The Strange Case of Madalyn Murray O'Hair

The Long Strange Life of an American Atheist

If we’re searching for the original “Karen,” the obtuse, obnoxious, liberal activist with a foul mouth and a litany of complaints—perhaps I found her. It’s Madalyn Murray O’Hair, who at one time was the most famous atheist in the world. A law school graduate who never passed the bar and, therefore, never practiced law, Madalyn sure filed lots of lawsuits. (For the purposes of this story, I’m going to call her Madalyn since there are many other Murrays and O’Hairs in this story.)

• In 1962, she filed suit to make prayer in public schools illegal. She won

• In 1963, she had a lawsuit that was consolidated with another lawsuit and went to the Supreme Court. It made mandatory Bible-reading in public schools unconstitutional

• She tried to get the words “under God” eliminated from the pledge of allegiance. She lost

• She brought suit to get “In God We Trust” off the currency. She lost

• She challenged the tax-exempt status of the Catholic Church. She lost

• And then she tried to get the tax-exempt status of the Mormon Church repealed. She lost

These were not her only causes. Madalyn was a walking compendium of political grievances. She was a radical leftist and a political activist. She was an antisemite, a holocaust denier, a homophobe, and a racist. But it was in her efforts to fight God that Madalyn found her true calling. While she founded an organization still extant today, American Atheists, it was never the atheist mission that she served. It was money.

When Madalyn started filing lawsuits and speaking out about the alleged mixing of church and state in America, she received an unsolicited check for $5,000 to support her organization. She had struck the mother lode of grifts: she had tapped into an under-served market of atheists. People were willing to pay her money to try to topple organized religion.

The Bible says you cannot serve God and mammon and that was very true in the case of Madalyn Murray O’Hair. She only ever served mammon.

A Short History of a Loud Woman

Madalyn Murray O’Hair founded the American Atheists organization, strangely based in Austin, in 1963. She was known as a radical atheist but she had so much more to offer

• She was a militant feminist

• She was the original screechy, crazy-eyed liberal

• Before Roe v. Wade, she was a vehement proponent of unrestricted abortion

• She advocated that 13-year-olds should be legally old enough to consent to sex

• She consistently denied that she was a communist, although she hosted Socialist Labor Party meetings and held meetings with communists at her home

• She tried to defect twice to the Soviet Union, but they did not want her. Twice

• Oh, and one time she was charged with assaulting a police officer when her son had a minor girlfriend/runaway stashed at their house

• In 1965, she married a communist named Richard O’Hair and changed her name. Then they got divorced. She was no match for her husband who was known to have used over 100 aliases

• She had two illegitimate children, one of whom she despised so much she called him a “post-natal abortion”

She was born in 1919 as Madalyn Mays and served in the Women’s Army Corps as a cryptographer in Italy during World War II. After her military service, she emerged as a jack-of-all-causes, but most notably as a firebrand activist atheist. Ironically, her first son, William (the “post-natal abortion”) converted to Christianity and became a Baptist minister. Madalyn disowned him. Irony is so ironic.

How Madalyn Got Rich

A biographer Ted Dracos wrote a book about her called Ungodly: The Passions, Torments, and Murder of Atheist Madalyn Murray O’Hair. The book title is kind of a spoiler. But Dracos takes a surprising perspective on the life of one of America’s most hateful citizens. He found in Madalyn an outspoken and unhappy liberal activist looking for a cause—only to stumble on a cash cow. It seemed that there were many atheists in America looking for some sort of leader or unifying figure and quite willing to send in money—lots of money—to support the fight against religion. Remember that unsolicited donation of $5,000? It came from an obscure farmer in Kansas. And there were lots of other obscure people across the country eager to help fund Madalyn’s war on religion.

Madalyn’s American Atheist organization started out as a rag-tag, family operation that she ran out of her house. She only had two family members who she was on speaking terms with, a son named Jon Garth (let’s call him Garth) and an adopted granddaughter named Robin. Even in the early days of her shoestring operation, her biographer says the nonprofit was worth about $15M and was even rich enough (and Madalyn clever enough) to stash some of that money in offshore bank accounts. She ran an atheist library, whatever that is, that was worth about $3M in archival documents. She toured the country giving speeches and passing the hat. She wrote some books, too, that are now mostly forgotten.

