A customer of Patrick Frazee’s horseshoeing business told jurors on Tuesday that the Florissant rancher made an unusual comment that his fiance Kelsey Berreth would never reappear after she was reported missing in December.
Margaret Luce testified that Frazee visited her home on Dec. 20 — more than two weeks after Berreth disappeared — to trim her horses’ hooves. They talked about hypothetical situations of what could have happened to Berreth, and Luce said she made a comment that Berreth could come back.
“And he said, ‘Oh, she’s never coming back,'” Luce testified.
As the murder trial of Patrick Frazee entered its third week Tuesday, prosecutors delved into the nitty gritty details of the evidence they used to support charges alleging Frazee bludgeoned Berreth to death on Thanksgiving Day in her Woodland Park condo.
For hours, law enforcement witnesses testified about the evidence they collected, including wood flooring from the condo that appeared bloodstained and a patch of burnt plastic on Frazee’s ranch. The evidence is meant to bolster the account told by the prosecution’s key witness, Krystal Lee Kenney, who said Frazee confessed to her and that she helped destroy evidence of the crime.
Thirteen witnesses testified Tuesday, including law enforcement officials who collected pieces of burned phones from a fire pit near a key witness’s home and a friend of Frazee who said he tried to help the Florissant rancher build an alibi for the day of the alleged murder. Multiple local residents testified that Frazee never spoke well of Berreth and that he said she had given full custody of their child to him.
Luce, the horseshoeing customer, also told the jurors that Frazee in the fall of 2018 told her that he wanted to raise Kaylee — he and Berreth’s 1-year-old daughter — with someone besides Berreth.
“He said he just wants her gone so he can raise Kaylee with someone else,” Luce said.
The woman’s testimony gives jurors another potential motive to consider when they deliberate on the case. Fourth Judicial District Attorney Dan May said in court last week that Frazee’s financial situation will also play a role in the prosecution’s case.
A crime scene analyst with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation walked the jury though the evidence found in Berreth’s condo, including spots of blood the size of pinpricks and wipe marks that appeared to show someone had cleaned the apartment.
Investigators also ripped up a large portion of the wood flooring in the condo’s living room, where Kenney said she cleaned up a pool of blood from the alleged killing. The analyst, Tanya Atkinson,, showed the jury more than a dozen pieces of the flooring that she said were stained with blood.
Another expert explained to the jury what happens to a human body when it is burned.
Jerry Means, chief fire investigator with Adams County Fire Rescue, testified that the burned plastic residue found on Frazee’s ranch next to a spot of oily dirt was consistent with a body being burned inside a plastic tote, like Kenney told investigators. He said if burned long enough at a high enough temperature, a human body essentially liquifies and can leave behind an oily substance.
However, Means also said that motor oil could leave a similar stain and he had no way of telling which substance darkened the soil at Frazee’s ranch. Kenney told investigators that Frazee poured motor oil on the fire as an accelerant.
In his cross examination of Means, Frazee’s defense attorney Adam Stiegerwald asked whether Means or any other investigators recovered metal clasps from the burn area. The black tote that investigators believe Frazee used to transport Berreth’s body contained multiple large metal pieces. Means said he didn’t.
Other testimony Tuesday included:
- Robert Slagle, a good friend of Frazee, who said that he drove around Woodland Park with Frazee after Berreth was reported missing to help Frazee collect evidence about his whereabouts on Thanksgiving, the day of the alleged murder. But some of what Frazee told Slagle about what he did that day did not line line up with what evidence showed.
- An Idaho Falls police detective who helped search Kenney’s property said he found what appeared to be cell phone components in two different burn areas there. Kenney told law enforcement that she burned her phone and Berreth’s phone on her land.
Two nurses who worked with Kenney at an Idaho Falls hospital took the stand Tuesday and said they saw Kenney in the hospital Nov. 23, the day after Thanksgiving. One co-worker testified that Kenney said she needed to switch shifts because she had to go to Colorado.
One of the nurses, Allyson Wright, said she next spoke to Kenney on Dec. 26. Kenney then told Wright that she had “gotten mixed up” in the case of Kelsey Berreth.
“She told me that she did what she had to do to keep herself and her kids safe,” Wright said.
