She knows something.
To the extent of what she knew was a shocking revelation.
I just never expected what she told us to come out of her mouth.
I'm Scott Weinberger, investigative journalist and former deputy sheriff.
I'm Anna Siga-Nicolazzi, former New York City homicide prosecutor and host of Investigation.
Discovery's True Conviction.
And this is Anatomy of Murder.
Often, when we think about achieving justice for the victim of a violent crime, we talk about catching the killer, proving beyond any reasonable doubt the who, what and how of the murder.
But there's another important aspect of justice, and it has to do with telling a victim's story, piecing together the evidence and the witness interviews and the forensics, not just to get a clearer picture of the crime but of the person whose life it cut short.
It's a responsibility that often falls to prosecutors like Jennifer Beeman.
Jennifer is the Chief Deputy DA from the 4th Judicial District in Southern Colorado, an area that encompasses two counties and the city of Colorado Springs.
Jennifer's been a prosecutor for nearly 20 years and, like many of us, it is a job she felt born to do.
I always wanted to be a lawyer.
My mom used to say, I would argue that the sky is not blue.
Yeah.
So everybody would say, you should be a lawyer.
You should be a lawyer.
So after finishing college, it was off to law school.
But while studying the law could certainly prepare her for the courtroom, her passion for the law and for justice would come from someplace much more personal.
When I was in law school, I didn't really know what kind of lawyer I wanted to be.
And it wasn't until my brother's best friend from when he was in high school was murdered.
I wasn't the direct victim of that crime.
I mean, I wasn't his mother.
I wasn't his sister.
But to me, he was like my little brother as well.
And when that happened it just really changed everything for me from a mental perspective about what was really important.
And so, immediately after graduating law school, Jennifer became a prosecutor, not just to enforce the law and prosecute those committing crimes, but to advocate for the victims that are no longer here to speak for themselves.
There's something about having that voice for victims.
I feel like every day I'm doing the right thing. for the right reasons.
One of those victims was a 29-year-old mother from Woodley Park Colorado, named Kelsey Berreth, who disappeared from her home on Thanksgiving Day 2018.
It was a story that soon captivated the nation.
Countless people clung to every twist and turn of the investigation.
But to her family, the shock and the pain were all too real.
Here's a bit about Kelsey.
Kelsey was smart, ambitious.
Kelsey had been trained as a pilot and she was working for a company that trains our military pilots.
Not the average career for a young woman or anyone at all.
Kelsey's love for aviation started at a very young age.
Growing up on a farm, she initially dreamt of becoming a crop duster.
Eventually, after various stops along the way, she landed at DAS Aviation in Pueblo, Colorado as a flight instructor.
Kelsey was the one teaching our U.S.
Air Force pilots how to fly.
And Scott just for a second when I saw that, like this woman right there, I mean she is a toughie, not even just being a pilot and teaching, but she is teaching our Air Force no easy task.
I had a lot of respect for who she was.
With intelligence, ambition, and a high-flying career for Kelsey, the sky was truly the limit.
But in 2016, her life made an unscheduled stop when she met a Colorado rancher by the name of Patrick Frazee.
So she had met Patrick through an online dating app.
Things just progressed so quickly in this relationship.
He came back to meet her family and proposed to her within months of meeting her.
And so Kelsey pulled up stakes in her home state of Washington, found a new job and moved to Colorado to be closer to her fiancé.
But things in Colorado quickly got off track.
She does move to Colorado to be with Patrick.
And initially she moves to Florissant because that's where Patrick Frazee lived.
And there is immediate conflict between Kelsey and Patrick's mother.
It's not a good situation.
So, being a strong, independent young woman, she finds her own condo closer to her new job and maybe a bit further from her future mother-in-law.
This relationship is still continuing with Patrick Frazee.
During this period of time, that's when she becomes pregnant with their daughter.
And she ultimately moves back to the Florissant area, but lands into Woodland Park.
Woodland Park is a small town within the Colorado Springs metropolitan area and surrounded by the million acre Pike National Forest.
I actually went to school in Colorado.
Go see you buffs.
And I can attest it is an amazingly beautiful part of this country.
It seems like the perfect place to settle down and raise a family.
But unfortunately, Kelsey's romance with Patrick had begun to cool.
When she moves to Woodland Park, they're still continuing to have these separate lives.
