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Kelsey Grammer has been one of TV’s most beloved stars for over four decades.
But throughout his years of delighting audiences with his portrayal of Frasier Crane, Grammer was harboring a profound grief that few fans were aware of.
In 1975, Kelsey’s sister, Karen Grammer, was abducted, raped, and stabbed 42 times. She was murdered just two weeks shy of her 19th birthday.
Kelsey Grammer opens up about a painful chapter in his past
Now, in a new memoir entitled Karen: A Brother Remembers, Grammer offers new details about his sister’s tragically brief life.
“For a long time, the grief was so dominant that I couldn’t access happiness,” Grammer told People magazine in a new interview about the project. “The book helped me get to a new place with that.”
As Kelsey explains in his book, Karen moved to Colorado Springs after a semester of college in Georgia in order to be with her boyfriend.
Kelsey last spoke to his sister in June 1975, when he called her on the phone from his home in Florida. Just hours later, she drove to the Red Lobster where she worked so that she could pick up her friend, whose shift was coming to an end.
As she was seated in her car in the parking, three men arrived with the intention of robbing the restaurant. Instead, they kidnapped Karen at gunpoint.
The man who stabbed Karen, Freddie Glenn, was also convicted of several other murders in the area. He’s currently behind bars, with his next parole hearing scheduled for 2027.
Grammer says he struggled with the question of whether to include grisly details from the police report in his book, as he wanted to focus on Karen’s life, not just the brutal circumstances of her death.
In the end, he decided to include the details in the hope that his account might help to keep Glenn behind bars.
“His protestations these days are like, ‘Well, I don’t remember raping her,’” Grammer says. “Bulls—.”
Kelsey’s lifetime of grief
Kelsey’s life has been marred by tragedy on numerous occasions.
In 1968, when Grammer was just 13, his father, Allen, was shot and killed in a wave of racial unrest that followed the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.
In 1980, his twin half-brothers were killed in a suspected shark attack while scuba diving.
These days, Kelsey is a father of seven and one of the most successful television actors of all time.
But it’s clear that the pain he experienced in his youth and young adulthood remains with him. And since that grief is a part of keeping his loved ones’ memories alive, he likely wouldn’t have it any other way.
Karen: A Brother Remembers will be published on May 6.
