Episode
FIGHTING BACK - SHE HAD THE DOCUMENTS: THE KAREN SILKWOOD STORY
- Published
- May 15, 2026
- Duration seconds
- 1123
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Summary
Oklahoma, 1974. A plutonium plant. A whistleblower. A meeting she never made. And documents no one has ever found. Garret Fisher covers the Karen Silkwood case — one of the most haunting whistleblower stories in American history, and the one that refuses to resolve into a clean ending. Silkwood was a lab technician at a Kerr-McGee plutonium plant in Crescent, Oklahoma, who became convinced the company was falsifying safety records and endangering its workers. She was elected to the union bargaining committee, testified before the Atomic Energy Commission, and gathered documentation she believed proved the violations. On November 13, 1974, she was driving to meet a New York Times reporter with those documents when her car went off the road. She was 28 years old. The documents were never found. Her family spent a decade in court. The Supreme Court ruled in their favor in 1984 — establishing that nuclear corporations could be held liable under state tort law. The company settled for $1.38 million without admitting wrongdoing. The plant closed the year after her death. None of the central questions about how she was contaminated, or what happened on that road, have ever been definitively answered. Join our new FB groups page here. Take the poll! Join the Daily Crime & Justice community on social media! We're building a passionate group of true crime enthusiasts who love diving deep into the most shocking cases in America. Follow us on Facebook and Instagram by searching "Daily Crime & Justice" on either platform. You'll get exclusive behind-the-scenes content, breaking news updates on cases we're covering, and early alerts when new episodes drop. Our social media is where Garret Fisher's hottest takes live, including reactions that don't make it into the show. But…