Deep Dive
Shownotes Transcript
This episode of Swindled may contain graphic descriptions or audio recordings of disturbing events which may not be suitable for all audiences. Listener discretion is advised.
Here there are two distinct differences. One is, of course, that the public school system is compulsory, that every child is obligated to go to school. The second is, of course, it's teaching. It's a vowed environment, which it says, a teaching environment. And when it's participated in directly by state officials, I think that makes no doubt in my mind, and I hope in yours, that this is an activity prohibited by the First Amendment.
In 1962, the state of New York approved a piece of legislation that encouraged but not required students in its public schools to begin every day with the recitation of the Pledge of Allegiance and a non-denominational prayer. Almighty God, we acknowledge our dependence upon Thee, and we beg Thy blessings upon us, our parents, our teachers, and our country. Amen.
This prayer, known as the "Regents Prayer," was written, recommended, and published by the New York State Board of Regents as part of their statement on moral and spiritual training. We believe, the board wrote, that this statement will be subscribed to by all men and women of good will, and we call upon all of them to aid in giving life to our program.
Most of the school districts in the state of New York shunned the practice and refused to adopt the prayer, fearing the legal and religious controversy that loomed. However, the Union Free School District #9 in New Hyde Park, New York required a reading of the prayer every morning, which immediately prompted suit. Five families of ten pupils led by a Jewish man named Stephen Engle filed a lawsuit against William Vytel, the school district's president.
The plaintiffs insisted that the official prayer both contradicted their families' religious belief systems and violated the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which states, Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. But the courts in the state of New York refused to stop the prayer's use. Even the state's Supreme Court ruled that it was not a violation of the First Amendment based on the fact that participation was optional.
Contrarily, the parents argued that the prayer was effectively compulsory and involuntary due to the difficulty and embarrassment of asking to be excused. Ultimately, Engel v. Vittel reached the United States Supreme Court, and on June 25, 1962, a decision was handed down.
By a majority vote of 6 to 1, the court ruled that state-sponsored school prayer was unconstitutional, no matter if it was non-denominational and no matter if it was voluntary. In his opinion for the court, Justice Hugo Black explained the importance of separation between church and state. He penned a lengthy history of the issue, beginning with the 16th century in England and the early colonial days of the United States.
Black reiterated the dangers of governmental and religious unions and noted that prayer is a religious activity by its very nature and that prescribing such a religious activity for school children violates the Establishment Clause. Quote,
We think that by using its public school system to encourage recitation of the regent's prayer, the state of New York has adopted a practice wholly inconsistent with the Establishment Clause. It is no part of the business of government to compose official prayers for any group of the American people, to recite as a part of a religious program carried on by government.
While Engel vs. Vittel is widely considered to be a landmark decision, and by some the ushering in of society's downfall, the ruling did not outlaw all prayer in public schools, as it has sometimes mistakenly been interpreted. The ruling merely prohibited the school itself or the state from directing the service. Students were still allowed to organize and pray on their own merit, which they remain able to do today.
But this ambiguity left the door open for future challenges. In 1963, less than a year after Engel v. Vytel, a similar case reached the U.S. Supreme Court.
This time a man named Edward Shemp had sued the Abington School District in Pennsylvania on behalf of his son Ellery, who had complained that he was required to sometimes read or hear portions of the Bible as part of his public school education, as required by a Pennsylvania state law. Edward Shemp, Ellery's father. Ellery thinks for himself, no question of that.
Like New York, the Abington School District contended that their Bible portion of the morning lesson was optional and that a student may be excused upon the written request of a guardian.
