National Roundup

Colorado
Woman who helped man who killed his fiancee gets 3 years
CRIPPLE CREEK, Colo. (AP) — A woman who was having an affair with a Colorado man and helped him after he beat his fiancee to death with a baseball bat was sentenced Tuesday to three years in prison.

Krystal Lee, 33, acknowledged in February 2019 that she helped clean up the bloody crime scene after Patrick Frazee killed Kelsey Berreth at her townhome in Woodland Park, a mountain community of 7,500 people about two hours south of Denver. The sentence was the maximum allowed under a plea deal.

“The most important thing I have to say is how sorry I am,” Lee said through sobs during the sentencing hearing. She described having “nightmares” over her guilt. “I am sorry that I did not save Kelsey.”

Lee, who worked as a nurse in Idaho, told investigators she grabbed several blood-spattered items from Berreth’s home to be burned, including a stuffed animal, children’s building blocks and what she thought was a Bible, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. She also acknowledged taking Berreth’s phone to Idaho at Frazee’s request to make it look like Berreth had left the state.

Under her plea deal, Lee became the key witness at Frazee’s trial, providing an insider’s account of how he blindfolded Berreth and bludgeoned her. During the trial, prosecutors showed jurors a video of Lee leading investigators to the spot where she said Frazee burned Berreth’s body.

She described Frazee putting the body in a dry water trough and lighting it on fire. At one point, she said, flames were as high as the nearby trees, so Frazee covered the blaze with what appeared to be metal roofing.

Frazee, 33, was convicted in November of first-degree murder and other charges and was sentenced to life in prison plus 156 years. His attorneys plan to appeal.

Berreth, a 29-year-old flight instructor, was last seen with her infant daughter on video from a grocery store security camera on Thanksgiving Day 2018. Her body was never found.

Arizona
Woman gets 21 years in prison for killing twin grandsons
TUCSON, Ariz. (AP) — A Tucson woman has been sentenced to 21 years in prison after pleading guilty to two counts of manslaughter in the shooting deaths of her 8-year-old grandsons.

A Pima County Superior Court judge sentenced 56-year-old Dorothy Flood on Monday in the killings of Jorden and Jaden Webb last April. Flood was the guardian and sole caregiver for the boys after her daughter died in 2017.

According to court documents, the twins had severe autism and were nonverbal, and detectives said Flood told a relative that they boys had become too much for her as the boys had been having trouble sleeping.

With family members in the courtroom, Flood apologized before she was sentenced by Judge Howard Fell.

“I loved those boys I never intended to harm them. I am so sorry that I did,” she said.

Sheriff’s deputies who found the boys dead also found Floor unresponsive from an apparent drug overdose.

Flood later told detectives she had tried to kill herself.

Flood originally was charged with first-degree murder but she pleaded guilty last month to manslaughter as part of a deal with prosecutors.

Flood will be given credit for 297 days of time already served.

New Mexico
Murder conviction overturned in Navajo reservation killing
GALLUP, N.M. (AP) — A federal appeals court has overturned a Gallup man’s first-degree murder conviction in a 2016 homicide, ruling that the defendant should have been allowed to present evidence that the man killed had used methamphetamine before a fatal fight.

The 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling Tuesday grants Brian Tony a new trial in the killing of 44-year-old Pat Garcia on the Navajo Nation’s reservation near Church Rock.

Tony denied premeditation and claimed self defense and the trial judge allowed his defense to present evidence that Garcia’s behavior was erratic and violent.

However, the judge didn’t allow Tony to elicit evidence that Garcia’s alleged behavior resulted from being under the influence of methamphetamine.

The trial judge said Tony wasn’t entitled to present the drug-use evidence because he hadn’t identified a proper purpose, but the appeals court said the defense had done that by arguing that the evidence might have explained Garcia’s alleged behavior.

Nevada
Murder trial set for Carson Indian Colony killing Dec. 2019
RENO, Nev. (AP) — A 51-year-old member of a Nevada tribe has been ordered to stand trial in federal court in Reno in April for murder in the killing of a man on the Carson Indian Colony in December 2019.

Steve Bryan is accused of shooting 23-year-old Kyle Sullivan Bryan in the head with a rifle at the colony in Carson City on Dec. 13, 2019.

A federal grand jury indicted him six days later on the murder charge.

The Nevada Appeal reported last year that Steve Bryan was a retired U.S. Marines Corps sergeant who served in Desert Storm and lived at the same address as the victim.

The Washoe Tribe, which is affiliated with the colony, said in a statement at the time that officers were responding to a report of domestic battery at about 3 a.m. when they found Kyle Bryan dead of multiple gunshot wounds.

Authorities haven’t explained the relationship between the two. The indictment identified the victim only as K.B.

Steve Bryan was arraigned Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Reno, where Magistrate Judge Carla Baldwin set his trial for April 7. If convicted, he faces up to life in prison. He was being held in the Washoe County Jail Tuesday without bail.