She's pregnant with their daughter.
She lives in her own place in Woodland Park and he continues to live in his own home in Florissant, Colorado with his mother.
In the fall of 2017, Kelsey and Patrick welcomed a baby girl and immediately their daughter became Kelsey's number one priority.
So, as many of you can imagine, the effort to balance being a mother and a career woman was exhausting.
With Patrick spending all of his time on the ranch.
He wasn't much help with the baby and that was causing a strain in their relationship.
Really living separate lives is weighing on Kelsey.
She's also worn out.
She's working all the time.
It's a very long commute.
It was over 60 miles each way, so Kelsey traveled over an hour to work and then back every day.
She has an infant.
She's exhausted because she's traveling from Woodland Park to Pueblo.
Patrick is living with his mom.
He's not necessarily providing all of the support that you would need from a spouse or a parent.
But like in all her endeavors, Kelsey was determined to make things work.
And that included planning and cooking a traditional Thanksgiving dinner for Patrick and their daughter at her condo in Woodland Park.
On Thanksgiving Kelsey had talked to her mom and there was some text messages going back and forth between her and her mom.
Kelsey chatted with her mom about family recipes as she started shopping for dinner at the local Safeway.
But she also shared some of her concerns about Patrick, who had been up all night feeling sick.
After the call with her mom, Kelsey returned home with the groceries.
Her mom Cheryl soon texted Patrick to wish him a happy Thanksgiving and a speedy recovery.
Patrick texted back with a happy Thanksgiving of his own.
But Kelsey's mom found it strange that she didn't hear from her daughter for the rest of that night or in the days that followed.
From all accounts, it sounds like Kelsey and her mom Cheryl have a very close relationship.
They would speak fairly often.
So there's something that isn't making a lot of sense that she hasn't heard from her and that she hasn't had a phone conversation with her.
Finally, two days after Thanksgiving, Kelsey's mom received a brief text from Kelsey promising to call later, but Kelsey never called.
Her next step logically is to try to get a hold of Patrick, which she does.
But to her shock, Patrick drops a bombshell revealing that he and Kelsey had broken up and that Kelsey had left their daughter with him before she stormed out.
To Cheryl, that doesn't make any sense.
It's not tracking because Kelsey never mentions this breakup in that phone call that they have on Thanksgiving Day.
It's about...
Christmas plans.
It's about what they're going to be making for Thanksgiving side dishes and different things that they may do on Thanksgiving.
So to have that conversation and never have her own daughter tell her that this major personal event has occurred was a huge red flag for Cheryl.
Patrick says that he thinks that Kelsey may have left the area to stay with a friend.
So, at least for the time being, he and his daughter would stay at his family's ranch until Kelsey returned.
On December 2nd 2018, 10 days since she last spoke with her daughter, Cheryl called the Woodland Park Police Department to report Kelsey missing.
Cheryl knows that none of this is making any sense.
So she contacts the Woodland Park Police Department to do a welfare check on Kelsey.
Jennifer learned of the report almost right away.
I was on call when the report came through that Kelsey was missing.
I think we all knew that something had happened to Kelsey.
But it was also pretty clear from the beginning that this was going to be a complex, involved investigation and case.
Law enforcement knew they needed to act.
But with no obvious crime, where would they start?
On December 3rd 2018, officers from the Woodland Park, Colorado Police Department were dispatched to perform a welfare check at Kelsey Barath's condo.
And what's important to remember is that, even though Kelsey has been reported missing, there's not an assumption that a crime has been committed.
So these initial visits are not criminal investigations.
They're usually performed by uniformed officers and not detectives.
And they are taking note of the most obvious and visible details.
Is their resident at home?
Is their car there?
Or is it in the driveway even?
And are there any signs of any possible break-ins?
And that really is what a welfare check accomplishes.
And in the case of Kelsey's well check, the officers did not notice much at all.
That was out of the ordinary.
They don't see any signs of anything at the house.
They don't see signs of a struggle or anything to give an indication that something had happened in Kelsey's condo.
But they also don't find Kelsey.
Here's what they do find.
Her clothes still in the closet, her toothbrush and makeup in the bathroom and her car still parked right in the driveway.
It doesn't appear that Kelsey had left for any sort of impromptu trip, as Patrick had suggested.
But there are signs that Kelsey went somewhere.
