You probably know Kelsey Grammer best for his role as Dr. Frasier Crane, initially Cheers and Frasier. But many years before he began his career, he suffered unimaginable tragedy when his younger sister was murdered.

Karen Grammer was just 18 years old when she was kidnapped and murdered by several men in Colorado Springs, Colorado in 1975. Freddie Glenn was convicted of the killing and is serving life in prison, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. Now, Kelsey has opened up about his sister’s tragic murder in his new memoir, ‘Karen: A Brother Remembers.’ The book’s description says it’s an exploration of ‘profound grief and devastation that followed Karen’s death, as well as the long and arduous journey toward healing.’

The book delves into the horrific details surrounding his sister’s murder but also functions as a form of closure for Kelsey, and a way of remembering Karen’s joyful, free-spirited personality. In the book, he speaks to old friends and people who knew Karen, as a way of capturing her childhood and who she was.

‘For a long time, the grief was so dominant that I couldn’t access happiness,” Grammer told People. ‘The book helped me get to a new place with that.’ His aim is to capture his sister’s joyful and vivacious spirit and interview her friends about her final years. ‘I wanted to breathe life into her and welcome her into the world,’ he continued to People. ‘We were Kelsey and Karen, brother and sister.’

Through the process of writing the book, Kelsey learned the horrors of what happened to Karen for the first time. In an interview with The Times, he explained he was left ‘stuck in the vein of having to imagine what happened’, sometimes suspecting that this ‘was almost worse than actually knowing.’

The details of Karen’s attack are horrific. Freddie Glenn and his friends had been planning to rob the Red Lobster restaurant where Karen worked. Karen was waiting outside the restaurant for a friend to finish their shift. Apparently seeing her as a potential witness, they abducted her at gunpoint.

Karen was taken to Glenn’s car. The other men went to rob the restaurant but decided against it. When they came back, they found Karen tied up next to Glenn. The group drove her to one of the men’s apartments, where they raped her. After, Karen was taken to an alleyway, where she was stabbed 42 times. Grammer writes in the memoir that, in her final moments, she crawled 400 feet from the alley she was dumped in to seek help in a trailer park nearby. ‘Freddie Glenn punched holes in my sister’s body with unimaginable brutality. There were defensive wounds on her hands. What I had hoped were a final, few moments of kindness from some stranger, were nothing of the sort,’ he wrote in an excerpt seen by People.

Glenn was found guilty in Grammer’s murder and was also convicted in two other killings in the area. He’s currently serving a life sentence in prison.

Amongst the tragedy, Kelsey has turned to religion. He shares three children with his wife Kayte, and they named their first daughter Faith. ‘By virtue of writing this book, [my faith] has gained a little ground. By virtue of meeting Kayte, by virtue of living through what we’ve lived through as well, has fortified my faith,’ Grammer told Fox News. He has also opened up about his belief his sister spoke to him through a medium, encouraging him to tell her story.

Sadly, this isn’t the only tragedy Kelsey has faced in his life. His parents separated when he was younger, and his father, Allen, moved to the Virgin Islands. In 1986, he was murdered in an apparently racially motivated attack by a local taxi driver. He set fire to Allen’s car and shot him dead when he came out of the house to investigate. Five years after Karen’s murder, Kelsey’s half-brothers, twins Billy and Stephen, were killed while scuba diving in a suspected shark attack.

In his memoir, Kesley details turning to drugs and alcohol to try and cope with these tragedies, which resulted in personal struggles for the actor, including multiple drunk driving and cocaine possession charges between 1988 and 1996.

‘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,”’ he told People. ‘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.”’

Now, Kelsey is determined that his sister is remembered for who she was in life. In the book, Kelsey is keen to keep the memory of Karen alive. He told ABC news that he decided to write about Karen’s death to honour her life. ‘I spent a long time on her death and very little on her life,’ he told the outlet. ‘And that’s what I hope people will take — spend time on the life you lost, spend time on the life you shared rather than the day you lost it.’ He added, ‘the mission is to heal, but the mission is also to help heal other people.’

The Survivors Trust offers a free, confidential helpline for survivors of rape and sexual violence in the UK and Ireland. You can call 08088 010 818 during specific hours. They also have a text service (07860 022 956) and email support (helpline@thesurvivorstrust.org).