Mike Boettcher
Appearances
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
We pulled out box after box, each one sealed with layers of thick packing tape.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
And later in life, Karen raced cars and was pretty good at it, too, in her white Honda Civic.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
But the two teenagers were headstrong and determined. It became a common law marriage.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Christy was the couple's first child. Two years after Christy, 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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
After that, Karen decided she had to leave, and she decided to leave the kids with Bill.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
In August 1972, Karen moved out. She gave Bill an uncontested divorce. Her children were five, three, and almost two years old.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Holy mackerel. This is what we'd been looking for, hoping for. Cassette tapes recorded in the 1970s. Interviews a private investigator had made looking into a mysterious death.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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's story.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Just like Karen's son, Michael, Steve Watka has been gathering pieces of the Silkwood Puzzle, too.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Steve held on to these recordings for 50 years. And at this point, he's replayed the calls so many times, he basically has it memorized.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Then Karen and a coworker 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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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 1, The Tapes.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Karen was set to meet Steve and Burnham on November 13, 1974, at 8 o'clock 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. She said, I'll be ready.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Jean 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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
She headed 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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
In pictures, the front end of the car looks like a crushed tin can.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
The highway patrol was notified of the accident at about 8 p.m., 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 9 p.m. She was 28 years old.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
And waiting. And we got more and more worried about that. Karen should have showed up by 8 o'clock. By 9, Steve decided to check on her.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
He found Karen's paycheck, her Kermagee paycheck, in the mud.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
The car, gone. And crucially, those documents, the ones she was supposed to deliver to Steve and Burnham, gone.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Radioactive, The Karen Silkwood Mystery, is a production of ABC Audio in collaboration with Standing Bear Entertainment. I'm Mike Boettcher. My co-hosts Bob Sands and I served as consulting producers on this podcast, along with Brent Donis. Thanks to the ABC News investigative unit and investigator producer Jenny Wagnon-Kortz, chief investigative reporter Josh Margolin,
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Reporter-Producer, Sasha Pezenik. 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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Arielle Chester was our social media producer. Special thanks to Liz Alessi, Katie Dindas, Cindy Galley, and the University of Oklahoma's Gaylord College of Journalism. Josh Kohan is ABC Audio's Director of Podcast Programming. Laura Mayer is our Executive Producer.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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 multi-million dollar experiment to supercharge nuclear energy. And when she began to notice unsafe working conditions, leaks, spills, co-workers getting contaminated with radioactive material over and over again, she spoke up.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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?
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Investigations into grisly murders, storm chasing through Tornado Alley.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Oklahoma Citians consider themselves halfway from anywhere. This morning, they were right in the middle of hell.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
We just can't seem to shake the idea that justice hasn't come for Karen yet. But maybe it will.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
Plus, even 50 years later, some people are still reluctant to talk about what happened.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
But we've got some new leads, like something Bobby's been holding onto for decades.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
So 9-0-8. And this is where your mother, Karen Silkwood, lived. Wow. You've been here before? Not since I was four years old. Michael Meadows was just five years old when his mother, Karen Silkwood, died. We met outside the apartment where Karen spent her final months.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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?
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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 Silkwood.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 1: The Tapes
The company that one Karen worked for was Kerr-McGee, named for its powerful leaders, Robert Kerr and Dean McGee.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Or did another vehicle try to scare her or run her off the road? We were pretty late in the reporting process for this podcast when we tracked down the bumper of Karen's Honda Civic. And that set this whole accident reconstruction idea in motion.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve actually looked to see if he could find a car that would have been on the road in the early 1970s that had a bumper low enough to cause the kinds of dents we see in Karen's left rear bumper and fender.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
I've always said we follow where the facts lead us. I was convinced that a close-up look at the bumper was going to unlock this thing. But in the end, that's not what I was hearing from Steve.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve says even if a phantom vehicle didn't hit her or didn't hit her hard enough to push her off the road, there's still the possibility that Karen was startled and then overcorrected. The intimidation factor.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So what does it all add up to? Steve says there's no evidence to definitively prove or disprove the presence of a phantom vehicle.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
