A new edition of ABC News Studios IMPACT x Nightline delves into lost tapes and new discoveries in a mysterious car crash that killed Karen Silkwood.
What’s Happening:
- This week’s brand-new edition of IMPACT x Nightline goes inside a renewed investigation into the 1974 death of Karen Silkwood, a young mother and chemical technician who was outspoken about health and safety at a nuclear fuel plant.
- In a story that became an Oscar-nominated film starring Meryl Streep, Cher and Kurt Russell, Silkwood died in a single-car crash while on the way to meet with a reporter.
- Authorities say she fell asleep at the wheel just miles away from a union meeting she had just attended, and was on her way to deliver sensitive documents that were never found after the crash.
- Now, via new reporting, many exclusive on-camera interviews and the discovery of lost tapes and new information documented in ABC Audio’s podcast Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery, IMPACT x Nightline investigates if Silkwood’s death was an accident or something more sinister.
- The episode, led by ABC News senior investigative correspondent Aaron Katersky, features new interviews with Silkwood’s relatives, including son Michael Meadows and two of her sisters, Linda Vincent and Rosemary Smith, as well as interviews with her friend and former co-worker Don Gummow, investigative journalists who have followed the case for 50 years and found the tapes Bob Sands and Mike Boettcher, and more.
- You’ll hear never-before-heard audio recordings with law enforcement, plus a hi-tech examination of evidence from the scene of the crash and an exclusive interview with one investigator who believes other people were involved in the car crash that killed Silkwood.
- Additional interviews include the following:
- Larry Dellinger, former Oklahoma Highway Patrol lieutenant
- Karen Pipkin Guerrero, daughter of A.O. Pipkin
- Steve Irwin, crash investigator
- Steve Wodka, former OCAW Union official
- David Burnham, former reporter at The New York Times
- James Noel, former employee, Kerr-McGee
- IMPACT x Nightline: What Happened to Karen Silkwood? The Lost Tapes arrives Thursday, December 5th, exclusively on Hulu.
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