During one particularly vivid scene from his new book, a 20-year-old Kelsey Grammer – long before his most famous role as Dr Frasier Crane – prowls the streets of New York at night, crazed with grief, daring trouble to come and find him.
Heading straight towards shadowy figures lurking in dark alleyways, he wanted, he writes, ‘to kill someone. I wanted to kill myself. I felt I was fit for a violent end, and so I went seeking it.’
Yet despite looking for trouble, it never arrived. ‘And in retrospect, I think maybe I was being protected,’ he says. ‘Maybe God, maybe Jesus, maybe Karen. Maybe all of them. But they said, “No. You’re not going to go this way.”’
Karen was Kelsey’s younger sister, and he took his rage-fuelled walks in the aftermath of her brutal murder in July 1975, two weeks shy of her 19th birthday.
Her story is told in detail by Kelsey for the first time in his book, Karen: A Brother Remembers, and today, dressed in a smart blazer and shirt, he’s discussing it over Zoom from the rather soulless office of his New York publishers.
For many, Kelsey is synonymous with Frasier – the erudite, occasionally pompous but also lovable radio psychiatrist, whose eponymous series is regularly lauded as one of the greatest sitcoms of all time. Yet despite Kelsey winning four Emmy Awards for his portrayal of the doctor, few knew of the tragedies that underscored his life.
In addition to Karen’s murder, his father Allen, who had abandoned the family when Kelsey was just two, was killed in an apparently racially motivated attack by a cab driver when Kelsey was 13.
His grandfather Gordon, who had helped raise Kelsey and his sister and ‘was my Dad’, died of cancer when Kelsey was 12. Then in 1980, his paternal half-brothers Billy and Stephen were killed in a shark attack in the Virgin Islands. Billy’s body was never found.
The story of Kelsey Grammer’s sister Karen is told in detail for the first time in his book, Karen: A Brother Remembers
Karen was Kelsey’s younger sister, and he took his rage-fuelled walks in the aftermath of her brutal murder in July 1975, two weeks shy of her 19th birthday. Pictured together as children, dressed for Easter Sunday
Did Kelsey ever believe the family was cursed? ‘No, but that’s what my dad’s dad thought,’ he says. ‘But I think it’s our responsibility to defuse that if such is the case. We were marked historically with a lot of premature death and it does go back generations, so I’d like to put an end to it. I’m going to live to be 160!’
That he can mine positivity from a life filled with tragedy says a lot about Kelsey who, fit and tanned, looks younger than his 70 years.
An emotional man, he cries during the telling of Karen’s story, reflecting the extraordinary closeness that they shared. A year and a half older than his sister, he had always been her ‘protector’ and the siblings enjoyed an outdoorsy life in Florida, where they were raised by their mother Sally and her parents Gordon and Evangeline.
But it was across the country in Colorado Springs that Karen was savagely murdered. She had moved there after dropping out of college and had taken a job at a chain restaurant. Arriving in the car park at around 11pm to meet her boyfriend once his shift there had ended, she was spotted by three men who were planning to rob the building.
Deciding she could be a potential witness, they abducted her at gunpoint and one of the men, Freddie Glenn, tied her up and put her in his car. She was then driven to one of their apartments where they took turns raping her as she pleaded for her life.
They then drove her to an alley where Glenn commanded her, ‘Tilt your head back’, before slashing her throat. She was almost decapitated. He stabbed her 42 times and left her for dead, but astonishingly she managed to crawl 400ft to a trailer park for help, and very nearly found it.
A couple who lived close by heard a scream but ignored it, and Karen died alone on a stranger’s doorstep in the early hours of 1 July 1975.
Kelsey had spoken to Karen on the phone just hours previously, as they had planned to celebrate her upcoming birthday at home.
Instead, a few days after she was due to arrive, Kelsey called the police and was informed that a body had been found. Then 20, he had to identify his sister (‘There was an almost comforting lack of Karen in what remained of her body,’ he writes), and although he asked the detective if she had been raped, he was told no, possibly in an effort to spare him further pain. Kelsey subsequently found out she had been violated from an article in US tabloid The National Enquirer.
In Karen: A Brother Remembers, Kelsey Grammer delves into the tragic story of his sister who was brutally murdered at the age of 18
Kelsey Grammer as Dr. Frasier Crane in the Cheers episode ‘ Bar is Born, which originally aired on October 12, 1989
Glenn was convicted of Karen’s murder along with several other murders in the area and is currently serving a life sentence, yet years later when Kelsey asked to read the police report while writing the book he was faced with yet more devastation.
‘The thing that upset me most in the beginning,’ he says, ‘was that in the first hundred pages of the police report, Karen has no identity. She’s just a girl, she’s just a Jane Doe basically… So, it was very sad for me to realise that no one had any idea who she was for a long time. Because I knew. I knew who she was.’
The death of Karen, a talented artist, almost destroyed Kelsey. In a heart-breaking sequence in the book when he recounts her funeral, he rails at himself for not doing ‘the one thing I had always done’ – protect his little sister.
Did he ever feel suicidal? ‘No,’ he says firmly. ‘I always thought that losing someone in that way demanded that you stay alive. I tried to be a good brother and I was a good brother – I know that now.’
