Kelsey Berreth: The Thanksgiving Murder Plot

A Thanksgiving Disappearance

On Thanksgiving Day 2018, the small mountain town of Woodland Park, Colorado, was shaken by the sudden disappearance of 29-year-old Kelsey Berreth. A dedicated mother to her 1-year-old daughter, Kelsey was last seen on grocery store surveillance footage with her baby. When she stopped answering calls and texts, her mother, Cheryl, knew something was terribly wrong. Kelsey was reliable and would never abandon her child. At her home, everything appeared normal—her car was in the driveway, her purse was inside, and cinnamon rolls she planned to bake sat untouched on the counter. It was as if she had vanished into thin air.

An Unraveling Web of Lies

The initial investigation focused on Kelsey's fiancé and the father of her child, Patrick Frazee. He told police they had recently broken up and that he last saw Kelsey when he picked up their daughter on Thanksgiving. He seemed oddly calm and detached for a man whose fiancée was missing. As days turned into weeks, a series of strange texts were sent from Kelsey's phone to her employer and to Patrick, suggesting she had left on her own. However, her phone's last ping was nearly 800 miles away in Gooding, Idaho, a location that made no sense to her family.

The Secret Lover and a Horrific Confession

The Idaho phone ping led investigators to Krystal Lee Kenney, a nurse who had been carrying on a secret, decade-long affair with Patrick Frazee. When confronted by the FBI, Krystal confessed to a gruesome plot. She revealed that Patrick had tried to solicit her to murder Kelsey three separate times. When she refused, he took matters into his own hands. On Thanksgiving Day, Patrick beat Kelsey to death with a baseball bat inside her home while their infant daughter sat in another room. He then called Krystal and demanded she drive from Idaho to Colorado to clean up the horrific crime scene. Krystal spent hours scrubbing blood from the walls and floors before disposing of Kelsey's phone and other evidence.

Justice for Kelsey

Based on Krystal's testimony and damning forensic evidence, Patrick Frazee was arrested and charged with murder. Although Kelsey's body was never found—as Krystal testified Patrick had burned it on his ranch—he was found guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison plus 156 years. Krystal Lee Kenney received a sentence for tampering with evidence in exchange for her testimony. Today, Kelsey's daughter is being raised by her maternal grandparents, who are dedicated to keeping her mother's memory alive.

Transcript:

[00:00:00] It was Thanksgiving day 2018 when 29-year-old Kelsey Berth vanished from her small Colorado town. One moment, she was baking cinnamon rolls for the holiday, and the next she was gone. No witnesses, no sign of a struggle, and no goodbyes. This wasn't just a disappearance, it was a puzzle that would take months to piece together, and what investigators eventually found was darker than anyone could have imagined.

Hey guys, and welcome to the Moms and Mysteries podcast, a True Crime podcast featuring myself, Mandy, and my dear friend Melissa. Hi, Melissa. Hi, Mandy. How are you? I am doing all right. Wonderful. Great. Good. Yeah. How are you? I'm good. Uh, you should say great because not only have we seen each other a lot the past few days 'cause we've been recording a lot, but I literally ran into you at Costco yesterday.

You did? [00:01:00] I was. I don't know. I had my headphones on and I was trying to pull up on my phone, uh, the list that, like my, my family always sends me their, their shopping list, their, their wish list mm-hmm. In their own text. So I'm like pulling up everyone's text messages and just trying to make sure I hit every aisle.

Um, I did forget one thing at Costco and it wasn't that important, but. I forgot one thing yesterday. It happens. So, yeah, so I'm sure, I'm sure it won't be long before I'm back there. I feel like I live there. I know I, well, I know you've, I've heard you say recently you were there and so when I went and I saw you, I was like, oh, she is really taking this executive membership and really using it for all it's worth.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I don't know. My kids are always saying we have nothing to eat, and I'm like, what do you want me to buy? I don't get it. I'm like, I go to Costco. I stock up on snacks that nobody needs and Right, they still say, why don't we have any snacks? And like I, I don't know what else to do. I don't know what else there even is.

My favorite is not only do we don't have [00:02:00] anything like snacks, but like when I ask specifically, well, what do you want? I don't know. Something that tastes good. Okay. Well. We've got difference of opinion here, and it makes me crazy. So anytime I bring something home, my daughter will be like, oh, you got green grapes?

I thought you were getting red grapes. You're just like, ha. Yeah, you can't win. Well, and then we kind of go through sometimes, like my kids will ask for grapes and then they will eat them in one day and then sometimes, and so I'll buy grapes again the next time, and then they rot in the drawer. Yeah. And no one eats them, so I'm like, I never even know what to buy or when.

