Ep. 1: The Tapes

Summary

Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery - Episode 1: The Tapes

Hosts: Bobby Sands and Mike Boettcher
Producer: ABC News
Release Date: November (50th anniversary of Karen Silkwood’s death)

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Introduction

In the gripping premiere of "Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery," hosts Bobby Sands and Mike Boettcher delve into the enigmatic and tragic death of Karen Silkwood, a courageous whistleblower whose demise continues to spark controversy fifty years later. This episode, titled "The Tapes," uncovers newly discovered investigative materials that shed fresh light on the circumstances surrounding Karen’s fatal car crash.

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Discovery of the Tapes

The episode opens with Bobby Sands and Mike Boettcher recounting their dramatic discovery of "Silkwood Storage," a crucial finding in their quest to unravel the mystery:

• Bobby Sands (00:06): "Last year, my buddy Mike and I found ourselves inside a giant warehouse with hundreds of big wooden storage containers..."

• Mike Boettcher (00:17): "It felt like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie..."

Amidst ordinary items like old toys and photo albums, they uncover a box labeled "Silkwood Storage" containing cassette tapes from the 1970s and interviews by a private investigator focused on Karen's death. This discovery sets the stage for a deeper investigation into whether Karen's death was purely accidental or if foul play was involved.

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Background on Karen Silkwood

Karen Silkwood was a 28-year-old lab analyst at Kerr McGee, a prominent nuclear fuel production plant in Oklahoma. She became increasingly concerned about unsafe working conditions, including:

• Leaks and spills of radioactive materials
• Insufficient training for workers handling plutonium
• Falsification of quality control reports

Karen’s persistent efforts to expose these hazards positioned her as nuclear energy’s first whistleblower. Her activism was unprecedented, especially during a time when blowing the whistle against a large corporation like Kerr McGee was rare and risky.

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Karen's Tragic Death

On November 13, 1974, Karen was en route to meet New York Times reporter David Burnham to deliver crucial evidence about the plant’s safety violations. However, she never arrived. Instead, she died in a single-car crash on a dark, isolated Oklahoma highway. The official story attributes her death to falling asleep at the wheel, possibly influenced by drugs, leading to her vehicle veering off the road and crashing into a ditch.

• Bobby Sands (02:07): "But she never made it to that meeting."
• Karen's Boyfriend, Drew Stevens (06:26): "They're killing me. They're trying to kill me."

Despite the official narrative, Bobby and Mike have long doubted its veracity, believing that Karen may have been silenced for the information she was poised to reveal.

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Bobby and Mike’s Investigation Journey

Bobby Sands and Mike Boettcher, seasoned journalists with decades of experience, reflect on their initial encounters and their enduring commitment to uncovering the truth behind Karen’s death.

• Bobby Sands (02:36): "We're two old gray guys who've been in this journalism game a very, very long time."

• Mike Boettcher (07:25): "Oklahoma Cityans consider themselves halfway from anywhere this morning. They were right in the middle of hell."

Their careers have been marked by covering significant and often harrowing events, from grisly murders to the Oklahoma City bombing. Now, they channel their investigative prowess into solving the Karen Silkwood mystery, fueled by the belief that justice has yet to be served.

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Interviews and Insights

1. Linda Silkwood Vincent (Karen’s Sister): Linda provides a heartfelt portrayal of Karen’s character, emphasizing her intelligence, bravery, and dedication both as a sister and a mother.

• Linda Silkwood Vincent (16:08): "Girls didn't take chemistry class... But she was like, I say, she was the only girl in her chemistry class."

She recounts Karen’s passion for science and her role as a pioneer in a male-dominated field. Linda also sheds light on Karen's tumultuous marriage and her eventual decision to leave her husband to protect her children.

2. Michael Meadows (Karen’s Son): Michael shares his personal struggle with the absence of his mother and his determination to uncover the truth about her death.

• Michael Meadows (13:55): "Was it a single car accident? Did she simply fall asleep at the wheel? Or did she... Was she forced off of the road?"

He expresses the emotional void left by Karen’s early death and his hope to finally understand what truly happened that night.

3. Steve Watka (Former Union Staffer): Steve, a retired attorney and former member of the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union (OCAW), has been meticulously collecting FBI documents and preserving crucial evidence related to Karen’s case.

• Steve Watka (24:48): "There was 599 file items. That's just FBI."

He discusses the cassette tapes he holds, containing Karen’s voice and alarming revelations about the plant’s operations, including the lack of proper safeguards for workers handling plutonium.

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Critical Evidence and Theories

The hosts delve into the contents of the discovered tapes, which include Karen’s own voice expressing grave concerns about the plant’s safety practices. The tapes reveal:

• Karen’s Worry (26:46): *"She says this plant is essentially being operated by a bunch of kids, 18 and 19 year old kids..."}

• Accumulating Risks (27:13): "She was concerned that she and her co workers didn't get enough information or training at the plant."

