Murder: True Crime Stories - UNSOLVED: The Whistleblower Murder 1

Episode Date: April 22, 2025

When 26-year-old Karen Silkwood first started working at a nuclear power plant in Oklahoma in 1972, she was thrilled to be fulfilling her passion for science. But before long, she realized just how risky her job was — and she wanted the world to know the truth. She had no idea that in doing so, she would lose her life. Murder: True Crime Stories is a Crime House Original. For more, follow us on all social media, @crimehouse To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This is Crime House. Every job has a purpose. Sometimes it might not feel that way, but whether you're sitting at a computer, working on an assembly line, or conducting research in a lab, we're all contributing to the world around us. But while some jobs are relatively low stakes, others put people in harm's way on a daily basis. Karen Silkwood was one of those people.

In the early 1970s, Karen started working at a nuclear power plant in Oklahoma. Although she knew her job was important, she didn't know it was lethal too. When she learned the real dangers associated with nuclear energy, she decided to fight for her safety and the safety of her co-workers. But in an attempt to save lives, Karen made some very powerful enemies. And they were willing to do anything to stop her. Maybe even murder. People's lives are like stories, with a beginning, a middle, and an end. But sometimes the final chapter comes far too soon, and we don't always get to know the real ending.

I'm Carter Roy, and this is Murder True Crime Stories, a Crime House original. Thank you to our Crime House community. Please rate, review, and follow Murder True Crime Stories to show your support. And to enhance your listening experience with ad-free, early access to each two-part series plus bonus content, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. New episodes come out every Tuesday. content, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. New episodes come out every Tuesday. And if you're interested in more true crime stories from this week in history, check out

Crime House The Show. Each episode covers multiple cases unified by the same theme. So every week you get something a little different. This is part one of Karen Silkwood's story. A nuclear plant technician who tried to expose safety violations in 1974, but died under suspicious circumstances before she could reveal the truth. In this episode, I'll share Karen's journey at the Oklahoma Nuclear Plant, how she uncovered its dangers, championed safer conditions, and what happened before her tragic death.

In the next episode, we'll follow the investigation into the crash. While it was officially ruled an accident, many believe Karen Silkwood was murdered. All that and more coming up. In August, 1945, the world changed forever when a terrifying new weapon was unleashed, the atomic bomb. But nuclear technology had a flip side. Although it was capable of great destruction, it could also generate cheap, plentiful energy,

particularly with the discovery of a new element, plutonium. Plutonium was also an essential component in nuclear energy, and in a world that was dependent on a limited supply of fossil fuels, having an alternative was critical. Just a few months after the Manhattan Project made their announcement in February 1946, Karen Silkwood was born in Texas. With so much progress being made in the realm of science, it was a fitting time for her to come into the world. As a little girl, Karen fell in love with the subject, and soon she decided that she wanted to become a scientist herself.

The petite brunette was the only girl in her high school to take chemistry. She got straight A's and graduated with honors. After that, Karen won a scholarship to Lamar State College of Technology in Beaumont, Texas. And in the fall of 1964, at 18 years old, she started working towards a degree in medical technology. It seemed like Karen was well on her way to becoming one of the groundbreaking researchers she so admired. But she was only in college for a year before she met a guy named Bill Meadows, and those plans changed. In the summer of 1965, they started dating and quickly got married.

The newlyweds were both just 19 years old. After that, Karen dropped out of college to focus on her future with Bill. Bill worked as a machinist for an oil pipeline company, which soon relocated the couple to Duncan, Oklahoma. For the next few years, Karen put her career aside in favor of starting a family. Their first child, Beverly, was born around 1967. Their son Michael followed by 1970, the youngest Dawn in 1971. A little over five years into the marriage, 25-year-old Karen was already a mother of three. From the outside, they seem like a perfectly happy family. But if you asked Karen, she would have told you a very different story.

