The Killing of Karen Silkwood

On November 13, 1974, Karen Silkwood, chemical technician and labor activist, was driving on a deserted Oklahoma highway when her car crashed into a cement wall, and she was killed. On the seat next to her were doctored quality-control negatives showing that her employer, Kerr-McGee, was manufacturing defective fuel rods filled with plutonium. She had recently discovered that more than forty pounds of plutonium were missing from the Kerr-McGee plant.

Fifty years later, her death is still steeped in mystery. Did she fall asleep before the accident, or did someone force her off the road? And what happened to the missing plutonium? The Killing of Karen Silkwood meticulously lays out the facts and encourages the readers to decide. Updated with new, vital information as well as the author’s chilling new introduction Silkwood’s story is as relevant today as it was fifty years ago.

For this updated edition, the author has added the latest information as to what happened to the various people involved in the Silkwood case, given real names to people who heretofore could not be identified, and presented new angles on the lasting effects of this underreported piece of the history of the antinuclear movement.