Mm-hmm. And yeah, they're not helpful with giving me any direction. So I just go to Costco, put a bunch of stuff in the cart and hope for the best. And you caught me doing that yesterday. Mm-hmm I did. That was actually very fun. 'cause you did not see me and so I just slowly walked up and you kind of like turned a smile 'cause you could feel somebody coming towards you and then you jerked your head back around and I was like, oh, I got her.

Good. Yeah. Well it's one of those things, you know, we always see each other. We see each other's faces when we're recording all the time. Mm-hmm. [00:03:00] Like we do our, our recording sessions over Zoom, so we're always seeing each other over video, but uh, we only see each other in person when we usually like plan on it.

So it kind of was one of those things where it took my brain a second. Like, I was like, why am I seeing Melissa here? Right, exactly. I'm like, what is she doing here? Forgetting that we literally go to the same Costco. Yeah. That, that is a possibility. Anyway, that was fun. Yeah, so we'll get into a story that we have this week.

It is Thanksgiving week. Hopefully everybody's week is off to a good start. I know a lot of you, if you're listening to this on Tuesday before Thanksgiving, many of you are probably getting ready to go travel or just have a lot of things in the work. So hopefully your week is going smoothly. This story that we have today is a story from a few years back, but it is a story that happened.

At Thanksgiving time, so we thought this would be a good one to share this week. So it was Thanksgiving Day in Woodland Park, Colorado, and this is supposed to just be a quiet and cozy day like most of us have on [00:04:00] Thanksgiving. It was 2018 and 29-year-old Kelsey Berth had plans that day. She was a new mom working as a dental hygienist, and she had a 1-year-old daughter who was the center of her world.

Her life wasn't flashy, but it was very full. There was family, work and motherhood, and by all accounts, Kelsey was very reliable. She was the kind of person who showed up early, sent thank you cards, and remembered everyone's birthdays. So when she suddenly stopped answering her phone, stopped showing up to work and stopped contacting her family, it really made no sense at all.

At first, no one wanted to panic. They thought maybe she'd gone to visit someone, or maybe she just needed space, but days passed and no one heard a word from her. Then her phone started pinging miles away. First near her hometown, then hours from there in Idaho. So theory started flying. Had she been [00:05:00] kidnapped, had she run away, was she even alive?

Her mom, Cheryl, refused to believe that Kelsey would've just walked away from her baby. When Cheryl called the man, Kelsey was supposed to be marrying, looking for answers. His response was rather odd. He was calm and detached, and he said they had actually broken up and he didn't know where she was, but that was about all he had to say.

Patrick Frazee was allegedly hiding a motive that the family would later uncover in a civil lawsuit. They found out that Kelsey was refusing to give him full custody of their daughter, and they were in kind of a battle over this. Patrick had claimed to investigators that Kelsey was abusing their child, and this is of course, a horrific allegation that law enforcement quickly determined, had no evidence to support it.

In reality, the couple was still negotiating parenting logistics, and Kelsey was still focused on domestic routines. In fact, one of the last messages Kelsey ever sent to Patrick was a [00:06:00] text that read. I bought some sweet potatoes in case you wanted sweet potato casserole. He never replied to this text, so from the outside looking in, it wasn't making a ton of sense.

Thanksgiving weekend is supposed to be all about family, and yet Kelsey's family couldn't even get her to pick up the phone. Kelsey lived in a tidy townhouse in Woodland Park about 30 miles west of Colorado Springs. This was a safe mountain community with the kind of small town charm where people really just wave when they pass you on the street and they say Good morning.

When Cheryl couldn't reach her daughter, she knew something was seriously wrong. Kelsey wasn't someone who was impulsive and definitely wasn't someone who just disappeared. By the time December rolled around, Cheryl got in her own car and drove 700 miles to Idaho from Colorado to find her daughter herself.

When she arrived at Kelsey's townhouse, the lights were off and everything looked normal from the outside. Her car was still there, her purse was inside, and her [00:07:00] cinnamon rolls were even still sitting on the counter. She had planned to bake them for Thanksgiving, but it looked like she never got the chance.

It seemed as though she had just stepped out and never came back. Cheryl called the police and the Woodland Park Police Department officially opened a missing persons case on December 2nd, 2018, 10 days after Kelsey had last been seen from the start. Police knew that this wasn't going to be a typical missing person situation.

Kelsey's phone had last pinged in Gooding, Idaho, which was nearly 800 miles away from where she lived. And of course that was strange enough, but the messages that were sent from her phone were even more strange. Her boss actually received a text saying she wouldn't be at work for the next week, and her fiance actually got one too, saying she was headed to Washington, but there was a huge problem.

