What Happened to Kelsey Berreth? Inside Her Brutal Murder and How 'The Other Woman' Helped Jail Her Killer By Caroline Blair

Kelsey Berreth was a doting mother whose life was brutally taken away from her.

Berreth was last seen shopping at a grocery store in Woodland Park, Colo., with her young daughter on Thanksgiving morning in 2018. Over a week later, Berreth’s mom, Cheryl Berreth, reported her missing when she couldn’t contact her.

Police began investigating her disappearance and initially thought she had left town after seeing text messages between herself and her fiancé, Patrick Frazee. Frazee also claimed that he’d been communicating with Berreth for days.

However, the investigation took a dark turn when authorities discovered that Frazee had a mistress named Krystal Jean Lee Kenney, who was impersonating Berreth on her phone. Kenney ended up turning on Frazee and alleged that Frazee had asked her to kill Berreth for him on three separate occasions.

After Kenney refused to do so all three times, Frazee took it upon himself to brutally murder his fiancée and then enlisted Kenney’s help to clean the crime scene. Kenney later took detectives to the crime scene and told them the grisly details of what it looked like when she arrived.

Frazee was arrested and charged with first-degree murder in December 2018. After his trial the following year, Frazee was found guilty of Berreth’s murder and was sentenced to life in prison plus 156 years. Meanwhile, Kenney agreed to plead guilty to evidence tampering in exchange for her testifying against her ex.

Here’s everything to know about Kelsey Berreth’s brutal murder and how her husband’s mistress helped prosecute her husband.

Who was Kelsey Berreth?

Kelsey Berreth, a mother of one and a flight instructor, was 29 years old when she died. Berreth was raised on her family farm in Moses Lake, Wash.

“From the pictures she’s gorgeous, obviously, and very put together and so you might think that she’s this prissy girl, but she was not. She was raised on a hay farm and very much a tomboy,” her longtime friend Nicole Haywood told 48 Hours in 2020. “She was out their driving tractors and bucking bales.”

After graduating from high school, Berreth enrolled in a flight instructor program at a local community college.

“I think it was exciting. She was fascinated with it,” her uncle, Scott Morin, told Dateline: Secrets Uncovered in 2024. “Kelsey was a light. She lit up a room. She lit up your heart.”

In 2015, Berreth met Patrick Frazee, a cowboy and rancher living over 1,000 miles away in Florissant, Colo. She later moved 20 minutes away to the town of Woodland Park, where she got a job as a flight instructor.

Two years after they started dating, Berreth was pregnant with their first child, and they welcomed their daughter, Kaylee, in October 2017. They got engaged but didn’t immediately set wedding plans. Although they raised Kaylee together, Berreth lived in her own condo, while Frazee was still residing on his ranch.

Where was Kelsey Berreth last seen?

Berreth was last seen on surveillance video footage shopping for groceries with her daughter at the Safeway grocery store in Woodland Park, Colo., on Nov. 22, 2018. She bought ingredients for a sweet potato casserole she was preparing for Thanksgiving, KKTV reporter Ashley Franco told 48 Hours.

Earlier in the day, Berreth also spoke to her mother about Thanksgiving and later texted Frazee, “I bought some sweet potatoes in case you wanted sweet potato casserole.” After Berreth went missing, Frazee initially alleged that the day before Thanksgiving, Berreth broke up with him.

The phone call, text message and grocery store run became central to the case because investigators determined that Berreth wouldn’t run away if she was preparing for Thanksgiving dinner.

They also figured out that if she had broken up with Frazee, as he suggested, she wouldn’t contact him about Thanksgiving plans. Her mom, Cheryl Berreth, told 48 Hours that her daughter “sounded happy” on their last phone call and never mentioned breaking up with Frazee.

After Berreth returned to her condo, a neighbor’s security camera caught Berreth and Frazee standing at her front door with a baby carrier. Later that day, Frazee was seen on the camera alone, but investigators were unsure whether he was leaving or entering at the different points.

Frazee told authorities that he picked up their daughter and took her to his ranch for Thanksgiving without Berreth. He then alleged that he had been communicating with Berreth via text messages and calls for a few days after. However, authorities later discovered that Frazee had taken Berreth’s phone with him after seeing her that Thanksgiving Day.

How did Kelsey Berreth die?

After Berreth’s mom hadn’t been able to contact her for 10 days, she reported her missing to the police. Investigators spoke to Frazee, who alleged that they had continued talking about their breakup via their cell phone for days after Thanksgiving.

However, investigators later traced Berreth’s phone — which continued texting both Frazee and her employer — to over 800 miles away in Idaho. While police considered that Berreth had run away, her mom insisted that that was unlike her daughter, and they also discovered blood smeared in Berreth’s condo.

At the same time, police discovered that Frazee had been in touch with another person who happened to be contacting him from a location near where they had traced Berreth’s phone. Authorities soon discovered that Frazee had a mistress, named Krystal Jean Lee Kenney, who had been in contact with Frazee the entire time.

