"Karen Silkwood was a laboratory analyst at the Kerr-McGee plutonium processing plant in central Oklahoma. It was not a great place to work: radioactive contamination was everywhere, safety records were routinely falsified, and deadly plutonium was disappearing - no one knew where. Silkwood, outraged, took it upon herself to gather documentation proving as many of the abuses as she could, intending to give the evidence to a reporter from the New York Times.

She never made it. Silkwood was found dead inside her car, which had crashed on the way to her meeting with the Times reporter. Local authorities claimed she had been drunk or stoned - an odd way to meet a reporter - but later investigations indicated that she had been purposefully run off the road. In effect, Silkwood had been murdered.

No one was ever indicted for Silkwood's death, although in the weeks preceding it she had been mercilessly harassed by Kerr-McGee and local law enforcement officials. The documents she had been carrying were never found."

A theory has since been stated that the Kerr-McGee corporation placed a bit of plutonium in the refrigerator of her apartment. Later it was proven true that there were traces of plutonium in her refrigerator. After a court battle between her family and Kerr-McGee, the family was awarded a monetary settlement. The Karen Silkwood story is undoubtedly a mystery.





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