These recordings suggest that Karen was deeply aware of the long-term health risks posed by plutonium exposure and the negligent practices at Kerr McGee. Her intent to expose the truth may have made her a target for those wanting to conceal the company's failings.

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The Fateful Night

The episode meticulously reconstructs the events of November 13, 1974:

1. Last Activities:

   • Karen attends a union meeting at the Hub Cafe, where she discusses her findings and prepares to deliver the evidence to David Burnham.

2. The Crash:

   • While driving her white Honda Civic with her boyfriend Drew Stevens, Karen veers off Highway 74, crashing into a concrete culvert wall.
   • Bobby Sands (34:18): "Her car drove into a ditch and smashed head on into the concrete retaining wall of a culvert."

3. Aftermath:

   • By the time Bobby, Mike, Steve, and Burnham arrive at the crash site, the evidence Karen intended to deliver is gone, and only her paycheck remains in the mud.

This pivotal moment underscores the mystery surrounding her death—whether it was a tragic accident or a deliberate act to silence her.

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Conclusion and Next Steps

As the episode wraps up, Bobby and Mike emphasize the lingering questions about Karen Silkwood’s death and their commitment to uncovering the truth using the newly discovered tapes and evidence.

• Bobby Sands (38:41): "What exactly was Karen uncovering about Kermagee? What secrets could those documents have held? That's next time."

• Mike Boettcher (38:51): "Radioactive The Karen Silkwood Mystery is a production of ABC Audio..."

The episode sets the stage for future installments, promising deeper exploration into the tapes, interviews with new witnesses, and further investigation into the unresolved aspects of Karen Silkwood’s story.

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Notable Quotes

• Bobby Sands (00:06): "We were definitely searching for lost treasure, hoping one of these storage containers would hold the key to a 50 year old mystery."

• Steve Watka (26:36): "She was concerned that she and her co workers didn't get enough information or training at the plant."

• Michael Meadows (23:44): "Nobody came forward and said, hey, we did it. Nobody admitted wrongdoing."

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Credits

Produced by ABC Audio in collaboration with Standing Bear Entertainment. Acknowledgments to the ABC News Investigative Unit, University of Oklahoma’s Gaylord College of Journalism, and all contributors who facilitated the uncovering of Karen Silkwood’s story.

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Stay tuned for Episode 2, where Bobby and Mike will delve deeper into the content of the newly discovered tapes, featuring Karen’s own voice and revealing crucial insights into her final days.

Transcript

[Bobby Sands]

Last year, my buddy Mike and I found ourselves inside a giant warehouse with hundreds of big wooden storage containers stacked floor to ceiling.

[Mike Boettcher]

It felt like a scene from an Indiana Jones movie. You know, the one where the government stores the lost ark in a massive warehouse filled with crates where it'll never be found.

[Bobby Sands]

Well, we were definitely searching for lost treasure, hoping one of these storage containers would hold the key to a 50 year old mystery. Okay, it's coming out.

[Mike Boettcher]

We pulled out box after box, each one sealed with layers of thick packing tape.

[Bobby Sands]

There were boxes of toys and old family photo albums. And a somewhat creepy ventriloquist dummy. Let me get this out of the way. I can't see what it says. And then. Mike, you found it.

[Mike Boettcher]

What?

[Bobby Sands]

Silkwood Storage.

[Mike Boettcher]

The very last box in the very back corner.

[Bobby Sands]

Big as Dallas. Holy cow. I got goosebumps on the outside. In black Sharpie was the name Silkwood? Yeah, it's all here. Holy Mac.

[Mike Boettcher]

This is what we've been looking for. Hope. Cassette tapes recorded in the 1970s. Interviews a private investigator had made looking into a mysterious death.

[Bobby Sands]

The death of Karen Silkwood. Karen died in a single car crash off a dark, empty oklahoma highway exactly 50 years ago this November. She was on her way to meet a New York Times journalist, reportedly to hand over documents she'd secretly been collecting at her job at a nuclear facility.

[Mike Boettcher]

But she never made it to that meeting.

[Bobby Sands]

On the way, Karen fell asleep at the wheel, possibly under the influence of drugs, drove off the highway, crashed into a ditch and died.

[Mike Boettcher]

Or at least that's the official story. We've never believed it, not for one second. From ABC Audio, this is Radioactive. The Karen Silkwood Mystery. Episode one the Tapes.

[Bobby Sands]

I'm Bobby Sands.

[Mike Boettcher]

And I'm Mike Boettcher.