When they first got together, both Karen and Bill were impulsive and immature. But Karen had changed since then. She was kind, frugal, a good mother, and took care of her health. Bill on the other hand, still acted like the teenager she met and married. His hobbies were drinking, spending money, racing motorcycles, and cheating on Karen with his mistress. Karen confronted her husband about his affair sometime that year in 1971. When he refused to break it off, they discussed ending their marriage. Oklahoma, unlike many states at the time, allowed no-fault divorce.

That meant Karen wouldn't have to prove Bill's infidelity in court to get a divorce. But Bill made it clear he'd fight Karen for custody of their children if she left. Karen had to think rationally. She had no income, which meant she couldn't support her kids on her own. She quickly realized her chances of winning custody were slim, so she stayed. All she could do was stand by as Bill continued to cheat and drive the family into bankruptcy with his reckless spending. But by the fall of 1972, 26-year-old Karen had enough. As badly as she wanted to be with her children, the situation was unbearable.

So she came up with a plan. She would leave Bill and find a job. Then once she had enough money to fight for custody, she'd go to court and try to get her kids back. One night that fall, Karen made her move. She packed her bags and took off while Bill was asleep. Karen moved in with a friend in the Oklahoma City suburbs. When Bill realized she truly wasn't coming back, he filed for divorce and custody of all three kids.

It went exactly as Karen expected. After the divorce, Bill kept the kids, married his mistress, and moved her into the family home. Luckily, Karen got to see her kids from time to time. Although she missed them deeply, she treasured their occasional visits, but for the moment she had to focus on starting a career so she could get them back. And while she only had a year of college under her belt, she figured it was enough to get a job in medical billing. But before she could apply, a more exciting opportunity came her way.

A nuclear fuel manufacturing facility in nearby Crescent, Oklahoma was hiring people to test plutonium pellets. These are small radioactive objects that are used to fuel nuclear reactors. In a town with just about 1,600 residents, the plant couldn't afford to be picky. Almost anyone willing to work would be hired, even a single mom with no experience. Plus, the job would reunite Karen with her old favorite subject, chemistry. Not only that, but she'd finally get the chance to put what she'd learned about medical technology to good use. There were lots of high-tech gadgets in the lab, including radiation detectors used to test workers for contamination.

The plant where Karen worked was operated by a company called Ker McGee. The company had just signed a $9.6 million contract with the US government to test out an experimental fuel. It was called MOX. The chemistry is complicated, but essentially MOX is recycled uranium and plutonium, which was important. Before nuclear reactors were powered exclusively on uranium, a limited resource. With MOCs, the government could keep churning out nuclear power with what they already had. To make it, you might think it required a bunch of scientists in white coats and masks in a pristine

laboratory. In reality, the Kermagee facility, known as the Cimarron Fuel Fabrication Site, operated more like a factory. Karen's new job involved inspecting powdered plutonium pellets for quality control. She used a glove box, that thing you've probably seen in movies where workers in hazmat suits stick gloved hands inside an airtight box. But if any little thing went wrong with the glove box, a worker could be exposed to plutonium powder, which could lead to disastrous results.

Because plutonium isn't just a powerful source of energy, it's also incredibly dangerous. Inhale enough of it and it can cause cancer. But none of the workers at the plant were asking questions about safety. Karen's one year of college made her an unusually educated employee. Most of her colleagues were people with no scientific background, others were teenage high school dropouts. Kermage knew they weren't aware of the dangers of plutonium, and yet they didn't bother to inform them.

The company was worried about its contract with the government, not the well-being of its staff. But it wouldn't be long until the truth came out, and Kermagee found themselves in hot water. In August 1972, 26-year-old Karen Silkwood started work as a plutonium tester at Kerr-McGee's Cimarron fuel fabrication site. Not only was Karen excited to be putting her medical technology training to use, but she was thrilled about the $4 per hour she was earning. At the time, the minimum wage in Oklahoma was just $1.40 an hour. Karen was making nearly triple that.

