Madalyn Murray O’Hair: The Most Hated Woman in America

Madalyn Murray O’Hair: The Most Hated Woman in America

On the morning of August 28, 1995, employees arriving at the American Atheists headquarters in Austin, Texas, found the doors locked. A typewritten note had been left behind explaining that the Murray-O’Hair family had been called out of town on an emergency and did not know when they would return.

At the nearby home shared by Madalyn Murray O’Hair, her son Jon Garth Murray and her granddaughter Robin Murray O’Hair, there was no obvious sign of violence. There had been no forced entry and nothing suggested a struggle. Yet the departure appeared strangely abrupt. Breakfast dishes remained on the table. Madalyn's medication had been left behind. Most troubling to those who knew the family, their dogs, animals to which they were deeply attached, had been left without anyone to care for them.

The three had seemingly vanished.

It would be more than five years before the truth of what happened to them was finally uncovered.

By then Madalyn Murray O’Hair had spent more than three decades as one of the most recognizable and controversial figures in American public life. She had challenged religious exercises in public schools, founded an organization devoted to atheism and separation of church and state, appeared repeatedly on national television and pursued a succession of lawsuits testing the boundaries between religion and government. Her personality was as much a part of her reputation as her causes. She was intelligent, confrontational, profane, theatrical and frequently willing to offend people who disagreed with her.

In 1964, Life magazine famously described her as "the most hated woman in America."

Long before that description followed her through history, she was Madalyn Evalyn Mays.

She was born April 13, 1919, in the Beechview section of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the daughter of John Irwin Mays and Lena Christina Scholle Mays. Her older brother, John Irwin Mays Jr., had been born in 1916. Census records show her father working in the iron and steel industry, and during Madalyn's childhood the family moved from Pennsylvania to Ohio.

The Great Depression disrupted the family's circumstances, and Madalyn later described those years as formative ones. She was raised in a household with religious traditions, but by her own later account began seriously questioning religion while still young. The precise development of her atheism was retold in different ways over the years, both by Madalyn and by members of her family, but by adulthood disbelief had become central to the way she understood herself and eventually to the public life she would build.

In 1941, at the age of twenty-two, she married John Henry Roths. Their marriage coincided with the beginning of America's involvement in World War II and soon became complicated by military service. Roths entered the armed forces, and Madalyn joined the Women's Army Corps.

Her wartime service took her overseas. She worked in cryptography and was stationed in Europe, including Italy. While there in 1945, she became involved with William J. Murray Jr., an Army officer who was already married. Murray would not leave his wife, and Madalyn's marriage to Roths ended in divorce. After returning to the United States, she gave birth on May 25, 1946, to William J. Murray III, usually known as Bill. Although she and the child's father never married, she began using the surname Murray.

After the war she pursued higher education with considerable determination. She studied at several institutions and completed her bachelor's degree at Ashland College in Ohio. She later attended South Texas College of Law, earning a law degree, although she did not establish a conventional career as an attorney. She also studied social work at Howard University in Washington, D.C.

In 1954 she gave birth to a second son, Jon Garth Murray. His father was Michael Fiorillo, with whom Madalyn had been involved but did not marry.

By the end of the 1950s Madalyn Murray was living with her sons and increasingly interested in politics, social policy and questions involving religion and government. She attended meetings associated with left-wing political movements, and accounts of this period describe her as sympathetic toward the Soviet Union. She also explored the possibility of emigrating there. Much of what has subsequently been written about the episode comes from later accounts, particularly those of her estranged son William, and some details have been repeated inconsistently. What is clear is that the family remained in the United States.

By 1960 Murray was living in Baltimore, Maryland, and working in social services. It was there that an issue involving her elder son's public school transformed her from a relatively unknown social worker into a nationally recognized figure.

Maryland law provided for Bible reading and religious exercises in public schools. Murray objected to her son William being exposed to the practice and argued that a public school should not conduct religious exercises on behalf of the state. When efforts to challenge the practice through school authorities failed, she went to court.

The resulting case became Murray v. Curlett.

It is often said that Madalyn Murray O’Hair "removed prayer from public schools," but the history is more complicated. In 1962, before Murray's case reached the Supreme Court, the Court had already ruled in Engel v. Vitale that government-composed prayer in public schools violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment.

Murray's case concerned Bible reading and the recitation of the Lord's Prayer in Baltimore schools. After she lost in Maryland courts, the case reached the United States Supreme Court and was consolidated with Abington School District v. Schempp, a Pennsylvania case raising similar constitutional questions.

Photo, Madalyn Murray O'Hair with sons William J. Murray, III, and Jon Garth Murray on the steps of the U. S. Supreme Court buidling in 1963. Image courtesy of the Baltimore Sun

On June 17, 1963, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 1 that state-sponsored devotional Bible reading and prayer in public schools violated the Establishment Clause.