Kelsey's purse is missing, her keys are missing, her phone is missing.
But there's other things in the condo that are still present that are intriguing to investigators.
We know that Kelsey was in Safeway on Thanksgiving.
She had talked to her mom that day about purchasing items for Thanksgiving.
Those items are still in the condo.
Specifically, Kelsey and her mom had talked about cooking cinnamon rolls for Thanksgiving morning and a tray of uncooked cinnamon rolls was sitting there untouched on top of the stove.
And this is one of the things to me.
That was just, you know, the second I heard it.
You know there's an issue.
But investigators noted other odd things, too.
This weird film is on the furniture.
It's on the TV.
It's just odd.
There's something that's just kind of off about it.
But most importantly, there were no clues to where Kelsey might have gone or even how she got there.
The options at that point were, did she take an Uber?
Did she take a cab?
Did somebody pick her up?
Because clearly she didn't leave in her own car.
There was just things that didn't make any sense.
Now remember, Kelsey was a pilot.
So flying off at a moment's notice wouldn't be so far-fetched, at least not for her.
But not to then pack a suitcase or even your toothbrush?
It's like she just vanished off the face of the earth.
As you can imagine, Kelsey's mom Cheryl, had already called all of Kelsey's friends in Colorado and in Washington, but no one had heard from her.
Cheryl contacts her workplace as well to see if she's at work.
And they say no, she called out sick or she texted out sick saying that she was going to go visit her grandmother in Washington.
And Kelsey did have a grandmother in Washington, but in this case Kelsey's mom knew that a visit like that was really unlikely.
It would make sense to go visit your grandparents, except in this case, it didn't make sense.
Her grandmother was very ill.
I think she was suffering from dementia.
So it wasn't something that she would just spontaneously go visit her grandmother.
It's something that she would have told her mom about and made plans for, because it's not a simple thing of just going taking grandma out to dinner.
But there was another possibility, wasn't there?
That maybe Kelsey really had just decided to leave.
That's not out of the realm of possibility for an exhausted mom to just opt out, because mothers, like all other people, are human.
And sometimes it all at least feels like it's just too much.
And in fact Kelsey had even admitted herself to a clinic not long before this to get treatment for for that feeling of utter exhaustion.
So investigators would have to consider that as a possibility.
It was absolutely pursued as a potential that maybe Kelsey just went back to that clinic.
So that clinic is contacted to see if she went back and she's not there.
So obviously, if you're Kelsey's mom, you are now just beside yourself with worry and at some point must be starting to imagine the worst case scenario that your daughter had been abducted or hurt or even killed.
Her fate was also on the mind of the public.
At one of the many press conferences that were held, her mom Cheryl, stepped up to the mic and made a very public appeal.
I'd just like to talk to you a little bit about Kelsey.
She's not the kind that runs off.
This is completely out of character.
Kelsey loves her God, she loves her family and friends, and she loves her job.
She's reliable, considerate, and honest.
We've created the Facebook page Missing Mother Kelsey Barrett as a site that gets her face out there.
That's used to spread the word that she's missing and we'd like to ask everyone to please share it.
Our sole goal is to get Kelsey out in front of everyone.
Like I said, she doesn't run off, and someone knows where she's at.
Kelsey, we just want you home.
Call us if you can, and we won't quit looking.
And she was likely frustrated too, because the one person who should have been the most helpful her fiance, who also happened to be the last person known to have spoken with Kelsey in person was acting as though there was nothing wrong.
But seeing as how this is now officially a missing persons case, Patrick's account of what happened on Thanksgiving was critically important to the investigation.
So they contact Patrick on the phone and he, in a recording that's captured on the officer's body worn camera, makes the statement.
He lays out a story to the police about what happened to Kelsey.
He says a couple of things that are very, I would say, concerning right away from a law enforcement perspective.
He tells law enforcement that the last time he saw Kelsey was in the alley outside her condo when they exchanged custody of the baby on Thanksgiving.
Not in the condo, but outside in the alley.
No mention of going inside to get his daughter's bag, her diapers or anything else.
No.
In fact, he is much more focused on the things he claims he had to return to Kelsey, which included a set of keys, some personal items oh, and a gun.
He said that he had had her firearm because she had threatened to kill herself at one point.
So he took the gun from her and then he returned the gun to her on that Thanksgiving day.