As a recently divorced mother of three, Karen hoped her newfound stability would help her get custody of her kids. But while Karen was focused on work, she was also open to dating again. And it didn't take long for a handsome co-worker to catch her eye. At 22 years old, Drew Stevens was four years younger than Karen. Even so, he was already a manager at the plant. Not only that, but he was also unhappily married. Drew and Karen were immediately drawn to one another and quickly started having an affair.

Within just a few months, Drew divorced his wife and Karen moved in with him. Although Karen was still focused on getting her kids back, being with Drew gave her the chance to finally relax and unwind a bit. Drew was into amateur car racing and dirt bike riding, and soon, Karen joined in on all his adrenaline-filled adventures. And her personal life wasn't the only thing that was intense. Not even three months after Karen started her new job, in November 1972, the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union, or OCAW, went on strike. They were protesting wages, training, and safety, specifically related to testing and creating plutonium pellets.

Karen picked up a sign and joined the fight, mostly because she was told to. Since she was so new, she wasn't familiar with the labor issues at the factory, but she did know working with plutonium was risky, and the more time she spent on the picket line, the more concerned she became. Especially because most of the co-workers protesting alongside her were 18 and 19 year old boys. Unlike Karen, they had no idea plutonium was dangerous when they started working at the plant. And despite fighting for safer conditions, it seemed like they still didn't understand the position they were putting themselves in once they got back to work.

The longer the strike dragged on, the more concerned Karen became about the conditions at the plant. But after two months, the strike came to an end when the company refused to meet the union's demands. Without any changes, Karen returned to work with the same contract she'd had before. Sadly, that wasn't the only disappointment she faced in early 1973. Sometime that January, after just a few months of dating, Drew told Karen the bad news. He wanted to have an open relationship.

He still cared about her, but he wanted to see other women, which meant Karen had to move out. Karen wasn't happy about it, but she agreed to the arrangement. She found her own apartment and tried to come to terms with her new reality, but the truth was she felt miserable and heartbroken. Eventually, Karen became so depressed that she tried to overdose on drugs in the fall of 1973 at the age of 27. Thankfully, Karen ended up calling a friend for help and she recovered, but after her brush with death, she knew she had to make a change.

She spoke to a doctor about her mental health, and he prescribed sedatives, including Quaaludes. They were later discontinued in the United States because of how addictive they were, but at the time they were widely available and often used as a first-line treatment for anxiety and insomnia. Karen soon started taking the drugs not just for sleep, but to manage her feelings during the day. She still spent a couple nights a week with Drew, but she knew it was unhealthy. Karen needed someone, or something else to focus on, and in the spring of 1974, she found it. At work, the Cimarron plant was falling behind on its quota of plutonium pellets.

To try and stem the bleeding, employees were ordered to work around the clock. But this only made things worse. Soon, tons of people were quitting. The disgruntled employees weren't shy about sharing their feelings about the facility, and Kermagee had a hard time finding replacements. In turn, whoever was left was forced to work 12-hour shifts, sometimes 7 days a week. Which meant the staff that was working was exhausted, and in turn, accidents, like plutonium leaks, became more frequent.

In one incident, plutonium dust got into the air in the factory during the middle of a shift. It could have been disastrous. Inhaling even a microscopic amount of plutonium can cause cancer. The head of Karen's department told Kerr-McGee they needed to address the contamination before bringing workers back in. The company ignored him. Another time, old barrels of plutonium started leaking on their way to the nuclear waste dump. If enough of the chemical seeped into the earth, it could pollute the area around it

and even make its way into the local water supply. In this case, employees noticed the leak before that could happen, but even then, the truck was so badly contaminated, parts of it had to be buried at the toxic waste dump alongside the barrels. But one of the worst incidents involved glove box operators like Karen. One day they were tasked with using their glove boxes to fill a bag of plutonium waste. After removing the bag from the airtight environment, it developed a hole and began smoking. The operators fled the room right away, but they'd already breathed in a dangerous amount

of the chemical. Although the Atomic Energy Commission, the government agency responsible for regulating nuclear facilities, already existed, they didn't seem concerned about the plant just yet. It's not clear why, although it's possible the Cimmeron facility was so new, the AEC wasn't aware of the safety concerns. But the more incidents that took place, the more worried Karen became. She knew it was just a matter of time until she was affected too. Sadly, she was right.