Murray did not accomplish the ruling alone, nor did the decision prohibit students from praying privately. What the Court prohibited was government-sponsored religious exercise in the public schools. Nevertheless, Murray became the person most closely associated in the public imagination with the decision.

The consequences for her were immediate.

She received enormous press attention as well as hostile mail and threats. Her sons also experienced the consequences of their mother's sudden notoriety. To supporters she was defending a constitutional principle and the rights of religious minorities and nonbelievers. To opponents she had become a symbol of an attack upon religion and traditional American life.

Murray did little to soften the reaction.

She possessed a gift for publicity and increasingly adopted a deliberately provocative public persona. She could be caustic, profane and combative, and she frequently seemed as comfortable antagonizing an audience as persuading one.

In 1964, Life magazine's description of her as "the most hated woman in America" captured the extraordinary hostility that had gathered around her. The label endured for the rest of her life.

The Supreme Court victory also gave Murray a cause around which she could organize. In 1963 she established the Society of Separationists, the organization that developed into American Atheists. Its purpose extended beyond opposition to school prayer. Murray wanted an organization that would defend the civil rights of atheists while challenging what she regarded as unconstitutional government support of religion.

After leaving Baltimore, she spent a period in Hawaii before settling permanently in Austin, Texas, in 1965. That same year she married Richard Franklin O’Hair, an artist. From then on, the name by which she became famous was complete: Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

Austin became the center of the movement she was building.

Through American Atheists and related organizations, O’Hair published books and periodicals, delivered lectures, produced radio programs and pursued lawsuits. Her causes included challenges to tax advantages enjoyed by religious institutions, religious language associated with government, mandatory moments of silence in schools and other practices she believed violated the separation of church and state.

Most of these later legal challenges failed.

One of the best known followed the Apollo 8 mission of December 1968. During the first crewed mission to orbit the Moon, astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders read from the Book of Genesis during a Christmas Eve television broadcast. O’Hair and other plaintiffs sued NASA administrator Thomas Paine, arguing that government employees participating in a federally financed space mission should not conduct a religious exercise.

A federal court dismissed the case. The court concluded, among other things, that the astronauts' religious statements were personal expressions and that the plaintiffs had not demonstrated an unconstitutional coercion of their own religious freedom.

The loss did little to diminish O’Hair's appetite for public confrontation.

Madalyn on Phil Donahue

She became a familiar presence on radio and television. She appeared with Phil Donahue and on numerous other programs, debated clergy and religious advocates, and willingly entered interviews in which disagreement was almost guaranteed. For a generation of Americans, she became the public face of organized atheism.

Her effectiveness depended partly upon the very qualities that made her divisive. O’Hair understood television. She knew that confrontation attracted attention, and attention gave her a platform. But the same approach could alienate potential allies as readily as opponents. Even within secular and atheist circles, reactions to her leadership and methods were mixed.

Her personal life remained intertwined with the organization.

Richard O’Hair died in 1978. Her elder son William had already begun moving away from his mother's worldview, and in 1980 the break became public and permanent when he announced that he had become a Christian. He eventually became a Baptist minister and religious activist and publicly repudiated the Supreme Court litigation in which his mother had used his name as a plaintiff.

Madalyn responded just as publicly. Their estrangement became bitter, and mother and son never reconciled.

The rupture also affected another generation of the family.

William had a daughter, Robin Ilene Murray, born in Honolulu in 1965. Madalyn eventually adopted her granddaughter, making Robin legally her daughter as well as her biological granddaughter. Robin grew up within the Murray-O’Hair household and became closely involved in the family's organizations.

Jon remained with his mother as well.

Jon, Madalyn, & Robin

By the 1980s, Madalyn, Jon and Robin formed the nucleus of both the family and the organization. They lived together, traveled together and worked together. In 1986 Madalyn stepped down as president of American Atheists and Jon assumed the presidency, although Madalyn remained the organization's most recognizable figure.

Their work continued, as did controversy surrounding Madalyn herself.

O’Hair's opposition to religion was not confined to constitutional litigation, and over the years she published and promoted material that went considerably beyond arguments about church-state separation. Some of her writings and statements were deliberately inflammatory toward Christianity and other religions. She also published material questioning accepted accounts of the Holocaust, views that drew criticism and have remained among the more troubling aspects of her public record. They were separate from the constitutional issues on which she had first become famous, but they were part of the complicated legacy she left behind.

By the early 1990s, however, the national spotlight had begun to move elsewhere. O’Hair was older and less active. The organization continued operating from Austin, but the world surrounding it had contracted considerably. At its center remained Madalyn, Jon and Robin.

Into that world came David Roland Waters.

David Roland Waters

Waters had a criminal record stretching back to his youth. American Atheists nevertheless employed him, and for a time he gained the family's trust. That relationship collapsed after Waters stole money from the organization. He pleaded guilty to theft after taking tens of thousands of dollars.

O’Hair retaliated publicly.

In the organization's publications she exposed Waters' criminal history, including the fact that as a teenager he had been convicted in the killing of another youth. The attack humiliated Waters and helped create a bitter personal grievance between him and his former employer.