We scrambled to find someone who could do the work, and ABC News hired Steve Irwin and his team to review all the evidence we could pull together for them.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Two hours later, Steve pressed pause on his PowerPoint and opened it up for questions and reactions. People's faces were drawn. This didn't seem to be the definitive closure we were hoping for. There was this uncomfortable pause where no one said anything.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So maybe it was something else. Then Karen's daughter, Christy Riddles, jumped in. She asked a question I think a lot of us had.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
What it comes down to, Steve explained, is that Karen lost control of the car. but we still don't know why.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Karen Silkwood's son, Michael Meadows, shared what I think a lot of us were feeling, this mix of gratitude, appreciation, but also some disappointment.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
We were hoping Steve Irwin, with his analysis of the bumper and all the other evidence, would solve the mystery.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
I think it's fair to say that's what Karen's family was hoping for, too. Confirmation of a second car or, at the very least, some definitive answer to why her Honda Civic left the road and crashed into a concrete wall as she was driving to what was arguably one of the most important meetings of her life.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
It turns out that while technology can do a lot of remarkable things, at least in this case, firm answers weren't part of the deal. At least, not yet.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
In this episode, what we learned, how it sits with the family, and where we go from here. From ABC Audio, this is Radioactive, The Karen Silkwood Mystery. Episode 5, The Phantom Vehicle. Our last episode. I'm Mike Boettcher. And I'm Bob Sands. This Zoom call, it's pretty strange when you think about it.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
The day after our session with Steve, one of our producers got a text from Karen Silkwood's older daughter, Christy Riddles. Christy was eight when her mom died. She was the oldest of the three kids and the one with the most memories of her mom. Christy was the one on the Zoom call who asked if Steve could pinpoint why Karen lost control of her car the night she died.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Unfortunately, Steve couldn't give her that piece of the puzzle.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Karen Silkwood did play a role in raising awareness about the risks and dangers of nuclear power.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
About a month before she died, Karen told the union leader, Steve Watka, that she was going to be gone from Kermagee, and that she was going to shut things down before she left.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
One of those workers was Jim Smith. He'd been a manager at the plutonium plant from day one. He told some documentary film producers that before everything closed down, there'd been talk of Kerr-McGee re-upping their fuel rod contract. But that would have required a major cleanup effort.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Still, even after the plant closed, Kermagee continued to operate as an energy company for more than 30 years. After it was acquired, Kermagee and its new parent company agreed to pay a $5 billion settlement with the Department of Justice to clean up contaminated sites from its oil, gas, and chemical operations across the country. This included radioactive waste from the plant where Karen worked.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
At the time, in 2014, the DOJ called it, quote, the largest payment for the cleanup of environmental contamination in history. Kermagee wasn't the only company that ultimately abandoned its nuclear investments. That big vision the US government had for this bountiful plutonium economy, one that supplied this evergreen source of cheap energy, well, that dream started to tarnish.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
50 years after Karen's death, her three adult children, her two sisters, even one of her granddaughters who never got to meet her, can beam in and watch a guy run computer models simulating the path her car took that night, its velocity, angle, and final moment of impact.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
By the late 1970s, there were these big questions about the safety of nuclear power plants and what to do with radioactive waste. And those questions cooled the plutonium economy. Over time, the construction of new nuclear reactors in the U.S. slowed to a trickle.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
How would Karen have felt about this shift away from nuclear power and her role in that shift? I wonder what she'd think of this new interest we're seeing in nuclear energy today. All of those big tech companies need sources of energy to fuel their hungry servers, especially with AI on the rise.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are all making serious investments into nuclear power in search of an emission-free source of electricity. the industry that Karen blew the whistle on could very well be on the brink of a comeback.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Throughout our reporting, we asked the people we spoke with what Karen meant to them, why her story still resonates 50 years after her death. We collected what they told us, along with bits of archival tape that spoke to Karen's legacy.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
She was an ordinary person like you and I. She seen something there that had to be done, and she did it for the union.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
They watch this little digital version of her car smash into a wall on a loop, as if it's backing up and hitting the wall once, twice, three times.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
A good woman with a good heart. So we're going to pause our investigation into the death of Karen Silkwood here. We don't have any more episodes planned, but I say pause because Bob and I have been working on this story for years, and I can't quite imagine not working on it.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve's been in the business for 37 years. He actually worked with A.O. Pipkin back in the 80s, and Pipkin was an important person in Steve's life.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Radioactive, the Karen Silkwood Mystery, is a production of ABC Audio in collaboration with Standing Bear Entertainment. I'm Mike Boettcher. My co-host Bob Sands and I served as consulting producers on this podcast along with Brent Donis. Thanks to the ABC News investigative unit and investigative producer Jenny Wagnon-Kortz, chief investigative reporter Josh Margolin,
