Kelsey Grammer reflects on sister's murder: 'It's not a badge of honor to have suffered grief like that'

Karen Grammer liked to dunk Oreos successful ice-cold Coca-Cola until the pick filling hardened and the cooky softened. She wore glasses. She didn’t person a beardown narration with her dad, but was highly adjacent to her grandfather. She smoked Marlboro Lights. She erstwhile jumped bare connected her furniture successful her assemblage dorm country portion listening to Leon Russell music. She, astatine slightest according to her precocious schoolhouse yearbook, had a hellhole of a travel to Disney World earlier graduation. She got truly into the movie “Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.”

If she were live today, her older member suspects, she’d beryllium surviving successful Florida. Maybe she’d enactment with animals oregon bash thing artistic. She ever liked moving with her hands.

Karen was kidnapped, raped and murdered connected July 1, 1975, conscionable 2 weeks shy of her 19th birthday.

The details of the attacks are much horrific than thing anyone, fto unsocial a loved one, should ever person to know. And particularly due to the fact that Karen was the younger sister of Kelsey Grammer — past a 20-year-old Juilliard flunkie — it is casual to sensationalize her last moments.

(Harper Select)

So the older Grammer did what helium wasn’t capable to bash 50 years ago: He protected his sister. In “Karen: A Brother Remembers,” which came retired Tuesday, the “Frasier” histrion sometimes references the atrocities the men committed (the verb “slaughtered” is invoked a fewer times and helium notes, from the coroner’s report, that the gash connected her cervix was truthful large that you could spot each the mode into her lung). But his superior purpose is to seizure his sister’s joyful and vivacious tone and interrogation her friends astir her last years. He writes that it’s not truthful overmuch a grief publication arsenic a beingness book; a elaborate past of his and his sister’s childhoods and however she stayed with him “before and aft her quality experience.”

Told successful a free-flowing benignant that Grammer happily concedes helium borrowed from Henry Fielding’s “The History of Tom Jones, a Foundling,” it features stories of their teen years on the Florida enactment and explores however these events impacted his beingness and career.

If these memories from 5 decades agone look peculiarly sharp, it’s due to the fact that Grammer says his sister appeared to him a fewer years agone and told him what to write. Grammer regularly works with mediums — helium was adjacent an enforcement shaper connected the Patricia Arquette procedural “Medium” — and says during a caller Zoom, “I deliberation each this worldly is instantly disposable to america arsenic agelong arsenic we driblet the filters and conscionable judge it.”

It’s not that grief, and coping mechanisms, don’t look successful this book; 1 of the ways Grammer passed the clip arsenic a newbie histrion astatine San Diego’s Old Globe theatre was to drawback a crab sandwich from Point Loma Seafoods with immoderate vino oregon beer, and caput to the neighborhood’s subject cemetery to beryllium astatine the sedate of a Vietnam worker who was astir Grammer’s property astatine the clip of his death.

The histrion says now, “An aged person of excavation said that the origin for addiction is usually unresolved grief, and that holds up for me” due to the fact that “[I] had a beauteous large handbasket load of grief that I had to woody with.”

“I was coming into a signifier successful my beingness wherever everything should person been wonderful,” Grammer says of his younger self, known arsenic overmuch for his aggregate Emmy wins arsenic the tabloid headlines astir his myriad relationships and marriages, and substance maltreatment issues. Now happily joined to his 4th wife, Kayte, with whom helium shares 3 children, Grammer says that backmost then, “I was affluent and celebrated and palmy and doing the happening I emotion much than thing successful the world, and yet I couldn’t forgive myself. So I had to find immoderate mode to bash that. And this publication really helped benignant of enactment the last bow connected the package.”

This means accepting that determination are things helium volition ne'er beryllium capable to answer, similar however Karen, a waitress, came to beryllium sitting successful the Red Lobster parking batch erstwhile she wasn’t scheduled to enactment that nighttime (he theorizes she was lonely and wanted to hold for her friends to decorativeness their shifts). Or if she knew what was coming erstwhile spree slayer Freddie Glenn and 2 others approached her arsenic she sat by a reddish Volkswagen Beetle, showed her a weapon and told her to travel with them. He does deliberation her reported effect — “for what?” — sounds conscionable similar his brassy small sister.

Working connected the publication besides means reliving, and sometimes re-questioning, his ain beingness choices. Grammer writes that Karen’s tone told him to forgive himself for the regret helium felt astir his assemblage girlfriend’s abortion. He says helium nary longer believes that Karen’s decease was immoderate benignant of eye-for-an-eye “Old Testament nonsense.” In the book, helium describes his “limping faith” toward Christianity. During our interview, helium talks of the “reawakening” helium experienced portion promoting his 2023 movie “Jesus Revolution.”

“I don’t spell retired proselytizing, but I americium not going to contradict my faith; I’m not going to contradict Jesus Christ,” Grammer says.

This, inevitably, brings up Grammer’s analyzable thoughts astir the decease penalty. Glenn was sentenced to the state enclosure for Karen’s murder, but 2 years aboriginal Colorado abolished the decease penalty.

“I’ve ever had mixed feelings astir the decease punishment due to the fact that I hatred to beryllium the nine that puts to decease the feline who is innocent,” Grammer says, earlier adding, “This guy’s not innocent.”

In his book, Grammer writes that it eats astatine him that Glenn’s petitions to the parole committee are ne'er astir remorse but alternatively that helium utilized to beryllium a “good kid.”

“Sometimes it was truly overwhelming; it tin inactive halt maine successful my tracks,” Kelsey Grammer says astir the grief of losing his sister.

(John Russo)

“I tin emotion the young man,” Grammer writes. “The young antheral whose hopes grew truthful dim, helium could deliberation of nary mode to empower himself different than to termination an guiltless girl. And I americium giving him a batch of recognition successful this characterization. It takes each fibre of my being, but my bosom goes retired to him. To that boy. To him only. Not the slayer helium became. The slayer helium remains. I permission him to God.”

Grammer knows that revisiting the lawsuit gives it much publicity and helium is besides alert that determination person been TV specials astir it (although helium stresses that these person not ever been accurate). His household suffered different tragedies, specified arsenic his father’s shooting decease from a hatred transgression and the drowning deaths of 2 of his fractional brothers. He writes successful the publication that his paternal grandfather’s effect erstwhile Grammer told him of Karen’s execution was, “This household is cursed.”

It’s an unusual happening to not lone beryllium famous, but to besides cognize that the worst things that person happened to you and your household tin beryllium reduced to whispered gossip and Wikipedia entries. Grammer says helium hasn’t fixed overmuch thought to the nationalist cognition of these events. Plus, helium says, “It’s not a badge of grant to person suffered grief similar that. That’s conscionable my changeless companion.” He adds, “It’s ne'er truly letting [Karen] go, but it’s letting immoderate of the complaint connected the grief go.”

“Sometimes it was truly overwhelming; it tin inactive halt maine successful my tracks,” Grammer says. “What’s comic is present it’s arsenic though thing has been lifted from maine … erstwhile I deliberation of Karen, I don’t deliberation of her decease arsenic overmuch arsenic I bash of her life. That was the bargain; that was the payoff. And that’s really been great. I person remembered her and she walks with maine present successful a mode that I wasn’t truthful successful interaction with until I wrote the book.”