A shocking tale of atheism, gold coins, kidnappings, extortions, and brutal murders.
Madalyn Murray O’Hair was not a product of her birth, her heritage, her upbringing. She was an anomaly in her family with her father being of Irish- Scottish ethnicity and her mother having the blood of Germany running through her veins. Both of them were religious.
Born on April 13, 1919, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Madalyn had an older brother, Jon Irwin Junior (Irv), and was baptized at the age of four. It was her religious beliefs, or the lack of them, that were going to play a pivotal role in her later life.
While in her teens her family moved to Ohio. There she graduated high school in 1936, got married, then served in the second world war in Italy for a few years, got divorced, and had two children, William J. Murray III with an officer she had served with, and then Jon Garth Murray in 1954 in a short-lived relationship with Michael Fiorillo.
At this stage, she wasn’t known as The Most Hated Woman in America, but that was about to change.
Now, no one sets out to be reviled by millions. No one wants to be hated by millions. Madalyn Murray O’Hair was no exception, but that was to be her fate.
Up to that point, her life hadn’t been anything remarkable, despite trying to emigrate unsuccessfully to Russia in 1960. The turning point came about from something as innocuous as taking her son, William, to re-enroll in Woodbourne Junior High School in Baltimore where she now lived.
It wasn’t the fact that the students had to recite the Pledge of Allegiance that bothered her, that got her hackles up, but the fact that they had to engage in prayers as well. Madalyn was an atheist and, when the school refused her request to excuse her son from the mandated prayers, decided to do something about it.
First, she pulled him out of the school, second, she took the Baltimore School System to court.
Her complaint stated that mandatory bible reading was unconstitutional, that it shouldn’t be forced on students. The US Supreme Court agreed with her and, in 1963 she got the ruling in her favor. That resulted in the nationwide ban on state-sponsored religious Bible reading and prayers in public schools. It was a huge win, and with it came consequences.
The backlash against her was venal, brutal, dangerously hostile, and she was forced to leave Baltimore for Honolulu, Hawaii, with her sons, Susan, her son Bill’s girlfriend, and her new grandchild, Robin.
After that victory, she founded the American Atheists organization and went on to file numerous lawsuits across the country for the separation of church and state, and even went on to launch the American Atheist Magazine. Her notoriety exploded further across America as she became more prominent, appearing on talk shows, holding debates with religious figures, and even launching her own radio station, the principal theme to criticize religion.
This further led to her own television show, the American Atheist Forum, which was fairly popular and brought in healthy donations from her expanding followers. Anyone who was religious, however, who did not appreciate her views that religion was a crutch, was irrational, was superstitious and was supernatural nonsense, came to hate her without prejudice.
It was this notoriety that earned her the name of The Most Hated Woman in America.
Death threats were the norm, stones thrown through her windows, and physical intimidation were regular occurrences. But Madalyn stuck to her principles and the organization grew to become a nationwide movement, its membership swelling throughout the next few decades.
In 1986, her son, Garth, took over the reins publicly, while she remained the power behind the throne. Her other son, William J. Murray, had become an outcast by this time, a pariah to her as he had found religion, converted to Christianity, and even became a Baptist minister. She disowned him completely, ashamed.
Still, the organization was thriving, was as popular as ever, championing the causes of non-believers.
On August 27, 1995, Madalyn, now 76, Garth who was 40 years old, and Robin at 30, who she had legally adopted, disappeared from the face of the planet, along with hundreds of thousands of dollars taken from the accounts of American Atheist.
What remained in their place was a note, typed, simply stating that the trio had had to leave for an emergency situation.
But then things went from strange to stranger.
Garth and Robin contacted several of their employees over the next month, voices strained, muted, something amiss. They offered nothing in the way of where they were, when they would be back, nothing. From Madalyn there was no word.
During this period, Garth ordered $600,000 worth of gold coins from a dealer in San Antonio. In the end, he collected only $400,000 worth.
On September 28 all communications ceased.
Concerned that maybe a scandal was about to blow up in their faces, especially since the IRS was enquiring about $1.5 million in unpaid taxes, and worried for the safety of the missing leaders, the senior staff in the organization contacted the FBI.