Years later, investigators would conclude that Waters had begun planning something far more serious.

On August 27, 1995, Madalyn, Jon and Robin disappeared.

At first, even people associated with American Atheists were uncertain whether a crime had occurred. The note at the office suggested an emergency trip, and the family had a reputation for secrecy. There was also reason to believe they might have chosen to leave voluntarily.

Telephone calls followed.

Jon and Robin contacted people connected with the organization, but their explanations were vague. They did not say precisely where they were or when they would return. Those who spoke with them later recalled that something seemed wrong.

Meanwhile, money began moving.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars belonging to organizations controlled by the family were transferred. In San Antonio, Jon arranged for the purchase of a large quantity of gold coins. The transactions would eventually become central to understanding what had happened.

For a time, however, the missing money made the family themselves appear suspicious.

Rumors circulated that Madalyn, Jon and Robin had simply taken the money and fled. New Zealand was repeatedly mentioned because of financial connections there. Others wondered whether Madalyn, whose health was declining, had deliberately disappeared to avoid publicity surrounding her eventual death.

The reality was much darker.

According to the case ultimately assembled by federal investigators, David Waters had joined with Gary Paul Karr and Danny Fry to kidnap Madalyn, Jon and Robin. The three were held captive in the San Antonio area while their abductors forced them to arrange the transfer of money.

For weeks, the family remained alive under guard.

Their telephone calls to Austin were made during this captivity. The financial transactions and purchase of gold were not preparations for a new life overseas. They were ransom payments.

On September 29, 1995, Jon obtained hundreds of thousands of dollars in gold coins from a San Antonio dealer. Soon afterward, the trail of the Murray-O’Hair family ended.

Madalyn was seventy-six. Jon was forty. Robin was thirty.

For years, no bodies were found.

The investigation might have remained unresolved much longer had journalists not continued examining the disappearance. Among the most important was San Antonio Express-News reporter John MacCormack. He followed financial records, telephone information and the people surrounding the missing family, gradually uncovering connections that pointed away from voluntary disappearance and toward David Waters and his associates.

Danny Fry became another crucial piece of the puzzle.

Only days after the Murray-O’Hairs vanished, Fry's mutilated body was discovered near the Trinity River outside Dallas. His hands and head had been removed, making identification difficult. At first there was nothing publicly connecting the unidentified murder victim to the missing atheist family hundreds of miles away.

Eventually, investigators established the connection.

Federal authorities came to believe that Waters, Karr and Fry had participated in the kidnapping and extortion and that Fry himself had subsequently been killed by his accomplices.

Gary Karr was prosecuted and convicted on charges connected with the conspiracy. Waters ultimately pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit extortion, robbery and kidnapping.

But one question remained.

Where were Madalyn, Jon and Robin?

In January 2001, more than five years after the family disappeared, Waters finally led federal authorities to a remote ranch near Camp Wood in Real County, Texas.

Investigators began digging.

Human remains were recovered from a shallow grave. The condition of the bodies reflected both the passage of time and attempts that had been made to conceal their identities. Among the evidence recovered was a prosthetic hip that helped investigators identify Madalyn.

The remains of Jon and Robin were there as well.

Another set of remains recovered at the site belonged to Danny Fry.

The mystery that had begun with a locked office in Austin in August 1995 was finally over.

Investigators concluded that Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Jon Garth Murray and Robin Murray O’Hair had been murdered after the kidnappers obtained the money they wanted. The precise sequence of the killings depended in significant part upon information supplied by Waters and evidence reconstructed years after the crime, but there was no longer any doubt that the family had not fled voluntarily.

They had been abducted, extorted and killed.

David Waters was sentenced to twenty years in federal prison. He died there in 2003. Gary Karr received a life sentence for his role in the crimes.

After the remains were released, William J. Murray III, Madalyn's estranged elder son and Robin's biological father, took responsibility for their final disposition. The decision was disputed by American Atheists, whose leadership objected to William receiving custody of the remains and considered legal action to recover them.

By March 2001, however, the matter had been settled privately.

Madalyn, Jon and Robin were cremated, and during the week preceding March 27 their ashes were buried together in a single unmarked grave at an undisclosed cemetery in Austin, Texas. William deliberately kept the burial quiet. There were no reporters or cameras, and only a small number of people were present, including several law-enforcement officers who had worked on the case and a pastor who attended as a witness.

No prayer was offered over Madalyn, Jon or Robin.

After the burial, those present walked to another part of the cemetery, where a prayer was said instead for the law-enforcement officers who had spent years investigating the disappearance and murders. In this way, Madalyn's long-expressed wish that no religious ceremony be performed over her remains was respected.

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The precise cemetery has never been publicly identified, and the grave itself carries no marker. Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Jon Garth Murray and Robin Murray O’Hair remain together there, somewhere in Austin, their final resting place deliberately concealed from public view.