9 Celebrities With Terrible Upbringings And How They Overcame Them

Kelsey Grammer And His Murdered Family

Paul Harris/Getty ImagesKelsey Grammer in his Los Angeles office in 2005 — four years before his sister’s killer came up for parole.

Kelsey Grammer remains best known for his iconic turn as Dr. Frasier Crane in the television classic Cheers in the 1980s and its spinoff Frasier in the 1990s. Before ever making it in show business, however, his life was defined by the horrific murders of his closest relatives.

Born in Charlotte Amalie in the U.S. Virgin Islands on Feb. 21, 1965, Kelsey Grammer was two years old when his parents separated. He moved to New Jersey with his mother and sister, while his father stayed behind to run his bar. He grew incredibly close to his grandfather, who died when Grammer was 11.

Grammer’s father Frank, meanwhile, started a new family and became the publisher of a local newspaper back in Charlotte Amalie called the Virgin Islands View. But on April 25, 1968, a man set fire to Frank Grammer’s car while Frank was in his office. When Frank ran outside to put the fire out, the man shot and killed him.

Arrested hours later, Arthur B. Niles would be found not guilty by reason of insanity and sent to a psychiatric hospital for decades. Widow Elizabeth Grammer had testified at trial that she had to drag her husband’s body away to prevent Niles from driving over it.

Kelsey Grammer was 13.

Limon Correctional FacilityGrammer forgave Freddie Lee Glenn for murdering his sister, but refused to support his release on parole.

Seven years later, his 18-year-old sister Karen was abducted, raped, and murdered. Sitting outside a Red Lobster in Colorado Springs, Colorado, after her shift on July 1, 1975, she was forced into spree killer Freddie Lee Glenn’s car, robbed, and taken to his apartment.

Glenn and his three accomplices had already murdered two locals before raping Karen and stabbing her in the hand, back, and neck. Left for dead in a trailer park, she tried to find help but died of blood loss before she could. Tragically, Kelsey Grammer would lose both of his half brothers to a fatal scuba diving accident in the Virgin Islands five years later.

Glenn was convicted of all three murders in 1976 but came up for parole in 2009, prompting Grammer to write to the board to plead for reconsideration.

“She was so smart and good and decent,” he said. “I miss her in my bones. I was her big brother. I was supposed to protect her — I could not. It very nearly destroyed me. When we heard this man might be paroled, the suffering began anew.”

Ultimately, Glenn’s parole was rejected.

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