Starting out dead broke, Madalyn got her business strategy from observing Jerry Falwell. This was revealed by an atheist who had worked in another organization but knew Madalyn well back in the penny-pinching early years. She reported that Madalyn diligently studied Falwell and modeled her big meetings, fiery speeches, and calls for donations after his business approach. She even copied some of his loud rhetorical style. And she learned an important secret: the way to get massive continuous donations is to create a nonstop series of disasters. Madalyn aimed for a different earth-shattering crisis every month.

Now in the finer points of style, Madalyn was nothing like Falwell or any other televangelist. She was a short, fat woman in frumpy clothes with a bad haircut who was vulgar, loud, and argumentative. This worked for her target audience. Madalyn loved to pick fights and insult people—but she always asked for the donations.

And they came in. Her pitiful little three-person organization was soon worth seven figures back when seven figures was a whole lot of money.

Madalyn was never ashamed of who she was. A lot of the cash that rolled in to American Atheists went straight to Madalyn, who spent it on expensive jewelry, luxury cars, and designer clothes. This last part is particularly ironic, since Madalyn always dressed like she just came in from an afternoon of dumpster diving.

At one point in her career running American Atheists, the IRS was going after her for $1.5M in unpaid back taxes. She gave them an official a two-word reply, and the first word stars with F and the second word is “you.”

Atheists lapped this up. Donations continued to roll in.

There is one point on which objective observers, critics, and fans all agree: Madalyn was the same nasty, argumentative, objectionable, and foul-mouthed person off-stage as she was on stage. Even those who had only fleeting encounters with her described her behavior as “appalling” and her personality as “unpleasant.”

As she gained national notoriety, she became friends with Hustler publisher Larry Flynt. In 1984, Flynt ran for president and he hired Madalyn as his speechwriter. Flynt was so taken with the outrageous Madalyn that he made Madalyn the sole heir to his $300M estate. The will was challenged by the Flynt family (which didn’t much like Madalyn) and it was all moot anyway. Madalyn died long before Flynt.

The Kidnapping

By the mid-1990s, the American Atheists organization was run by Madalyn’s son Garth, although everybody said that Madalyn was still running the show, just at arm’s length. Except for Garth being the main officer, it was a lot like it always was: a home-based multi-million-dollar enterprise in Austin with only three employees: Garth, Madalyn, and Robin.

One day, on August 27, 1995, all three disappeared. A typewritten note on the locked front door of their Austin house stated they had been called out of town for an emergency and did not know how long they would be gone. No one turned in a missing person’s report but a cursory investigation by the cops found some strange things in the house. There was uneaten food left out, as if they had been interrupted during a meal. Their pet dogs were left at home—and the O’Hairs never neglected their dogs. No one had taken any passports. They had not packed clothes or other things that one might do if one were leaving town.

From that day till September 27, 1995, there were occasional mobile phone calls from Garth and Robin to various people involved with American Atheists, but conversations were short and they never said why they left, what they were doing, or when they would come back. Some of the people who got the calls said that Garth or Robin sounded tense and unnatural. No one ever heard from Madalyn.

After September 28, 1995, the phone lines were dead. Four years came and went. Some police investigators looked into the case. A private investigator was eventually hired who found out they had been staying in San Antonio (very close to Austin). Most of the official interpretation of the events was that the atheist family was doing that old American dance: “take the money and run.” The IRS was closing in on them, since they reportedly owed over $1M in back taxes. The IRS was more actively investigating the disappearance than the FBI at the time. But then, over time, the case started to unravel. It was not what anyone expected.

David Roland Waters

In 1993, a guy named David Roland Waters was living in Austin and looking for work. He was a professional typesetter (back when typesetting was a profession) and he thought working for American Atheists would be fun, since he assumed that the enterprise would be like a think tank or university group and he’d meet lots of interesting characters.

Instead, he found Madalyn to be “the most hateful individual I’ve ever met.” There were no intellectual debates, no esteemed scholars, and nothing but foul-mouthed screaming all day long. He hated the place, and he hated Madalyn most of all.

