The Karen Grammer Story

Time Passes

In the nearly 30 years since Corbett and Glenn's murder spree, much has changed.

For his part, Glenn has kept a fairly low profile in prison. Corbett, meanwhile, has insisted that he has found God. He converted to Islam several years ago and now goes by the name of Hasani Seyeng Chinangwa. At his parole hearing five years ago, Corbett, now Chinangwa, told the board that he is a changed man. Back then, he is quoted as saying in a report published by the Gazette Telegraph, "I didn't care if I was killed or not...or if I killed...I had no value or compassion for human life. I'm not the person that I was 20 years ago today."

Smit is not convinced.

"Now, Corbett, I've heard that he's changed a lot and I'm not saying he couldn't," Smit said. "But I talked to him right after that parole hearing because I wanted to ask him if he had killed the cab driver," the man gunned down on base at Fort Carson during the height of the Corbett and Glenn killing spree.

Ft. Carson sign

"He said he didn't do that one, and I wouldn't have expected him to say he did, and in fact he may not have killed that cab driver," Smit said.

Though their encounter was brief, it did give Smit an opportunity to assess the man, now well into his 40s, whom he had tracked 30 years ago, the man who had locked eyes with him in a Colorado courtroom a generation ago, staring back at him with the icy rage of a stone-cold killer.

It was clear to Smit that years in prison, and perhaps even his religious conversion, had served to change the man. "He has softened quite a bit, I will say that," Smit said. "But I'll tell you, he's still the most dangerous man I've ever met."

Heim has long since retired from the prosecutor's office, and Smit and Russel have as well, though they have garnered national attention, and in some cases controversy, for their roles in other high-profile cases, including the investigation into the death of Jon Benet Ramsey. That was a case that thrust Smit into the spotlight when he criticized the Boulder district attorney's handling of the investigation.

Despite retirement, though, both Russel and Smit keep active. Russel, among other chores, has developed a class for law enforcement officers on sex and crime, a class that includes in its syllabus, the whole grim story of the Michael Corbett cabal.

So Far

As for the Grammer family, the whole world now knows the name of Karen Grammer's older brother. The grief-stricken young man who had to fly to Colorado to identify his slain sister's remains has since gone on to become one of the most recognizable faces in show business. Though he has talked publicly from time to time about his sister's death, both on television talk shows, and in his autobiography, "So Far," he has neither exploited the tragedy nor dwelled on it.

To this day, there is a certain tenderness in the voices of the two hardened veterans of the legal system, Russel and Smit, when they talk about the television star and the ordeal that he had to face.

But to them, the name Grammer conjures up only one real image. It's the face of Karen, the young girl who fought so hard to make it to the end of the alley that night, and who, in part because of her powerful will to survive, marked a trail in blood that led to the gang of killers who had taken her life.

"We had a series of murders in Colorado Springs...and they were all unsolved, and that was really something for us," Smit said. "Actually, it was the Karen Grammer case that broke all of them."

Even now, for Russel, Karen Grammer is never far from his mind. As he spoke with Crime Library recently, Russel had in his hands a series of photos taken at the crime scene the night she died, photos he keeps in his personal file, a file he uses to develop his classes. Mixed in with the photographs are some shots of Karen Grammer. Some of them catch in stark detail the horror of her death. Others seem to have captured her beauty. The truth is, he says, he doesn't really need the pictures. Despite the passage of almost 30 years, the image of Karen Grammer is never far from Russel's mind.

"I was DA for a long time," Russel says, "There's about three different women who died whose pictures I still think about in my mind. Karenis one of them."