IMPACT x Nightline: What Happened to Karen Silkwood? The Lost Tapes (12/5)

THURSDAY, DEC. 5
IMPACT x Nightline: “What Happened to Karen Silkwood? The Lost Tapes” (312) – Streaming Only on Hulu
Logline: Lost tapes and new discoveries in a mysterious car crash that killed Karen Silkwood, a young mother. Silkwood’s story fascinated generations, inspiring an Oscar®-nominated film starring Meryl Streep. Was it an accident or something more sinister?

Extended Logline: This week, “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 owned by her employer, Kerr-McGee. Silkwood died in a single-car crash while on her way to meet The New York Times reporter David Burnham when authorities say she fell asleep at the wheel just miles from a union meeting she had just attended. She’d agreed to deliver sensitive documents that were never found after the crash. The mysterious circumstances surrounding Silkwood’s death captured national headlines, stumped generations of investigators and journalists, and even inspired an Oscar-nominated film starring Meryl Streep, Cher and Kurt Russell. 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 Inside Scoop:

• ABC News Studios’ “IMPACT x Nightline: What Happened to Karen Silkwood? The Lost Tapes” begins streaming on Thursday, Dec. 5, only on Hulu.
• 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.
• This episode features 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
• ABC Audio’s new podcast series “Radioactive: The Karen Silkwood Mystery,” hosted by veteran journalists Mike Boettcher and Bob Sands, is available now on all major podcast platforms including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, Pandora, SiriusXM, the iHeartRadio app, Audacy, TuneIn and others.