A BROTHER'S LOVE

An emotional Kelsey Grammer tells us how he found the strength to write a book about his sister's murder

- AMY BIELBY

Kelsey Grammer “lost himself” for three years. During that period, he sank his time, energy and emotional capacity into one of the most important projects of his life — a book entitled Karen: A Brother Remembers, in which he shares the unthinkable true story of his younger sister’s murder 50 years ago.

“I would take writing breaks,” admits the Frasier actor, 70. “Sometimes, I had to go away for a month or so and just stop because it was too much information to digest, some of it too painful. I had to understand what was appropriate in terms of sharing and not sharing.

“Some of it is pretty graphic and unsettling, but I tried to protect the reader and let them embrace how horrible some of it was, without making them look at everything.”

His sister was just shy of her 19th birthday when she was abducted at gunpoint by three men, taken to an alley, raped and stabbed 42 times. Kelsey, then 20, made the trip from his Florida home to Colorado to identify the body of his beloved sibling and would never emotionally recover from the tragedy.

Putting her story on paper — and making it clear that this is, in fact, Karen’s story and not his own - served a dual purpose, allowing Kelsey to honour his sister's memory and acting as a form of therapy. “Someone described [finishing the book] as taking off every piece of clothing you've ever worn, finally standing in a doorway with all the past behind you and a new life ahead of you,” he tells us. “The grief is forever and that’s still going to bubble up, but this was a gift from Karen.”

Before starting the memoir, Kelsey — who has a strong belief in the spirit world - met with a medium in England named Esther. Not sure what to expect (she’d been recommended by a friend of a friend), he went in with an open mind, hoping to connect with his sister.