Twenty eight year old Karen Silkwood died on November 13, 1974. Possibly one of the most famous cases in Oklahoma, Karen’s death has spawned at least one book and a movie. But what actually happened to her remains mostly shrouded in mystery.

At the time of her death, Karen worked at a plutonium plant in Crescent as a lab technician. Eventually she became very concerned with lax safety procedures, even claiming that some forty pounds of plutonium had inexplicably gone missing from the plant. This amount of plutonium could create roughly two atomic bombs. Her employer maintained that absolutely no plutonium had gone missing from the plant. Karen had then begun working with her union in order to get the story of lax security and quality control procedures out to the public.

On November 13th, while on her way to meet with a New York Times journalist, Karen was involved in what has been termed a one car accident. Her vehicle swerved off of highway 74 colliding with a concrete wall and killing Karen Silkwood. The documents and pictures she was reportedly bringing with her to the meeting were never found. An autopsy would show that at the time of her death. Karen had traces of alcohol and prescription sedatives in her system, leaving police to conclude she had fallen asleep at the wheel and caused the accident herself.

The oddest part of Karen’s story, however, is likely what happened in the days before her death. Given she worked at a nuclear facility, there was an alarm system in place to detect radioactive matter either coming into or leaving the facility. On November 5th, an alarm went off showing Karen herself was contaminated with plutonium. Testing would show that the plutonium had come from inside the gloves she had been using to work. After medically monitoring her for the next several days, it was discovered that not only was Karen heavily, internally contaminated- but so was her apartment. More specifically, a sandwich inside her apartment was contaminated. A private investigator for the union Karen was working with would also say that upon inspection of her vehicle there were dents and scrapes along the back bumper that appear to show someone hit her vehicle sending her into the concrete wall and killing her.

Karen’s death and the events prior and after remains a matter of conjecture. She is either celebrated as a stop at nothing whistleblower or condemned as a martyr who manufactured the problems she was so determined to solve.