Latest news with #siblingloss
Fox News
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- Fox News
Princess Diana's brother shares heartbreaking grief, says her death felt like 'an amputation'
Earl Charles Spencer lost a part of himself when his sister, Princess Diana, was killed nearly three decades ago. On May 15, he appeared on "Loose Men" in honor of Mental Health Awareness Week, where he discussed sibling grief. "It's such an amputation," said the 60-year-old. "You grow up with these people, they are your flesh and blood, they're with you forever, and then they're gone." "It's a really extraordinary thing," the historian reflected. Diana died in 1997 from injuries she sustained in a car crash in Paris. She was 36. At the time, the mother of two was being chased by paparazzi. Spencer noted that grief never goes away. "For years after Diana died, I would think, 'I must ring her and tell her something,' because we shared the same sense of humor," he recalled. "And you just realize, of course, that's not going to happen." The author described how his big sister played a key role in his childhood. "As your family naturally folds in on itself — you lose your parents — I have two older sisters who I adore," Spencer explained. "They're quite a lot older than me, so I don't share my childhood with anyone anymore. And that's a great loss you can never really put right." The world, along with Spencer, watched Diana grow from a shy teenage nursery schoolteacher into a glamorous celebrity who comforted AIDS patients. She instantly became a household name when she married the future King Charles III in 1981, when she was 20 years old. They welcomed two sons, Prince William and Prince Harry, before the couple announced their separation in 1992. Their divorce was finalized in 1996. Spencer said that even as a teenager, he felt an urgency to protect his sister from "the photographers who were plaguing her." "I remember just before she died, a female journalist wrote a really horrendous article, because by that stage I don't think that journalist was thinking of Diana as a person," said Spencer. "She was something to make money out of or whatever." "I wrote her an outraged letter and had a bit of to and fro with her," he said. "I think, particularly as a brother of a sister, you always want to get stuck in, really." It was during Diana's funeral that Spencer denounced the ruthless U.K. press that hounded his beloved sibling in her lifetime. Spencer was 42 years old when he first revealed to a therapist he had been sexually abused as a child. At the time, he had "hit rock bottom." Seventeen years later, he detailed the trauma he endured in a memoir, "A Very Private School." He never told Diana about his experience at Maidwell Hall, an elite English boarding school. But as he struggled with loneliness away from his family, he often thought of his sister. "She was the closest person to me growing up," he told Fox News Digital in 2024. "We had two much older sisters and a baby brother who had died. Then there was Diana and me. We were very close. And, actually, that was one of the devastations of being sent away. She was sent a year ahead of me, but for the first few years of my life, we went everywhere together." WATCH: PRINCESS DIANA'S HAIRDRESSER RECALLS THEIR LASTING FRIENDSHIP "We did everything together," he shared. "We went to a very gentle primary school together, a day school, [before boarding school]. She was an absolutely lovely older sister to a little boy whose parents were divorced and had quite a traditional English upbringing. We were allies." At the time, a spokesperson for Maidwell Hall didn't immediately respond to Fox News Digital's request for comment. It previously told "Today" that it has notified authorities who investigate crimes against children. School officials are also encouraging any past students with similar experiences to come forward. Today, Spencer hopes the school will now deal with its past "in an honest way." "I would tell [my younger self] it wasn't his fault," Spencer said. "As a child, you're always thinking it's your fault. I used to think I must have failed as a son to be sent away to such a place and not be part of the family. … But I would tell him, 'You're fine. You've come out on the other side.'"
Yahoo
09-05-2025
- Yahoo
Kelsey Grammer Recalls Horrifying Moment Police Turned Up at Family Home To Reveal His Sister Had Been Murdered
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. Job Market Defies Tariff Fears To Remain Strong in April, Offering Jolt of Confidence to Homebuyers Supply of Homes for Sale Hits a Post-Pandemic High in April—but Pending Sales Drop as Buyers Grapple With Economic Uncertainty Buyers Now Need To Earn 70% More Than They Did 6 Years Ago To Buy a Home