Writing the book, he says, crying softly, ‘helps me get through that a little bit because I felt like there was a fatal defect in me that I had not stopped it and I was able to release that.’ He still hears Karen’s voice in his head and has spoken to many mediums over the years. He even ended up producing the Patricia Arquette drama Medium, which ran for seven seasons.
Three years ago he received a message from his sister via a ‘truly gifted’ medium who told him Karen wanted him to write her story now.
‘I was given this sort of declaration: go make this happen. And so I did,’ he says. ‘I think Karen knew I was ready. It was like a final piece of the puzzle for me to say, “This happened. I am not responsible, but I am responsible for keeping her memory alive.”’
Kelsey has been married four times, the first three of those relationships filled with tumult. His first marriage, to dance teacher Doreen Alderman, lasted eight years (they were separated for the final six) and produced a daughter, Spencer. A relationship with make-up artist Barrie Buckner produced another daughter, Greer, who went on to star in the recent Frasier reboot, while his second marriage to exotic dancer Leigh-Anne Csuhany ended abruptly after a year, with Kelsey claiming she subjected him to domestic abuse.
His third marriage to Camille Donatacci, a regular on The Real Housewives Of Beverly Hills, ended in 2011 after 13 years, two kids and much acrimony.
While others have explained Kelsey Grammer’s excesses as an understandable response to the tragedies that had befallen him, ‘I think the periods when I was experimenting with drugs or was excessive with alcohol were really more focused on enjoying myself,’ he says
In fact, he suggests that Karen’s spirit may have prompted him to end some of these relationships. ‘I’d get this sort of nudge saying, “You’ve done enough here. You don’t need to do this anymore.”’
But while at times his private life could be volatile, his career went from strength to strength. Although he was let go from the famed New York performing arts school Juilliard shortly before Karen’s death, he made his way to Broadway before landing the role of Frasier Crane in the hit sitcom Cheers in 1984. When that show ended in 1993, Kelsey picked up where it left off with Frasier, possibly the most successful spin-off in TV history.
But off-screen his life was getting messier. In 1996 he crashed his car while drunk and checked into the Betty Ford Center to clean up. In the book he describes a period when ‘I cursed myself with too much drinking and drug abuse. And some fairly exotic sexual behaviour.’
He had therapy in the 90s – perhaps predictably, given that he’s played the most famous fictional therapist ever – but ultimately he credits his staunch faith for helping him. ‘God,’ he once said, ‘is probably the best therapist.’
While others have explained his excesses as an understandable response to the tragedies that had befallen him, ‘I think the periods when I was experimenting with drugs or was excessive with alcohol were really more focused on enjoying myself,’ he says. ‘It was fun at first but then it kind of stopped working. Maybe I was escaping a little bit from success. Maybe,’ he smiles, ‘I made a couple of bad turns!’
Where he didn’t make a bad turn, he says, was with his fourth marriage to Kayte Walsh, 46, a British former flight attendant whom he met in 2009 while flying from LA to London. The couple have been married for 14 years and have three children – Faith, 12, Gabriel, 10, and James, eight.
She gave him the space to write his book, and once he had finished, he says, his voice wracked with emotion, ‘She said, “I’ve missed you.” She knew I had to do it.’
They divide their time between homes in California and upstate New York, and have also bought a 19th-century cottage in Somerset, close to Kayte’s parents Susan and ex Bristol City footballer Alan Walsh. Anglophile Kelsey’s love of all things British even extends to Only Fools And Horses and especially to its star Nicholas Lyndhurst, who went on to feature in the recent Frasier reboot as his best pal Professor Alan Cornwall.
In addition to Karen’s murder, Kelsey’s father Allen, who had abandoned the family when Kelsey was just two, was killed in an apparently racially motivated attack by a cab driver when Kelsey was 13. Pictured: Karen Grammer
Kelsey Grammer and wife Kate Walsh attend the 2017 Vanity Fair Oscar Party
Though the show was cancelled earlier this year, Kelsey is hopeful it will return and lavishes praise on his co-star. ‘Nicholas is the wizard,’ he says. ‘He is as good an actor as any I’ve known…I just love him. He’s become possibly one of my best friends, if not my best friend.’
Kelsey says he’ll never retire (‘I got kids! I got stuff to do!’), and while he dotes on his children, he admits he’s had to fight a certain over-protectiveness towards them, given what happened to his sister. ‘I’ve always tried to teach my kids to keep their heads up,’ he says. ‘Keep an eye out for what’s going on around them.’
Karen’s murder has cast a large shadow. In the book Kelsey recounts how his 10-year-old son Gabriel wanted to kill the man who killed Karen. ‘I mean, he isn’t interested in putting his own socks on, but he’s interested in his father’s grief,’ says Kelsey. ‘I told him, “Gabe, hatred doesn’t solve anything. Hatred is what got us to this place.”’
Glenn has been denied parole four times, with his next hearing set for 2027. Has Kelsey forgiven him? ‘Yes,’ he says. Has he forgiven himself, even though he was in no way to blame? ‘Still working on that,’ he replies. ‘I’m certainly further along than I’ve ever been.’ Writing the book has proved a catharsis and, he says, not just set Karen free, but him too. ‘At the mention of her name, the first thing I think of now is something good, rather than something bad.’
Writing about his beloved sister has, he says, ‘set our joy free again’.
- Karen: A Brother Remembers, available now (Harper Select, £22).
