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Please do not suffer in silence.

In the mid-1970s, Wyoming was in the grip of an energy boom.

The oil crisis of 1973 had sent shockwaves through the American economy, and suddenly the vast mineral deposits beneath the plains and hills of the American West.

Uranium, coal, oil shale, natural gas, were more valuable than they had been in decades.

Companies poured into Wyoming's Powder River Basin and the surrounding regions,

staking claims, hiring geologists, and racing to locate deposits that could be

extracted for profit.

It was a gold rush, except the gold was underground, invisible to the naked eye.

And it could only be found by people with specialized knowledge and specialized equipment.

For a young geologist with the right skills and the right tools, 1970s

Wyoming was a place of opportunity, but opportunity, as it so often does, attracted more

than just honest people. In May of 1976, a 25-year-old geologist from Meade, Colorado, drove his specialized geological truck into the

open country around Gillette, Wyoming to conduct a routine exploration trip.

He had $30,000 worth of radioactive material in the back of his van.

He had sophisticated equipment that could locate mineral deposits hidden deep

beneath the earth. He had knowledge that was, in the context of the energy boom, extremely

...