Kelsey Grammer And His Family Tragedy
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, 1955, 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.
The Fatherless, Crime-Riddled Youth Of DMX
PinterestDMX (right) was tricked into a crack-cocaine addiction when he was 14.
Praised as one of the rawest and most honest rappers in hip-hop, DMX found it hard to talk about his past without a microphone. Born Earl Simmons to an impoverished single mother on Dec. 18, 1970, in Mount Vernon, New York, he was abused and abandoned before crime or drugs even entered the picture.
His father had walked out on the family and didn’t even call Simmons on his birthdays. He was six years old when his mother beat two teeth out of his mouth with a broom. He was 14 when he began drinking alcohol and smoking cannabis — and his local music mentor betrayed him into a crack addiction.
“He introduced me to the best part of my life which would be the rap, but he passed the blunt around and I hit the blunt,” Simmons said. “I later found out that he laced the blunt with crack. Why would you do that to a child? He was like 30 and he knew I looked up to him. Why would you do that to someone who looks up to you?”
The teenage Simmons began a streak of petty crimes that led to his mother’s custody being revoked. A judge ruled his mother unable to keep him out of trouble, and Simmons was sent to a children’s home for what was meant to be an 18-month stay.
KMazur/WireImage/Getty ImagesDMX performing at Woodstock in 1999 — the year he made hip-hop history.
But he was soon expelled for starting a fire with his roommate. He then spent time at another children’s home until at least 1985 in Dobbs Ferry, New York. But Simmons returned to his stomping grounds determined to impress producers. He spent years doubting if he’d ever make it before finally being signed to Def Jam Records in 1998.
With his first two albums reaching No. 1 on the Billboard Charts within one year, DMX had accomplished a historic first for hip-hop and took the genre by storm. From drug possession and carjacking to robbery and assault, he had navigated a string of criminal charges and prison bids to get there.
While he left an iconic Grammy Award-winning discography behind, DMX never overcame the addictions bestowed upon him as a child. Before dying of a heart attack on April 9, 2021, the 51-year-old admitted that rap had been the only way he was able to express himself.
“I really didn’t have anyone to talk to about it because in the ‘hood, nobody wants to hear that. Nobody even wants to help with talking,” he said. “But talking is actually one of the bravest things you can do. One of the bravest things you can do is… let it out.”