[Bobby Sands]

We're two old gray guys who've been in this journalism game a very, very long time. Mike and I met as young reporters at competing Oklahoma news outlets. We were both on the scene of a hostage situation back in 1973. Bullets were whizzing past our heads. I dove off the end of a flatbed trailer. And what does this crazy character do? He stood there holding a microphone in the air, trying to catch the sound of the bullets flying by. I said to myself, that's a guy I gotta get hooked up with. And we've been buddies ever since.

[Mike Boettcher]

By 1974, Bobby and I were working in the same newsroom, KTOK commercial radio in Oklahoma City. We wrote news copy on typewriters, and stories came in from across the country on the AP wire machine. When breaking News hit the alarm on the Teletype machine would go off.

[Bobby Sands]

That summer, reporting came through that KTOK newsroom about a 28 year old union organizer making noise about safety conditions at a local nuclear facility.

[Mike Boettcher]

Karen Silkwood was a lab analyst at a nuclear fuel production plant. It made the plutonium fuel rods to power a new kind of nuclear reactor, part of a multimillion dollar experiment to supercharge nuclear energy. And when she began to notice unsafe working conditions, leaks, spills, coworkers getting contaminated with radioactive material, over and over again, she spoke up, tried to change things, make them better.

[Bobby Sands]

Karen was a rank and file worker, one of only a few women who worked in that plant. And yet here she was, standing up to her employer, Kerr McGee, an atomic energy giant.

[Mike Boettcher]

Karen became nuclear energy's first whistleblower, though the term whistleblower was just starting to be used. This was at a time when the idea of someone inside of a big corporation exposing alleged misdeeds was shocking.

[Bobby Sands]

And so when news of Karen's death broke in November of 74, when that bell dinged on the wire, I paid really close attention.

[Mike Boettcher]

We would have loved to investigate Karen's death, but Bobby and I were too young and too green then to dive headfirst into such a complex story. There was mystery and controversy swirling all around it.

[Bobby Sands]

Over the years, we kept a close eye on the Silkwood case. And for a time, so did the rest of the country. For much of the next half hour.

[Mike Boettcher]

I'd like to look with you at.

[Michael Meadows]

A real life whodunit.

[Steve Watka]

Karen Silkwood, a young woman who tried to expose the dangers at a plutonium plant in Oklahoma.

[Mike Boettcher]

She died in a car crash on the way to deliver documents allegedly about.

[Bobby Sands]

Safety abuses that the plant tour reported.

[Steve Watka]

The official reports don't reveal that Karen Silkwood was a person caught up in a power struggle. Bluntly stated, she was spying on her employer.

[Mike Boettcher]

There was an investigation by the Oklahoma Highway Patrol, an FBI investigation, a civil lawsuit, several appeals, a congressional hearing, and two appearances before the Supreme Court of the United States. Did I miss anything, Bobby?

[Bobby Sands]

Well, there were also investigations by several news outlets. And Karen's story got lots more attention in 1983 with the release of the Hollywood movie Silkwood, based on her life. Meryl Streep starred as Karen, actually got Streep an Oscar nomination.

[Mike Boettcher]

They're killing me. They're trying to kill me.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

They want me to stop what I'm doing.

[Mike Boettcher]

In the real life version of Silkwood, Karen became an icon for the labor movement, the women's movement and the Nascent anti nukes movement with vigils for Karen years after her death. Karen Silkwood, today we thank you.

[Bobby Sands]

We honor your memory. We will try to make that truth known as you did. We will not forget you. Mike and I held onto Silkwood over the years as we covered countless other stories.

[Mike Boettcher]

Investigations into grisly murders. Storm chasing through tornado alley.

[Bobby Sands]

I was standing outside a home that was just completely flattened. The car is on its roof. There was war reporting overseas. And the Oklahoma City bombing, which shook our home state and the country. We covered that for NBC.

[Mike Boettcher]

Oklahoma Cityans consider themselves halfway from anywhere this morning. They were right in the middle of hell.

[Bobby Sands]

And then a couple of years ago, we decided to try and pick back up with Silkwood, do the job we would have loved to have taken on as cub reporters 50 years ago.

[Mike Boettcher]

Because it didn't feel like any of the many investigations in the 70s and 80s had gotten it right. None of them were able to once and for all disprove the Highway Patrol's official narrative of a single car crash.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

It appeared at the scene and from the physical evidence at the scene that.

[Michael Meadows]

She ran off the road by herself.

[Bobby Sands]

To us, there seemed to be more to Karen's story. And we weren't the only ones who suspected it. It's a widely held belief Karen Sokwood died for what she knew. So what had Karen uncovered? Who had she upset? Why did her car hit that concrete wall? Was there a second vehicle involved?

[Mike Boettcher]

We just can't seem to shake the idea that justice hasn't come for Karen yet. But maybe it will.