Anytime an investigator hears the word gun, their ears are going to perk up.
Just the potential of violence that a firearm presents means that it now has become part of the conversation, especially in a missing persons case.
But that in addition she'd at least supposedly talked about self-harm.
And now he gives her back the gun, and now she and the gun are gone.
Those on their face are head-turning statements.
I agree.
I mean you enter a weapon into a situation where a woman is missing and there's some kind of potential domestic issue here.
That is really a serious, serious problem.
That's going to be a huge concern for law enforcement that maybe she would have harmed herself.
So they ask him about that.
Would she harm herself?
Patrick says, no, I don't think that she was suicidal or anything like that.
But he did say that they had broken up and she had gotten all of her stuff back.
So if Kelsey was not a threat to herself, the obvious next question would be was there anyone else that posed a threat to her?
And considering that Patrick is telling police that they had broken up on the very day that she went missing, the most logical potential threat would be Patrick himself.
So at this point, knowing his exact whereabouts and if he had an alibi was certainly in order.
He tells them that after picking up their daughter from Kelsey's, he had driven her back to the family's ranch for Thanksgiving dinner, around 230 in the afternoon.
They asked both his brother and his mother about what happened.
His brother is a Colorado Springs police officer.
He confirms that Patrick is at Thanksgiving dinner.
Now, according to Patrick, the split with Kelsey was amicable.
They had just been growing apart for some time, and Kelsey had already agreed to share custody of their daughter as she explored a new path.
But Patrick's mother, Sheila's version of their breakup is much less generous.
Sheila did not like Kelsey.
And when law enforcement talks to Sheila about where's Kelsey, she makes no bones about how she feels about Kelsey still.
Says a bunch of horrible things about her, is essentially claiming that she probably just ran off.
But given everything known about Kelsey, nothing about that claim lined up.
So you have a young mother, someone who's excited about her career path, family that loves her, cares about her and is worried about her.
When you take that trifecta of who Kelsey is, Something had to have happened to her.
This isn't someone who's just going to say I want to go live off the grid and I'm just going to pack up and walk into the woods.
She has family.
She has a small child and a career that she loves.
It really didn't make any sense for her to disappear like that short of foul play.
But to make that leap, investigators need more than just their hunch.
They need evidence.
At that point, there's not a lot that they can really do.
There isn't really probable cause that a crime has occurred yet at this point.
There's just red flags and suspicious behaviors.
Kelsey's mom and her brother fly out to Kelsey's condo to help in the search efforts to find Kelsey.
And that's when things take really a sinister turn in the investigation.
Kelsey's mom and brother arrived at Kelsey's condo soon after the officer's initial welfare check, but what to police had been observable details to her family were the type of indicators that make the hair on the back of your neck stand up that something was terribly wrong.
The newly bought groceries.
Sitting on the kitchen counter, the pan of cold cinnamon rolls resting on the stove, a broom on top of Kelsey's bed.
But it's when Kelsey's brother examines the bathroom, their worst fears come true.
He is in the bathroom and he looks down and he sees what appears to be a large blood smear on the toilet.
When he sees that, that's when things really shift to a criminal investigation and into a homicide type of an investigation.
When that blood is discovered on the toilet, everything changes.
Cheryl and Clint then have to leave that condo because now it appears to be a crime scene.
It also means that the small Woodland Park Police Department is going to get the help and resources of a statewide law enforcement agency.
Colorado Bureau of Investigation then really takes over this investigation at that point, because CBI not only has criminal investigators, they also maintain the DNA forensic lab for the state of Colorado.
They do all the testing for all sorts of things, but critically, DNA.
Using luminol and what is called a blue star analysis to reveal blood that may not be visible to the naked eye.
Investigators find spots not just on the toilet but all over the bathroom.
They take samples of that blood, do a very quick DNA turnaround and determine that it is in fact Kelsey's blood that's on that toilet.
And there's her blood in other spots in the bathroom as well.
You know Scott, just seems that everything is adding up, that of course they want to go back to Patrick for some more questioning.
Absolutely.
The home is a potential crime scene.
And you want to know who had access to your crime scene.
And the quick answer is Patrick.
You also want to know who's the last person to see your victim alive or, of course, has an intimate relationship with your victim.
Sounds like ding, ding, ding.