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
reporter-producer Sasha Pesnik, and associate producer Alexandra Myers. This podcast was written and produced by senior producer Nancy Rosenbaum and Vika Aronson. Tracy Samuelson was our story editor, associate producer and fact-checker Audrey Mostek. We had production help from Meg Fierro, story consultant Chris Donovan, Supervising producer, Sasha Aslanian. Original music by Soundboard.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Thanks to Pat and Texla Mountain for the use of their song, Karen Silkwood. Mixing by Rick Kwan. Ariel Chester is our social media producer. Special thanks to Liz Alessi, Katie Dendoss, 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.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve's long-ago work with Pipkin meant something to Pipkin's daughter, Karen Pipkin Guerrero, too. You met her in the last episode when we drove to her home in Albuquerque to see the bumper.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
I'm glad. Three generations of Karen's family are here today. Her sisters, Rosemary Silkwood Smith and Linda Silkwood Vincent, along with her son, Michael Meadows. And for the first time, we're joined by Karen's daughters, Christy Riddles and Don Lipsy. Don's 20-year-old daughter Riley is sitting by her mom.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve begins with the indisputable facts of the accident. That Karen's car collided with the cement wall of that culvert. The moment of impact. So this is her car. It's taken. He displays a photo of the front end of Karen's tiny white Honda, jagged and crumpled. The hood is collapsed toward the steering wheel like a crushed soda can.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Okay, we got the whole fam family. Steve's an accident reconstructionist. He's used to speaking to juries in courtrooms. He's dressed the part today in a light gray suit coat and tie. Anyway, I just feel better knowing who I'm talking to.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
What happened in the moments after the car drove off the road, before it hit the wall? And the question we're all wondering, what caused Karen's car to leave the road in the first place?
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve and his team looked for signs that Karen might have been trying to regain control after she left the road. Was she steering or braking? He found signs of both.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
That would set up the next sequence Steve is looking at. After Karen's car hit the wall and came to a rest, its nose was pointed toward the roadway.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Then there's the question of speed. The speed limit on the highway was 55, and Steve believes it's a reasonable assumption that she was going the speed limit. The alternative would be that she was drowsy or sedated and driving slower than the speed limit. Pipkin calculated by the time Karen hit the wall, she was going 30. Steve says that matches their modeling too.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So the drop in speed after leaving the road to Steve, that indicates the driver took action.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So Karen was awake at the moment of impact. That's the opinion of one expert using the latest in accident reconstruction technology. The idea that Karen was asleep, maybe even in a stupor, as law enforcement once said, that doesn't necessarily check out. And Steve's findings challenge at least one theory that placed the blame for the accident solely on Karen Silkwood.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol didn't have any comment on the new assessment, and they told us there are no plans to reopen the investigation.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Why did Karen's car leave the road that night and crash into a concrete culvert?
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve has created simulations of three possible scenarios. In one, the car veers off the road to the right, then overcorrects to the left and loses control.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
These are both single-car accidents. But what we've all been waiting for Steve to tell us about is the bumper.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
It's not what I expected. It's a nice moment, but looking at the rest of the photo, Steve breaks with his old mentor. He doesn't see what Pipkin saw in these stents.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So Steve thinks it's unlikely that these dents were created by another car, what he poetically refers to as a phantom vehicle. That's a vehicle that's alleged to have been present, but leaves behind no physical evidence. But he doesn't totally dismiss the possibility of a phantom vehicle. He zooms in on the dents.
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'Radioactive' - Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
In the simulation, the phantom vehicle sideswipes Karen's car on the driver's side. Then they have to be parallel for a period of time.
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Trailer: 'Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery'
We also found a trove of private investigators tapes in a storage locker and tracked down physical evidence from the night of Karen's crash.
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Trailer: 'Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery'
Holy mackerel, there's black stuff in it still. Yeah.
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Trailer: 'Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery'
50 years later, what we've learned about the life and death of America's first nuclear whistleblower. Radioactive, The Karen Silkwood Mystery, a new narrative series from ABC Audio. Coming November 12th, wherever you get your podcasts.
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Trailer: 'Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery'
Fifty years ago, Karen Silkwood got in her car alone.
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Trailer: 'Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery'
She never made it. And those documents she was reportedly carrying? were never found.
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Trailer: 'Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery'
I'm Mike Boettcher. I've covered the world for Network TV and returned home to Oklahoma to investigate the one story I can't get out of my mind.