None of this lines up with what her family knew. Kelsey hadn't told anyone she was leaving. She hadn't packed clothes or taken her car. It was as if someone wanted to make [00:08:00] it look like she had gone somewhere, but she hadn't. The Woodland Park police quickly called in the Colorado Bureau of Investigation and the FBI.

They started piecing together Kelsey's last known movements. The last time she'd been seen alive was on Thanksgiving Day on security footage from a grocery store in Woodland Park. She was pushing her baby in a shopping cart. She was smiling and chatting totally normal, and then there was nothing after that.

Kelsey simply vanished. When police first looked into Kelsey's disappearance, they approached it like any other missing person case. She was an adult. There were texts suggesting that she had left voluntarily. Of course, her fiance says they had recently broken things off, which is a time where somebody might just want to go off grid.

Right, right. That, that doesn't sound so crazy and nothing really screamed foul play, but something about it just didn't sit right. Friends described Kelsey as being a homebody, a devoted mom who was really [00:09:00] careful about her routines. So the idea that she would just. Pack up, drive hundreds of miles away and leave her baby behind was impossible.

Especially if you're going to court trying to get primary custody of your baby and then you're just like, okay, well I'm just leaving. That makes no sense whatsoever. So the more people who knew her started to speak up, the clearer it became that Kelsey didn't just leave. Something had to have happened.

The first person detectives naturally wanted to talk to was her fiance Patrick Frazee. He was a local rancher known in the area, and seemingly a very steady guy. But when police interviewed him, his answers raised more questions than they solved. He told investigators that he and Kelsey had met briefly on Thanksgiving day to exchange their daughter.

And then, you know, he took their daughter and they went their separate ways. He said they recently decided to end the relationship and were just trying to figure out these parenting logistics. He didn't seem emotional, [00:10:00] he didn't seem frantic, he just seemed detached, and we will have so much more to get into with this story after a quick break to hear a word from this week's sponsors.

And now back to the episode. Before the break, we left off in Woodland Park, Colorado, where 29-year-old Kelsey Berth had vanished after Thanksgiving day. Her cinnamon rolls were still on the counter. Her car was parked outside and her phone was pinging 800 miles away in Idaho. Detectives had just opened a missing persons case, but nothing about it really made sense.

There were odd text messages, sudden silence, and a fiance whose story just didn't quite add up. When investigators sat down with Patrick Frazee, his claim, his detached answers only deepened the mystery of what really happened to Kelsey. Meanwhile, Kelsey's mom, Cheryl just wasn't buying any of it. She knew her daughter and she knew that Kelsey wouldn't leave her baby, and she especially wouldn't go days without contacting her family.

So Cheryl started [00:11:00] retracing everything herself. She checked Kelsey's townhouse, which looked eerily untouched. Her cars were parked, her makeup and toothbrush were still there. Her luggage was even still there, and those cinnamon rolls that she had planned to bake for Thanksgiving were still sitting out on the counter.

It looked like Kelsey was in the middle of her day, then just vanished. At this point, Woodland Park Police really ramped things up. They got a search warrant for Kelsey's home, and what they found was really confusing. There were no clear signs of forced entry or struggle, but there were faint stains that just didn't look right, and that made investigators quietly flag the scene for further testing.

They also started digging into Kelsey's phone activity. The texts that had gone out from her number looked suspiciously generic, kind of seemed like someone was just trying too hard to sound casual. Then there, of course, was that final ping from her phone in Idaho that was nearly 800 miles away. So the phone became the [00:12:00] center of everything.

If Kelsey had truly gone to Idaho, her family would've heard from her again, but no one ever had. And when investigators compared the phone data to her bank records and surveillance footage, everything started coming into focus. Her phone was still active long after she wasn't. The media jumped on the story and suddenly Woodland Park wasn't so quiet anymore.

News vans rolled through town. Reporters stood outside Kelsey's apartment complex, and everyone wanted to know what happened to the young mom who had just simply vanished over Thanksgiving. Police organized searches through wooded areas, ranch land, and nearby trails, and volunteers came out in the cold.

They were scanning in ditches, forests, and even looking in wells, but they never found anything. They found no trace of Kelsey, no sign of her car even being moved, no leads. That explained why her phone ended up in Idaho. They just found absolutely nothing. As the days turned into weeks, suspicion started to grow.

[00:13:00] Kelsey's family and her coworkers and even some of Patrick's acquaintances started asking the same question. If Kelsey didn't run away, then where did she go and what did happen to her? As December went on, the investigation into Kelsey's disappearance ramped up and fast The FBI and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation joined in.

And what had started as this local missing person case was now national news. And I was saying to Mandy before this, I very much remember this story, and if you don't remember it yet, you. Recognize it as we go a little bit further because this was just unbelievable as a mom, as we are both moms, to hear about this mom leaving on Thanksgiving, you know, leaving her baby and everything, it makes absolutely no sense.

