
