The fiancé of missing Colorado mother Kelsey Berreth was arrested Friday morning, a law enforcement source involved in the investigation said. Authorities arrested Patrick Frazee nearly one month after Berreth, the mother of his 1-year-old daughter, vanished on Thanksgiving day, near Woodland Park, a city between Denver and Colorado Springs. Frazee was transported to the Teller County Jail following his arrest, the law enforcement source said.
Woodland Park Police also announced they would hold a news conference at noon ET, according to a post on the department’s Facebook page. Kelsey Berreth hasn’t been seen since November 22. Frazee previously had told police he last saw Berreth on November 22, when he picked up their daughter, making him the last known person to report seeing Berreth alive. Police said they have surveillance video of Berreth, a flight instructor, shopping with her daughter that day at a Woodland Park supermarket. Berreth’s employer got a text from her phone on November 25, saying she wouldn’t be able to work that week, police have said. Frazee also said she texted him that day, but the contents of that text haven’t been released.
A week after that, she was reported missing. Woodland Park police began their search on December 2, when Berreth’s mother, Cheryl, alerted them to her daughter’s disappearance.
Berreth’s phone was tracked to a location near Gooding, Idaho. Berreth has family in that state, Woodland Park Police Chief Miles De Young said. Gooding is roughly 800 miles northwest of Woodland Park.
“She’s not the kind that runs off,” Cheryl Berreth said at a police news conference on December 10. “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.” The reward for information leading to finding Berreth is $25,000, Woodland Park police said. Frazee voluntarily released his phone to be searched and allowed officers to take a DNA sample on December 12, his lawyer said. Two days later, investigators combed Frazee’s home and 30-plus-acre property in Florissant, Colorado, with a search party of 75 officers, a law enforcement source told CNN at the time.
De Young provided few details at a news conference, declining to say what investigators were looking for or what prompted them to search that location.
At the time, Jeremy Loew, an attorney for Frazee, issued a statement in which he said his client “continues to cooperate with law enforcement.” “We encourage law enforcement to take whatever steps it deems necessary to find Kelsey Berreth and to be able to exclude Patrick Frazee as a possible suspect in this missing person investigation,” Loew’s statement said. “Mr. Frazee will continue not to participate in any interviews with the media and instead focus on parenting the child he shares with Ms. Berreth.”
Earlier this week, authorities said they conducted routine follow-up searches on Frazee’s and Berreth’s homes.
The Woodland Park Police Department Thursday evening said on social media that new information about the case continues to come in. They asked the public to be patient. “We hope to have answers for all of the questions our community has on this case as soon as possible,” police said in a news release posted to Facebook.
Investigators with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, the Woodland Park Police Department and the FBI were spotted at Berreth’s home Thursday evening carrying large brown bags out of the home, and a firefighter was seen carrying a ladder into the house.
