Bodies Identified as Those of Missing and Kin
by Ross E. Milloy
The New York Times, 3-16-01

Austin, Tex., March 15 – The five-year hunt for the atheist leader Madalyn Murray O’Hair is over, a forensics expert hired by the government said today, confirming that bones dug top at a remote ranch were those os Ms. O’Hair and two of her family members.

Ms. O’Hair, 76, played an important role in one of two 1960s United States Supreme Court decisions, painting mandatory prayer in public schools, disappeared in 1995 with her son John Garth Murray, 40, and her granddaughter, Robin Murray, O’Hair, 30.

Officials said they believed the three were killed and dismembered in an Austin storage locker and their bodies dumped at a remote ranch in Real County, 90 miles west of San Antonio. One of the men suspected of the involvement in the case, David, or Waters, 53, accompanied the authorities to the gravesite in January, as part of a plea bargain.

At a news conference today at the United States, attorneys office here, David, M Glassman, chairman of the anthropology department at Southwest Texas State University, described a grizzly scene at the ranch, with bodies burned and stacked haphazardly across each other after the legs had been removed. Based on anthropological, medical and dental studies of those remains, he said, Ms. O’Hair, and her family members had been identified.

“Three of the skeletons have been analyzed and a recommendation has been made to the judge of real county that death certificates be issued for these three individuals,” Dr. Glassman said.

A severed head and hands from a fourth body found at the ranch have not been identified, he said.

How Miss O’Hair and her granddaughter died, could not be determined, Dr. Glassman said, but Mr Murray, who was found with his arms tied in a plastic bag around his head, showed signs of blunt force trauma to the skull that might have led to his death.

No one has yet been charged directly in the killings, but in June, Gary Paul Karr, 52, a handyman from Novi, Mich., was found guilty of extortion and other charges related to the case. He was found not guilty of kidnapping charges.

Evidence presented at his trial, indicated that the authorities believed Mr. Karr, Mr. Waters, and a third man, Danny Fry, kidnapped missile hair and her family in September 1995, and extorted $610,000 from them over a month before they were killed.

Official said they believe that Mr Fry was later, killed by Mr. Karr and Mr. Waters, his head and hands severed to prevent identification, and his body left beside the trinity river near Dallas in October 1995.

Mr. Waters, who has a long criminal record, including murder, what is an office manager for Miss O’Hair’s American atheists organization in 1993 and was fired for stealing $54,000 from the group.

He pleaded guilty in January to conspiracy charges, and agreed to lead investigators to the bodies, officials said. As part of his plea bargain, Mr. Waters will reportedly get immunity for his role in the killings, but receive a 20 year sentence for the conspiracy charges.

He is already serving a 60 year state sentence for probation violations and an eight year federal sentence for weapons violations.

“This certainly bring some closure,” Roderick L Beverly, an agent for the federal Bureau of investigation, said today.

After Ms. O’Hair’s disappearance in 1995, some wondered whether she had fled with money from her group, or whether the woman whom Life magazine had called the most hated woman in America, had drifted away to die, were Christians would not pray over her.

Born in Pittsburgh on April 13, 1919, two a contractor, John I Mays, and his wife, Lena, Ms. O’Hair was baptized a Presbyterian, but, she said, came to atheism early. In World War II, she served in the Women’s Army Corps, and later earned a law degree, but it was her involvement in the legal flight that led to the Supreme Court ruling on school prayer that made her a national figure.

In Italy, during World War II, Miss O’Hare, married to a steel worker at the time, met William Murray, Jr, an officer, who was also married. She had a son by him, William Murray III, who said he was named after his father. She divorced her husband and took Murray’s name, but never married him.

After she had enrolled her son, William, in a Baltimore public school in 1959, she sued to end the mandatory classroom prayer and Bible reading held there. The case reached the Supreme Court, where the justices joined it to a smaller one, rendering their landmark decision under the name of the other case, Abington vs. Schempp, in 1963.

Being a focus of controversies suited her temperament. “I love a good fight,” she said. “I guess fighting God, and God’s spokesman is sort of the ultimate, isn’t it?” Still, she also said that she became a target of harassment and death threats.

After a decision, Miss O’Hair moved to Austin, where she founded American Atheists, wrote books with her son, John and granddaughter, Robin, and continue to fight against school, prayer, and for legalized abortion, among other issues. She also married Richard O’Hair.

Her combative style alienated even many who agreed with her, well, giving credit is a foil against which to express their outreach. She was passed the peak of her influence by the time she disappeared.

William, her surviving child, became a Christian evangelist.