What Happened to Kelsey Grammer’s Sister, Karen? What to Know About Her Gruesome 1975 Murder

It’s been five decades since Kelsey Grammer‘s sister was brutally murdered.

On July 8, 1975, Grammer, who was 20 years old at the time, was at home with his family in Pompano Beach, Fla., when he received a knock on the door that would change his life forever. Detectives told the actor that they had discovered the body of a Jane Doe in Colorado Springs, Colo., whom they believed to be his younger sister, Karen Grammer.

The next day, Grammer flew to Colorado, where he confirmed their suspicions and learned that Karen had been killed one week earlier — just two weeks shy of her 19th birthday.

On May 6, Grammer is releasing a book titled Karen: A Brother Remembers, looking back on the brutal killing of his sister and how it continued to impact him years later.

“For a long time, the grief was so dominant that I couldn’t access happiness,” the Frasier star told PEOPLE ahead of its release. “The book helped me get to a new place with that.”

So what happened to Kelsey Grammer’s sister? Here’s everything to know about the 1975 murder of Karen Grammer — including where her killers are today.

What happened to Kelsey Grammer’s sister?

After a semester of college in Georgia, Karen had relocated to Colorado Springs to be with her boyfriend. She last spoke to Grammer on June 30, 1975, when they discussed her plans to come home to Florida after the Fourth of July. The day after their call, however, she died.

When Grammer didn’t hear from his sister, he got suspicious and called the police. He later learned that at 11 p.m., just hours after their conversation, she went to Red Lobster, where she worked, to wait for a friend to finish their shift.

According to Grammer’s recount of the police report, three men arrived at Red Lobster with plans to rob the restaurant. Upon seeing Karen, they pulled out a gun and told her to come with them.

She was taken to one of the men, Freddie Glenn’s, car and left with him, while the two others went into the Red Lobster, which they ultimately decided against robbing. When they returned to Glenn’s car, Karen was tied up next to him. The men drove her to one of their apartments, where they took turns raping her.

Then, they drove Karen to an alley, where Glenn stabbed her to death 42 times.

How was Kelsey Grammer impacted by his sister’s death?

In the years after learning of his sister’s brutal murder, Grammer, whose dad, Allen, had also been killed several years prior, grappled with how to cope with his overwhelming grief.

“There were some times I pretty much surrendered to despair,” Grammer told PEOPLE in November 2022.

In his new book, the actor opens up about his past struggles with alcohol and substance abuse. Between 1988 and 1996, he faced multiple charges for drunk driving and cocaine possession, ultimately going to rehab at the Betty Ford Center.

“I always had something in the back of my head saying, ‘Okay. That’s enough now. Cut it out. You know why you’re doing this,’ ” Grammer told PEOPLE ahead of the book’s release. “But there was the other part of me that wanted to surrender to it and go, ‘Let it mess you up a little bit. Let it hurt.’ “

Despite his internal struggles, Grammer continued to wake up and go to work, starring in the NBC sitcom Cheers and later leading his own hit spinoff, Frasier.

“It seemed to make it more damning in a way, but you know what? I had to do it, so I’m okay,” he said. “I learned that I really am a ‘I don’t quit’ kind of guy. I can look at the past and see, ‘Oh, well, you still did what you had to do.’ “

Who killed Kelsey Grammer’s sister?

Glenn was convicted of murdering Karen, along with two accomplices, including Michael Corbett.

Glenn was also tried in separate trials for murdering two other men — Daniel Van Lone and Winfred Proffitt — in June 1975, per The Denver Post.

According to CBS News, Glenn killed Lone, a motel cook who was 28 years old at the time, during a botched robbery on June 19, 1975.

Just a week later, he killed Proffitt, an Army soldier who was 19 years old, during a drug deal, per the outlet.

Although he was originally given the death penalty, his sentence was changed in 1978 to life in prison with the possibility of parole, per CBS News.

Where are Karen Grammer’s killers now?

Glenn is continuing to serve a life sentence in prison for Karen’s and the other men’s murders, and has been denied parole four times.

During his first parole request in July 2009, Glenn apologized to the families of the victims, saying, “I am sincerely and truly remorseful,” per The Denver Post.

With his next hearing set for 2027, Grammer told PEOPLE that Glenn’s excuses are “bulls—.”

“His protestations these days are like, ‘Well, I don’t remember raping her,’ ” he said.

Though Grammer has found a degree of forgiveness, he is still committed to holding Glenn accountable for his actions.

He told PEOPLE that revisiting the details of his sister’s murder for his book was “not pleasant or comforting,” but ultimately provided “ammunition to keep Freddie Glenn in jail.”

“You don’t want to eat yourself to pieces because you can’t forgive somebody,” he said. “But it’s hard to forgive a person who consciously decided they wanted to murder somebody you love. This wasn’t just some temperance issue with him. It was deliberate.”

“I can give you forgiveness, but you’re not going to get out of paying for it,” Grammer continued.