Thefts Rock Atheism’s Mecca; Leadership Missing
Houston Chronicle, 11-12-95

O’Hair and family may be on vacation.

Austin, Texas – If atheism were a religion, Madeline Murray O’Hair’s American Atheist Center would be it’s Vatican.

But today, the headquarters of the nation’s, oldest, most prestigious atheist organization is all but vacant. And O’Hair – who rocked the Christian world in the early 1960s by successfully challenging school prayer – is missing.

Despite rumors that O’Hair is ill or dead, an atheist center newsletter, suggest she may be simply have gone on a prolonged vacation – in part, because of stress created by a series of steps and burglaries that left the organization in a financial crisis.

I trusted employee who had served time in Illinois for murder last summer, pleaded guilty to felony theft in the case.

The disappearance of O’Hair, 76, her son, Jon Murray, and her granddaughter, Robin Murray, O’Hair, in late August or early September launched a media search for atheism’s Trinity.

But spokesmen for the American Atheist Center have revealed little and O’Hair’s other son, Dallas, evangelist William Murray, allowed that he has had no contact with his mother for years.

He said, however, that representatives of cryogenics organizations – are regulars at American Atheist conventions. “For all I know,” he said, “they could have her frozen in the back of a van somewhere.” 

A story in the July issue of American Atheist Newsletter, however, said staff members at the center already had been placed on 20 for work weeks because of the diminished funding.

“This simply means that the three Murray O’Hairs work longer hour to make up for that labor loss,” the article said. “(They) need a little time to “breathe free”.

Spike Lyon, spokesman for the center’s legal arm, The Society of Separationalists, and the last known person to have spoken to O’Hair, said, “They could just be traveling around”.

“This can be a high pressure environment. It’s stressful to get a death threat every day. Sometimes, you know, you just have to get away”.

Tyson said O’Hair was well when he spoke to her about a month ago. He declined to reveal the families whereabouts or a return date. “O’Hair’s quite interested in the Civil War,” Tyson said, “and they could be visiting battlefield.”

In the interim, he said, the center office essentially is closed. The headquarters building in a rundown Northeast Austin neighborhood is ringed by a padlock, 7 foot high chain-link fence.

“I guess the employees are out looking for work,” Tyson said. “There were only about six of them.”

The July newsletter – touted as the “Members’ Inside Report” and edited by O’Hair and Jon Murray noted that the American Atheist Center had been victimized in a series of burglaries from November 1993 to April 1994.

In the first case, a $4000 computer was taken. Austin police concluded the case was an inside job, according to the newsletter.

In a second burglary, in January 1994, $70,000 in bonds was stolen from a safe shortly after staff member, David Waters was promoted to office manager. The final theft, a few months later, involved the loss of $55,000 from the American Atheists Center’s bank accounts.