In 1974, Kerr-McGee laboratory analyst Sherri Lou “Dusty” Ellis and coworker Karen Silkwood became nuclear-safety activists after tests reportedly detected plutonium contamination in their bodies. Silkwood’s testing at Los Alamos, New Mexico, on November 10–11, 1974, showed substantially greater contamination than Ellis’s or roommate Drew Stephens’s. Silkwood died in a car crash on November 13, 1974, while investigating plant conditions; the source records Ellis’s later claims that she knew who was responsible, but does not establish that the death was anything other than a crash.
Ellis continued protesting Kerr-McGee and rejected a company payment offered in exchange for abandoning complaints, according to the source. In 1975 she pleaded guilty to forcibly entering the plant after climbing its exterior wall with a shotgun and received one year of probation. Her refusal to cooperate with authorities or testify complicated subsequent legal battles, while the case became a national symbol of nuclear-worker whistleblowing through the 1983 film *Silkwood*. Producers paid Ellis $67,500 for use of her likeness, portraying her as “Dolly Pelliker.”