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Fatal Disguise
Let's go now to Channel 2's Mike Bucinich with the latest on what he's learned. Mike.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Or did another vehicle try to scare her or run her off the road? We were pretty late in the reporting process for this podcast when we tracked down the bumper of Karen's Honda Civic. And that set this whole accident reconstruction idea in motion.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve actually looked to see if he could find a car that would have been on the road in the early 1970s that had a bumper low enough to cause the kinds of dents we see in Karen's left rear bumper and fender.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
I've always said we follow where the facts lead us. I was convinced that a close-up look at the bumper was going to unlock this thing. But in the end, that's not what I was hearing from Steve.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve says even if a phantom vehicle didn't hit her or didn't hit her hard enough to push her off the road, there's still the possibility that Karen was startled and then overcorrected. The intimidation factor.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So what does it all add up to? Steve says there's no evidence to definitively prove or disprove the presence of a phantom vehicle.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
We scrambled to find someone who could do the work, and ABC News hired Steve Irwin and his team to review all the evidence we could pull together for them.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Two hours later, Steve pressed pause on his PowerPoint and opened it up for questions and reactions. People's faces were drawn. This didn't seem to be the definitive closure we were hoping for. There was this uncomfortable pause where no one said anything.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So maybe it was something else. Then Karen's daughter, Christy Riddles, jumped in. She asked a question I think a lot of us had.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
What it comes down to, Steve explained, is that Karen lost control of the car. but we still don't know why.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Karen Silkwood's son, Michael Meadows, shared what I think a lot of us were feeling, this mix of gratitude, appreciation, but also some disappointment.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
There was a chorus of thank yous and goodbyes.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
We were hoping Steve Irwin, with his analysis of the bumper and all the other evidence, would solve the mystery.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
I think it's fair to say that's what Karen's family was hoping for, too. Confirmation of a second car or, at the very least, some definitive answer to why her Honda Civic left the road and crashed into a concrete wall as she was driving to what was arguably one of the most important meetings of her life.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
It turns out that while technology can do a lot of remarkable things, at least in this case, firm answers weren't part of the deal. At least, not yet.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
In this episode, what we learned, how it sits with the family, and where we go from here. From ABC Audio, this is Radioactive, The Karen Silkwood Mystery. Episode 5, The Phantom Vehicle. Our last episode. I'm Mike Boettcher. And I'm Bob Sands. This Zoom call, it's pretty strange when you think about it.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
The day after our session with Steve, one of our producers got a text from Karen Silkwood's older daughter, Christy Riddles. Christy was eight when her mom died. She was the oldest of the three kids and the one with the most memories of her mom. Christy was the one on the Zoom call who asked if Steve could pinpoint why Karen lost control of her car the night she died.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Unfortunately, Steve couldn't give her that piece of the puzzle.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Karen Silkwood did play a role in raising awareness about the risks and dangers of nuclear power.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
About a month before she died, Karen told the union leader, Steve Watka, that she was going to be gone from Kermagee, and that she was going to shut things down before she left.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
One of those workers was Jim Smith. He'd been a manager at the plutonium plant from day one. He told some documentary film producers that before everything closed down, there'd been talk of Kerr-McGee re-upping their fuel rod contract. But that would have required a major cleanup effort.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Still, even after the plant closed, Kermagee continued to operate as an energy company for more than 30 years. After it was acquired, Kermagee and its new parent company agreed to pay a $5 billion settlement with the Department of Justice to clean up contaminated sites from its oil, gas, and chemical operations across the country. This included radioactive waste from the plant where Karen worked.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
At the time, in 2014, the DOJ called it, quote, the largest payment for the cleanup of environmental contamination in history. Kermagee wasn't the only company that ultimately abandoned its nuclear investments. That big vision the U.S. government had for this bountiful plutonium economy, one that supplied this evergreen source of cheap energy, well, that dream started to tarnish.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
50 years after Karen's death, her three adult children, her two sisters, even one of her granddaughters who never got to meet her, can beam in and watch a guy run computer models simulating the path her car took that night, its velocity, angle, and final moment of impact.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
By the late 1970s, there were these big questions about the safety of nuclear power plants and what to do with radioactive waste. And those questions cooled the plutonium economy. Over time, the construction of new nuclear reactors in the U.S. slowed to a trickle.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
How would Karen have felt about this shift away from nuclear power and her role in that shift? I wonder what she'd think of this new interest we're seeing in nuclear energy today. All of those big tech companies need sources of energy to fuel their hungry servers, especially with AI on the rise.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Companies like Microsoft, Amazon, and Google are all making serious investments into nuclear power in search of an emission-free source of electricity. the industry that Karen blew the whistle on could very well be on the brink of a comeback.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Throughout our reporting, we asked the people we spoke with what Karen meant to them, why her story still resonates 50 years after her death. We collected what they told us, along with bits of archival tape that spoke to Karen's legacy.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