However, one day in 1956, after Ellery Shemp refused to stand for the Lord's Prayer and opened the Quran during the daily readings to prove a point, Ellery's teacher removed him from the classroom. That evening, Ellery wrote a letter to the American Civil Liberties Union asking for help.
in a lawsuit filed by the Schimpf family against the Abington School District. Edward and Robin Schimpf contended that the rights of their children, Roger and Donna, under the First and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution had been violated. Having already graduated by the time the case was heard by the District Courts of Pennsylvania, Ellery Schimpf was not named in the suit. This is the family's lawyer, Henry Sawyer. What was done in Abington was a religious exercise.
and i said in this connection that of all the world's literature only the holy bible as the legislature called it had been singled out to be read and required to be read at the opening of each school day the testimony was that the students were required to observe a peculiarly high standard of decorum it seemed
In two separate trials, the district court sided with the Schimpf family. Edward Schimpf had testified that he had considered having his children excused from the exercises, but decided against it, over worries that his children's relationships with their teachers and classmates would be adversely affected, even more so than they already had been.
Schimpf argued that that fear of ostracization essentially compelled the Bible readings to be considered compulsory, which the courts considered unconstitutional. The school district and the state superintendent of schools disagreed, however, and appealed the ruling.
But before the Pennsylvania Supreme Court was able to hear the case, the law that mandated the reading of Bible verses at school was amended by state legislators. So the original judgment was vacated and Schimpf v. Abington returned to the lower courts for further consideration until the United States Supreme Court agreed to hear the appeal. Meanwhile, a similar case was playing out in Baltimore, Maryland.
That's 14-year-old William Murray, or Bill Murray, as he was known to his former friends. Bill had just returned to the United States with his mother Madeline and younger brother John Garth after a failed attempt to defect to the Soviet Union via Paris.
When Madeline enrolled Bill at Woodburn Junior High School, 17 days into the semester, she discovered that prayer and Bible readings were mandatory at the institution. Bill was bullied and intimidated for not participating. Madeline Murray, a devout atheist, sued the school district in 1960 for violating her family's First Amendment rights. But the Maryland court system ruled against her, and again when she appealed,
Although Madeline Murray never passed the bar exam, she considered herself educated in legal matters and even held a degree from the South Texas College of Law, so she continued to pursue the case all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. There, Madeline and Bill's case was consolidated with the Schimpf v. Abington case so that these similar cases could be heard at the same time.
Again on June 17, 1963, the Supreme Court justices ruled overwhelmingly 8 to 1 that school-sponsored prayer and Bible readings in public schools were unconstitutional. Justice Tom C. Clarke wrote, "We repeat and again reaffirm that neither a state nor the federal government can constitutionally force a person to profess a belief or disbelief in any religion
Neither can it constitutionally pass laws or impose requirements which aid all religions as against non-believers, and neither can it aid those religions based on a belief in the existence of God as against those religions founded on different beliefs. Case closed.
President Kennedy makes news on many fronts in his weekly press conference. To reporters crowding the State Department auditorium, he restates America's stand against any red China threat to Kamoi and Matsu Islands. He discusses his trade expansion and Medicare programs. After his opinion of the Supreme Court decision banning prayer in schools, the president says,
Well, I haven't seen the measures in the Congress, and you'd have to make a determination of what the language was and what the effect it would have on the First Amendment. The Supreme Court has made a judgment. A good many people obviously will disagree with it. Others will agree with it. But I think that it is important for us, if we're going to maintain our constitutional principle, that we support Supreme Court decisions, even when we may not agree with them.
Predictably, the American public's reaction to the ruling was divided, which was reflected in the responses from their preferred media publications. The liberal New York Times printed large portions of the court's opinion without comment or criticism, while the more conservative Washington Star pondered if Christmas carols would be the next to go. Could it be the first shot in the endless imaginary war on Christmas?
The Republicans in Congress certainly thought so. Members of the House and Senate have filed more than 150 resolutions to overturn the prayer in school decision by constitutional amendment. God belongs in the classroom, they say. That's the only solution to all this madness. As if the divine entity will descend from heaven at a moment's notice to shield the student body from a hail of bullets.
Regardless, the legacy of Ingo V. Vittel and Schimpf v. Abington has survived, just like the other oft-attacked, quote, liberal decisions of that particular Supreme Court that involve contraceptives, reproductive rights, and desegregation.
