Kelsey Grammer: ‘Freddie Glenn punched holes in my sister's body' as Frasier actor details brutal murder in memoir

The Frasier actor detailed the brutal murder of his younger sister, who was then 18, in a book titled Karen: A Brother Remembers as it recounts the traumatic events surrounding her death in 1975 and the impact it left on his life.

Grammer was 20 years old when detectives arrived at his family’s home in Pompano Beach, Florida, on July 8, 1975, and informed him that they had found the body of a Jane Doe in Colorado Springs, Colorado. They believed it was his sister.

The next day, Grammer flew to Colorado and confirmed that it was Karen. She had been raped and stabbed to death by Freddie Glenn, who was on a killing spree in the area with accomplices.

In an interview with People, Grammer, now 70, said: “For a long time, the grief was so dominant that I couldn’t access happiness. The book helped me get to a new place with that.”

Karen had moved to Colorado Springs after a semester in Georgia to be with her boyfriend. She last spoke to Grammer on June 30, telling him she planned to return home to Florida after the Fourth of July. She was abducted on July 1 outside the Red Lobster where she worked, while waiting for a friend to finish their shift.

According to Grammer’s retelling of the police report, Glenn and two others had planned to rob the restaurant but spotted Karen instead. When approached, “With a gun drawn, they told her to come with them. ‘For what?’ she asked,” Grammer writes, noting that the defiant response was characteristically her.

Karen was tied up and left with Glenn while the others abandoned the robbery plan. They later took her to an apartment, where they took turns raping her, then drove her to an alley where Glenn stabbed her 42 times and nearly decapitated her.

In the book, Grammer describes her final moments in graphic detail: "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... 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."

"There were defensive wounds on her hands. Freddie Glenn punched holes in my sister’s body with unimaginable brutality," he writes.

Grammer considered whether to include these painful details in the book but ultimately decided it was necessary. “There is something beneficial in knowing (the truth). It is ammunition to keep Freddie Glenn in jail,” he writes.

Glenn, who was convicted of Karen’s murder and other killings in the area, is serving a life sentence and has been denied parole four times. His next parole hearing is scheduled for 2027.

Grammer remains outspoken about Glenn’s accountability. “His protestations these days are like, ‘Well, I don’t remember raping her,’” he says. “Bulls---.”

While Grammer has spoken about forgiveness in the past, he maintains that it does not absolve Glenn of responsibility. “You don’t want to eat yourself to pieces because you can’t forgive somebody. But it’s hard to forgive a person who consciously decided they wanted to murder somebody you love... I can give you forgiveness, but you’re not going to get out of paying for it.”

Beyond the crime, the book aims to honour Karen’s life and spirit. “I wanted to breathe life into her and welcome her into the world,” Grammer says. “We were Kelsey and Karen, brother and sister.”

Karen: A Brother Remembers is published by Harper Select and will be available on May 6.