Kelsey Grammer Opens Up About Sister’s Murder & How He Coped With Grief

Frasier star Kelsey Grammer is opening up about the murder of his sister, Karen Grammer, almost 50 years ago, and how he dealt with the grief while making his way in Hollywood.

Speaking to ABC News’ Diane Sawyer about his new book, Karen: A Brother Remembers, available May 6, the Cheers alum confessed to battling cocaine and alcohol addiction at the height of his television career as he dealt with the grief of his sister’s death.

“It’s remarkable that I survived some of that,” he said. “I might be asleep on one of the benches on the Cheers set, and then when it was my turn, I’d just stand up and go do it.”

Karen was kidnapped and murdered in 1975 when she was 18 years old. She was living in Colorado at the time when several men abducted her from the restaurant where she worked. The police stated that the men initially promised to release her but instead drove her to a mobile home park, where one of them stabbed her multiple times. Karen tried to get help from a nearby home but collapsed before making it there.

Kelsey, who described his sister as “a poem, a light, fun, innocent, and wise,” was 20 and getting his start as an actor when a police officer turned up at his door to tell him his sister had been murdered.

In 1976, one of the men who abducted Karen, Freddie Glenn, was convicted of her murder. He is currently serving a life sentence.

The Emmy-winning actor said he tried to block out the details of Karen’s death for many years, but he decided to travel back to Colorado and face the ugly truth for his new book.

“I had horrors in my mind that were craving the truth, what I knew happened, and to feel her steps, her final steps, to be in her, to be with her,” he told Sawyer.

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“The mission is to heal. But the mission is also to help heal other people,” he added. “And by introducing them to Karen, it is my hope that they’re reintroducing themselves to the loved ones they’ve lost in the same way.”

Kelsey said he returned to the spot where his sister was stabbed to death, saying, “I stood where I could not be so many years ago. And I cried out loud like a child whose hope had died.”

He also shared a new outlook on Karen’s passing, explaining to Sawyer, “I spent a long time on her death and very little on her life. And that’s what I hope people will take… spend time on the life you lost. Spend time on the life you shared rather than the day you lost it.”