Patrick Frazee's Murder Trial Begins As Mystery Of Kelsey Berreth Continues

TELLER COUNTY, Colo. (CBS4)- It has been nearly one year since the last time Kelsey Berreth was seen alive. Her fiancé and father of her child, Patrick Frazee, is on trial for murder in connection with Berreth's death.

Surveillance video captured Berreth walking into a grocery story with her infant daughter on Thanksgiving morning 2018. Every day since that sighting has been filled with questions from her community in Woodland Park and her family and friends.

Ashley Cogburn grew up with Berreth and lived with her for a short time in Colorado, she spoke with CBS This Morning in January.

"I grasp onto well maybe somebody took her," she said.

Thoughts she shared less than a month after investigators announced Frazee, 33, would be charged with her murder.

"I think deep down I knew," she said.

On Friday, a jury was seated and Frazee's trial started with attorneys laying out two versions of events that lead to Berreth's death.

The first from prosecutors of a man they called a "cold, calculating manipulator," showing Patrick Frazee's on a projection screen going on to say, "this man is a killer."

They plan to argue that Frazee killed the mother of his child and convinced another woman he once had an affair with, Krystal Lee Kenney, to help him clean it up.

Information she shared with police and subsequent admission of her role in the murder in court is what put Frazee behind bars.

"I had no right," Kenney told a judge in February.

But her cooperation with authorities didn't come of her own volition, the key point in the version of events told by the defense.

They say Kenney can't be trusted, pointing out that investigators had to track her down out of state, and only after she made a deal with prosecutors did she agree to talk.

After 40 minutes of opening statements from the prosecution, and 20 minutes by the defense Kelsey's mother took the stand, remembering the last conversation she had with her daughter.

With more testimony ahead and evidence to be revealed it will be up to the jury to decide which of those versions to believe.

Frazee has entered a not guilty plea to charges of first-degree murder, solicitation to commit murder and tampering with a body. He faces life in prison if convicted.