And while people in positions of power continued to disingenuously interpret the Constitution like it was a Bible in order to levy additional challenges, the people directly involved in the historic Supreme Court cases moved on with their lives. Kind of. Ellery Shimp, the Unitarian, earned a PhD in physics from Brown University and worked with GE Medical Systems to develop MRI technology.
In 2002, he was invited back to Abington Senior High to be elected into the school's Hall of Fame. In his acceptance speech, Dr. Shemp said, "...I never thought they'd invite me back here. Bill Murray must have had the same thoughts about heaven. The once self-described atheist saw the light in 1980 and became a born-again Christian and pastor, much to his militant mother's chagrin."
One could call this a post-natal abortion. Madeline once commented about her oldest son's spiritual journey: "I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times. He is beyond human forgiveness." The battle to enforce separation of church and state had never ended for Madeline Murray. In fact, she made it her life's purpose. Not that she believed in anything of the sort.
After the Supreme Court case was decided, Madeline only grew more outspoken, bitter, and emboldened. Thanks to the persecution and harassment her family experienced at the hands of the Jesus Freaks. She was fired from her job at the Baltimore Department of Public Welfare. Rocks and eggs were thrown at her home. Feces and death threats littered her mail. Madeline also said she had to buy her son John a kitten because all the kids in the neighborhood had been forbidden to play with him.
A few weeks later, Madeline claimed to have found that kitten dead on the front porch. Someone had twisted its neck. Madeline theorized that the stress caused by these endless disruptions led to her father's heart attack and early death. And for an atheist, that's almost even more tragic since no afterlife awaits. Everything goes black, it's presumed. Just like the way it was before you were born.
Our house was attacked so many times that I became quite an expert glass repairman. Anybody that needs glass repaired in their home can call on me. I know how to deal with the putty and cutting the glass. You were throwing rocks at your windows? That's right. We had bullets through the front window. We had bullets through the back window. And we had bullets through the back door of our car. This must have been what Jesus felt like as he lugged the cross through the crowds of people who were afraid of a few new ideas.
or maybe more like a witch, burned at the stake for inviting the bad weather. Madeline Murray would perish at the thought, but she did relish her new role as public enemy number one. She fanned the flames of eternal hellfire with aggressive quote after aggressive quote. "We find the Bible to be nauseating, historically inaccurate, replete with the ravings of madmen," she told Life magazine in 1964.
We find God to be sadistic, brutal, and a representation of hatred, vengeance. We find the Lord's Prayer to be that muttered by worms groveling for meager existence in a traumatic, paranoid world.
Fair enough.
After fleeing Baltimore in 1963 in the face of growing hostility, and after allegedly assaulting five police officers who were trying to retrieve her son Bill's underage runaway girlfriend from their home, Madeline Murray and her family sought political asylum in Hawaii and Mexico, but were turned away in an instant.
Eventually, the Murrays settled in Austin, Texas, where they established what would become one of the largest atheist organizations in North America, until everything went horribly wrong. A leading figurehead of atheism dedicates her life to maintaining the separation of church and state, until one day she, along with her family and minor fortune, vanishes off the face of the earth on this episode of Swindled.
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If you're an atheist, Madeline Murray O'Hare is heroic. If you're not, she's at best a curiosity and at worst the most dangerous person on the planet. That makes her at the very least an extremely controversial woman. But Madeline Murray O'Hare says she's not here to win popularity contests. She's here to enforce the separation of church and state. And if she can separate you from your church in the process, well, that would make her happy too.
The birth of Madeline Mays was a miracle. Legend has it that her mother, Lena, tried to induce a miscarriage by throwing herself down a stairwell. Before that, she had tried concoctions of herbal remedies and black magic to no avail. That's according to Madeline's son, Bill, who also claimed that when his mother was born, alive and well by the grace of God on April 13th, 1919, in addition to a misshapen ribcage, her body was enveloped with some kind of unusual dark membrane.
The doctors who aided the delivery were befuddled, but let the family take the oddity home as a souvenir. And the baby too. Growing up in Pittsburgh back then was rough for Madeline. Her relationship with her parents was poor, to say the least, and their financial condition even poorer, thanks to the stock market crash and subsequent Great Depression that began in 1929. But Madeline Mays has always been a fighter, tougher than the nails used to hammer Jesus to the cross.