[Bobby Sands]

There are fewer and fewer people alive to share what they know from the night Karen died. Many of the people who worked with Karen in the plant are dead.

[Mike Boettcher]

Plus, even 50 years later, some people are still reluctant to talk about what happened. Hello?

[Bobby Sands]

Yes, ma'am. My name is Bob Sands. I'm a producer. I produce documentaries. Have you got just a moment to chat with me?

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

What is it about?

[Bobby Sands]

It's about the death of Karen Silkwood.

[Mike Boettcher]

It's not anything I can talk about.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

I'm sworn to secrecy. It's not anything I can talk about.

[Bobby Sands]

Well, see, this is the kind of stuff I want to sit down and talk with you about on camera. Sarah, I don't want to go on camera. I'm not going to testify to anything too long ago.

[Mike Boettcher]

But we've got some new leads. Like something Bobby's been holding onto for decades.

[Bobby Sands]

In the mid-90s, about 20 years after Karen's death, I was handed a secret tape with the instruction I could not reveal its contents until certain people named in the tapes died. Well, that time has come. We'll hear what an investigator was trying to shed light on decades ago and what he came up against.

[Michael Meadows]

He did advise me that this could.

[Steve Watka]

Become very dangerous and that my life could possibly be in danger if we.

[Mike Boettcher]

Got deeply involved in this and we found people brave enough to talk. People who can shed light on who Karen was and what she was learning about the place where she worked.

[Bobby Sands]

And people with clues that could possibly help solve the puzzle of her death. People who've been holding on to the old investigative tapes we dug out of storage, and even physical evidence from the night she died. In one case, an accident investigator saved a crucial piece of Karen's wrecked car, even making sure to pass it on to his daughter on his deathbed with the idea that someday someone could figure out what really happened to Karen. That someday someone would come looking for it.

[Mike Boettcher]

Well, here we come.

[Bobby Sands]

In the dry states of the Southwest, there's a group that's been denied a basic human right in the Navajo Nation. Today, a third of our households don't have running water. But that's not something they chose for themselves. Can the Navajo people reclaim their right to water and contend with the government's legacy of control and neglect?

[Mike Boettcher]

Our water. Our future. Our water. Our future.

[Bobby Sands]

That's in the next season of Reclaim the Lifeblood of Navajo Nation. Listen now, wherever you get your podcasts.

[Mike Boettcher]

So 9:08, and this is where your mother, Karen Silkwood, lived. Wow, you've been here before?

[Michael Meadows]

Not since I was 4 years old.

[Mike Boettcher]

Michael Meadows was just 5 years old when his mother, Karen Silkwood, died. We met outside the apartment where Karen spent her final months. It's a plain red brick one story building broken up into a few apartments, each with a front door opening onto a small shared lawn. So what do you. Do you remember anything about when you came here when you were a kid?

[Michael Meadows]

So over the years, I've described a breakfast at a kitchen island bar piece where one side is the kitchen, one side were two bar stools. And I can remember my older sister and I having breakfast, just cereal of some sort at that bar.

[Bobby Sands]

Michael doesn't remember much about his mom. He has a few fragmented memories, that breakfast. A trip to the zoo, maybe a trip to the state fair. Though he's not sure about that last one. Looking at Karen's old apartment makes him feel like some of those memories he's been grasping for could be unlocked if he could only see through the apartment's brick walls. And 50 years into the past.

[Michael Meadows]

Sunday night, we can't see inside, but, you know, it's tempting to want to go peek in the window and see if anything flashes or if I remember anything from that long ago.

[Mike Boettcher]

Instead of memories of his mom, Michael's got black and white photos, newspaper clippings, police reports. If he tries to picture his mom or imagine what she was like, the image in his head is actually Meryl Streep's portrayal of Karen in the 1983 movie Silkwoods.

[Michael Meadows]

That movie came out when I was 14, 15 years old. I didn't understand how Hollywood worked. So, you know, Meryl was Karen in my head. Jokingly, my daughters refer to Meryl affectionately as Grandma. You know, Hollywood played such a key role in how we view everything. So I kind of drew myself to think, right, so that's who she was.

[Bobby Sands]

Michael is a former Marine, and four years ago, he started his own investigation into how his mom died, how her car smashed into that concrete culvert wall. And he shares a suspicion other people have.

[Michael Meadows]

Was it a single car accident? Did she simply fall asleep at the wheel? Or did she. Was she forced off of the road and struggling to get back on and not seeing the concrete culver in the dark in front of her, smashing into it and ending her life? There's never been a definitive answer. Both sides told a very different story that night of what happened. And as her son, I would like to have a definitive answer of what really took place.