On July 31, 1974, 28-year-old Karen was in the plant's emissions lab. She worked 10 hours that evening, mostly alone. When she was finished, another employee changed the air filter in the room and checked it for plutonium, which was the typical procedure. And that night they found traces of it. Karen and two colleagues were tested for contamination. Thankfully, the results showed just minor amounts of toxins in their bodies. But Karen knew she'd gotten lucky. If it had

been worse, she'd be at risk of radiation poisoning. By then, Karen had been concerned about Kermagui's safety policies for a long time, but now it was personal, and she was ready to act Karen decided to get more involved with the oil chemical and atomic workers union OCAW their contract with Kermagee was due to expire in December and they needed to elect a three-person bargaining committee to negotiate a new one in August 1974 Karen was elected and became

the first woman to join the committee. She was thrilled to finally have an official role in negotiating with Kerr-McGee. But that excitement quickly turned to frustration, because her priorities didn't necessarily align with everyone else in the Union. The safety issues at the Cimarron facility were so bad, there was a very real possibility the plant could be shut down if everything came to light, which would mean hundreds of employees would lose their jobs. Karen thought it was a risk worth taking, but not everyone agreed, and soon she'd be facing an uphill battle with her co-workers and her managers. But while Karen knew she was wading into dangerous territory, she had no idea that she was making some powerful people very angry or that she was putting a target on her back.

After a contamination scare at Kermage's nuclear plant in Oklahoma, 28-year-old Karen Silkwood was ready to fight for safer working conditions. And in August 1974, Karen was elected to her union's bargaining committee. But there was a problem. OCAW is mostly an oil and chemical workers union. National leadership hadn't seen atomic safety as a priority in the past. Karen's more experienced colleagues on the bargaining committee expected an uphill battle to get the union to care about contamination at the Cimarron facility. So for the next few weeks, they worked on getting

OCAW national leadership on board with their demands. Meanwhile, Karen gathered more evidence about safety issues at the plant. By the end of September, they'd made real progress, and the committee was invited to meet with union leadership at their headquarters in Washington, D.C. Karen could hardly contain her excitement. She'd never been so far east, and felt like she was finally finding her purpose in the

world, fighting for underdogs like herself. And the meetings in D. in DC only solidified that. One of the Union's leaders, Anthony Tony Mazaki, was assigned to meet with the trio. As soon as they got talking with Tony, they felt like they could trust him. Not only did he care about atomic workers, he actually knew more about the dangers of plutonium than they did. Karen was well aware that radiation poisoning could kill a person, but she didn't know

the specifics. Tony told her it could also cause cancer and lead to fertility issues in women. That was news to Karen, and she had a basic scientific education and worked in a laboratory. She was outraged. If she had no idea there was a cancer risk associated with plutonium, chances were the young men working on the assembly line didn't either. Karen wanted to let her co-workers know the truth about plutonium right away. But Tony advised the committee to be strategic. First, they deliver their complaints to the Atomic Energy Commission.

Then they could work on informing the rest of the staff at the plant. On the day of the meeting, another union employee, 25-year-old Steve Wodka, drove Karen, Jerry, and Jack to the AEC's headquarters in Washington, D.C. She and the others told the AEC about 39 separate issues at the plant, all related to safety. One of their complaints was about decontamination showers, which involved an extra-powerful showerhead and scrubbing with strong detergent. The committee explained that although the staff was regularly contaminated, they didn't get any shower heads for 75 workers per shift, which meant not everyone got the chance to get rid of the toxins on their bodies after working. There was one issue Karen and her colleagues didn't bring to the AEC, though.

