Bob Sands
Appearances
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
And while he said he didn't do an exhaustive search, Steve could not find a car with a bumper that was low enough to do the job.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve goes back to this idea that law enforcement had that maybe the dent was caused by the tow truck driver who pulled it out of the culvert that night. Pipkin and the FBI tested it for cement residue and didn't find any. But Steve is skeptical.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Where Pipkin thought there was circumstantial evidence to suggest a second car, Steve doesn't see it. Again, he can't definitely rule it out. But as he spoke, I felt the phantom vehicle get even more shadowy.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
And then Karen Silkwood's sister, Rosemary, spoke up. But her question wasn't for Steve. It was for A.O. Pipkin's daughter.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
And it's the culmination of weeks worth of effort, that drive to Albuquerque to photograph the dent in the bumper, collecting every scrap of original evidence we could find from all the different accident reports from Troopers Fagan and Owen, A.O. Pipkin, and the FBI.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve acknowledged the heaviness in the room. For the last two hours, he was explaining Karen Silkwood's fatal car crash in technical terms, the way he might typically do in a courtroom. Now he was speaking to family members who knew the driver of this car, loved her, family members who for years had been grasping for some kind of resolution that kept evading them.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve has told us that's why he does this work. The science can help families know more about what happened and maybe give them some sense of peace. He wasn't able to answer all the questions we had going into this, but he did answer one big one, and Karen's sister Rosemary was grateful for that.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
We took all the photographs, diagrams, hand-drawn sketches, witness interviews, and report narratives and uploaded them to Steve's team in Dallas to see if new tools and technology could tell us something that wasn't possible to know in Karen's day.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
That with 50 years of technological advances since Karen died, Steve could now tell us, without a doubt, what happened in the moments leading up to the crash.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
We wanted that closure for them, for everyone.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
But Steve's presentation brought up some feelings for Christy. She wanted to remind us about some of the fundamental questions in this story that continue to matter, and how our attempts to try and get definitive answers about Karen's fatal car crash might actually not be the way forward as we think about where we want to go next in our own investigation.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
We ask her to record part of the message she sent us.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
She wanted safe working conditions, and she tried to do something about that.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Well, in the end, the Kerr-McGee plutonium plant did shut down. It wasn't long after Karen died, actually. The company couldn't reach a deal for a new contract to keep manufacturing its fuel rods. So on November 13, 1975, on the first anniversary of Karen's death, Kerr-McGee announced it was closing the plant. And by the end of that year, most of the workers were laid off.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Karen probably wouldn't have wanted her friends and co-workers to lose their jobs. But I've come to see the closure of the Kermagee plant as some kind of vindication for her. That in the end, maybe she got what she wanted, even if it wouldn't have been how she wanted it. She wanted a safe plant, and she wanted the rest of us to know about the hazards that alarmed her.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Well, consider that a mission accomplished.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
I think it's fair to say Karen's story, the publicity around her contamination, death, and the civil trial were all part of that. There was also the partial meltdown of a big nuclear reactor in Pennsylvania, Three Mile Island, in 1979. It was a huge story that really frightened a lot of people.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Altogether, the late 70s was a time when the risks and potential health issues of nuclear power started to feel real to the American public, visible, tangible in ways they hadn't before.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Karen's friends and family told us she wasn't necessarily anti-nuke, or at least she didn't start out that way. I think of her more as an underdog fighting for other underdogs. That's the way I'll always remember her.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Yeah, there's a bunch of us. There's a bunch of us. Steve Irwin peers into a Zoom screen. A couple rows of faces stare back at him. It's not his usual audience.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve Irwin feels the weight of this moment.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
We're both in our 70s, but we're going to keep chasing any leads that need to be chased. I guess we don't know any other way. So if you know something about Karen Silkwood, her work as a whistleblower at Kerr-McGee, her contamination, her death, whatever it might be, Get in touch with us. We've set up a phone line where you can leave a message. The number is 347-901-9102.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
That number again, 347-901-9102. That's all for now. Thanks for listening.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
We invited Karen to be on the Zoom, too, given how she had held on to the Silkwood bumper, waiting for the moment it might be needed. She and Steve hadn't met before. Hi, Karen.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve stands by a big screen where he can display his simulations or magnify the smallest scratch in photos.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve's team created an animation showing how the car could have smashed into the cement wall and came to rest on its side in the red mud.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So we have a pretty good sense of the moment of impact. Now Steve and his team must work their way backwards to think what set of forces acted on the car to get it to this crumpled state. And here's where the evidence gets thinner.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Remember, the highway patrol thought that Karen had been unconscious, possibly under the influence of a sedative and asleep at the wheel. And that's the reason for the crash. Lieutenant Larry Owen said that there was no evidence of braking or trying to steer after the car left the road. What did Steve find?
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
He pulls up a photo Pipkin took a couple of days after Karen's crash of tire marks in the grass next to the highway. The highway patrol and Pipkin measured marks once Karen drove off the road that ran 255 feet. Imagine, 85 yards on a football field. But it's hard to see much detail in Pipkin's photos.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Trooper Rick Fagan, one of the first officers on the scene, reported that just before impact, the tire tracks appeared to turn right.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So there was a final steer to the right, an action.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
It wasn't passive coasting. And here's where we want to remind you that Karen was a skilled driver. She'd gotten into car racing with her boyfriend, Drew, and she raced that little Honda, even won a trophy that we saw at her sister Rosemary's house.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
But today, he's presenting to members of the Silkwood family. They've gathered to hear what he has to say about the fatal crash that killed Karen Silkwood 50 years ago. Maybe Steve Irwin will finally have some of the answers they've been waiting for.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
The evidence Steve finds of braking and steering are important. Remember, the highway patrol thought that Karen was asleep at the wheel. Steve comes to a different conclusion.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Now, could Karen have fallen asleep and been woken up by going off the road? It's possible, Steve says.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So, what made Karen drive off the road in the first place?
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
The murkiest part of this crash has always been what happened to Karen while she was on the road to make her lose control.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
In another, she goes off the road to the left and can't get back on the road.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
He pulls up A.O. Pipkin's original photograph, showing the damage to the rear of Karen's car. Two dents, one is on the fender, just behind the left rear tire. The other is on the bumper. But first, there's something else in the photo that catches Steve's eye.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Seven miles into her trip, exhausted, stressed out from her multiple contaminations and scrub downs, maybe clouded by her prescription sedative, Did she fall asleep at the wheel, as law enforcement has always said?
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Then Steve shows us a simulation of what it would have looked like if a second car comes up behind Karen, taps her from behind, and keeps going.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Then there needs to be some kind of force that's powerful enough to make Karen's car go over to the left-hand side of the road. That force could have been her steering. Maybe she's scared and reacting to what's happening. Or maybe she hit the brakes. But when it comes to a phantom vehicle, dinging Karen's bumper and fender and forcing her to go left... Here's the question Steve asks.