Investigation
Several posthumous investigations were launched in both public and private spheres. The press picked up on Silkwood's story;
The New York Times
had a front-row seat because Burnham had literally been at the scene of
the accident a few hours after it happened. He and Steve Wodka had been
waiting for Silkwood at the nearby Holiday Inn. When she was
uncharacteristically later than usual, at 10 p.m., they started making
phone calls and learned of the accident. After Burnham's stories
appeared in the
Times,
Rolling Stone picked up on the story and ran a series of articles on the plant and Silkwood.
Silkwood's Honda after the accident
And locally, people were still trying to hash out what had
happened. An accident investigator, A.O. Pipkin was hired to investigate
the accident by the union. Pipkin found that the rear bumper of
Silkwood's car showed concave markings on the left side that neither
Drew Stephens nor the mechanic who had previously worked on Karen's car
remembered. That fender also tested positive for rubber, as if a bumper
from another car had hit her from behind. Kerr-McGee and police
contended that any dents in the metal fender were from the tow truck
hauling the car from the ditch.
Kerr-McGee accepted the narrative
put forth by the police department, and when questioned, went on the
offensive. Company representatives suggested that Karen had been a
drunk, drug-addicted floozy who perhaps had even gone so far as to
poison herself to get the plant in trouble. To Silkwood's friends, this
was a plainly preposterous notion, considering how much of a nervous
wreck she had become over the last few month, but it was a version
repeatedly put forth in the lawsuit that soon followed her death.
READ MORE:
http://www.crimelibrary.com/criminal_mind/forensics/karen-silkwood/investigation.html
The Kerr-McGee Story
Karen Silkwood was born on the 19th day of February in the year of 1946.
She died in the year of 1974 on November 13th. During life, she worked
at the Kerr-McGee plant in Oklahoma, near the city of Crescent. She held
the responsibility of making pellets composed of plutonium for fuel
rods that were nuclear reactor based. Eventually, she came to the point
where she questioned the irregularities that occurred at the factory,
and stated that they committed many wrongdoings. Once this started to
happen, she mysteriously died. It is believed that Karen was part of a
conspiracy that would prevent her from revealing information on the
Kerr-McGee plant.
When Karen Silkwood got
the job at the Kerr-McGee plant, she become interested in the group called
"Oil, Chemical & Atomic Workers Union".
It was not too long after being hired that she joined the group.
Shortly thereafter, the union members participated in a strike against
Kerr-McGee. The strike would soon come to a close and she would be put
in the committee that was referred to as
"Union Bargaining" and
given the responsibility of investigating issues related to the health
of the workers as well as the overall safety of those individuals. She
researched the facility and discovered:
READ MORE:
http://www.greatest-unsolved-mysteries.com/karen-silkwood.html
Karen Gay Silkwood (February 19, 1946 – November 13, 1974) was an American chemical technician and
labor union activist
known for raising concerns about corporate practices related to health
and safety of workers in a nuclear facility. She is most famous for her
mysterious death, which was the subject of a victorious lawsuit against
the chemical company
Kerr-McGee. She gained more fame when she was portrayed by
Meryl Streep in
Mike Nichols' 1983
Academy Award-nominated film "
Silkwood".
She worked at the
Kerr-McGee Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site plant near
Crescent, Oklahoma, United States. Silkwood's job was making
plutonium pellets for
nuclear reactor fuel rods. This plant experienced theft of plutonium by workers during this era. She joined the union and became an
activist
on behalf of issues of health and safety at the plant as a member of
the union's negotiating team, the first woman to have that position at
Kerr-McGee. In the summer of 1974, she testified to the
Atomic Energy Commission about her concerns.
For three days in November, she was found to have abnormal but low
levels of plutonium contamination on her person and in her home. That
month, while driving to meet with David Burnham, a
New York Times
journalist, and Steve Wodka, an official of her union's national
office, she died in a car accident under unclear circumstances.
Her family sued Kerr-McGee on behalf of her estate. In what was the
longest trial up until then in Oklahoma history, the jury found
Kerr-McGee liable for the plutonium contamination of Silkwood, and
awarded substantial damages. These were reduced on appeal, but the case
reached the
United States Supreme Court
in 1979, which upheld the damages verdict. Before another trial took
place, Kerr-McGee settled with the estate out of court for US $1.38
million, while not admitting liability.
READ MORE:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Silkwood
