A former Idaho nurse who scrubbed blood from the Woodland Park town house where Patrick Frazee fatally beat his fiancée Kelsey Berreth with a baseball bat was sentenced Tuesday to 3 years in prison.

Wearing her hair in a French braid and no makeup, Krystal Jean Lee, 33, stood sniffling as Teller County District Judge Scott Sells sentenced her beyond the presumptive range, imposing the maximum under her plea agreement.

“The most important thing I have to say is how sorry I am,” Lee said through sobs, describing “nightmares” over her guilt. “I am sorry that I did not save Kelsey.”

Lee, also known as Krystal Jean Kenney, pleaded guilty in February 2019 to a single count of evidence tampering, in what El Paso County District Attorney Dan May called a “deal with the devil” that helped bring Frazee to justice.

The charge normally carries up to 18 months in prison. Kenney also was eligible for probation. She had been rejected for community corrections because of a “poor attitude,” according to comments in court.

Under her plea deal, Lee sidestepped the potential for more serious charges and became the star witness at Frazee’s trial, providing an insider’s account of how Frazee blindfolded Kelsey Berreth and fatally bludgeoned her as she pleaded, “Please stop.”

During more than a day on the stand, Lee dabbed at tears as she unraveled a plot to use Berreth’s stolen phone to make it look like she had gone on the run, and told how she led authorities to the dirt-covered burn scar on Frazee’s ranch where Berreth’s body was torched in a bonfire, leaving behind a tooth fragment believed to be the slain woman’s.

Addressing court, Lee’s supporters described her “caring” and “empathic” – qualities they said Frazee turned against her in convincing her that Berreth was an abusive mother bound to harm the toddler daughter she shared with him.

And when Lee refused Frazee’s demands that she kill Berreth on his behalf, Frazee intimidated her into silence by his threats against her children, they claimed.

“She made the decision to protect her own children and prayed that Patrick would not go through with it,” Suzanne Wilson of Lee’s hometown of Hansen, Idaho.

Said Shena Bingham, a family friend: “She thinks she’s a fool. I think she’s a survivor.”

Friends and co-workers of the murdered Berreth recounted her “selflessness,” both as a colleague at Doss Aviation in Pueblo, where she worked as a flight instructor, and as a loving mother of her then 14-month-old daughter, Kaylee.

Chris Paulhamus, co-worker at Doss Aviation, blamed Lee’s ruse with Berreth’s phone for creating false hopes she was still alive after her Thanksgiving Day 2018 disappearance – leading to a painful revelation when authorities announced that evidence showed she had been murdered.

“It was crushing,” Paulhamus said. “Our sister was dead.”

In a letter read by a prosecutor, Berreth’s parents, Cheryl and Darrell Berreth, said her cooperation with prosecutors was “no excuse” for a lighter sentence.

“Her excuses are invalid,” their letter said. “She chose to cover up the murder, only speaking up to help herself.

“She shouldn’t have received the plea deal she did. The only thing she didn’t do was swing the bat.”

Lee’s sentencing followed legal arguments in court at which Lee’s attorney, Dru Nielsen of Denver, argued that her penalty should be capped at 18 months. Citing language from the written plea agreement, and a transcript of Lee’s February 2019 guilty plea, Judge Sells disagreed, finding that Lee acknowledged the stakes in pleading guilty.

“She spent hours and hours cleaning, and then she continued to clean,” said May, who grew tearful in as he lobbied for the maximum. “She got a substantial deal already.”

May said it was Lee’s idea to use Berreth’s phone to make it look like she had left Colorado. Lee also lied to the FBI when they initially asked her what she knew of the crime.

Nielsen asked the judge to impose a year in prison, pointing out her lack of criminal history. Lee knew “in vivid detail what Patrick was capable of” and wasn’t operating with a clear mind or a “devious” mind, when she participated in Frazee’s plot, she said.

“Her actions and decisions were ones she never would have made but for overwhelming fear,” Nielsen said.

Without her “courage,” Patrick Frazee could be out in the community right new, her attorney added.

Imposing a penalty, Sells acknowledged Lee’s overwhelming support from family and friends, but said she must be sentenced for her actions, including the coverup with the phone and her decision to suit up in a haz-mat suit to clean up Berreth’s home.

“Incredibly to me, you stopped at a local fast food place to get dinner for yourself, Mr. Frazee and Kailee,” Sells said.

Colorado law allows judges broad discretion in choosing aggravated sentences for crimes such as evidence tampering.

In arguing that Sells use that discretion, May cited the case of Christopher Mountjoy, a Colorado Springs Iraq War veteran-turned motorcycle gang enforcer convicted in 2013 of manslaughter in the shooting death of an unarmed man who died in a hail of gunfire outside an outlaw motorcycle gang’s Colorado Springs clubhouse.

Mountjoy in 2013 received a 21-year sentence, including a 3-year, aggravated sentence for evidence tampering – because the crime related to a death, as in the Frazee case.

Frazee, 33, was convicted of all counts at a nationally watched trial in November. He was sentenced to life in prison plus 156 years. His court-appointed appellate lawyers filed a notice of appeal on Jan. 6 — an automatic measure after first-degree murder convictions in Colorado.

Frazee is being held at the Arkansas Valley Correctional Facility near Ordway.

At the conclusion of Lee’s sentencing hearing, she was handcuffed. She is expected to be held at the Teller County jail in Divide pending her transfer to the state Denver Reception and Diagnostic Center, which will decide where she serves her sentence.