So right there, you know, there's red flags everywhere in this story. Reporters were staking out Kelsey's townhouse. There were helicopters that were circling and police were combing through every inch of her life looking for something, or [00:14:00] anything that really could explain where she had gone. They began by reviewing surveillance footage.

So Woodland Park is a small town, but there were just enough cameras from gas stations and parking lots, even the grocery store, to be able to piece together a partial timeline. And so the last confirmed sighting of Kelsey ended up being on Thanksgiving day around mid-morning when she was seen shopping with her baby in Safeway.

She looked perfectly fine, calm, totally normal. She just bought a few items and she went home. And again, Patrick's stories that he stopped by her house later and picked up their daughter. He said after they exchanged the baby, Kelsey even gave him a slice of homemade pie and then she goes inside and he drives off, and that he claims was the very last time he saw her, except none of his story can really be verified.

Investigators started digging into the details and immediately the timeline felt. Just off Patrick said Kelsey [00:15:00] handed over their daughter outside her condo, but no neighbors saw that happen. There was no surveillance cameras capturing it. There's no ring doorbell footage, nothing. Detectives checked with friends and family and none of them recalled any sign of tension or breakup plans despite Patrick's claim that the relationship was ending.

And while he insisted that Kelsey had texted him afterward, supposedly saying she's headed to Washington, he really just. Didn't seem all that curious about why she never came back. He hadn't reported her missing. He hadn't tried to track her phone. And when police searched his property, a sprawling ranch in Florissant, Colorado, his reaction wasn't exactly that of a panicked fiance.

According to investigators, he was calm, polite, and weirdly helpful, like someone reading from a script. As detectives started peeling back the layers, they just found things that didn't match up. Patrick told them he'd been with his cows that afternoon. He was doing chores, [00:16:00] but his phone records told a different story.

His phone had pinged near Kelsey's house multiple times at suspicious hours. Prosecution experts would later testify that a neighbor's surveillance camera captured a figure consistent with Patrick Frazee entering and leaving Kelsey's condo 11 times on Thanksgiving day. Then there was the issue of the texts, and they weren't just strange, they were kind of strategic.

There was the message to Kelsey's boss excusing her from work and the one to Patrick claiming that she was traveling. And of course, thief, just general Ping from Idaho investigators knew the odds of Kelsey sending all of those herself or slim to none. The real breakthrough came when police obtained a search warrant for Kelsey's townhouse.

They were able to use luminol, which is the chemical that reveals blood even after it's been cleaned. And when they sprayed with luminol and turned the lights out, the glow told a devastating story. There were traces of blood in multiple places, [00:17:00] including the bathroom on the floors and the walls. None of it was visible to the naked eye, but under the chemical spray, it was everywhere.

That changed everything. Kelsey wasn't just missing anymore. Something violent had happened inside that home. By mid-December, investigators were running out of patients, and honestly, also out of theories, they had a missing mother, a suspicious fiance, and a phone that somehow made an 800 mile trip. It just didn't add up.

That's when the digital forensics team started pulling data from Kelsey and Patrick's phones. They found text messages, call logs, and GPS data that didn't really make sense, especially around the time of Thanksgiving. Patrick had told investigators that he hadn't seen Kelsey after their supposed baby exchange.

But phone records showed that their devices actually were near each other for hours that day. And when investigators looked into the phone ping that came from Idaho, they trace it to a small [00:18:00] town called Gooding. And this place has a population of barely 3000. So it seemed kind of like a dead end at first.

But when the FBI started digging deeper, they discovered that someone in Gooding had been in. Frequent contact with Patrick and that person was a woman named Crystal Lee Kenny. So at first, this is a name that is kind of outta left field. No one knows who she is. But then everything started clicking together, like really like a perfect puzzle.

They learned that she was this nurse from Idaho and apparently someone that Patrick had known for years. The relationship between Patrick and Crystal was more than just a secret affair. Crystal later testified that they had an on again, off again relationship that spanned over a decade, even while she herself was married.

She also revealed a dark moment from 2016 when she became pregnant with Patrick's child and when she asked Patrick what to do, his callous response was quote, I guess you're a baby [00:19:00] killer or you're not, and she ultimately decided to terminate the pregnancy. This history established a pattern of manipulation and control, and as Crystal would reveal, Patrick had made multiple attempts to get her to kill Kelsey before Thanksgiving day.

He first suggested that she drug Kelsey's favorite caramel macchiato, and later he suggested a pipe or a baseball bat on separate trips that Crystal had made to Colorado. He's like trying to actively get Crystal to go and murder Kelsey. And offering up suggestions for different ways that she could do this.

