WOODLAND PARK — Kelsey Berreth was slight in stature but mighty enough to be one of a handful of female instructor pilots who trained Air Force Academy graduates in aircraft navigation.

“That showed some of her strength,” said Raymond Siebring, who was Berreth’s supervisor at Doss Aviation, now L3Harris, in Pueblo. “Her stature did not reflect her heart or her character.”

She’d be sitting in the cockpit next to a large football player, and there was no doubt who was in charge, he said Sunday, at a remembrance vigil for Berreth.

“I saw them be intimidated by her,” Siebring said. “She was able to teach well but hold her own. She helped them go through their careers.”

Berreth was murdered on Nov. 22, 2018, in her home in this small mountain town at the hands of her fiance, Patrick Frazee.

The 29-year-old mother kept a Bible on her desk along with a photo of her daughter, Kaylee Jo, a toddler when Frazee, Kaylee’s father, killed Berreth on Thanksgiving Day.

“She showed up every day, professionally ready for the next mission,” Siebring said of Berreth, adding that she often prayed at her desk in preparation for her days in the stressful environment.

Berreth’s family members, who live in Idaho, did not attend Sunday’s event but did give their blessing, said Kelli Shofstall, one of the organizers.

Most of the people who shivered in the cold, listened to music by local musician Cari Dell and looked at memorial displays set up in a park pavilion had never met Berreth.

“It hit home; it’s a small town, and the way it happened was just heartless and very sad,” said Woodland Park resident Christina Wilson, who was called to serve on the jury for Frazee’s trial but didn’t get selected.

Like many who were touched by the unthinkable tragedy, attendees knew her in their hearts, which are still hurting.

“She needs to never be forgotten,” Shofstall said.

In addition to honoring Berreth’s life, organizers also had another goal in mind: keep Frazee’s accomplice in prison.

While a jury found Frazee, a rancher and farrier from Florissant, guilty of Berreth’s murder in November 2019, just days before the one-year anniversary of her death, and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole plus 156 years, Frazee’s mistress, Krystal Lee Kenney, was sentenced in January to three years in prison.

The sentence drew public outcry and came after Kenney struck an agreement that the district attorney later referred to as “a deal with the devil.” In exchange for testimony about how Frazee killed Berreth, Kenney’s punishment for her involvement with planning the slaying with Frazee, cleaning up blood and other evidence from Berreth’s townhome, transporting Berreth’s cellphone to Idaho and showing police where she said Frazee burned Berreth’s body, would be light.

“It was absolutely avoidable,” Shofstall of Berreth’s brutal death, in which Frazee bludgeoned Berreth with a baseball bat.

At the end of March, Kenney, a nurse from Idaho, was up for consideration to be moved from a women’s correctional facility in Denver to a halfway house. A judge denied the request.

Kenney’s chance to be let out of prison and enter a community corrections program is up again, with a hearing set for Wednesday. The timing, being so close to the anniversary of Berreth’s death, seems wrong, event organizers said.

“It’s a slap in the face to everyone,” said Deb Pepe Davis, who helped start a Facebook group, The Peoples Team for Justice for Kelsey Berreth.

An online petition calling for Kenney to be kept in prison had nearly 9,000 signatures from people around the world, which Shofstall was presented earlier this year to the governor’s office and correctional officials.

“When I was hanging up posters for this event, people were talking to me, and that’s probably the biggest thing I hear: that woman could have stopped it, but she didn’t,” Shofstall said of Kenney. “Nobody can wrap their head around it.”

Doss Aviation’s crew of 80 flight instructors, who exclusively train academy airmen, performed a missing man formation flyover at a private ceremony they held last year for Berreth, whose body was never found.

“She made a difference in so many airmen’s lives,” Siebring said.

An observation tower on the Doss Aviation site is now named after her.

Berreth lives on through her young daughter, Siebring said, with the child’s life reflecting her mother’s.

“Kaylee embraces all the beauty Kelsey was,” he said.