Karen had spoken to Steve and Tony about a bombshell discovery she'd made. According to her, the plant was falsifying quality control reports and shipping defective fuel rods. If that were true, it could cause a nuclear disaster. The new experimental reactor could melt down completely, leaving land and water permanently contaminated with radiation. Before the meeting with the AEC, Steve and Tony had convinced Karen not to bring up her suspicions about the fuel rods just yet. This was so big, so inflammatory, she needed more proof, especially because it could get the plant shut down. But because of the sensitive nature of the allegation, they wanted Karen to be the only one gathering evidence.

She couldn't tell anyone, not even her fellow bargaining committee members. Unlike Karen, they were supporting spouses and young children. If they knew the facility might get shuttered entirely, it was possible they'd take Kerr McGee's side. It was a heavy burden, but Karen agreed with Steve and Tony. She would take on this secret assignment alone. In early October 1974, Karen returned to Oklahoma. She carried a red spiral-bound notebook with her around the plant.

She jotted down notes on everything, from poor welding techniques to contamination incidents. Despite the ongoing issues at the facility, Karen felt like nobody realized the danger they were in. On calls with Steve, which he recorded with Karen's permission, she sounded like she was about to cry while talking about her colleagues. While Karen was fighting for better working conditions, her co-workers seemed totally oblivious to the risks they were taking in her mind. The teenagers were still laughing off experiences like finding holes in gloves

used to handle plutonium. The more time that passed, the less patient Karen became. She wanted her young colleagues educated about radiation now, and if Kerr-McGee wouldn't warn their workers, the Union would have to do it for them. Steve agreed. On October 10th, he sent two nuclear scientists from the University of Minnesota to the Cimarron fuel fabrication site for a lecture. Any Kermagee worker was welcome to come, but only about 50 people showed up, about a third of the staff scheduled each day.

The scientists made sure those 50 people were alarmed enough to spread the word, though. After explaining their credentials, they warned the workers. There's no safe amount of exposure to plutonium. Even the slightest leak could lead to radiation poisoning, which in turn could cause cancer. Which naturally led to the question, what do we do about it? Karen and her comrades were ready with an answer. Join the Union. The more people they had on board, the better chance they had at renegotiating a stronger contract that December. It's not clear exactly how many people joined, but after the lecture, the Union definitely had more support. And although it was a win for OCAW, Karen's work

was far from over. She still had her secret mission to complete. She'd promised to bring Steve and Tony evidence about the defect of fuel rods, but time was ticking because Steve was working with a contact at the New York Times, a reporter named David Burnham. As long as Karen came through with the documents, David promised to cover her story. He wanted to meet with Karen in about a month, on November 13, 1974, in Oklahoma City. That would give him enough time to get his story to print before the union's contract expired on December 1. It was a good strategy, but it wasn't perfect, especially because Tony and Steve

still didn't want anyone to help Karen with getting the documents together. It was a ton of pressure, and Karen was crumbling. She couldn't sleep at night and was wracked with anxiety during the day. Quaaludes were the only thing that helped. Sometimes she even mixed them with a form of Tylenol that contained codeine. Using both together could lead to drowsiness and impaired motor functioning. And it was impossible for Karen to hide. On November 5th, she received a written reprimand from her boss. Apparently she'd been reported for appearing drunk on the job.

Karen hadn't been drinking, but she had been using prescription drugs at work, so she had no grounds to fight it. All she could do was take it on the chin and go to the lab as usual. After her shift was over, Karen tested her protective clothing for contamination. This was a routine precaution. Workers had to test themselves and their gear whenever they entered or left the lab. Normally it was no big deal. But this time, Karen's coveralls tested hot, meaning radioactive.

Karen stripped off the garments. A female co-worker tested her skin and found several hot spots on her body. The worst was on her right wrist, which was contaminated at over 20 times the level considered safe by the AEC. Next she saw a company doctor who took a nasal smear. Remember, plutonium is most dangerous when inhaled. A positive nasal smear suggests potential inhalation, and Karen's was positive. Karen took a decontamination shower, which involved scrubbing herself with bleach and tide detergent.

