Cheers star Kelsey Grammer has revealed how he discovered the horrifying details of his beloved sister's death, 50 years after she was raped and murdered.
Karen Grammer was killed on July 1, 1975 as she stood waiting outside a Red Lobster in Colorado Springs, CO, for her boyfriend. Aged 18, Karen had moved to the city months after graduation in Florida where she had been raised alongside her older brother Kelsey, their single mom and grandmother.
© Harper Collins FocusKelsey had never known the details of what happened that day as during the trial he had been warned away to spare him from the terrifying and tragic details.
But as he researched for his new memoir, Karen: A Brother Remembers, Kelsey visited the town and the scene of Karen's last moments with his wife Kayte, and also read the police report for the first time.
© Dave Benett/Getty Images for ATG“I discovered in the writing and in the journey of this book the idea that I had to be there and do what I wasn’t able to do before, which was to hold her as she died," he told LA Times.
In the memoir, Kelsey – whose life has been marred by tragedy including the 1968 murder of his father in Saint Thomas and the death of two teenage half-brothers in 1980 – shared how detectives came to the Grammer family home in Pompano Beach, FL to tell the family that they had discovered a Jane Doe they thought might be Karen.
On July 1, she had been kidnapped by several men including Freddie Lee Glenn, now 68, and his accomplices including the late Michael Corbett, who had planned to rob the Red Lobster restaurant where she worked.
© Harper Collins FocusAs Karen saw them enter, they decided to instead abduct her, transporting her to an apartment where she was raped before they drove to an alley to dump her body.
There, Freddie Lee stabbed Karen 42 times, almost decapitating her, with Kelsey writing in the memoir that "Freddie Glenn punched holes in my sister’s body with unimaginable brutality".
The men left Karen there to die, but the teen was still alive although her final moments were to end in further despair with Kelsey discovering that although Karen found the strength to crawl to a nearby trailer to ask for help she was not greeted with kindness.
© Harper Collins Focus"In my imaginings, the man who found Karen at his doorstep was a 'good Samaritan' of sorts," Kelsely wrote.
"I stand corrected and disappointed that that man did not attempt to help her but simply called the police after leaving her body as it lay... eyes vacant, staring at the sky, her legs still on the steps, her head on the ground and a clenched fist above her head with a single finger pointing — somewhere or nowhere — just pointing.
"She had fallen backward from the trailer door after knocking for help. It was her last hope and disappointment after crawling 400 feet from the place where she had been stabbed. Bloody fingerprints mark the trail of her final moments at exactly 3’6” along the office and walls of the trailer park. She had been on her knees, crawling her way. What I had hoped were a final, few moments of kindness from some stranger, were nothing of the sort."
© APFreddie and Michael were found guilty for Karen's death and four other killings in Colorado Spring that year; Freddie has appealed for parole several times and Kelsey has spoken at each hearing.
"I accept that you live with remorse every day of your life but I live with tragedy every day of my life," he said via video in 2014.
© Harper Collins FocusIn the memoir Kelsey shared that Karen's murder sent him down a path of cocaine and alcohol abuse, writing that "the murder killed a corner of my heart".
Now 73, he is sober and lives in Portishead, England, with his wife and their three children. The six-time Emmy winner is a father to seven children from past marriages, and has one grandson.
