Kenney eligible for halfway house after serving 60 days

The woman who cleaned up Kelsey Berreth’s bloody apartment after her murder is eligible for placement in a local halfway house, though Krystal Lee Kenney has served only two months of her three-year sentence for her role in the crime.

Kenney is eligible for the placement under state law because she pleaded guilty to a nonviolent offense and is less than 20 months from her release date, as calculated by the Colorado Department of Corrections, Fourth Judicial District Attorney Dan May said. Now, Kenney can apply to a local community corrections program in the state and the board of that local program will decide whether to accept her, he said.

“Serving two months out of a three-year sentence for what she did is simply unconscionable,” May said.

Sells sentenced Kenney on Jan. 28 to three years in prison for helping Patrick Frazee, her longtime friend and sometimes romantic interest, destroy evidence after he killed Berreth, his fiancée. Kenney traveled from her Idaho home to Woodland Park after the murder and cleaned Berreth’s bloodstained apartment. She told investigators that she also helped Frazee burn Berreth’s body and destroyed Berreth’s phone as she drove home to Idaho.

Before the murder, Frazee asked Kenney on three occasions to kill Berreth for him.

“When Judge Scott Sells handed down a three-year prison sentence, he said what she did was ‘cold, calculating and cruel’ and that if he sentenced her to probation it would minimize the depravity of her actions,” May and Senior Deputy District Attorney Jennifer Viehman said in a statement. “We believe that sending her to a halfway house would do just that.”

Kenney’s attorney, Dru Nielsen, said Kenney would make an optimal candidate for placement in community corrections because she had a good work ethic and posed no public safety risk.

Nielsen also cited Gov. Jared Polis’ order issued Thursday about managing the prison population to prevent the introduction of the coronavirus into the facilities.