July 8, 1975, was a day that changed Kelsey Grammer’s world forever.
The then-20-year-old aspiring actor was visiting his family in Pompano Beach, Florida, when police showed up to the home with devastating news: Grammer's little sister, Karen, was found murdered in Colorado Springs, Colorado.
Grammer reflected on the tragedy in Karen: A Brother Remembers, a newly released memoir in which he details his years-long healing journey that led him to forgiveness.
Grammer spoke about the book during a May 6 episode of the Tamron Hall Show, insisting he felt “sympathy” for the man who killed his sister but strongly objected to his prison release.
“I try to have a sense of sympathy … But I still said, ‘I hope you do the world some good … in prison. And there’s a number of ways to do that,'” Grammer said. “It is my belief that any human being, no matter how unimaginably cruel they have been at some point in their lifetime, is capable of being good. So that’s what I hold out for him, but I don’t believe he should be free.
Grammer continued: “Whatever abrupted his growth or maturation at one point to allow him to decide to put a knife in someone 42 times … This is not turf that is to be harvested in any place but in that garden (prison), which is a garden surrounded by walls.”
According to The Independent, Karen was living in Colorado when three men abducted her outside a restaurant where she was working. Police say the 18-year-old woman was raped and stabbed 42 times before trying to crawl her way to a nearby trailer park.
“She had fallen backward from the trailer door after knocking for help,” Grammer wrote in his book. "She had been on her knees, crawling her way. Seeking help with her last ounce of life. The coroner noted that through a gaping wound in her neck, he could see all the way into Karen’s lung. I had been right in saying he [the killer] almost decapitated her… There were defensive wounds on her hands.”
Freddie Glenn and one of his accomplices, Michael Corbett, were convicted of Karen's murder as well as several other killings. The third accomplice remains unknown. Both men were initially sentenced to death; however, they were resentenced to life imprisonment after Colorado’s death penalty was declared unconstitutional.
Corbett died behind bars in 2019.
Nearly 40 years after Karen’s murder, Kelsey Grammer delivered an emotional address at Freddie’s parole hearing in Colorado, saying he had forgiven the man for his crime but could not support his release.
“I accept your apology. I forgive you,” he said before the Colorado parole board. “However, I cannot give your release my endorsement. To give that a blessing would be a betrayal of my sister’s life. I accept that you live with remorse. But I live with tragedy every day … I want to believe you have actually changed your life. Things you say, I accept a lot of it.”