Which is absolutely wild because really what did Crystal have to gain in this? It seems like this thing they had going on for years and years was Right. Kind of working. So really what is the point? Right. She did say that she had purchased a coffee that she poisoned on one of the trips, but ultimately she couldn't go through with it.

She just told Patrick, you know, I can't do this. Which I mean, yeah, like, uh, [00:20:00] it's so hard in these because clearly Patrick is. An abuser, right? And so we understand how that cycle of abuse works in relationships, which I'm sure there was that at play between him and Crystal as well. And so you can see like being scared, but yeah, I just.

I don't understand. Someone's trying to get you to commit murder multiple times, brings this up to you like, yeah, and how are you driving 800 miles with poison coffee and expecting somebody to take it from you? That doesn't even make sense to me. Yeah, no, I mean, obviously there was, well, I would assume there was a plan, but who knows?

But it was terrible. But the fact is she knew that he wanted to do this, he wanted her to do this, so she had enough knowledge to know that this was. Definitely in his mind this was a real thing that he was thinking. For sure. Yeah. And we have more to get into after one last break to hear a word from this week's sponsors.

And now back to the episode. So before the break, Kelsey's mom, Cheryl had turned really into a one woman search team. She drove hundreds of miles. She [00:21:00] was checking every detail of her daughter's life, and she uncovered a home that was really frozen in time. Police were starting to realize this really wasn't a disappearance at all.

It was something much worse. They found faint stains that glowed under luminol texts that really felt staged, and this timeline that didn't make sense. And then they found that the trail stretched all the way to Idaho. Where investigators discovered a woman named Crystal Kenny, someone who had a long and complicated past with Patrick Frazee, and a secret that would really blow this case wide open.

When the FBI showed up at Crystal's door, she probably knew the game was up. She really didn't say much at first, but when agents started pressing her about a relationship with Patrick, the truth really just began to spill out and it was jaw dropping. Crystal admitted that she and Patrick had been romantically involved for more than a decade, and this wasn't just a casual fling, it was an actual relationship that had continued while he was [00:22:00] engaged to Kelsey and that Thanksgiving weekend, crystal said that he had called her in a panic.

He told her something terrible had happened and he needed her help cleaning it up. Now Crystal's version of events would later become one of the most disturbing testimonies really in recent true crime history. And again, when this came out, this is the part where I started remembering this story because it's just so messed up.

So she claimed that Patrick told her in advance that he had planned to kill Kelsey. And again, we talked before that he wanted her to do it herself several times. Each time she told him she couldn't go through with it, but she never warned Kelsey and she never went to police. So on Thanksgiving day when Patrick called her saying, you've got a mess to clean up, she drives all the way from Idaho to Woodland Park.

When Crystal arrived, she said that Patrick led her into Kelsey's town home, and what she described next was really horrifying. She said there was blood [00:23:00] everywhere. It was on the walls, the floor, the bathroom. She said Patrick told her he killed Kelsey with a baseball bat while their baby was nearby in another room.

What a monster. I just cannot get my head around people who can even do this or who are capable of this. Totally. And also for all this planning that he's done and thinking about it, what a horrific way to kill someone. Not that there should be a good way, but this is just one of the most hateful and awful ways I could think of hurting someone and, and just right on the other side of the wall from your kid.

That doesn't make any sense to me from a baby, a 1-year-old baby. Like that's Needs her mom. Yeah, it's It's sick. Horrible. Sick. Yeah, it's terrible. So Crystal further testified though that Patrick told her that Kelsey's last words were, please stop as he was beating her. So the scene Crystal walked into was described as being horrific, and when she came to Idaho, she came with supplies.

She had a protective body [00:24:00] suit, gloves and trash bags, really just to clean up this massive amount of blood. A few days later when she was back in Idaho, she said she watched as Patrick Frazee burned a black tote bag that he claimed to contain to Kelsey's body and the baseball bat that was on his property.

Crystal claimed that she spent hours cleaning, scrubbing walls, washing floors, and gathering this evidence that he was going to dispose of. She said Patrick gave her Kelsey's phone and told her to send a fake text to make it look like Kelsey was still alive, including that one that pinged in Idaho. And that's why the phone had traveled hundreds of miles North.

Crystal had taken it there herself just like he told her to. But these two were too stupid to know not to turn it off in your town. Basically leading the police right to them, which. I'm glad they're idiots. So by the time she finished talking to investigators, they had really everything they needed to connect Patrick to Kelsey's disappearance.[00:25:00] 

On December 21st, 2018, almost a month after Thanksgiving, they arrested him on charges of first degree murder and solicitation to commit murder. What they didn't have yet, though was Kelsey's body, and without it, the case would become one of the toughest murder prosecutions Colorado had ever seen.

