this is nightline. >> tonight. silkwood. a mystery so riveting. it inspired the oscar nominated film starring meryl streep. they're trying to kill me. >> they want me to stop what i'm doing. >> 50 years after karen silkwood died in a car crash, her family

still looking for answers. >> my heart knows there's a hole there. >> inside the renewed investigation into her death. >> mike, you found it from never before heard audio tapes. >> my life could possibly be in danger. >> to high tech examination of evidence. was it really an accident or something more sinister? >> that young lady was murdered. as far as i'm concerned. >> plus mufasa. >> i always wanted a brother. >> the star studded cast behind the lion king prequel. >> i'm a warthog. you're a warthog. i was typecast. >> lin-manuel miranda's musical genius unleashed. colin. >> there was such care taken for the musical storytelling to kind of grab the baton. >> plus, the debut to watch out for. >> we're here today recording >> we're here today recording the lion king.speak now or forer hold your-

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been saved. >> thanks for joining us tonight. recently unearthed clues breathing new life into the investigation of karen silkwood's death five decades after the nuclear facility workers totaled, car was found along a stretch of oklahoma highway on her way to meet a reporter to discuss the plant's allegedly dangerous conditions with another look into the investigation. here's abc's senior investigative

correspondent, aaron katersky. so how are you feeling? >> well, i'm trying to stay centered. don't get your hopes up too high. and. and it'd be nice to have some information. hopefully it'll give us some closure. >> michael meadows has been waiting for this moment for nearly his entire life. >> i don't get to even watch your steps here. >> for 50 years, he has been haunted by the memory of his mother, karen silkwood. >> i hear you, brant. i don't see you. >> and the unanswered questions surrounding the car crash that killed her. was it really an accident or something far more sinister? >> i don't know what their intent was to kill my mother. i know that's the result of their actions that they took that night. sorry, karen.

>> i don't know if you've ever. >> finally, on this day, he may get some answers. >> the back end of the vehicle is exposed to the wall. >> karen silkwood claimed there were safety problems at the plant. >> she was on her way to deliver documents to a new york times reporter. >> michael was just five years old when his mom died so young that when he closes his eyes to remember her, it's not always her face that he sees. instead, it's meryl streep. streep played karen silkwood in the oscar nominated 1983 film based on the story of a 28 year old oklahoma woman trying to expose secrets some wouldn't want revealed. >> they're killing me. they're trying to kill me. they want me to stop what i'm doing. >> this is the door your mom would have walked through. going to work every day. >> michael's hopes for answers are pinned on these two men.

investigative journalist mike boettcher and bob sands, ready to break through roadblocks that generations of journalists, investigators, even family have not. tonight, inside the renewed investigation into karen silkwood's death, unearthing never before heard audio tapes. >> mike, you found it. what? silkwood. storage. vegas. >> dallas, and a high tech examination of evidence from the crash. >> this isn't over yet. >> how does this local story. the death of a 28 year old woman in a car crash on some rural highway suddenly become national news with a congressional investigation, fbi involvement and talk of nuclear secrets. >> yeah, that's the question, isn't it? >> paul says the silkwood. okay, there we go. >> my name is joe royer, and i'm an investigator. i'd like to know if i could come by and

speak with you. what case is that? the karen silkwood case. >> it all came to a head on this two lane stretch of highway in oklahoma. it's pretty rural out here, and it's dark. >> there's no circumstantial evidence there to indicate that somebody may have another vehicle, may have hit the car in the rear. >> as her son, i would like to have a definitive answer of what really took place. >> if we don't learn from stories like karen silkwood, we're doomed to repeat them. >> karen started at the kerr-mcgee plant back in 1972. it was designed to make the fuel rods that powered a new kind of nuclear reactor, which meant processing uranium and plutonium. she worked with what was called a glove box designed to protect workers from radiation, while they handled tiny plutonium pellets. >> the first few months, she was a very happy camper. she was doing exactly what she had wanted to do with her whole life. but then she started to