[Mike Boettcher]

You know, in my mind, just thinking about you, you're a former Marine, and it sounds like you're a Marine on a mission, right.

[Michael Meadows]

With his hands tied, which, you know, it's, I'll take what I can get, but I don't know that I'm going to have all of the tools I need for this particular mission.

[Mike Boettcher]

Why are your hands tied? How are they tied? What ties them?

[Michael Meadows]

The fact that there's still so many people afraid to tell what they know or what they've heard. It's amazing to me that 50 years later, a company that barely even exists, if it does exist at all, still has that kind of control or that kind of intimidation.

[Mike Boettcher]

The company, the one Karen worked for, was Kerr McGee, named for its powerful leaders, Robert Kerr and Dean McGee in Oklahoma.

[Michael Meadows]

Kerr McGee was Oklahoma. You know, you can't go downtown and not step on their streets. There's the Dean McGee of the Robert Kerr boulevards intersectioning down by the courthouse. So, I mean, Kerr McGee helped build.

[Bobby Sands]

Oklahoma back in the early 1970s. Kerr McGee was a Goliath in Oklahoma and in America's oil and gas industry. But if Kermogee was Goliath, Karen never set out to be David, though she certainly became one.

[Mike Boettcher]

She took the job at the nuclear plant because she needed a job and the company was one of the biggest employers in the area. But also Karen loved science.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

She was the only girl in her chemistry class, which was kind of back then, was unusual.

[Bobby Sands]

That's Linda Silkwood Vincent, Karen's youngest sister.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

Girls didn't take chemistry class. You know, you took homemaking and those kind of things. You were going to be a housewife. But she was like I say, she was the only girl in her chemistry class, so.

[Bobby Sands]

So she had dreams.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

She planned on doing something with her life. You know, it just took a little detour for Lois.

[Mike Boettcher]

And that was a guy. Yeah.

[Bobby Sands]

We met Linda and Karen's other sister, Rosemary Silkwood Smith, at Rosemary's home, 30 minutes east of Houston. We wanted to get a better picture of who Karen was as a young woman before she turned into the fearless whistleblower.

[Mike Boettcher]

We know Rosemary and Linda treated us to cookies and coffee and we reminisced about their big sister. Karen was six years older than Rosemary and 13 years older than Linda. And boy did Karen take to that role of big sister.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

When Linda was born, that was like her baby. She was so tickled. She was very affectionate. She was a very loving and caring person.

[Bobby Sands]

Karen took care of people. She would help friends with her schoolwork and volunteered as a candy striper at the hospital. But Karen also liked living on the edge a little bit. She was gutsy.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

Football stadium was across the street and we used to climb that tree and get on the roof and watch the football gang.

[Bobby Sands]

And she taught you how to drive?

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

Yes, in a 64 Volkswagen Bug with the 4 on the floor.

[Bobby Sands]

How old were you?

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

12.

[Mike Boettcher]

And later in life, Karen raced cars and was pretty good at it, too. In her white Honda Civic.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

She had told me that she had raced and won that trophy and I said, you're racing your little car.

[Mike Boettcher]

Karen got a scholarship for college, but dropped out against her parents wishes to marry Bill Meadows, an oil pipeline worker and motorcycle lover that she'd met a year earlier.

[Bobby Sands]

Well, Mary isn't quite right. With her being 19 and Bill only 18, no one would legally marry them without their parents permission.

[Mike Boettcher]

But the two teenagers were headstrong and determined it became a common law marriage.

[Bobby Sands]

Karen's son Michael says his mom was stubborn. For better or worse, she'd get into heated debates with her father in law. Michael says other People would have been intimidated to challenge this big, accomplished, headstrong Navy vet. Not Karen.

[Michael Meadows]

He's like, yeah, you know, everybody else would get up and leave the room because they thought we were legitimately mad at each other. He said, she just believed what she believed, and I believed and I believe, and neither one would back down. So I always found that interesting where I get my stubbornness from, although my father's got it, too. So I get it from both sides of the family.

[Bobby Sands]

In the early days, life with Bill was exciting. Bill Meadows talked about those early days in an AE documentary from 2001 called Karen Silkwood A Life on the Line. We used to go down to Lake Dallas and jump off of the railroad trestle in the lake, which was about 40, 50ft high.

[Steve Watka]

She kept doing that.

[Bobby Sands]

The last time she did, she was.

[Steve Watka]

I think, seven months pregnant with Christie.

[Mike Boettcher]

Christie was the couple's first child. Two years after Christie, they had Michael. Then a year later, another daughter, Dawn. By the time Karen was 24, she had three babies to take care of. Like lots of people in oil country, the couple moved around a lot in those first few years, but landed in Duncan, Oklahoma.