Waters turned out to be a deeply troubled man, but he was smart. He very quickly pieced together the truth behind American Atheists. He realized it was not a legitimate group, it wasn’t even really much of an organization, it was a money-making operation built around the outrageous and offensive persona of Madalyn. Waters got closer into the organization and since it was such a small office, it didn’t take him long to see how Madalyn was cooking the books, where she was stashing donations, and how she was setting up offshore accounts. He observed her take donations and spend them entirely on herself.

He saw a lot of money flow through the organization.

As I said, Waters was a troubled man, so his first impulse was to get his own taste of the pie. In May 1995, he managed to steal $54,000 from the American Atheists. He got caught, but he got a light sentence. Madalyn wrote an article about him in the American Atheists newsletter and somehow she managed to find out a dark secret of Waters’ past.

Waters was a murderer.

It was not really a secret. He had a record. He had killed a 17-year-old and got only 8 years for the murder. Having done his time, Waters mostly tried to hide his past. At least, he didn’t talk about it. But Madalyn did.

That made Waters very angry.

Waters had a girlfriend at the time and she told police he was planning on taking revenge on Madalyn.

Criminals must be a gregarious lot, because they all seem to know each other. Waters had lots of criminal friends, including two guys who were willing to help him kidnap the American Atheists—Madalyn, Garth, and Robin. The story is a bit complicated so I’ll streamline the details. First, Waters and his co-criminals, Gary Paul Karr and Danny Fry, kidnapped Madalyn, Garth, and Robin and got them to withdraw money from their bank accounts and hand over their cash and credit cards. Garth even drew out $500,000 and took payment in gold coins.

Once Waters, Karr, and Fry were sure they had gotten all the loot they were going to get, they murdered Madalyn, Garth, and Robin and dismembered them. But remember we’re dealing with criminals, and at this point, Waters allies himself with Karr and they both bump off Fry. I guess money split two ways is more than money split three ways. When Karr was finally apprehended, he provided the details on the kidnapping, the thefts, and where the bodies were buried. He also turned evidence on Waters.

The case gets even stranger. Waters was arrested, but he was not tried for kidnapping or murder (although he was alleged to have committed those crimes). Instead, Waters was convicted of “conspiracy” and got 20 years in federal prison. He also had to pay back $543,665 to the American Atheists and/or the estates of Madalyn, Garth, and/or Robin. Waters went to prison in 2001 (remember the murders occurred six years earlier) but he never paid back anything. He died in early 2003 of cancer.

And remember those $500,000 in gold coins? Waters and crew hid them in a storage locker. Most of them were stolen from the original thieves. In other words, what Madalyn stole from her donors, Waters and crew stole from Madalyn, and some other rando crooks stole out of a storage facility. The cycle of crime.

Her Legacy

It’s hard to believe, but Madalyn Murray O’Hair has been the subject of a biopic called The Most Hated Woman in America. She didn’t object to the title. It may be one of the few things in the world she didn’t object to. In fact, it was a name Madalyn used of herself, since she got so much hate mail.

Her organization American Atheists still exists and a guy named Nick Fish is currently president.

Her son William Murray is still a Baptist pastor. He is lobbying to bring prayer back to school and wrote a book called My Life Without God about his upbringing as the son of America’s most vociferous atheist. He served as an adviser to President George W. Bush. By all accounts, his mother never spoke to him again after he converted to Christianity.

But perhaps Madalyn’s most lasting contribution of all was to daytime TV.

In 1967, Phil Donahue had an afternoon talk show in Dayton, Ohio and his very first guest was Madalyn Murray O’Hair. He was looking for ratings, and he wanted a lightning rod figure for controversy—which he got. Madalyn was in the news a lot back then, mainly for getting prayer out of the schools. While Donahue’s plan was to interview her, he found that every time the show went to commercial break, the audience fired off questions they wanted to ask the prominent atheist. In fact, Donahue realized that their questions were better than the questions he had prepared. Midway through the show, Donahue decided to switch up the format. He grabbed a microphone and positioned himself in the audience and got them to ask questions. This was the start of the modern daytime TV talk show.