Emotional Kelsey Grammer Forgives Sister's Killer at Parole Hearing
The actor says he can forgive the man who killed his sister four decades ago
— -- Actor Kelsey Grammer told a Colorado parole board that he has forgiven the man who murdered his sister nearly 40 years ago but does not want him released from prison.
“I accept that you live with remorse every day of your life but I live with tragedy every day of my life,” Grammer, 59, told Freddie Glenn, his sister’s convicted murderer, via video conference on Tuesday.
The “Frasier” and “Cheers” star was 20-years-old when his younger sister, Karen Grammer, was abducted and stabbed to death by Glenn and others in 1975. Karen Grammer was 18 at the time.
“She was a terrific kid,” Grammer said. “She was a wonderful person and I miss her all the time.”
Glenn is currently serving a life sentence at the Buena Vista Correctional Facility in Colorado. He watched Grammer from a video monitor and apologized to the actor, saying he was young and hung with the wrong crowd.
"I thought I would die. I thought I would be killed," Glenn said, according to the Denver Post. "I think I deserve a second chance."
"I accept your apology. I forgive you,” Grammer told Glenn, according to the newspaper. “However, I cannot give your release my endorsement. To give that a blessing would be a betrayal of my sister's life."
Grammer, whose fourth wife, Kayte, recently gave birth to his sixth child, and the couple’s second, opened up to Oprah Winfrey in 2012 about his tragic past.
Grammer revealed on an episode of “Oprah’s Next Chapter” that, in addition to his sister’s death, the lives of his grandfather, father and two half-brothers also ended tragically and suddenly.
“I did lose my faith in God from time to time,” he told Winfrey.
The parole board has not yet made a decision on the fate of Glenn, who was 18 at the time of the murder, the Denver Post reported.