The Idaho woman who took a plea deal in order to help prosecutors put a now-convicted murderer behind bars for the rest of his life was denied parole by the state parole board on Wednesday.
Krystal Lee Kenney, 34, was denied discretionary parole after a board hearing Wednesday morning, according to a person with knowledge of the decision, and will be eligible to go before the board again this time next year during her annual parole application hearing, the person said.
Kenney is currently at the Denver Women's Correctional Facility.
Kenney had an intimate relationship with Patrick Frazee, the man who was found guilty in November 2019 of murdering his fiancé, 29-year-old Kelsey Berreth, on Thanksgiving Day 2018. As part of a plea deal with prosecutors, Kenney pleaded guilty to tampering with physical evidence and agreed to testify at Frazee's murder trial. In November 2019, Frazee was found guilty of all counts against him and was sentenced to life without parole plus 156 years.
READ MORE: Inside the entire Patrick Frazee murder trial
Kenney was sentenced to three years in prison, the maximum sentence.
In March, two months after she was sentenced, she requested to move to a halfway house. That request was rejected.
According to the state parole board site, her estimated mandatory release date is set for July 7, 2022.
As part of the plea deal, Kenney provided prosecutors with precise details about how Frazee had asked her to kill Berreth on multiple occasions, and then demanded that she leave Idaho to come clean up the murder scene after Thanksgiving. Kenney obeyed this command and in court, explained the horrific scene she found at Berreth’s home in Woodland Park. She also described that Frazee said he had beat Berreth to death with a baseball bat and put her in a black tote, and that she joined him as he burned the tote on his property in Florissant.
After Frazee's verdict, prosecutors said they were happy with the outcome and satisfied that Kenney’s testimony had helped the case, but knew that they had “made a deal with the devil” by offering Kenney a plea agreement.