Patrick Frazier's trial began in November of 2019, almost exactly a year after Kelsey disappeared. It had taken investigators months to pull together enough evidence to charge him, especially without a body, but what they did have was damning. The courtroom was packed every single day of the trial.

Kelsey's family sat quietly in the front row surrounded by supporters, while reporters lined the back wall, scribbling notes on the other side. Patrick sat there really calmly and people just had no idea, you know, that he had been capable of this. The prosecution's case relied heavily on circumstantial evidence, but it was really powerful.

Blood [00:26:00] spatter analysis from Kelsey's home cell phone records placing Patrick there during the time of the murder, and most importantly, they had Crystal Kenny's testimony. When Crystal took the stand, the whole room went silent. She told the jury in excruciating detail about everything Patrick had said and done from the months of planning up to the moment that he called her and told her about the murder.

She described what it was like walking into Kelsey's apartment and seeing all the blood everywhere, and she said that she cleaned for hours using bleach wipes and rags, collecting evidence that Patrick told her, you know, they were gonna burn later. Just really going all in on the cleanup and kind of helping him.

She told the jury that she even took Kelsey's phone with her to Idaho and sent those fake text messages to make it look like Kelsey was still alive. This testimony was really hard to hear, and while the defense tried to discredit her, they tried to paint her as a scorned lover, just trying to save [00:27:00] herself.

The physical evidence really backed up everything that she was saying, and then came a surprise witness, a jailhouse informant named Jacob Bentley. He told the jury that while Patrick was in jail awaiting trial, he had actually tried to orchestrate hits on key witnesses, including Crystal and even Kelsey's mom.

Cheryl, what's this saying about cheating? If he cheats with you, he'll cheat on you. Yes. That's what this reminds me of. Uhhuh, if he will plan someone else's murder, he will also plan your murder a thousand percent. He's going to do that. Yes. He's a monster. Will stop at nothing. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Um, so this jailhouse informant said that Patrick had written the names Crystal Eng Cheryl's names on paper towels, and passed them to him with detailed instructions on how.

To kill them. My gosh. The jury really didn't need much more convincing. After hearing weeks of testimony, examining phone records and seeing the forensic evidence from Kelsey's home, [00:28:00] they began deliberating and just three and a half hours later. They returned with a verdict. Patrick Frazee was found guilty on all counts, which were first degree murder solicitation to commit murder and tampering with the deceased human body.

He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Plus an additional 156 years. As for Crystal Kenny, as you can imagine, she struck a plea deal very early on. She pleaded guilty to tampering with evidence in exchange for her cooperation, and she received a three year prison sentence to many people, especially.

Kelsey's family that felt far too light, but really without her testimony. The case against Patrick might not have ever been proven, might not have even seen the light of day, so it wasn't a perfect kind of justice, but it was something. After the verdict came down, Kelsey's family finally had some measure of justice.

But the word closure didn't [00:29:00] really apply. There was still no body to bury, no grave to visit, and no way to truly say goodbye. Cheryl, Kelsey's mom said it best when she said, we got justice, but we didn't get our daughter back. The thing that really struck with everyone was how preventable this whole thing was.

During the trial, it came out that Crystal had actually told multiple people weeks before the murder that Patrick was planning to kill Kelsey. So it's not just Patrick telling Crystal Crystal's now telling other people, and no one is telling the police. She had one friend that was a paralegal who told her to go to the police in October of 2018, but Crystal didn't do it.

And because she didn't, Kelsey never got the chance to protect herself. And that's of course what makes this case so haunting. It's. Not random. It's not a moment of rage. It was planned down to the day, down to Thanksgiving Day, and it was surrounded by warning signs that no one acted on. The Kelsey Berth [00:30:00] case ended up sparking a much bigger conversation about domestic violence and intimate partner homicide, especially in these cases where there aren't obvious physical signs of abuse.

Kelsey's family really had no idea what she was facing. She wasn't being beaten or isolated and from the outside, her relationship with Patrick looked pretty stable, but behind the facade, he was possessive, controlling, and capable of manipulation that bordered on sociopathic. Today, Kelsey's daughter is being raised by her maternal grandparents in Idaho.

Cheryl and her husband have made it their mission to keep Kelsey's memory alive. Not as a victim, but as the loving, bright, devoted young mom that she was. The family has also established a scholarship in Kelsey's honor. Man, this story is so sad and for all the reasons kind that we've already, you know, said why it's so sad.

Of course. But the more stories I hear like this, and you know, Melissa, I'm not even the kind of person who's like. All men are scary and all whatever. Yeah. I'm not like, [00:31:00] you know, I'm not like that. I know that, you know, not all people are bad in general. Right. But man, it is so scary when you see how often it happens where women specifically are just trying to get out of a relationship and like it's literally everyone's right to leave a relationship or to stop associating with any person that you do not any longer want to associate with.