All three are Patrick.
And when you think about his story and I say story because talking about a breakup on the very day and that she just up and left without telling anyone else but him, it just doesn't add up.
You know, if that happened you wouldn't have those groceries sitting on the counter or even now this blood.
Well, that's at least on its face indications of a potential crime, all of which makes Patrick's story of a breakup and leaving town all the more suspicious.
What you have is a situation and a real need to talk to Patrick.
The only conversation they've had with Patrick so far has been on the phone.
So right now, it is a good reason to sit down with someone who's becoming your highest priority in your purse of interest list.
And they also want to see him for another, even more important reason, and that is to check on Kelsey's daughter.
They also have serious concerns about where's the baby.
They need to see the baby, put eyes on the baby to make sure the baby's okay.
And they want to talk to Patrick about the timeline and get more details about what happened that day.
And it really didn't take very long to actually find Patrick Frazee.
They come to a restaurant, a hamburger restaurant in Colorado Springs, where he is eating with his brother, some other family friends and the baby is with him.
So law enforcement is able to confirm that yep, the baby is here, baby's okay.
And then they try to talk to Patrick.
Patrick does not talk to law enforcement at that point.
He lawyered up at the Five Guys, and that was the end of any official statements from Patrick.
So Patrick was obviously aware that he is now a suspect in his wife's disappearance, does not provide any further statement to law enforcement or surprisingly, he does agree to hand over his cell phone.
The turning point is when that blood is found on the toilet, because that gave more credence to the suspicions that there was something nefarious that happened, something that Kelsey was met with foul play.
When law enforcement discovers that they're able to get search warrants, then for Patrick's phone records, for Kelsey's phone records.
What is contained in them is game changing.
And it really is, in many respects, the most important piece of evidence in this case.
So now police had both Patrick's phone and Kelsey's phone records and of course they wanted to check to see if there was any text between them leading up to and after they had supposedly met to exchange custody of their daughter on Thanksgiving.
And they did find communication, but it was a bit different than what you'd expect if they were breaking up.
And what they found was a fairly typical exchange about Thanksgiving plans.
Kelsey asking if he wanted a certain side dish, what time he was coming over.
But even these mundane details raise eyebrows because it seems to contradict Patrick's story that he had planned to eat Thanksgiving with his family at the ranch and not with Kelsey.
But there's also a couple of exchanges that I just found pretty strange.
That were two days after Thanksgiving, which is when Kelsey was already gone.
You have one where Patrick texts, are you OK?
Do you need anything?
And from Kelsey's phone comes back, no, I'm fine.
Just worn out.
And then there's another exchange that Kelsey asks him, don't you even love me?
And Patrick responds would I go through all of this if I didn't?
They're supposedly broken up, he has the baby and the fact that this is all that there was between them, these four almost perfunctory lines like they, to me just seemed wooden and it was almost like lines out of a bad play.
Not the questions that a young mother who had now broken up with this guy she was planning to spend her future with might be thinking and talking about, if they were communicating at all.
We really wanted to have her phone pinged to see where her phone was.
And at that point her phone was pinging in Idaho.
So, according to phone records, Kelsey or at least her phone was over 800 miles away from her home in Colorado.
So on a single looking through these text messages, now we're getting a story here.
And it seems to be a story that contradicts Patrick's alibi.
And it also suggests that maybe Patrick's story about them breaking up really isn't true.
So, in addition to the text messages, there are some phone calls that undermine certain elements of Patrick's alibi.
What they see immediately in the phone records is Patrick's phone calls that he makes on Thanksgiving.
He calls his mother, I think maybe around 4.30 on Thanksgiving evening.
So he calls his mom at 4.30, which is odd because he claimed to have been at her house by 2.30.
So if he's there, why is he calling her from his phone?
And that's not the only call that he made.
And he calls an Idaho phone number.
I think we were all thinking to ourselves, who is this Idaho phone number?
Who is he calling?
So law enforcement immediately starts going through, who is this person?
We got to find this person.
We got to talk to this person.
And guess what?
The phone number that Patrick Frazee was speaking with.
It was located in the very same area that Kelsey's phone was pinging.
So let's talk about the possibilities.
Kelsey and the person behind this mystery number were one and the same, very unlikely.
That Kelsey coincidentally fled to the very same area in another state as this other person also just happened to be in doubtful.