[Bobby Sands]

Bill Meadows told us that in his marriage to Karen, when things were good, they were very good, and when they were bad, they were very bad.

[Mike Boettcher]

Karen's sisters also remember highs and lows.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

She tried to come home more than once. The first time, Bill came and got her, and the second time he brought his dad with him, and she went back with him then, and then she just decided that was going to be her life.

[Mike Boettcher]

We reached out to Bill Meadows through his daughter dawn, who is his caretaker. He didn't dispute going to get Karen when she left, and he said he did bring his father with him the second time.

[Bobby Sands]

To her sisters, Karen seemed resigned to stay in the marriage. But then she found out about something else.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

She found out that he was having an affair.

[Mike Boettcher]

After that, Karen decided she had to leave. And she decided to leave the kids.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

With Bill because she knew his family could provide for them better, take better care of them. He was never going to let her win at that.

[Mike Boettcher]

In August 1972, Karen moved out. She gave Bill an uncontested divorce. Her children were 5, 3, and almost 2 years old.

[Bobby Sands]

A mother giving up custody of her kids was really unusual in the early 1970s. And it's something that after Karen's death, would be used against her to try and paint her as a bad mother and a bad person. Rosemary and Linda say Karen absolutely loved her children.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

Her eyes would just shine when she was around the kids and she truly loved her children.

[Mike Boettcher]

Michael says he doesn't hold his mother's leaving against her. He only saw her a few times in the 18 months after the divorce and before she died. But he feels like she fought for him and his sisters. For him. What's hard has been missing the chance to know his mom for himself, not someone else's version of her.

[Michael Meadows]

It's odd because sometimes I get overwhelmed with emotions and I don't have anything to tie that to because again, mom was gone when I was really young. She was out of the picture when I was really young. And I'm like, just need a second. I think it's about what I missed, you know, like what the could have. What could have been affects me more than actual sadness of losing her, because I don't have again, I don't have any memories of us together. So I don't. It's not like, gosh, I missed that and, gosh, I missed that. It's.

[Bobby Sands]

Take your time. It's okay.

[Michael Meadows]

My heart knows there's a hole there.

[Bobby Sands]

A hole he's trying to fill by learning all he can about the woman who never got to raise him, about her life and her death.

[Michael Meadows]

Nobody came forward and said, hey, we did it. Nobody admitted wrongdoing. I mean, it was swept under the rug. So for the family, the reason we're still talking about it, the reason I'm still talking about it is because I would love for, in my lifetime, I would like to know what happened. You know, I don't. I don't expect at this point in time, 50 years later, for there to be a perp walk, somebody in handcuffs saying, I did it. That's. That's not what we're looking for. We just want to know if anybody out there knows what happened. What happened.

[Bobby Sands]

That's precisely what we've been trying to figure out.

[Mike Boettcher]

So we're returning to the people who have the best chance of knowing the ones still alive, who still hold part of Karen Silkwood story. Just like Karen's son Michael, Steve Watka has been gathering pieces of the Silkwood puzzle too.

[Steve Watka]

Okay, so here. This is my FBI investigation documents. Everything's in cryological order.

[Mike Boettcher]

Steve met Karen in the early 1970s. He was a young staffer working for the labor union that represented Karen and other workers at the plant, the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union, or the ocaw. Back then. His hair was black and wavy and he had a thick walrus style mustache.

[Bobby Sands]

So very 70s of him. These days, Steve's Got a head of white hair and a full gray beard. He recently retired from his career as an attorney advocating for people with work related cancer. He's now spending his retirement in a small New Jersey beach town, trying to figure out what happened to Karen Silkwood 50 years ago. Filing Freedom of Information requests with federal agencies, poring over decades old legal documents and files with ink that's faded but still legible.

[Steve Watka]

So there's 599 file items. That's just FBI.

[Bobby Sands]

Steve also has the only recordings we've been able to find of Karen's voice.

[Steve Watka]

Okay, now talking to Karen Silkwood. And Today is Monday, October 7th. All right, now what about this getting to these kids, Joking about getting hot.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

We've got 18 and 19 year old boys, you know, 20 and 21, I mean, and they don't, they didn't have a schooling, so they don't understand what radiation is. They don't, they don't understand Steve. They don't understand.

[Mike Boettcher]

Steve held onto these recordings for 50 years and at this point he's replayed the call so many times he basically has it memorized.

[Steve Watka]

She says this plant is essentially being operated by a bunch of kids, 18 and 19 year old kids, kids that were hired off of the local farms who didn't know anything about radioactive materials and what's going to happen to them as they grow up and this material is inside of them.

[Bobby Sands]

At the time of this call, Karen was still learning about the effects of repeated exposure to radioactive materials.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

But Steve's going on every day. So it accumulates, doesn't it?