Like everybody has that right? And just to think that. People can't even do that like safely. Like it just is so sad to think about this young mom and her baby now not having her mom because this guy like didn't want her to like end the relationship and just work out a custody arrangement with her daughter.

Like I don't, it's just, and meanwhile he has a whole other girlfriend, like, why is he worried about this? It's such a weird. It's not weird, but, well, it is weird, but it's a control thing. It's, it's a, I'm going to, you know, leave this with what I want to, and too bad for you. It sucks for you, but it's so frustrating and it is so scary.

They talk about the most [00:32:00] common. Times for women to be hurt in a relationship is when they try to leave or right after they leave. And then also pregnant women, which I know she was not, but that one always blows my mind too. How many pregnant women? Me too. How high The percentages of women who were murdered during pregnancy.

It's just. Like, I don't know. I, we've gotta do more to prevent this and to see signs and my gosh, if somebody tells you they're gonna kill somebody, please go to the police. Yes. Just believe them. Goodness. Right. Don't wait for like, proof that they're not joking because no one says that. If they're not, you know, no one's.

No one jokes around like that. So yeah, it's very sad. And why ruin your own life? Like why, why this is just a bad person. Why, why do any of this? And, ugh, it just makes me so sad for her family. Me too. All right, Melissa, since this is a holiday week, I thought it would be nice to turn the page like we used to.

Yeah. And play a little game of lasting before we go. Are you, are you [00:33:00] down? I'm down. I'm down to clown on lasting. Before we go. Well, this is perfect 'cause this is definitely clown worthy, uh, content right here. Oh. So yeah, if you're a new listener around here or you maybe just forgot what last thing before you go is it's just a little segment that we used to do all the time at the end of the show.

Kind of as a pallet cleanser after we've heard a story that might not leave us feeling very good. Uh, and we don't wanna do that to you, especially this week if you might be listening, you know, during, um, holiday time. So if that's not something you enjoy, you can just turn it off. I know not everybody likes to hear anything extra.

This is just extra and it leaves silly. It will be silly. So if you do listen to this and you hate it. Don't complain about it. We don't need to know. Just turn off, don't complain about it. So for this Thanksgiving edition of lasting, before we go Melissa, we're gonna play a little game that I am gonna call.

Guess that side or guess that, guess that side dish. Okay. Yeah. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna describe a Thanksgiving side dish or just a dish in really the most questionable, uncomfortable way possible. [00:34:00] And you have to guess what food I'm talking about. Okay. I, okay. All right. Let's do it. I'm excited. Okay. All right.

So for the first one, this dish has the texture of a wet sponge, and it looks like it's already been chew, chewed once. No, this is how it's doing. Oh my gosh. Okay. Looks like it's already been chewed once. Texture of a wet sponge. That's all my clues. Okay. Is it a sweet or a not? It's got sweet. Okay. It's got the texture of a wet sponge.

It looks like it's already been chewed once and baked twice. Not twice baked potatoes. No, um, baked twice. Okay. Give me this one. I'm gonna get the others. It has celery bits in it. Oh, stuffing. Yeah. I hate it so much. See, that's why you didn't think of it. 'cause you just, you blocked it out. You blocked it out.

No. Yeah, the celery really helped me 'cause absolutely not. All right. This one probably will be a little easier for you. Okay. So this dish is basically what happens when sugar and vegetables go through a messy divorce, but still spend holidays [00:35:00] together for the kids. Is this sweet potato casserole? It is, yes.

I can't decide if it's dinner or dessert. My favorite sweet potato casserole. Yes. Mm-hmm. Okay. Next one. Dish number three. This dish is full of wet ingredients that never should have met each other. Uh, it's pinkish, sometimes green and nobody knows what it actually is, including the person that brought it.

Okay. It's gotta be ambrosia salad, but I make, I don't suggest that 'cause I make Watergate salad and I love Watergate salad. What's in it? But everyone, okay. Watergate salad is pistachio pudding mix. So some people are out right there. Mix it like Jello pudding mix. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So you mix it with, uh, one thing of cool whip, like a cup of marshmallows, a can of crushed pineapples, coconut.

I think that's it. Okay. That actually sounds okay. It's very co, the coconut and pineapple actually is doing it for me right now. Oh really? 'cause you can, those can be omitted. No, I like that. Like kids's hate it. And it's truly like that's the only thing I have on my list [00:36:00] for, for Thanksgiving. That's my favorite.