Madeline endured the toxic household and eventually found her way out and fell in love, another concept that she would chew on for the rest of her life. At the age of 22, Madeline married a man named John Roths, a steelworker, but the holy matrimony was short-lived. Two months later, both Madeline and John were inspired to join the military after the Japanese carried out a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor.
Madeline said she was stationed in North Africa and in Italy, where she served as a cryptographer on General Dwight D. Eisenhower's staff, but archivists at the Eisenhower Library later told Texas Monthly Magazine that there was no evidence found in their records of that claim being true, not that a lack of evidence has ever prevented anyone from believing things that are likely fictional. People are at their happiest when ignoring the truth.
However, what is undeniable is that Madeline Mays Roths found a new man. She became pregnant while overseas by William J. Murray. He was an officer in the army, and wealthy, and married, and suddenly a strict Catholic who refused to divorce his spouse like Madeline Mays formerly Roths had already planned to do. So Madeline took Murray's name anyway, and moved back to the States where she gave birth to a baby boy, whom she named after his absent father.
Madeline Murray then moved into her parents' home. She worked a variety of jobs, attended college when she could, raised her son as a single mother, birthed another child named John with another deadbeat dad, studied communism, and lived completely destitute until the Supreme Court case in 1963.
Madeline's now infamous battle to keep prayer out of public schools had won her more than a handful of supporters around the country. Some of them sent money to her home, sometimes simply addressed to the atheist in Baltimore. Suddenly, Madeline had a nickel for every death threat, and it was life-changing, but so was the abuse her family was suffering from their neighbors and colleagues. Madeline wanted to leave Baltimore, but not alone.
I just want a man, she told Playboy magazine in 1963. A real too-bald masculine guy. And there aren't many of them around, believe me. But I do want somebody my own age and somebody who has brains enough to keep me interested and to earn enough money to support me in the style to which I've become accustomed.
I want a man with the thigh muscles to give me a good frolic in the sack, the kind who'll tear hell out of a thick steak, and yet who can go to the ballet with me and discuss Hegelian dialectic and know what the hell he's talking about. I want a strong man, but a gentle one. Meet Richard O'Hare, a former Marine that had spent four years as a card-carrying communist in Detroit while serving as an FBI informant.
O'Hare named nearly 100 of his comrades in a public trial in 1962 and had been pretending to be an employee of the Bureau ever since. It must have been love at first sight when these two outcasts crossed paths south of the border. Madeline Murray and her youngest son had escaped Baltimore, first to Honolulu, then to Mexico before being deported to Texas.
Madeline has said that while in Mexico, she was approached one night at gunpoint and herded onto an airplane with her 11-year-old son John and new boyfriend Richard. From there, they were flown to San Antonio, where the Maryland State Police were waiting to arrest her. But Madeline claims she was able to evade their control. I didn't come to Texas. I was brought to Texas.
I had fled from Baltimore to Honolulu hoping to find political asylum in Honolulu, which is a fundamentally Buddhist state that is anti-Christian. And I couldn't find it there. The legal procedures were against me. So I fled to the only Western country that I knew that was absolutely dedicated to separation of church and state, and that's Mexico.
To fight her extradition, Madeline relocated to Austin, the capital of Texas. She was joined by Richard O'Hare, whom she soon married, as well as her son John, and eventually her granddaughter Robin, who Madeline adopted after her eldest son Bill Murray found Jesus and Alcoholics Anonymous. Madeline, on the other hand, was taking steps inside of multiple Central Texas jail cells. She said she was arrested three times in San Antonio and twice in Austin during her legal entanglement.
But eventually, all the charges were dropped and she was allowed to stay. And I must say that your jails are quite dirty, very cluttered, and they smell from urine. And absolutely not a nice place in which one should spend one's continuing existence. But I had to fight the extradition to Maryland from the Capitol. And by the time that we had established ourselves here...
