He eventually got promoted to management, but that didn’t happen until after the mid-1980s, when the health concerns about Fernald became public knowledge. Sadler spent most of his career as a laborer. I learned this the hard way during a joint interview with Bob Kispert and John Sadler. When you talk to Fernald plant alumni, you have to be mindful of the type of job the worker held. So which is it: fake news or a real conspiracy? He’s my cardiac support dog.Īmber Hunt: They were all sick. Male: The doctor says, “You ain’t going to live through this.” Harry Easterling: I gotta go to dialysis three times a week. Lisa Crawford: We’ve had, you know, higher rates of leukemia, and we’ve had higher rates of breast cancer and kidney cancer and bone cancer and. What I do know is that when I called past employees to talk to them about Fernald, I noticed a theme in their answers. Tell everybody that they’re dying of cancer, that they’ve all been killed, that there’s a great government conspiracy to do them in, and they love it.Īmber Hunt: Maybe it does sell newspapers. Weldon Adams: That’s the way the media does. That’s what sells newspapers. Horror stories sells newspapers. Uranium isn’t totally safe, he concedes, but this notion that it might be responsible for anyone’s ill health? Well, that’s just fake news.
He’s been one of Fernald’s biggest defenders over the decades, testifying in numerous trials that you could sit right on top of a billet of uranium and walk away just fine. And we had some of the best heart specialists around, who made our case, and it convinced the jury.Īmber Hunt: That’s Weldon Adams. He didn’t die of uranium poisoning he died of a potassium deficiency. Weldon Adams: We won that case hands down. It sounds pretty open and shut that the exposure and his demise were probably connected, and yet, here’s the voice of a former NLO manager summing up the outcome of Larry’s widow’s wrongful death lawsuit: Hicks went to work healthy one day, was drenched in uranium, and felt ill until his death five days later. If you’ve been listening to this season of Accused wondering how on Earth anyone could get conspiracy-minded enough to think the government might have helped cover up the killing of David Bocks, you need look no further than the case of Larry Hicks. All they knew was that for days afterward, Larry felt sick and was required to undergo decontamination scrubs daily at work.
It was a solid, reliable job that provided well for his family.īut on this day, not quite a year after his coworker David Bocks apparently disappeared inside of a salt inferno, a piece of machinery malfunctioned overhead during Larry’s shift, and he was doused in particles of uranium.įun fact about uranium: It’s colorless and odorless, and Larry likely didn’t know how acutely he’d been exposed. The married father of three and avid jogger had risen the ranks after working 12 years at the company. Larry Hicks was a healthy 33-year-old man when he awoke one day in May 1985 and headed to his job as a supervisor at National Lead of Ohio’s Fernald plant. We can’t quit.”Īmber Hunt: I'm Amber Hunt, and this is Accused: The Mysterious Death of David Bocks. Lisa Crawford: My husband said to me, “Maybe it’s time to quit.” And I said, “I can’t. Jon Hughes: It seemed so mundane, yet it seemed so evil at the same time or potentially evil.īen Kauffman: I don’t know how much we know about the radiation risk today. Lisa Crawford: In the early years, absolutely. Bob Kispert: I think the interview is about over.Īmber Hunt: So is it fair to say that the government lied to people here?
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