[Bobby Sands]

Sure as hell does. She was concerned that she and her co workers didn't get enough information or training at the plant, especially about how plutonium could accumulate in the body over time. You'll hear a lot more from these tapes in the next episode.

[Mike Boettcher]

Karen actually only knew Steve for seven weeks. The last seven weeks of her life. She was in Oklahoma. He was in D.C. working at the OCAW's office there. But they got to know each other pretty well.

[Steve Watka]

She was strong. I mean, she knew she was on the right side of things. And what was going on in the plant was wrong. And I think that gave her her strength.

[Bobby Sands]

Though brief, those seven weeks would wind up changing the course of both of their lives. It all started with Karen's concerns about the plant. She claimed things there were sloppy and unsafe at Kerber McGee's nuclear facility in Crescent, Oklahoma. Plutonium, the stuff she and other assembly line workers were handling, has a half life of up to 20,000 years. Getting contaminated with that stuff can have major health consequences.

[Steve Watka]

The belief is that intense radiation that goes on essentially for the rest of the person's life causes lung cancer. So the handling of plutonium is supposed to be very strict. There's supposed to be essentially no contact whatsoever with this material. There's always supposed to be a barrier between the worker and plutonium. And what was going on in this plant was that barrier with being breached on a daily basis.

[Mike Boettcher]

Then Karen and a co worker raised some even bigger concerns about wrongdoing at the plant, that important quality control reports were being falsified. Concerns that, if true, meant the health and safety of a lot more people was at risk, well beyond people who worked at the plant.

[Bobby Sands]

But a claim like that, they'd need evidence, company documents.

[Steve Watka]

And Karen said, I'll do it. I'll pull it together. And we say to her, well, okay, report back to me, but keep your profile low or non existent. No one should know that you're doing this.

[Bobby Sands]

No one should know. So Karen went back to Oklahoma and started quietly looking for evidence. She told Steve over the phone that things were coming together and she'd be able to prove it. So he began looking for an investigative reporter. That's where legendary New York Times reporter David Burnham came in.

[Mike Boettcher]

They called me up and said, you ought to go to Oklahoma and meet this woman who has good information on a scandal going there where the Kerm McGee, which was the company that owned a lot of nuclear processing plants, was messing up. David Burnham passed away In October of 2024, just a few months after this interview. In the late 60s, early 70s, Burnham uncovered police corruption in the NYPD and then reported on Congress and federal agencies like the one overseeing Karen's job as an atomic worker.

[Bobby Sands]

When the union tried to get Burnham interested in the story, at first he didn't bite.

[Mike Boettcher]

It was not quite on my beat and I said, no thank you. And the bureau chief undid that answer and said, you're going out to Oklahoma City.

[Bobby Sands]

So there it was. Burnham was going to OKC.

[Mike Boettcher]

Karen was set to meet Steve and Burnham on November 13, 1974 at 8:00 in the evening at the Northwest Holiday Inn in Oklahoma City. The plan was she'd turn over the evidence to Burnham, documents she'd been secretly collecting, and he'd expose Kerr McGee to the whole country. When Steve asked Karen if she was reluctant or hesitant in any way, she was clear.

[Steve Watka]

She said, I'll be ready.

[Bobby Sands]

Karen was going to blow the whistle on this energy giant. Her life was going to change and everything around her was going to change. But none of that happened.

[Mike Boettcher]

Instead, here's what we know from that night.

[Bobby Sands]

From around 5:30 to 7pm Karen was at a union meeting at the Hub Cafe, a greasy spoon and Crescent not far from the plant. She drank an iced tea and aside from making a brief presentation to her fellow plant workers, she didn't say much that night. A friend and fellow Kermagee plant worker Jean Young spotted Karen at the meeting leafing through a stack of documents.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

She sat right over the table by herself. Then she kept flipping through the papers.

[Mike Boettcher]

You know, this is from a 1980 interview for a documentary about Karen. Jean told the filmmakers that she talked with Karen right before she left the Hub Cafe.

[Linda Silkwood Vincent]

I asked her how she felt and you know, that's the first time I'd ever noticed Karen a bit nervous. You know, we stood right there in the Hub and we talked and she told me, she said I've got everything together. And she did. Well, I swear to God, in front of God, you know she had it.

[Mike Boettcher]

Gene also gave a sworn affidavit about that night. About how Karen had a manila folder with her about an inch thick full of papers. She said some of them were typewritten pages. Others were heavier, like photographs.

[Bobby Sands]

Then Karen left and got into her 1973 white Honda Civic to drive the 30 miles to meet Steve and Burnham who were waiting for her at the hotel. With her boyfriend Drew Stevens, she headed.