We were so entrenched that we couldn't possibly afford to move since inflation is upon us in America today. Once firmly settled in Austin, Madeline Murray O'Hare picked up right where she left off in her defense of a secular nation. It was Madeline's goal to point out the hypocrisy and the absurdity of organized religion and its effects on the lives of even the country's most staunch non-believers.
Ever since she had read the Bible from cover to cover as a child, Madeline Murray O'Hare had felt compelled to express her distaste. Quote,
Madeline set up a printing press in her new home to distribute newsletters and other atheist paraphernalia. Churches exist tax-free but desire to dictate law while praying for peace with blood on their hands. The paradox of free will and predestination. The intolerance. Judge not.
lest ye be judged. I am involved in a political-religious battle, and religion is politics in the United States. To live with a philosophy, and to live in a way based on that philosophy, the philosophy of atheism, the philosophy of love of fellow man rather than love of God. When a City of Austin council member caught wind of Madeline's home printing business, a zoning violation was issued.
Madeline, knowing that churches were allowed to operate freely in residential areas, decided to establish her own house of worship in order to be granted the same luxuries. She installed herself as the bishop. Her husband, Richard, was the prophet. Divinely tax-exempt, the government was not abused.
Throughout the late 60s, 70s, and even 80s, Madeline Murray O'Hare organized and agitated even further. She founded the American Atheist Organization, a non-profit dedicated to defending the civil liberties of atheists and advocating the complete separation of church and state.
The stance of the American atheist organizations is as follows: religion is a private affair. It is for your home and your church. The politics and education, public education in the country are public affairs and into this no religion should intrude.
Madeline, who served as the CEO and President of American Atheists, was adamant that her goal was not to convert believers into non-believers. She told Playboy magazine, quote,
At no time have I ever said that people should be stripped of their right to the insanity of belief in God. If they want to practice that kind of irrationality, that's their business. It won't get them anywhere. It certainly won't make them happier or more compassionate human beings. But if they want to chew that particular cud, they're welcome to it.
Madeline claimed that the sole purpose of the organization was to ensure that that particular CUD did not encroach into public life. She accomplished this by launching what she called a "campaign of litigious education." She filed numerous lawsuits that challenged certain government practices that she deemed violations of the separation of church and state. Some were more successful than others. Some, pettier than others.
In 1964, Madeleine sued the Federal Communications Commission so that atheists could have equal time with religion on radio and television. In 1970, she challenged the weekly religious services that were being held in the Nixon White House. A year later, she sued NASA for allowing astronauts to broadcast readings from the Book of Genesis while they orbited the moon. She also tried to have "In God We Trust" removed from U.S. currency.
In Texas, Madeline challenged the opening prayer at city council meetings in Austin. Then she sued to remove the provision in the state's constitution that required a belief in God for any person holding office. There was another lawsuit to remove the nativity scene from the capitol's rotunda. And she burned a jury summons on television because it required an oath to serve.
In addition to being a godless atheist, many considered Madeline Murray O'Hare to be a militant feminist as well, because she advocated for such radical ideas as free birth control and complete equality with men. She also professed publicly, in an article for Hustler magazine, the benefits of masturbation, probably because it's more difficult to read your Bible when the pages are stuck together. So I've heard...
Live from the new headquarters of the American Atheist Movement off Cameron Road. Thank you for joining us. First of all, Ms. Hare, can you hear me? Yes, I can hear you. What prompted you to start this movement in the first place? I'm sorry, I can't hear you. What prompted you? You've just ruined a television shot.
Madeline's hot tics continued to stir the religious crackpots whose vulgar letters and threats were not emblematic of turning the other cheek, and Madeline's activism over the years continued to land her in legal hot water. She claimed to have been arrested almost a dozen times before she turned 58 years old, mostly for disorderly conduct at council meetings and such. It was a small price to pay to give her non-beliefs some media exposure, even though for Madeline Murray O'Hare,
Media exposure had always been pretty easy to come by. She was the first ever guest on the Phil Donahue show in 1967. In the years following, she squared off in countless debates with religious leaders and scholars on the radio, TV, and in print, where it was obvious to every casual viewer or listener that Madeline's opponents usually were not fit for battle. They shrunk in the shadow of her enormous wit and candor.
and it didn't help that Madeline was as physically imposing as she was intellectual. Lumbering and broad-shouldered, with a vocabulary fit for both savant and sailor, the most hated woman in America's reputation ballooned with each public appearance, and she reveled in the infamy. "What do you have against God?"
