WITNESSES RECALL FRAZEE’S LACK OF CONCERN STOOD OUT
Murder suspect’s seeming lack of concern for missing fiancée, odd demeanor stood out to witnesses
As family and law enforcement searched for Kelsey Berreth, her fiance showed a lack of concern for her whereabouts and never asked police if they had any clues that could help find her, according to testimony Monday in Teller County District Court.
Two people — a bank worker and a phone store employee — found their interactions with Patrick Frazee in the days after Berreth’s disappearance so strange that they immediately contacted police.
Woodland Park police Cpl. Dena Currin testified Monday morning as prosecutors played a recording of a Dec. 2 phone call between her and Frazee about his missing fiancee. Frazee told the corporal that the last time he had spoken to Berreth was when they broke up.
“We basically had a heart to heart that this wasn’t working out, that she wanted to go our separate ways,” Frazee told Currin in the recording.
At the time of the call, Frazee already knew that Berreth’s mom was worried that nobody had heard from her daughter for days. But never once did he seem to express any interest in the whereabouts of the mother of his child and he never asked the officer if she had found any clues.
Frazee’s apparent lack of concern during the call stood out, Currin testified during the murder trial of the Florissant rancher.
The trial began its second week Monday with testimony from Currin, Berreth’s mother and brother, her next door neighbors, the manager at her job and people who encountered Frazee after the reported disappearance.
Multiple law enforcement officers from the Woodland Park Police Department and the Teller County Sheriff’s Office also testified about the first days of the investigation. Prosecutors started to delve into the more than 630 pieces of evidence collected during the investigation, including receipts from Berreth’s car, samples of her handwriting and Frazee’s cellphone.
The 15-minute phone call between Currin and Frazee is the first time the jury heard Frazee’s account of what happened in the days before Berreth disappeared. She was last seen on Nov. 22, Thanksgiving Day, and her mother reported her missing on Dec. 2, the day of that phone call. It was the first time Frazee had spoken to police about Berreth’s disappearance.
Two people unrelated to Frazee or Berreth became enmeshed in the case when Frazee walked into their workplaces after Berreth’s disappearance.
David Felis, an employee at the Woodland Park Verizon store, said Frazee came into his store on
Dec. 11 — more than a week after Kelsey was reported missing. Even though Felis didn’t recognize Frazee or know his connection to the case, Frazee at the beginning of their conversation told the phone store employee, “Don’t believe everything they’re saying about me,” Felis testified Monday.
Frazee then asked Felis how to change the PIN on a phone on his account, but they couldn’t change the number because Frazee didn’t have the phone. Frazee also nervously asked if anybody could recover information from a phone that had been damaged or destroyed.
Frazee seemed paranoid, Felis said.
“That rang every alarm in my head,” Felis said.
The phone store employee excused himself from the conversation to go to the bathroom, where he searched Frazee’s name. After Frazee left the store, Felis called Woodland Park police. The next day, he sat for an interview with a district attorney’s investigator.
Another Woodland Park worker, Patricia Key, also called police after an interaction with Frazee. Police already had contacted Key because she managed the credit union that Berreth and Frazee used, and police wanted records of Berreth’s debit card purchases.
When Frazee came to the bank on Dec. 5, he asked Key for video surveillance of himself at the bank’s ATM on Nov. 22 — the day investigators later alleged Frazee killed Berreth. He told her he needed to establish a timeline for that day so police could exclude him from their investigation into Berreth’s disappearance, Key said.
Later in their conversation, Frazee said that Berreth had communicated with her mother on Nov. 25 — the Sunday after Thanksgiving. But Frazee became angry when Key asked why he needed to establish a timeline for Nov. 22 when he just said Berreth had been heard from three days later. He then denied that he said anything about the Sunday contact, Key said.
The odd nature of the conversation and Frazee’s demeanor prompted Key to call police, she said.
“There was never any mention of Kelsey or concern about her whereabouts or welfare,” Key testified.
Questioning of Berreth’s mother, Cheryl Berreth, also revealed facts about Frazee’s seeming lack of concern. While the search for her daughter was underway, Cheryl Berreth testified that Frazee did not call her or attend a candlelight vigil for Kelsey.
Police officers testified Monday that they didn’t see anything suspicious in Berreth’s condo the first few times they visited.
They saw no signs of forced entry, though Frazee’s defense attorneys asked whether they could have missed signs of a break-in.
It wasn’t until three days after Berreth’s disappearance was reported — and after multiple searches by family and police — that Clinton Berreth noticed a blood stain on the bottom of the condo’s toilet. When he reported the finding to police, the investigation into his sister’s disappearance seemed to kick into a higher gear, and the family was not allowed to return to the condo, he said.
Frazee, dressed in a blue and white checkered shirt, sat next to his public defenders Monday and listened intently to testimony, sometimes taking notes. Frazee is charged with two counts of first-degree murder, three counts of solicitation to commit murder, tampering with a dead body and two counts of a crime of violence.