She was an ordinary person like you and I. She seen something there that had to be done, and she did it for the union.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
They watch this little digital version of her car smash into a wall on a loop, as if it's backing up and hitting the wall once, twice, three times.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
And that's not what you got back in the early and mid-1970s.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
A good woman with a good heart. So we're going to pause our investigation into the death of Karen Silkwood here. We don't have any more episodes planned, but I say pause because Bob and I have been working on this story for years, and I can't quite imagine not working on it.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve's been in the business for 37 years. He actually worked with A.O. Pipkin back in the 80s, and Pipkin was an important person in Steve's life.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Radioactive, the Karen Silkwood Mystery, is a production of ABC Audio in collaboration with Standing Bear Entertainment. I'm Mike Boettcher. My co-host Bob Sands and I served as consulting producers on this podcast along with Brent Donis. Thanks to the ABC News investigative unit and investigative producer Jenny Wagnon-Kortz, chief investigative reporter Josh Margolin,
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
reporter-producer Sasha Pesnik, and associate producer Alexandra Myers. This podcast was written and produced by senior producer Nancy Rosenbaum and Vika Aronson. Tracy Samuelson was our story editor, associate producer and fact-checker Audrey Mostick. We had production help from Meg Fierro, story consultant Chris Donovan, Supervising producer, Sasha Aslanian. Original music by Soundboard.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Thanks to Pat and Tex LaMountain for the use of their song, Karen Silkwood. Mixing by Rick Kwan. Ariel Chester is our social media producer. Special thanks to Liz Alessi, Katie Dendoss, 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.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve's long-ago work with Pipkin meant something to Pipkin's daughter, Karen Pipkin Guerrero, too. You met her in the last episode when we drove to her home in Albuquerque to see the bumper.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
I'm glad. Three generations of Karen's family are here today. Her sisters, Rosemary Silkwood Smith and Linda Silkwood Vincent, along with her son, Michael Meadows. And for the first time, we're joined by Karen's daughters, Christy Riddles and Don Lipsy. Don's 20-year-old daughter Riley is sitting by her mom.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve begins with the indisputable facts of the accident. That Karen's car collided with the cement wall of that culvert. The moment of impact. So this is her car. It's taken. He displays a photo of the front end of Karen's tiny white Honda, jagged and crumpled. The hood is collapsed toward the steering wheel like a crushed soda can.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Okay, we got the whole fam family. Steve's an accident reconstructionist. He's used to speaking to juries in courtrooms. He's dressed the part today in a light gray suit coat and tie. Anyway, I just feel better knowing who I'm talking to.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
What happened in the moments after the car drove off the road, before it hit the wall? And the question we're all wondering, what caused Karen's car to leave the road in the first place?
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve and his team looked for signs that Karen might have been trying to regain control after she left the road. Was she steering or braking? He found signs of both.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
That would set up the next sequence Steve is looking at. After Karen's car hit the wall and came to a rest, its nose was pointed toward the roadway.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Then there's the question of speed. The speed limit on the highway was 55, and Steve believes it's a reasonable assumption that she was going the speed limit. The alternative would be that she was drowsy or sedated and driving slower than the speed limit. Pipkin calculated by the time Karen hit the wall, she was going 30. Steve says that matches their modeling too.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So the drop in speed after leaving the road to Steve, that indicates the driver took action.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So Karen was awake at the moment of impact. That's the opinion of one expert using the latest in accident reconstruction technology. The idea that Karen was asleep, maybe even in a stupor, as law enforcement once said, that doesn't necessarily check out. And Steve's findings challenge at least one theory that placed the blame for the accident solely on Karen Silkwood.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
The Oklahoma Highway Patrol didn't have any comment on the new assessment, and they told us there are no plans to reopen the investigation.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Why did Karen's car leave the road that night and crash into a concrete culvert?
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
Steve has created simulations of three possible scenarios. In one, the car veers off the road to the right, then overcorrects to the left and loses control.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
These are both single-car accidents. But what we've all been waiting for Steve to tell us about is the bumper.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
It's not what I expected. It's a nice moment, but looking at the rest of the photo, Steve breaks with his old mentor. He doesn't see what Pipkin saw in these stents.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
So Steve thinks it's unlikely that these dents were created by another car, what he poetically refers to as a phantom vehicle. That's a vehicle that's alleged to have been present, but leaves behind no physical evidence. But he doesn't totally dismiss the possibility of a phantom vehicle. He zooms in on the dents.
Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery
Ep. 5: The Phantom Vehicle
In the simulation, the phantom vehicle sideswipes Karen's car on the driver's side.