First... Why does he bug you? Well, first off, there isn't any. And second off, the idea which you invented has caused more misery to every human being in all ages of history than any other single idea. Listen, Madeline. An atheist is a person who questions every kind of authority. And this is the thing that is important. Because if we can, without blinking an eye, question the ultimate authority, God...
who must be obeyed, then we can question the authority of the state, we can question the authority of a university structure, we can question the authority of our employer, we can question anything. I think the thing that I find absolutely the most regrettable and intolerable is that Christianity
person's feelings of personal inadequacy. They feel that they cannot cope, that they must go outside of themselves, that they cannot educate themselves and use their potential in self-actualization. You do support the established order in America. You have never at any time been on the side of minority. Tell me when you came out for the black man.
It was after the black man and the brown decision that you jumped on the bandwagon. Tell me when you come out to get children out of coal mines. It was after the union movement. You're going to spend your whole life preparing to meet the Lord.
Boy, you folks are crazy as hell. Okay, you think she's going to hell then? I don't know. I would like to have faith to believe that she could be saved. I say this, if she is ever saved, I don't want to be saved. I'm not interested in your ideas. Let me ask you about your higher consciousness and the good order. For instance, my husband recently died of cancer.
If you look at it from the viewpoint of the cancer, the cancer had every right to exist. The cancer had every right to metastasize, to put out colonies. It went from my husband's liver to his bowels, to his intestines, to his brain, to his nervous system, to his lymph glands. Looking at it from the viewpoint of the cancer, this is idiotic because it killed its host. For God so loved the world that he gave us cancer.
Madeline's husband, Richard O'Hare, died of cancer in 1978. There were rumors that she was planning to divorce him leading up to the terminal diagnosis. Richard had physically abused Madeline on numerous occasions in their final years together. They were separated at the time after Richard was sent to jail for assault. But Madeline decided to wait out her husband's impending death to reap the pension benefits he would leave behind. After all, Richard wouldn't need them. There are no bill collectors in hell.
Besides, Madeline Murray O'Hare had a new $1 million American Atheist Center to pay for, which had officially opened a year prior.
The 17,000 square foot building on Cameron Road in North Austin served as the official headquarters of the organization. It contained a printing press, a mailroom, a recording studio, multiple offices, one of the largest libraries of atheist material in the country, and a gift shop where the cashier would gleefully scribble over and godly trust on every dollar bill that was placed into the register.
The building also eventually featured a six-foot fence topped with barbed wire to keep out the riffraff and deranged fundamentalist. I can't tell you how many times we made frantic runs for our cars in parking lots or where we have been insulted in restaurants. The doctor tells me to walk two miles a day. I can't.
I cannot go out and walk two miles any place in Austin without being accosted by a religious nut. Madeline, who maintained most of the power, operated the American Atheist Headquarters with her son, John Garth Murray, who served as the organization's president, and Robin Murray O'Hare, Madeline's granddaughter and executive secretary, with a handful of unrelated support personnel.
The three family members lived together in the same house, worked in the same office, ate at the same restaurants for lunch, but always drove their separate cars. Some disgruntled former members grumbled that it was the family's way of flaunting their fancy digs. Others assumed the Murray O'Hairs needed the extra room to bring along their beloved Cocker Spaniels, Gannon and Shannon, previously Ingalls and Marks.
