NOV 6, 2019
Patrick Frazee trial: 'Please stop,' Kelsey Berreth pleaded as she was beaten to death, says witness
“Please stop.”
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The desperate plea capped an emotional day of testimony from prosecutors’ star witness, Krystal Lee, an Idaho nurse who testified that Frazee personally confessed to the killing, then enlisted her help in trying to cover it up.
Lee — who no longer goes by her former married name of Kenney — broke down in sobs while relaying in a barely audible voice, what Frazee told her about Berreth’s dying words.
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Often choking up and dabbing her face with a tissue, Lee recalled first falling for Frazee in 2006 at a dance in Lake George, west of Colorado Springs.
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Their relationship soured a year and a half later. And Lee described a moment afterward where Frazee threatened to kill a dog he had given her, telling her that the previous owner was demanding the dog back unless he paid for it.
But they stayed in touch every few years, often through Facebook. Days before her 2010 wedding to another man in 2010, Frazee urged her to back out. She went through with the marriage anyway.
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When her marriage turned rocky in 2015, Lee traveled back to Colorado and began an affair with Frazee — recalling "it was like nothing had changed — same giddy feeling."
Frazee urged her to get a divorce. And in March 2016, Lee became pregnant with Frazee’s child — news that Frazee did not take well.
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Lee had an abortion, and told Frazee it was a miscarriage. Even though she filed for divorce two months later, the two didn't reconnect until October 2017.
In August 2018, Frazee, 33, acknowledged he was in another relationship, and that he had a child. Frazee claimed the mother, 29-year-old Berreth, was abusing their toddler daughter, Kaylee.
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She eventually grew suspicious of Frazee’s claims that Berreth was a poor mother, especially after babysitting the girl and not finding any bruises on her.
She said she never called police out of fear that she’d be blamed, and that Frazee would call someone to kill her, too.
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On Thanksgiving evening, Frazee called Lee and told her she had “a mess to clean up,” she testified.
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When Lee opened the door to Berreth’s apartment on the morning of Nov. 24, she said she found blood splattered everywhere. On the floor, the fireplace, behind the couch. On cookie cutters, on carpets in nearly every room and on the walls higher than Lee could reach. On a windowsill, on stuffed animals and on a family picture of Patrick, Kelsey and Kaylee Frazee.
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Over the next four hours, she cleaned the apartment from top to bottom — she filled six garbage bags with curtains, washcloths, toys and other items stained with blood that she couldn't clean.
Later that day, she accompanied Frazee to property he leased southwest of Cripple Creek, where he had stashed Berreth’s body in a tote atop bales of hay.
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“He just said he swung away, and that it was really hard," Lee said. Frazee added that using the bat wasn't humane. And that in the future, he'd stick to normal weapons … the old fashioned way.”
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“I saw some of those pictures,” Lee said. “And I knew there were people who cared about her. And people were going to look for her.”
Lee is expected back on the stand Thursday for cross examination by Frazee's public defenders.
