Karen Louise Wiles was born on January 21, 1950 to Richard and Phyllis Wiles in Tacoma, WA. Richard Frederick Wiles was born on September 7, 1923 in Burlington, WA and Phyllis Irene Hurn was born on November 10, 1927 in Sunnyside, Washington. After ‘Dick’ served in both WWII and the Korean War, he returned home and the couple were married on April 10, 1946; at first the family resided in Sedro-Woolley before they relocated to Burlington in 1958, where they laid down roots. They had five children together: Dianne (b. 1952), Karen, Brenda (b. 1963), Stephen, and Randall (b. 1956).

Details about Karen’s life are basically non-existent: the only real ‘fact’ I was able to find about her is that she had some sort of diminished mental capacity and during her adolescence attended/lived at the Fircrest School in Shoreline, WA. Fircrest was a major Residential Habilitation Center for those that suffered from intellectual disabilities and was designed to provide residential care, nursing, and habilitative services for those with ‘unique medical needs;’ it operated under the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. Sadly, I was only able to find one black and white picture of Karen in an article that was published after her murder, most likely due to the fact that she never attended any sort of formal schooling (for example, Fircrest isn’t on classmates.com). Around three weeks prior to her death, Karen was voluntarily committed to Western State Hospital on February 4, 1975 after she was confined ‘in a series of Seattle mental-health facilities.’ Detectives said she had briefly resided there in October of 1974 but left after only two weeks; she was found by police the following month and was ‘returned to care in Seattle.’

Around noon on February 21, 1975 the semi-nude remains of Karen Wiles were found around eight miles from Western State Hospital in a blackberry patch by a Port of Tacoma employee that had been inspecting a tidal gate at a dead end of Lincoln Avenue (one source said it was Taylor Avenue). It was an area known as the ‘tideflats,’ and during the daytime it was a semi-busy area close to Seattle… but at night, it transformed into a dark, deserted place that was known for attracting unsavory individuals that were typically partaking in some sort of illegal activity (aka: it was the perfect place to dump a body). It was strongly believed by investigators that she’d been murdered somewhere else and dumped at the tideflats.

At the time she had been found, Wiles was only wearing stockings and a dress that had been pulled up to her hips, and she was naked from the waist down; her shoes, jacket, and underclothing were found nearby.  According to the Pierce County Coroner Jack Davelaae, her cause of death was strangulation, and detectives said twine had been found wrapped around her neck; she also had noticeable impressions on her wrists, which were an indication that she’d been bound when she was alive. Close to where her remains were found, investigators found a three-foot-long black plastic hose, which is interesting because Warren Leslie Forrest’s first victim said that at one point during her attack her assailant had penetrated with a hose which had been seized as evidence from Warren’s van: it was described as being approximately two inches in diameter and a couple of feet long and was very similar to the one found near Karen’s body (which unfortunately had gotten lost at some point after being brought into evidence).

Just a few weeks prior to her admission to the facility, suspected serial killer Warren Leslie Forrest had been committed after it was determined he had been ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ after he got caught attacking his Lacamas Lake victim, and on January 31, 1975 he was committed to the Western State Mental Hospital in Steilacoom, WA.

Authorities had no other choice than to turn to the public for help in identifying the young victim and turned to the local news: after the story aired some nurses at WSH came through forward and made the positive identification. According to Detective Lieutenant Grenville Legge, the twenty-five-year-old Wiles was last seen at the Western State Penitentiary around 6 PM on Tuesday, February 21. 1975: she had been wearing a blueprint blouse, red and white checkered double-knit slacks, white stockings, blue tennis shoes, and a blue ski jacket. She was 5’8,” weighed around 175 pounds and had long brown hair and blue-grey eyes.

A spokesman for Western State Hospital said that because Wiles had voluntarily entered the facility and was not a minor, they were under no obligation to notify her parents when she left their care. Detective Legge said that in the days that immediately followed her disappearance investigators interviewed hospital employees along with their residents about the activities of Karen on the morning she was last seen; he also said they had ‘briefly’ chased a lead regarding a report of a vehicle with its headlights out that had been seen leaving the area on the evening she was last seen alive (nothing ever came of it).

According to investigators, statements made by Wiles family and other patients at Western State Hospital were ‘conflicting:’ one fellow patient said that in the morning on the day she vanished Karen had told her about her intentions of hitchhiking to Seattle, but this was only if she was able to leave the hospitals grounds; also, according to the same patient, she had returned to her room in the ‘early afternoon’ and changed her clothes. Additionally, a resident of Lakewood, WA came forward and told Pierce County Sheriff’s that they saw a woman that matched Wiles description hitchhiking ‘towards Tacoma’ on Steilacoom Boulevard around 2:30 PM on February 21. 1975… however, they also said that they received several additional reports that she was at a few other locations across Washington at the time as well.

These reports that Karen was seen hitchhiking in the middle of the afternoon are in direct conflict with a finding from the pathologist’s report from her autopsy: the food that had been found in her stomach matched the meal that had been served at Western State Hospital that evening, which took place between 4 PM and 6 PM; they also said that the ‘digestion was not far advanced.’ Which means is her last meal had been at the hospital, then she may have been killed sometime between dinner and 8 PM. Investigators were also looking into several vehicles that were seen near the facility on the day of and after she was last seen alive. The RN’s at the hospital that identified Karen’s remains told detectives that she ‘would do anything to get a drink,’ and had gotten caught with alcohol at the facility before she disappeared. They also said she had ‘self-destruction’ tendencies and had recently ‘superficially’ cut herself. Police passed her picture around in the lower Pacific Avenue bars as well as at the hospital and around the tideflats area where her remains were recovered, but they came up empty handed.

These reports that Karen was seen hitchhiking in the middle of the afternoon are in direct conflict with a finding from the pathologist’s report from her autopsy: the food that had been found in her stomach matched the meal that had been served at Western State Hospital that evening, which took place between 4 PM and 6 PM; they also said that the ‘digestion was not far advanced.’ Which means is her last meal had been at the hospital, then she may have been killed sometime between dinner and 8 PM. Investigators were also looking into several vehicles that were seen near the facility on the day of and after she was last seen alive. The RN’s at the hospital that identified Karen’s remains told detectives that she ‘would do anything to get a drink,’ and had gotten caught with alcohol at the facility before she disappeared. They also said she had ‘self-destruction’ tendencies and had recently ‘superficially’ cut herself. Police passed her picture around in the lower Pacific Avenue bars as well as at the hospital and around the tideflats area where her remains were recovered, but they came up empty handed.

According to ‘Stolen Voices of Dole Valley,’ the murder of Karen Wiles has recently been reopened, and for the first time since her death detectives in Tacoma questioned Warren Leslie Forrest about her death (however all their attempts were unsuccessful, as he refused to answer their questions). The use of a ligature to strangle the victim along with the sexual assault was consistent with Forrest’s MO, and it’s been reported that he worked with Karen in the hospitals kitchen; despite some restrictions (he wasn’t supposed to leave the facilities grounds the first few weeks he was there), he was still somehow able to leave the hospital and he did have access to his vehicle (I also saw he had access to the facilities van).Also, interestingly enough, Warren Forrest’s then wife Sharon claimed he was having an extramarital affair with one of the members of the staff at Western State Hospital, a fact that one of his ‘good friends’ verified when they were interviewed by detectives (he said that her name was Nancy). This is interesting to me, because in 1984 he married one of the nurses at the prison he was incarcerated in (Walla Walla State Penitentiary).

Because of not wanting to write about the same things repeatedly, I’m not going to go over the more commonly discussed victims of Warren Leslie Forrest, only because I have written about them all in the last two articles about him. The use of a ligature to strangle the victim along with the sexual assault was consistent with Forrest’s MO, which targeted young girls and women in the Clark County area of Washington state in the early to middle 1970’s (often those who were hitchhiking or walking alone). He frequently used a blue 1973 Ford Econoline van in his attacks, and in one of his cases where the victim survived, she said that he used a knife to threaten her then he forced her into the back of his vehicle. During abductions, he questioned victims about their age, relationships, and sexual history to assess them according to his own notions of morality. WLF’s preferred torture tool (which was a unique signature in relation to his MO) was an air-powered dart pistol, and he shot his victims with darts as a form of torture before eventually abandoning and/or killing them. He often left the women in remote, heavily wooded areas such as Dole Valley, Lacamas Lake, or Tukes Mountain in a state park (which makes sense, as he worked for the parks department) and they were typically bound with rope or baling twine, and were frequently tied between trees. Forrest’s primary methods of murder were strangulation and stabbing, with wounds that were typically consistent with the use of an ice pick or darts. 

Investigators involved in Karen’s case said that in relation to Warren Leslie Forrest, although circumstantial evidence aligns in the case, it lacks physical proof: Tacoma Detective Sergeant Julie Deer said: ‘there are similarities that one can’t ignore… but we have to have evidence.’ According to current members of the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, the staff at the Western State Hospital didn’t cooperate with the original detectives from the Tacoma Police Department back in 1975, which was detrimental when it came to the investigation. During his interview with Carolyn Osorio, retired Pierce County Police Chief WW Parrott made it clear that investigators were extremely suspicious about the goings on at Western State Hospital in the 1970’s, and the murder investigation hit a wall in 1978 partially due to ‘uncooperative staff, and: ‘investigators were extremely suspicious’ and had been ‘stymied by the staff at Western at every turn.’ Because Wiles was ‘a marginalized woman’ without close family advocates, investigators said her murder sadly became an afterthought, and her case quickly fell to the wayside.

According to the Pierce County Sheriff’s Department, some of the evidence related to Wiles case was either ‘mishandled or lost,’ and crucial biological evidence that could have belonged to the suspect (such as swabs and pantyhose) was lost. Before Tacoma PD Detective Lindsey Wade retired in 2018, she submitted some of Weil’s clothing to a lab in Washington state for DNA testing, along with the twine that had been recovered from around her neck; the results came back as ‘inconclusive,’ meaning no DNA from the suspect had been identified. 

According to Chief Parrott, ‘the majority of my investigation into this homicide was conducted in and about the grounds of Western State Hospital. And I don’t feel I have to capitalize on you the difficulty that one is confronted with when attempting to conduct major investigations at this institution. It’s been my feeling from the mere outset of my investigation into this homicide that the suspects responsible for the demise of Karen Wiles were somehow connected to the hospital in one capacity or another. However, I have yet to be successful in attaching suspicions to any one person.’

Richard Frederick Wiles died at the age of eighty on December 5, 2003 in Burlington, Washington. Karen’s mother Phyllis Irene Wiles passed away at the age of eighty-six on August 18, 2014 at home with her family by her bedside; the mother of five enjoyed crocheting ‘beautiful doilies,’ and loved to bake apple pie (her family’s favorite dessert) for every occasion; cinnamon rolls and pineapple upside down cake were also a specialty of hers. According to her obituary, Phyllis loved animals, country music, movies, and the beautiful flowers that her son was always bringing to her, and she never left home without her earrings on and always wore a heartfelt smile.

Karen’s sister Dianne died at the age of seventy-three on November 29, 2025 at Riverside Village, and according to her obituary, after high school she relocated to Oregon and was a co-owner of ‘His and Her’s Locksmith’ in South Bend for twenty years. Upon retiring Dianne returned to Washington to take care of her mother, and she adored being a mom and grandmother; she also loved to cook and was an avid reader, and had an extensive library of books (she especially was fond of cookbooks).

Both of Karen’s brothers are still alive: after college Stephen relocated to Collierville, Tennessee, and Randy Wiles stayed in Burlington, WA. Her sister Brenda Wiles-Harley is currently residing in Mount Vernon, WA.

Works Cited:
Carolyn Osorio. (September 9, 2025). Stolen Voices of Dole Valley, Episode 5: The Good-Looking Stranger. Taken February 12, 2026 from https://pod.wave.co/