see reality around her. she started getting contaminated. >> it wasn't clear to most people the health effects of radiation. >> you're dealing with something that's so many millions of times more toxic than anything else i know. >> steve latka first met karen in the early 70s, when he was a young staffer working for the labor union that represented karen and other workers at the plant. the oil, chemical and atomic workers union. >> and i said, you know, karen, i can't take notes on this. i got to tape you up in the laboratory. >> we got 18 and 19 year old boys, you know, and 20 and 21, i mean, and they don't they didn't have the schooling, so they don't understand what radiation is. >> kerr-mcgee argued it complied with existing regulations. toward the end of 1974, production had ramped up at the plant, and employees say so had safety issues. karen volunteered

to gather evidence about the safety concerns at the plant and report back to union leaders. >> she started snooping, and she came across a lot of very important stuff, watkiss says. >> karen claimed that important procedures were ignored, that factory reports were being falsified, and she'd been compiling a long list of radiation exposures. wadkar and karen decide it's time to go public. he sets up a meeting with the new york times reporter on november 13th, 1974, but she never made it. on the drive over her small honda civic ended up smashed on the east side of the highway, jammed into a concrete culvert. karen was declared dead at the scene very quickly. law enforcement said they knew the cause. >> it appeared at the scene and from the physical evidence at the scene that she ran off the road by herself. >> the oklahoma state highway patrol had always maintained that karen silkwood lost control of her car after falling asleep, something other investigators

and those who knew her never accepted. >> wait a minute. you don't understand. she was just on the highway for a few minutes. she couldn't have fallen asleep. >> in recent years, bob and mike have uncovered recordings about what may have happened in those final weeks of karen's life. >> there's two sets of tapes here. the first one was this impromptu investigation by a former highway patrolman who, just through circumstances, wound up finding himself in the middle of the karen silkwood case. >> this could become very dangerous. and that my life could possibly be in danger if we got deeply involved in this. >> the voice on those tapes, larry dellinger. >> that young lady was murdered. as far as i'm concerned, in the early 90s. >> dellinger recorded those tapes while he was a state trooper. in his investigation, he says he was told that some local police officers had been working off duty for the

kerr-mcgee company, and the crash that killed karen silkwood didn't happen the way authorities said it did. >> he advised that they had run her off the road and killed her. >> dellinger says an attorney told him that a former oklahoma city cop said he and three other off duty officers were tailing karen the night she died. >> he is one of the four said they had been drinking a little bit and they were following her. they bumped her, knocked her off the road, probably with no intentions necessarily of killing her, but she runs off the road and hits this big concrete abutment and kills her instantly. and he says that he's scared to death that he knows someday somebody's going to come in with a warrant and arrest him. >> eventually, larry got names, and he says he took them to the fbi and the oklahoma state bureau of investigation. but soon the investigation went cold and nothing ever happened. when

abc news reached out, the fbi and oklahoma city police did not comment, and the other state agencies also declined to comment. >> i wish the truth would come out. i wish names would come out. i don't have any doubt that it occurred. and she was murdered. it's just not fair. and the people involved are all dead now. all four of them that were allegedly in the car. >> to date, there has still been no official confirmation of these allegations. >> our thanks to erin for much more on this story. watch impact by nightline. what happened to karen silkwood? the lost tapes, streaming now on hulu. and when we come back, it's the triumphant return of the live action lion king, the glorious, star studded mufasa. together star studded mufasa. together that is if you're living with h, imagine being good to go without daily hiv pills. ♪

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>> welcome back. it was the king of the christmas box office and on the wish list of millions of lion king fans, a prequel to the 2019 blockbuster. pulling back the curtain on the origin stories of mufasa and scar, here's abc's rhiannon ally with another look.