Or maybe that was their way of getting a moment to themselves. Lord knows they probably needed one. But it was true that the first family of atheism was making a lot of money, at least for the average person. But the Murray O'Hairs were non-average people. That's according to John Garth Murray, who, 34 years old at the time, told Texas Monthly, quote,
Madeline and I and Robin just don't fit into that role. We're accustomed to good food, to eating in dining rooms with tablecloths, good dishes and a good bottle of wine. Even when we go out for lunch, we go someplace nice. You'd never see us at McDonald's or Burger King. That's just not our lifestyle. All of us have nice clothes. My suits cost a minimum of $500-$600. My shirts are custom made. My ties are all silk.
We have a nice house in Northwest Hills, nice automobiles. We get a tremendous amount of flack over the fact that I drive a Mercedes, Madeline drives a Mercedes, and Robin drives a Porsche. We've been around the world three times.
But none of those things stopped Madeline from vigorously recruiting new members via the American Atheist radio program, the American Atheist television forum that aired on 150 cable systems, and the American Atheist Legacy newsletter that had been published since day one.
We are always behind in funds because we rely completely on individual and private donations of those persons who hear me or read about me and are concerned enough to try to send in a couple of books. We're always struggling for funds. I wish I could get a grant from an appropriate government agency, but I doubt under the Nixon administration that that's going to be possible.
Anytime she was asked, Madeline would claim that the organization's membership was the highest that had ever been and that they maintained a mailing list of anywhere from 45 to 100,000 people. Conversely, Bill Murray, Madeline's son who, before his defection, had previously worked at the organization, claimed that American Atheist was entirely supported by a little more than 2,500 paying members and that that figure was the highest that had ever been.
Whatever the true membership total may be, it was more than enough to have a parade, apparently. Four, six, eight, separate church and state! Two, four, six, eight, separate church and state! Ladies and gentlemen, while the rest of the parade is gathering around the front of the California State Capitol here in Sacramento, I have a question for all of you. Are there any atheists here at the Capitol? No!
We want to let Governor Wilson and the members of the California State Legislature know what God is. What is God? All right, God is make-believe. Madeline Murray O'Hare's notoriety began to fade in the late 80s and early 90s, even though she was needed more than ever.
On the campaign trail leading up to the 88 election, George H.W. Bush was asked what he would do to win the votes of the Americans who were atheists. The soon-to-be president of the United States replied, "I guess I'm pretty weak in the atheist community. Faith in God is important to me." Robert I. Sherman, the reporter from the American Atheist News Journal who asked the question, was taken aback and followed up, "Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of Americans who are atheists?"
Bush answered, "No, I don't know that atheists should be considered as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one nation under God." Madeleine Murray O'Hare still had plenty of work to do, but she was also being faced with her own mortality. She was getting older. She had diabetes, a hip replacement, and heart disease. She could barely walk, much less carry the cross of the entire atheist movement.
That was Madeleine at the American Atheist Convention in 1993, announcing her intention to remain involved.
But less than two years later, Madeline Murray O'Hare, John Garth Murray, and Robin Murray O'Hare disappeared one day in August 1995 and were never heard from again.
Do you believe that Madeline Murray O'Hare could be saved? Do you believe it? How many? Raise your hand. Do you believe it? How many believe she could be saved? How many think it's too late? How many think she's gone too far? Raise your hand. Would you stand for just a second? Hold it. You'll stand so they can see. Why do you think it's too late? Well, just the things she has said so many times against the word and against the Holy Spirit. Wouldn't the Holy Spirit forgive her? Well, let me put it this way. If she isn't saved before she dies, I would like to have it published of how she dies.
Why? Because I believe if she isn't... She's going to die lost. Right. I believe if she dies and if she is in her senses and rational, I believe that she will die such a miserable death that it would convince all those that are following her that she was wrong. Support for Swindled comes from SimpliSafe.
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For the past three decades, Madeline Murray O'Hare has been the most outspoken voice of atheism in America. God is make-believe. But more than a hundred days ago, she mysteriously disappeared, simply vanished from her home and offices in Austin, Texas. When American atheist employee David Travis arrived at work on the morning of August 28, 1995, he discovered that the front door had been padlocked shut.
A note taped to the glass read, quote, The Murray O'Hare family has been called out of town on an emergency basis. We do not know how long we will be gone at the time of the writing of this memo. That's odd. