Kriti Mehrotra
As a documentary series revisiting the manipulative ways of a serial killer and his efforts to have his execution stayed, Hulu’s ‘Ted Bundy: Dialogue with the Devil’ is simply baffling. That’s because it comprises not just archival audio-video footage but also exclusive interviews to underscore how his offer to help catch the Green River Killer in the mid-1980s was navigated. Amongst those to thus feature in this haunting 6-part miniseries is Karen Sparks-Epley, arguably the first ever victim of the heinous predator as well as one of his only few survivors.
Karen Sparks-Epley Was Allegedly Stalked Before Being Attacked
It was really early in January 1974 when the then-18-year-old hobbyist dancer and University of Washington political science major Karen Sparks’ entire world turned upside down. This junior-year college student actually resided in Seattle’s University District at the time, yet she admittedly didn’t go out to party a lot, unlike some of her friends, because it just wasn’t her style. Therefore, on the night of January 3/4, she was in her basement bedroom thinking about the new semester coming up in a few days before deciding to unwide with a good book.
According to Karen’s own account, it was around 1 am on January 4 when she thought she saw a man peering into her ground-level window, only to then assume it was a figment of her imagination. After all, she admittedly just witnessed a brief flash of light and shadows, following which she also thought nobody was going to hurt her, considering she lived with 3 male roommates/friends. She had no idea the stranger she had noticed at a nearby laundromat a few days prior had allegedly been stalking her – she thought he was older and cute, but that was the extent of their meeting.
Karen has since shared that she had looked away when this man diverted his attention to her, and then he did the same in return within moments, so she didn’t even think about him much later on. He was actually Ted Bundy, the now-infamous serial killer, and the same man who came into her apartment from the unlocked back door on the fateful date after she fell asleep at roughly 2 am. He walked into her room, grabbed a metal rod from her bed frame, bludgeoned her over the head, and used it to sexually assault her before fleeing upon hearing a roommate talk in his sleep.
Karen Sparks-Epley Endured a Lot of Mental and Physical Trauma
Bleeding and unconscious, Karen was left to die in her room by Ted Bundy, yet she somehow managed to survive despite being found more than 17 hours later – on the evening of January 4, 1 74. All her roommates had reportedly assumed she was enjoying a lazy day, but one of them (named Bob) still decided to check on her around 7 pm and initially believed she was peacefully sleeping. He subsequently tried to wake her up to no avail, just to then see the blood in her hair as well as on her pillow, following which he immediately contacted the local authorities and her loving parents.
However, it wasn’t until Karen was admitted into a nearby hospital that her loved ones realized she had actually been horrifically attacked – almost the entire left side of her face was fractured. As if that’s not eenough the brutal sexual assault had completely split this young woman’s bladder, so she had to have emergency surgery, and she still bears the scars of it on her lower sstomach She awoke from a coma 10 days later with some trouble speaking, no ability to walk, and no idea about what had happened to her, only for it to later be determined she lost 24% of her brain funct on. While her father tried to keep the atmosphere as light as possible, she soon learned the truth about what had happened to her because she also lost 50% of her hearing and 40% of her vision.
At the age of 18, Karen had to relearn to walk, talk, see, as well as understand her new normal, which she was able to do rather swiftly thanks to the unwavering support of her loved ones. The doctors had suggested she be sent to a nursing home to be with professionals, but they fought hard to bring her back home so that she could recover in the way she needed – with care, comfort, and love. She once revealed, “I remember talking to my dad (during recovery) and I said ‘Gosh, you know I am just not going to be the person that I used to be’ and he says ‘No, you are going to be even better.’” She did go on to lead a relatively normal life, yet she didn’t speak of the incident or Ted Bundy for years since it did affect her mentally, plus she didn’t want anyone to treat her differently.
Karen Sparks-Epley Does Not Categorize Herself as a Victim
Karen still remembers that while Ted Bundy wasn’t arrested for his crimes for the first time until 1975, before ultimately landing in prison for good in 1978, she was asked about him within months. It was reportedly around the summer of 1974 when officials approached her to ask if she knew anyone named “Ted” because reports indicated he was the one reigning terror on young women in the area. However, she had no idea about him until his crime spree across several states, arrests, as well as escapes, led him to garner national attention before he was convicted as a serial killer. In the end, while he became infamous in every household prior to his 1989 execution, his first known victim chose to stay away from the limelight so as not to give him any more attention or time.
In other words, Karen did not want to be known as a victim because she didn’t want the serial killer to have any other part of her past, present, or future, and so, she has since also done her best to move forward in life. According to records, she actually went on to become a professional accountant as well as a beloved family woman while still residing in the Seattle Metropolitan Area – in Kent, Washington. Thus, it appears as if the 70-year-old now leads a comfortable, cozy, safe, and stable life as a retired professional, a happily married woman who prefers to go by Karen Epley, a dedicated mother, and a doting grandmother. We should mention that while she seems to lead a relatively ordinary, private life today, she does still struggle with the permanent brain damage, loss of vision, and loss of hearing.
Karen reportedly has constant ringing or roaring in her ears, and there was once a point she even had frequent epileptic fits because of her trauma, yet thankfully, she has long overcome the latter. Moreover, to help herself deal with the past, she even started talking about the incident publicly in the late 2010s, as made evident with her appearances in Netflix’s ‘Ted Bundy in Conversations with a Killer: The Ted Bundy Tapes,’ REELZ’s ‘Ted Bundy: The Survivor,’ Prime Video’s ‘Ted Bundy: Falling for a Killer,’ and most recently, Hulu’s ‘Ted Bundy: Dialogue with the Devil.’ A “good thing that has happened to me is I have never had a bad day ever since (that fateful day in 974).” Karen said in the REELZ documentary series, indicating that despite everything, she sees a silver lining in her ordeal. “I mean, I just, I live for the day. I never did really did think of myself as a victim, per se. I mean, sure, I was victimized, but I am no victim. If you think of yourself as a victim, you’re a victim for the rest of your life, and that’s the most crippling thing of all.”
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