It’s been almost half a century since Kelsey Grammer’s 18-year-old sister was murdered in 1975, but for Kelsey, the memory of the horrific loss doesn’t fade away.
"I've been writing a book actually about some of the past, and one sentence comes to mind," Kelsey told People magazine. "It was ancient grief that is forever fresh.' It's always with you."
In 1972, Kelsey was just 20 years old and studying acting at Juilliard when his little sister, Karen, moved to Colorado Springs right after high school graduation. She got a job at a Red Lobster, and one night while waiting for her boyfriend to get off his shift, she was kidnapped by a group of men who intended to rob the restaurant. Instead, they kidnapped, raped, and stabbed her to death.
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One of the convicted killers, Michael Corbett, died while serving his prison sentence in 2019. The other, Freddie Glenn, was sentenced to death, but changes to Colorado’s death penalty have made it so he is eligible for parole after 10 years.
Kelsey’s daughter, 39-year-old Spencer Grammer, shares her father’s love of acting and stars with him in Lifetime’s upcoming holiday flick The 12 Days of Christmas Eve.
She told People that the knowledge that his sister’s killer could one day walk free has haunted her father. This has made moving on even more difficult for the Frasier star, who every so often has to relive the case for a statement to the court.
"Glenn is always up for parole every couple of years, so every few years [my father] has to speak against him," Spencer explained to People.
"It's so difficult for him to have to relive it over and over again. And there really isn't a lot of information for the family of victims in regards to when people are going to be released," she continued, saying that this adds an extra layer of pain to the victims’ families.
Glenn and Corbett were found guilty of murdering three people in 1975 but were reportedly responsible for at least five deaths in the Colorado Springs area.
Spencer told the outlet that her father will never get over the horrific way his sister’s life ended.
"When you lose somebody that you're close to, especially to something that's completely out of your control, we can't make sense of it," Spencer, the Rick and Morty star, added. "There's no reason that somebody goes and stabs somebody or murders somebody. There's no rationale. It just happens, and it's not okay."
Karen’s death was not the first tragic death in Kelsey’s life, or the last. When he was just 13, his father was shot and killed by a man who had trespassed on his property. Then, in 1980, his two teenage half-brothers were scuba diving off St. Thomas when they died in a suspected shark attack.
Kelsey revealed that as a young adult, he clung to drugs and alcohol as a way of coping with all of the grief. "There were some times I pretty much surrendered to despair," he said, according to People.
Kelsey, despite the tragedies that plagued his early life, has found joy in family and through his faith.
His career has continued to prosper, and he is not slowing down soon. Especially with a Frasier reboot in the works.
"I take a moment out every morning for a moment of gratitude," he told People. "There's a great Doobie Brothers line that Michael McDonald wrote that goes, 'You'll always have a chance to give up. So why do it now?'"