Or that something much more troubling was going on.
That possibility was unfortunately the most likely.
And police knew that locating the person in Idaho that Patrick Frazee was speaking with might prove key to this case.
It is somebody that he talks to on multiple occasions in that weekend after Thanksgiving.
And it just can't be a coincidence that that's one of the first phone calls that he makes on Thanksgiving evening.
They find out very quickly that the person who has that Idaho phone number is Crystal Lee.
Crystal Lee was a 31-year-old nurse from Gooding, Idaho, but investigators were about to find out that she was so much more.
And with the possibility that the crime has crossed state borders, agents from the FBI joined the investigation.
And it's the FBI that calls her and talks to Crystal.
They really didn't know very much about her at that point.
When they call her, they're asking her just some basic questions like, Patrick Frazee calls you.
What do you know?
Essentially, what's going on?
Crystal initially claims that she barely knows Patrick, a man whose phone records already proved that she spoke to him multiple times in the days following Thanksgiving.
And then it starts to evolve in that phone call with okay well, actually I did go to Colorado to look at a horse that Patrick wanted to sell.
I decided not to buy it.
So then I went back to Idaho.
Okay.
Sure.
Patrick is a rancher and it is plausible that he might occasionally sell horses, but there is something about Crystal's answers that are definitely raising some suspicions.
I'm sorry you went to Colorado to look at a horse on Thanksgiving weekend and then just turn around and drove back.
That doesn't make any sense.
Shortly after their phone call with Crystal, investigators secured a warrant to search her phone records.
And what those phone records would reveal would break this case wide open.
What investigators discover is not just a few, but dozens of calls between Patrick and Crystal in the very days following Kelsey's disappearance.
And when they pull location data from Crystal's phone, it shows that those calls were not just made from Idaho but also from near Kelsey's home in Woodland Park.
They knew right away that she was lying to them.
So they immediately traveled to Idaho to go interview her in person.
What she tells them is, I want to talk to you, but I want to have my lawyer here first.
I want to have my lawyer here, but I do want to talk to you.
I do want to tell you what happened.
You know, during the discussion with Jennifer, she talks about the fact that sometimes a defendant will just tell an investigator I want a lawyer, and the investigators will simply shut down the interview, as they should, and not make any efforts to find out if that means I don't want to talk at all or I don't want to talk because my lawyer needs to be here.
And the difference between those two positions, if you will, can really lead to a break in the case.
And I found that interesting that she brought it up during the discussion.
But if she's going to keep talking, it's going to make the most sense for a deal to be in place.
But it's never going to be that simple, because obviously at this point they don't know what she's going to say and if it's even going to be the truth.
So really how it works is this.
She's going to have a lawyer with her if she's going to speak with him, which she did.
And then she's given what's called queen for a day, which basically means that she has blanket immunity from prosecution for anything she says during that conversations.
There is a caveat.
You do not have immunity from perjury if she lies.
However, once what she says is investigated, if investigators and the prosecutors believe it to be truthful well, that is when they strike that deal with the understanding that she will cooperate, including through the rest of the proceedings, including truthful testimony, in exchange for a lesser conviction and sentence.
And that's basically what happened here.
So Crystal Lee returns to Colorado to speak to investigators.
We set up an interview with her because it's obvious that Crystal knows something.
To the extent of what she knew was a shocking revelation.
I just never expected what she told us to come out of her mouth.
Jennifer Beeman, the deputy DA assigned to Kelsey's case, was prepared to offer Crystal a cooperation agreement in exchange for information about Kelsey's disappearance.
But she was not quite prepared for what she was about to hear.
When she comes in for that interview, she tells law enforcement right away what happened.
And it was just absolutely shocking.
I think everybody's jaws dropped.
When she tells us that yes, Patrick killed Kelsey.
Not only that, he killed her, how he killed her, what he did with her remains afterwards, and that he had tried to get Crystal to kill Kelsey on three other occasions.
And there is so much more to this story that we can't fit it all into only one episode.
So join us next week for the rest.
On the next episode of Anatomy of Murder.
When she comes back with the bat, he tells her just to get to swinging.
When they do talk later, it is, there's a mess here for you to clean up.
You need to get out here right away and you need to clean this up.
So, what do you think, Chuck?
Do you approve?
I approve!