Nice. You know, I've always been one that like avoids those. Those, those types of dishes, like the ambrosia salad and like whatever that thing is you just said. It sounds delicious. Yeah. But, um, ambrosia salad. I don't know enough about it. I've seen it and I've always avoided it, but somehow, yeah, water, weight salad is my jam.

Okay. All right. I'll give you that one. All right. Next dish. Melissa. This is a dish that doesn't just walk in. It emerges. It vibrates for a few seconds before settling into its final unsettling form. Vibrating and exploding people. Slice it into discs and then act offended when you don't take a piece.

Cranberry sauce. Yes, it jiggles. Okay, now I get it. The exploding. Okay. My other favorites. I found some in my, uh, pantry yesterday and I was like from last year. Yeah, it's still good. I'm sure it's, but do I put it in my fridge and just eat? I'm gonna eat it this week just for [00:37:00] kicks and gigs. For funsies?

Yeah, just for funsies. Why not? Yeah, I mean, I love it. Literally. Why not? I actually found a can of canned pineapple that I've had in my thing for like a year or pineapple. Wrong pumpkin, canned pumpkin. Oh, okay. Yeah, that I've had in my thing for a year. 'cause I remember last year I went on a kick. I was like, oh, I wanna make the whole family pumpkin pancakes and you need a can of, can of pumpkin.

Um, and they turned out so good and I forgot I still had a can of it. So now I'm already thinking about making pumpkin pancakes. I mean, that's just good parenting right there. Yeah. I mean, thank you. I'll take it. All right. Next dish. It's a mystery swamp in a casserole dish and looks like it was made by someone that's never actually eaten food.

Before this di, this dish will have you saying it was fine before you added soup cream bean casserole. Yes, because doesn't it have like cream of mushroom or cream of something? Yeah, and I love green bean casserole, but I don't like it when it's real soupy. I actually don't [00:38:00] know that I've seen it too soupy, but I just avoid it.

I want whatever's like sprinkled on top. I would put bacon on top, but nothing else. Mm-hmm. Yes, I love green bean casserole, but I, I do it like a specific way and I don't use cream of mushroom soup 'cause I find it. What is the point? Yeah, I don't know, flavor and to make it like creamy, but then also I'm like, do you really need like creamy green beans?

I don't know. Green beans don't seem, there's a lot of food that you can put, like, I like creamed corn. Like there's certain vegetables that are fine with creamy sauce, but like, I don't know, green beans have never really struck me as a creamy vegetables. That is not a word I want to use with that. I've said it way too many times.

I know. Please stop. Okay. Next dish. This one is smooth, dense, and somehow both comforting and threatening at the same time. It looks like a cloud, but weighs as much as emotional damage. Okay, that's mean I feel like, looks like a cloud. I got a little dark here. [00:39:00] Mashed potatoes please? Of course. Oh, good. Okay.

That's the only thing that looks like a cloud. Yeah. Describe it again. Smooth, dense. Both comforting and threatening. It's threatening for me because nothing threatening. I'll eat the whole dang thing. That's why it's threatening to me. I love mashed potatoes, but me too. I hate. They do look like you could just keep, you could just eat them and eat them and eat them until all of a sudden it catches up and you have like a rock in your stomach and you're like, why did I eat like my weight and potato?

Yeah. My daughter doesn't like, like lumpy mashed potatoes, like at all. So I was like, I know what I'll do. I put it in the freaking blender, like it's gonna be as good as it can be. I'm talking soup. It was can of. Whatever they are. Potato soup. It was so gross. I was like, you don't have to eat it, but I did spend a lot of time, so if you'll just take one bite.

Aw. Of course you wouldn't do it. So, um, and I didn't like it either. It's just different textures can really ruin things for you. Yeah, for sure. No, I totally [00:40:00] agree. Okay, I have one last one. This last one's gonna be tough. Maybe you're pretty quick, so maybe you'll get it. All right. This dish is warm peppery.

Slightly aggressive. I think you might say it's what would happen if a pepper mill fell in love with a pie crust and they raised ground beef in a lawless frontier town. So help me God. Is this meat pie? Yes, you demon. It Mandy's meat pie. It's actually not even a Thanksgiving dish. I just wanted to include it in here because thanks for doing that.

As soon as you said pepper and ground beef, I knew. This was going to be the end for me. Lawlessness. Yes. Yeah. Oh, I love that game. That was really fun. Yeah. All right, Melissa. Well I hope you enjoy your Thanksgiving holiday. I hope I enjoy mine. Um, we are recording this a little bit in advance, so neither one of us is quite ready to think about Thanksgiving just yet, but it'll be here before we know it and uh, yeah, we will be back.

Next [00:41:00] week, same time, same place. New story. Yeah, have a great week and a great Thanksgiving. Bye.