Despite these concerns, the FBI had very little to go on to suggest that there was any foul play involved in the trio’s disappearance. They interviewed employees, both past and present, suspected several who had shady pasts but came up with no solid leads.
The trail went cold, was petering off into nothing, no leads, no suspects, not even any motives.
If it wasn’t for an article in the Express-News a year later in August 1996 by a reporter, John MacCormack, the disappearance of Madalyn, Gareth, and Robin, would have faded away into history, another unsolved crime, if a crime it was.
The unraveling began with a body. A dead one. The corpse in question belonged to Danny Fry. At first, it was difficult to ascertain his identification due to the fact that his head and hands were not where they should be.
It wasn’t until 1998 before the reporter was able to string together enough information to make a coherent case, and maybe figure out who had put several bullets into Fry’s body and lopped off his head and hands. The suspect list surprisingly wasn’t that long.
One of the major breakthroughs came from a tipster who claimed to be a family member concerned about Fry. He gave the reporter a name, someone who had enlisted Fry for a job, a job that required a gun, and his silence.
Like a bloodhound, MacCormack was on the trail again, reinvigorated to unravel the mystery of where the O’Hairs were, who had killed Fry, and what happened to the $400,000 worth of gold coins. At the center of his investigation was the name he had been given, that of David Waters, a man with theft, murder, and an eight-year prison sentence in his past, and nothing bright on the horizon of his future.
When MacCormack interviewed him about the O’Hairs, Waters commented that they were probably basking in the sun somewhere living the high life from the monies they had pilfered.
The reporter didn’t buy it for a second, especially when his investigation revealed that Waters had stolen $54,000 from the American Atheist organization back in 1993. Stonewalled, but not giving up, he unearthed another name, Gary Paul Karr, who had links to both Waters and the mutilated body of Danny Fry.
At this stage MacCormack couldn’t go any further as he had no access to Karr to interview him, so handed all his evidence over to the FBI. To them, Karr, who hadn’t long been released from a thirty-year sentence for kidnapping, had no option but to answer their questions. At first, though, he was reluctant to say anything, thinking that they were fishing.
When presented with all the evidence and dots they had joined together, it didn’t take long for him to realize that he was jammed up in a corner with nowhere to go.
From the subsequent confession, a search warrant was easily granted, and the ensuing raid on the home of David Waters revealed guns, ammunition, handcuffs, a shovel, and crucially, a Browning 9mm pistol.
Waters and his girlfriend were arrested for kidnapping, extortion, and murder, their crimes motivated by hate, revenge, and greed.
It unfolded that Waters simply didn’t like Madalyn, in fact, hated her with a vengeance. When the kidnapping idea was hatched between him and Karr, Fry was brought in to help as they needed a third man to pull it off.
The three of them planned the kidnapping of Madalyn, Garth, and Robin to get their hands on as much money as they could, and get rid of someone Waters despised. $600,000 was the amount they had in mind, easier to split three ways.
Madalyn, Garth, and Robin were snatched up at gunpoint and held for a month at the Warren Inn in San Antonio. From there Garth and Robin made the calls and arranged for the ransom money. Unfortunately, Garth only picked up $400,000, with no way to collect the further $200,000.
Incensed, his hatred of Madalyn finally boiling over, Waters changed location to the nearby La Quinta hotel. Once there, he, Karr, and Fry strangled their hostages to death. All three bodies were disposed of.
But there was a further problem that hadn’t initially been anticipated by the two main cohorts, Waters and Karr – that $400,000 didn’t split too well three ways. After a night out drinking, celebrating, they turned on Fry, shot him dead, and discarded his body in the East Fork Trinity River in Dallas County, minus his head and hands.
Karr quickly confessed when he was arrested for kidnapping, extortion, and multiple murders. In a plea deal for a reduced sentence of 20 years, Waters agreed to lead the FBI to where they had buried the O’Hairs and Danny Fry’s head and hands. Both men received lengthy sentences, but Waters died in prison in 2003 of lung cancer.
The mystery, and the whole sordid scheme, was finally solved, with family members’ fears put to rest, and the American Atheist society able to continue its crusade.
As for its once famous-former founder…Well, Madalyn Murray O’Hair may well have been The Most Hated Woman in America, but even she didn’t deserve to be murdered for a few pieces of gold.