Kelsey Berreth's blood was all over her condo and cops found a tooth on fiancé Patrick Frazee's ranch, court hears
CRIPPLE CREEK, COLORADO: The trial of Patrick Frazee, the man accused of murdering his fiancé and the mother of his child, Kelsey Berreth, at the Teller County Court in Cripple Creek, Colorado, saw prosecutors call a forensic anthropologist to the stand to present DNA evidence this past week.
MEAWW previously reported that Berreth, 29, was last seen entering a Safeway store in Woodland Park with her daughter Kaylee at 12:27 pm local time on November 22 last year.
Frazee became a suspect after it emerged that he did not report her missing—she was reported missing only in early December—despite admitting to the authorities that he met with the mother on Thanksgiving to take their 16-month-old daughter Kaylee.
He was officially arrested and charged late in December, just days after witnesses saw him at a waste management facility in the area along with two other men, dumping trash from a trailer that was attached to the pickup he had driven there.
This past week proved to be one of ups and downs for the prosecution.
An analyst from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation testified that a barn where their key witness, Krystal Lee Kenney, had said Frazee hid the mother's body tested negative for human blood and any trace of human DNA.
The analyst also testified that the tooth recovered from Frazee's 35-acre ranch, where Frazee allegedly burned Berreth's body, was human but that they could not extract a DNA profile from the fragment or match it to a person.
However, some of the DNA testing did back up the claims made by Kenney, who Frazee is said to have been romantically involved with, and who told authorities she helped him dispose of Berreth's body and clean up the crime scene.
Kenney had told investigators she cleaned Berreth's apartment of her blood after Frazee bludgeoned her to death, and it was confirmed that blood found in the condo's bathroom matched the young mother's DNA profile.
Furthermore, some swabs from Berreth's living room yielded DNA that matched her profile, as well as the profile of a person who is still unknown to investigators. Other samples presented included DNA from the condo's former resident, Berreth's family, and Frazee.
Surveillance camera footage from the day of her disappearance also showed Frazee at her home and confirmed parts of Kenney's timeline of how she and Frazee moved around Teller County to hide evidence.
Crucially, in what could yet prove to be the prosecution's downfall, there is no footage of Kenney entering or leaving Berreth's home on November 24, the day she claimed to have cleaned up all the blood and evidence.
Frazee is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of solicitation to commit murder in the first-degree over allegations he employed others to carry out Berreth's murder, one count of tampering with a body, and two counts of a crime of violence.
Teller County District Court Judge Scott Sells announced that he intends to schedule closing arguments on Friday afternoon, after which the jury will deliberate.