On November 13, 1974, police were summoned to the scene of an accident just outside of Oklahoma City. When they arrived, they discovered the car, a 1973 white Honda Civic, had run off the left side of State Highway 74, traveled some distance along the grass shoulder, and then struck the wing wall of a concrete culvert just a few feet south of the intersection with West Industrial Road. Unfortunately, the driver, soon identified as Karen Silkwood, was pronounced dead at the scene. The Oklahoma state trooper at the crash site found a few tablets of the sedative methaqualone (Quaalude) in the car, and what he believed were two marijuana joints. Later, the coroner would report that he found 0.35 milligrams of methaqualone in her blood, far more than what was considered a “therapeutic” dose (.25 mg) but less than what would be toxic (.50 mg).

The Oklahoma Highway Patrol report concluded Silkwood had fallen asleep at the wheel and crashing, resulting in her death.

A tragic but routine accident.

Or was it?

Turns out, Karen Silkwood worked as a technician at a plutonium plant operated by the Kerr-McGee Corporation at their Cimarron River plutonium production plant near Crescent, Oklahoma and had been openly critical of the plant’s health and safety procedures. A member of the local Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers (OCAW) Union, Silkwood discovered numerous violations of health regulations at the Cimarron plant, such as exposure of workers to contamination, faulty respiratory equipment, and improper storage of samples. She believed the lack of sufficient shower facilities was increasing the risk of employee contamination. She also found evidence of missing or misplaced plutonium. And when she discovered most employees had no idea about the link between plutonium exposure and cancer, she worked with national OCAW members to bring scientists to the plant to raise awareness. The OCAW initiated an aggressive whistleblowing campaign, based on Silkwood’s investigation, claiming that “the Kerr-McGee plant had manufactured faulty fuel rods, falsified product inspection records, and risked employee safety”. The union threatened litigation.[3] On September 27, Silkwood testified before the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) about the dangerous working conditions within the plant.

A little over a week before her death, Silkwood was polishing plutonium pellets that would be used to make fuel rods for a “breeder reactor” nuclear-power plant. At about 6:30 P.M., an alpha detector mounted on her glove box (the piece of equipment that was supposed to protect her from exposure to radioactive materials) went off: According to the machine, her right arm was covered in plutonium. Further tests revealed that the plutonium had come from the inside of her gloves—that is, the part of her gloves that was only in contact with her hands, not the pellets. The performance of a routine self-check showed her body at almost 400 times the legal limit for plutonium contamination. She was decontaminated at the plant and sent home with a testing kit to collect urine and feces for further analysis. These, too, were found to be extremely contaminated, which could have only occurred by ingesting plutonium. The next morning, as she left for a union meeting, Silkwood again tested positive for plutonium, although she had performed only paperwork tasks that morning. She was given a more intensive decontamination. On November 7, as she entered the plant, she was found to be severely contaminated, even expelling contaminated air from her lungs. A health physics team accompanied her back to her home and found plutonium traces on several surfaces, especially in the bathroom and the refrigerator. When the house was later stripped and decontaminated, some of her property had to be destroyed.

Although Silkwood’s poor working conditions would allow for some level of contamination, questions arose about how or why the levels were so high for her during that three day period in November. The particular type of plutonium found in Silkwood’s home came from a Cimarron production area, pellet lot 29, where she did not work and did not have access. Silkwood claimed someone working for Kerr-McGee had deliberately contaminated her. Kerr-McGee’s management, on the other hand, alleged that Silkwood had contaminated herself in order to harm the company’s reputation.

On the night she died, Silkwood attended a 5:30 p.m. union meeting, along with ten other members of the OCAW local, at the Hub Cafe in Crescent. Attendees of the meeting testified that, afterward, she was on her way to a meeting with a union representative and a reporter for The New York Times, reportedly with a folder full of documents that proved that Kerr-McGee was acting negligently when it came to worker safety at the plant.

Oklahoma State troopers found none of the documents Silkwood had been holding in her crashed car on State Highway 74.

Suspicious indeed.

Even more suspicious was the findings of the OCAW’s own investigation into the crash. Contrary to the official police report that Silkwood, under the influence of drugs, had fallen asleep behind the wheel, investigator, A. O. Pipkin Jr. discovered that the car had veered from the right lane to left shoulder. In addition, “the steering wheel was bent back on the sides, proving she’d been wide awake and hanging on tight as she tried to maintain control.” Most significantly, Pipkin found damage to the rear of the vehicle which, according to her friends, had not been present before. As the crash was entirely a head-on, front-end collision, it didn’t explain the fresh dents on the left rear fender and the bumper above it. A microscopic analysis of the rear of the car revealed paint chips that could have come only from impact by another vehicle.

Silkwood’s plutonium contamination and the mysterious circumstances of her death became a national news story. It aroused public suspicion and resulted in a federal investigation of Cimarron plant security. Faced with intense scrutiny, Kerr-McGee closed its nuclear fuel plants in 1975.

Silkwood’s father sued Kerr-McGee, although the time leading up to the trial was filled with its own mysterious circumstances and conspiracies. According to Richard Rashke, who wrote a book about the incident entitled The Killing of Karen Silkwood, officials investigating Kerr-McGee’s operations and the circumstances of the car crash were themselves at risk: “People had been tailed and forced off lonely roads by speeding cars. Two shadowy characters about to be subpoenaed suddenly packed up their attaché cases and fled to West Germany. One apparently healthy police officer about to be deposed died of a heart attack. There was no autopsy. Someone tried to murder a Kerr-McGee manager who knew too much. Someone tried to assassinate Bill Taylor, the chief investigator for the legal team representing the Silkwood family. And then there were all those strange clicks on everyone’s telephone.”

Ultimately, Kerr-McGee agreed to settle out of court for US$1.38 million, although they refused to admit liability.

As for those potentially damaging documents Silkwood supposedly had on her possession at the time of the crash?

To this day, they have still never been found.