It seemed to work. Afterwards her whole body tested within the AEC's prescribed safe levels of contamination. Karen went back to work, finishing her shift at 1 a.m. Despite an extensive search for the source of the exposure, Kermagee never figured out what happened. Karen was stunned. Nothing about her routine had changed, and yet somehow she was impacted. All she could do now was monitor the issue.

Kermage gave her a testing kit and told her to collect samples of all her urine and bowel movements for the next five days. The next day, November 6, Karen returned to the plant. Union negotiations were supposed to begin later that afternoon, and she was buzzing with excitement. But before she could make it to the negotiating table, that anticipation turned to horror. During a routine check, Karen's right arm came up radioactive. This was shocking, because she hadn't worked with plutonium that day.

She'd started her shift with paperwork and planned to go directly from the office to the union meeting, so there was no rational explanation for how she was exposed. This time, a good scrubbing failed to clear up her contamination. Still, Karen was allowed to go to the meeting, with a radioactive arm. Doctors at the facility determined the plutonium was too deeply embedded in her skin to pose a threat to anyone else. But even though she was able to make it to the bargaining session, the union didn't make much progress.

After an unproductive discussion, Karen took another decontamination shower, scrubbing her skin raw with a caustic paste. The next day, November 7, Karen came to work and immediately took another test. Her results were even worse than the day before, which was really odd. She had taken a shower before leaving the plant, and yet the numbers were higher this morning, which signaled to Karen she wasn't getting contaminated at work, but at her own home. After telling her colleagues her theory, a group of doctors from the lab donned protective

gear and searched Karen's apartment. Their findings were definitive. There was radioactivity just about everywhere inside her home, far above the safe limit. There was nothing to do about it. Everything in the apartment had to go. The doctors bagged all of Karen's belongings and took them to a radioactive waste disposal facility. Later that night, Karen confided in the two men she trusted most.

25-year-old Steve Wodka with the OCAW union and her on-again, off-again boyfriend, 24-year-old Drew Stevens. She told them she believed she was going to die, either of acute radiation poisoning now or cancer later. The two men knew they had to be there for Karen. Steve booked a flight to Oklahoma the next day, but there wasn't much time to comfort her. Kermagee had decided that Karen should go to Los Alamos in New Mexico. They wanted her to visit the lab best known for its role in the Manhattan Project. There, the most advanced radiation detection equipment in the world would determine once

and for all how badly she'd been exposed. Karen traveled to New Mexico with Drew, terrified of what she'd learned there. She arrived late Friday night, November 8th. The scientists couldn't see her for testing until Monday, November 11th. But when she finally did see them, the results were a relief. To everyone's surprise, all her readings were either negative or within safe limits. The scientists even reassured her she could get pregnant and give birth to healthy babies. her she could get pregnant and give birth to healthy babies. Although Karen was still shaken up about the incident, the results calmed her down. And just in time.

On November 12, she and Drew returned to Oklahoma. Steve Wadka was still in town. His and Karen's meeting with the New York Times reporter was scheduled for the very next day. Karen rushed to gather up all the documents to take Kerr-McGee down. Little did she know, the company may have been one step ahead of her, and they would do anything to make sure she wasn't at that meeting, no matter how ruthless it was. Thanks so much for listening. I'm Carter Roy and this is Murder True Crime Stories. Come back next week to learn

what we know and still don't know about Karen's death, as well as how her family fought to hold Kerr McGee accountable. Murder True Crime Stories is a Crime House original. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on social media at CrimeHouse. Don't forget to rate, review and follow Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference. We'll be back next Tuesday. Murder True Crime Stories is hosted by me, Carter Roy, and is a CrimeHouse original powered by Pave Studios.

This episode was brought to life by the Murder True Crime Stories team, Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benadon, Natalie Pertsofsky, Lori Marinelli, Sarah Camp, Yelenaena War, Beth Johnson, and Russell Nash. Thank you for listening.