Krystal Lee sentenced to 3 years; how much time will she serve?

CRIPPLE CREEK, Colo. (KRDO) -- Patrick Frazee's longtime mistress, Krystal Lee, sits in jail after being sentenced to three years in prison and a year on probation for cleaning up Kelsey Berreth's murder.

But how much time will she serve?

After the brutal November 2018 killing of Berreth, Lee admitted to helping hide evidence and cleaning up the bloody crime scene. In return for helping prosecutors convict Frazee, she was charged only with tampering with evidence.

"It's sort of an innocuous crime, it doesn't have any serious consequences like a violent crime would," said Criminal Defense Attorney, Pat Mika, who believes she won't be behind barbed wires and prison doors for too long.

"She is automatically eligible for a reduction of 25% reduction off the top of the sentence before she goes into prison. That reduces her sentence down to 27 months. She is eligible for parole after she serves half of that time in prison so that would give her 13 and a half months in her parole eligibility date comes up," he said.

A three-year sentence could be cut down to just months.

"In this system, she starts getting processed out about nine months before her parole eligibility date so she could theoretically serve a prison sentence of 4 months or 4.5 months," Mika said.

Many people feel Lee may have gotten off easy, including Fourth Judicial District Attorney Dan May.

"Do I think she should have gotten more time? You betcha. Do I feel bad she only got three years today? You betcha, but in the end we needed to solve this case," May said Tuesday.

Mika says it's just the way of the system.

"She gets all the benefits of being charged with something and convicted of something that isn't really connected in a meaningful way to the crime," he said.