Kenney eventually turned on Frazee and claimed to authorities that Frazee visited Berreth on Thanksgiving Day and blindfolded her to play a game where she would try to guess the scent of different candles. Frazee then allegedly took a bat and beat Berreth to death while their daughter was in another room in the house. After committing the murder, Frazee allegedly put Berreth’s body in a black tote. Frazee denied killing his fiancée.

How was Krystal Lee Kenney involved and what did she say about the murder?

Krystal Lee Kenney played a significant role in convicting Frazee of Berreth’s murder. After authorities connected that she was in communication with Frazee at the time of the crime, she revealed that they had been in an on-again, off-again affair since 2006.

By 2018, the pair reconnected for good, and Kenney alleged that she was unaware he had a child with and was engaged to another woman. After she discovered the truth, Frazee allegedly told her that Berreth was an abusive mother and began trying to convince Kenney to kill Berreth.

“He started telling Krystal that Kelsey was an abusive mom, that he had people watching Kelsey and that he was concerned that Kelsey was going to hurt the baby, if not worse,” CBI Agent Jon Grusing told Dateline: Secrets Uncovered. “She was madly in love with Patrick and that overruled all her common sense and her judgment.”

Kenney claimed that Frazee tried to get her to kill Berreth not once, not twice, but three times. Kenney’s best friend, Michelle Stein, told 48 Hours that Frazee “would play head games with her a lot” and “just had a way of manipulating her into doing things.”

Kenney alleged that the first plan was for Kenney to bring Berreth coffee laced with lethal drugs. However, when she approached Berreth’s door in September 2018 pretending to be a neighbor, Kenney gave her the coffee but wasn’t able to go through with putting the drugs in the coffee.

The second time occurred when Frazee gave Kenney a metal pipe so that Kenney could strike Berreth in her home. For the second time, Kenney drove to Berreth’s home with the intention of killing her but backed out.

In the third and final attempt, Frazee told Kenney to bring an aluminum baseball bat and kill her, but she allegedly got spooked when she saw a police car drive by. Kenney claimed that that was when Frazee got frustrated and took matters into his own hands.

On Thanksgiving Day 2018, Frazee allegedly called Kenney and instructed her to drive from Idaho to Berreth’s condo to clean up the murder scene. Two days later, Kenney drove to Berreth’s home and cleaned the crime scene with bleach and other chemical solutions. After cleaning most of the scene, she claimed that she and Frazee put all of the evidence with blood in a bag and burned them — in addition to Berreth’s body — on Frazee’s ranch. Kenney then returned to her home in Idaho with Berreth’s phone and texted both Frazee and Berreth’s employer to make it seem like she was still alive.

A few weeks after Berreth’s murder, Kenney confessed to her part in the cleanup and attempted murders and agreed to testify against Frazee in exchange to only plead guilty to evidence tampering.

Kenney later took investigators to Berreth’s condo and walked them through the “horrific” sight she saw when she cleaned the room. Kenney alleged that she purposely left some blood for authorities to discover as evidence.

“When I first walked in, I saw, um, blood all over the floor,” she told investigators, per a video obtained by Dateline: Secrets Uncovered. “I saw blood up the wall. Saw blood on this wall.”

What happened to Patrick Frazee?

Over a month after Berreth’s murder, Frazee was arrested at his ranch and charged with Berreth’s murder on Dec. 21, 2018. He pleaded not guilty and maintained his innocence. His trial began in October 2019 and Kenney served as the prosecutor’s primary witness.

Frazee’s trial took place over 10 days, and after three hours of deliberation, a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. A judge sentenced Frazee to life in prison plus 156 years.

As of August 2025, Frazee is serving his sentence at Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility in Crowley County, Colo., according to the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Frazee and Berreth’s daughter, Kaylee, is being raised by Berreth’s parents.

What happened to Krystal Lee Kenney?

After agreeing to a plea deal to testify against Frazee, Kenney was sentenced to three years in prison for evidence tampering. She began her sentence on Jan. 28, 2020, at the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility.

However, in February 2021, an appeals court ruled that her three-year sentence was unconstitutional because the judge exceeded the maximum sentencing guidelines for her specific charge. Kenney was resentenced to 18 months and was released from prison on March 23, 2021.

“Based on the new sentence, Ms. Kenney was now past her mandatory release date and she was released from the Denver Women’s Correctional Facility on parole on Tuesday,” the Department of Corrections spokeswoman Annie Skinner told The Denver Post at the time.

Prior to Kenney’s release from prison, she apologized to Berreth’s family at her sentencing in January 2020.

“I know saying I’m sorry is not good enough. I don’t even know what the right word would be to describe the remorse that I feel,” she said, according to The Colorado Sun. “I’m sorry Kaylee will not have her biological mother … and I’m sorry to everyone who’s been affected by this horrible tragedy. I am sorry that I could not save Kelsey.”

However, the judge at her sentencing, 4th Judicial District Court Judge Scott Sells, told her that her actions were “cold, calculating and cruel.” He added, “Simply saying I’m sorry is not enough. You made an ongoing, multi-day effort to tamper with evidence that spanned hours and hours and hundreds of miles.”