>> i'm a warthog, you're a warthog. i was typecast. you are pumbaa, a jewish pig. it's a real contradiction, but i'm willing to ride with it. >> pumbaa and timon the meerkat, the beloved lion king duo together again on the big screen. >> so, just to be clear, we're not in this story. >> there's a lot of stories with all of us tell. >> one of those, voiced by seth rogen and billy eichner in mufasa. it's the latest in the franchise now with music by lin-manuel miranda. >> i think if it had just been the 94 film, i would have felt very intense pressure. but because there's been this incredible julie taymor broadway musical and beyonce's contribution with her inspired by album, that kind of expanded the notion of what lion king music could sound like. >> you know, it top everything, everything. you know it. king already, already you know it. >> a lot of modern african pop sounds. and so i felt like i had a lot of space to create. >> mufasa, a prequel to the classic story. the film packing

serious star power with beyoncé again lending her voice to nala. >> we're here today recording the lion king and her daughter blue ivy, making her voice acting debut as nala's daughter kiara. >> if i like told my younger self that i was in a movie i like, never believed myself was part of the draw to come back that you get to babysit beyoncé's daughter. >> it was an audition for us in real life. exactly. >> advocate for ourselves to be blue ivy's babysitters. >> when we started recording. seth is the one who told me that it would be blue ivy playing kiara. no one tells me anything. >> the film treading new territory, revealing the origins of mufasa and scar, the thing we all knew going into this movie was like, mufasa is a good brother, scar is the bad brother, and i love the way this complicates all that. now accompanied by miranda's signature musical stylings, it lives in you. it lives in

miranda. the tony, emmy and grammy award winning musician who shot to fame after creating hits like hamilton. i am not throwing away my shot and disney's encanto and moana. how far i'll go, and now writing mufasa songs like my little. calling. i heard that your kids are kind of your beta testers. >> i always wanted a brother, and i caught my six year old singing that to himself while getting dressed for school, and i was like, okay, we're going to be fine. >> the film's characters brought to life through a combination of live action filmmaking and photorealistic cgi. what was your reaction when you saw the movie for the first time? >> it was kind of mind blowing. i'd say 95% of what ends up in the movie. we improvise in the booth together, but we don't know what's going to end up in the movie. >> what was that like doing that together? >> it's really fun, and it's

really cool that in these big, giant, expensive movies, they've allowed us to kind of carve out this little corner of like, true, like improvizational comedy. >> but one voice. the cast is now paying homage to james earl jones, the original voice behind mufasa. >> don't turn your back on me, scar. >> we lost the incredible james earl jones earlier this year. what was it like returning to this film without him? >> yeah, well, there's no lion king without james earl jones. you know, i'm such a huge part of the legacy and a legend in so many ways. we grew up with him being part of lion king. >> we are all connected and star wars. >> it is useless to resist field of dreams. baseball has marked the time. >> so yeah, i'm glad they found a way to pay tribute to him in this. obviously free. >> and after singing hakuna matata in the last film, hakunamatata, eichner and rogen now have a bone to pick with mufasa's musical mastermind. >> write us a damn song.

>> we had to improvise our own from this movie. >> okay, everyone got a song except for timon and pumbaa. >> were you glad there wasn't a song? >> i'm never happy is what i've learned throughout this. if i have to sing, i'm unhappy. and if i don't get the opportunity to sing, i also am unhappy. it speaks to my personality in many ways. >> our thanks to rhiannon mufasa >> our thanks to rhiannon mufasa is in theaters ed, moderate to severe ulcerative colitis symptoms can keep coming back. start to break away from uc with tremfya... with rapid relief at 4 weeks. tremfya blocks a key source of inflammation. at one year, many people experienced remission... and some saw 100% visible healing of their intestinal lining. serious allergic reactions and increased risk of infections may occur. before treatment, your doctor should check you for infections and tb. tell your doctor if you have an infection, flu-like symptoms or if you need a vaccine.

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>> passion, betrayal and murder. and what was in this secret letter she

>> and finally, tonight as we celebrate this season with family, we want to close out this broadcast with a special tip of our hat to our nightline squad. to all those who make this show possible. happy

holidays. from our nightline family to yours. thanks for watching.

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