[Mike Boettcher]

South toward Oklahoma City on State Highway 74. It was a road Karen knew well. She traveled it nearly every day to get to and from work. A narrow two lane roadway with steep shoulders and prairie on either side. On that night, Highway 74 was dark and empty.

[Bobby Sands]

Karen was seven miles from Crescent when her Honda Civic went from the right lane of the highway across to the left and off the road onto the grass along the road's shoulder.

[Mike Boettcher]

Her car drove into a ditch and smashed head on into the concrete retaining wall of a culvert. Basically a big wide drainage channel running under the road.

[Bobby Sands]

Law enforcement estimated that the moment of impact happened around 7:30 that night. The collision crumpled the front end of Karen's small two door Honda, making the windshield fly out and leaving the vehicle sitting on its left side in the red mud of the ditch.

[Mike Boettcher]

In pictures, the front end of the car looks like a crushed tin can.

[Bobby Sands]

Karen Silkwood didn't have a chance.

[Mike Boettcher]

The highway patrol was notified of the accident at about 8pm and when the trooper arrived at around 8:15, he noted that Karen's legs were broken. She had dried blood on her face and she appeared to be dead. At around 8:30, an ambulance arrived at the scene. They transferred Karen to Logan County Hospital. She was pronounced dead on arrival around 9pm she was 28 years old.

[Bobby Sands]

When Karen didn't show up for the meeting in Oklahoma City, Steve Watka, David Burnham, the New York Times reporter, Andrew Stevens, Karen's boyfriend, started to get nervous.

[Steve Watka]

So we were there at the the Holiday Inn and we were waiting and waiting.

[Bobby Sands]

It's ours and waiting.

[Mike Boettcher]

And we got more and more and more worried about that. Karen should have showed up by 8:00. By 9, Steve decided to check on her.

[Steve Watka]

And I said, something's wrong. So I ended up making phone calls.

[Bobby Sands]

And finally Steve reached one of Karen's fellow union leaders.

[Steve Watka]

He says to me, steve, I just learned that she was killed in this auto accident. And Drew is like sitting as close to me as you are. And I had to turn to him and say, my God, you know, she's dead.

[Mike Boettcher]

First there was grief, primarily for Drew.

[Steve Watka]

He was devastated and he cried. He cried immediately.

[Mike Boettcher]

Then there was action.

[Bobby Sands]

The union guy, the reporter, the boyfriend, they all had this one impulse to go to Karen.

[Steve Watka]

We all climbed in Burnham's car and we drove up the highway. And I don't know how it is that we found it, but we actually found the site.

[Bobby Sands]

But by that point, Karen and the wrecked Honda, the entire accident scene had been cleaned up.

[Steve Watka]

Nobody was there at that time. We're walking around in the dark. It was cold and windy. And we found her paycheck. I found her paycheck in the mud.

[Mike Boettcher]

He found Karen's paycheck, her Kermagee paycheck in the mud.

[Bobby Sands]

Decades later, Steve still wonders, what if he and Burnham had gone to Karen that night instead of having her come to them?

[Steve Watka]

There's no question that the night of November 13, 1974, she should have stayed right there in Crescent and Burnham and I should have gone up there, found someplace up there, and just talked to her there and not have put her at the vulnerability of driving down the highway. There's no question about that.

[Bobby Sands]

That small decision, it haunts him.

[Steve Watka]

We just didn't perceive the danger.

[Bobby Sands]

By the time Steve, Drew and Burnham arrived at the scene of Karen's crash, just about every trace of her had vanished. Everything except that paycheck in the mud. Karen gone, the car, gone.

[Mike Boettcher]

And crucially, those documents, the one she was supposed to deliver to Steve and Burnham, gone.

[Bobby Sands]

What exactly was Karen uncovering about Kermagee? What secrets could those documents have held? That's next time.

[Mike Boettcher]

Radioactive The Karen Silkwood Mystery is a production of ABC Audio in collaboration with Standing Bear Entertainment. I'm Mike Boetcher. My co host Bob Sands and I served as consulting producers on this podcast along with Brent Dones. Thanks to the ABC News Investigative Unit and investigator producer Jenny Wagner, Courts chief investigative reporter Josh Margolin, reporter producer Sasha Pesnick and Associate producer Alexandra Myers. This podcast was written and produced by Vika Aronson. Nancy Rosenbaum was our senior producer. Tracy Samuelson was our story editor, associate producer and fact checker Audrey Mostick story consultant Chris Donovan supervising producer Sasha Azlanian. Original music by Soundboard mixing by Rick Kwan. Arielle Chester was our social media producer. Special thanks to Liz Alessi, Katie Dindos, Cindy Galley and the University of Oklahoma's Gaylord College of Journalism. Josh Cohan is ABC Audio's Director of Podcast programming. Laura Mayer is our executive producer.