Kelsey Grammer Recalls Horrifying Moment Police Turned Up at Family Home To Reveal His Sister Had Been Murdered

Yahoo

09-05-2025

Actor Kelsey Grammer has detailed the tragic moment police officers arrived at his family's Florida home to reveal that his sister, Karen, had been brutally killed.
Grammer, 73, revealed his grief over the death of his beloved sibling and the trauma he experienced from having to identify the 18-year-old's body while laying bare their touching relationship in his new memoir, 'Karen: A Brother Remembers,' which was published on May 6.
At the time of Karen's death, the actor was living at the family's Pompano Beach home. However, his younger sibling, whom he described as 'funny and free-spirited,' had moved away to Colorado Springs, CO, after graduating from high school.
Just months after she moved out, detectives turned up on the Grammer family's doorstep with gut-wrenching news: They had found the body of a Jane Doe whom they believed was Karen.
It was Grammer who was assigned the difficult task of identifying the body—a moment that he later revealed would haunt him forever.
Karen was abducted on July 1, 1976, by Freddie Lee Glenn and his accomplice, Michael Corbett, who were planning on robbing the Red Lobster restaurant where she worked.
But in a heinous turn of events, they kidnapped Karen before raping her and stabbing her 42 times, nearly decapitating her in the process.
'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 almost decapitated her. Freddie Glenn punched holes in my sister's body with unimaginable brutality,' Grammer described.
The actor—who was two years older than his sister and had always considered himself to be her protector—later learned that his sister was alive when the men left her in an alley.
After they left, Karen crawled to the door of a nearby trailer, begging someone to help her.
Grammer revealed he always hoped someone kind helped his sister in any way they could. However, he later found out that wasn't the case.
'In my imaginings, the man who found Karen at his doorstep was a 'good Samaritan' of sorts,' he 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,' he explained.
Later in the memoir, Grammer revealed that he and Karen were extremely close as they were the only two siblings and they grew up with a single mother.
He revealed that his story was dedicated to his sister, whom he described as 'an Oreo cookie dipped in an ice-cold Coca-Cola.
'She was a poem, a light, fun, innocent, and wise.'
'This is your story Karen. I hope you like it. It holds you. It holds me. It holds our love. Forever yours, Kelsey,' he added.
Glenn is serving a life sentence. However, he has come up for parole multiple times.
'I accept that you live with remorse every day of your life, but I live with tragedy every day of my life,' Grammer told the killer in a 2014 parole hearing.
The actor revealed that he and his wife, Kayte, had visited the same Red Lobster restaurant Karen worked at to honor her.
'Kayte and I went for a bite of food, shared a bottle of wine. We talked. Reviewed … at the wooden fence just feet from where Karen left her body. It had broken me, again. Just when I thought nothing else ever could,' he said.
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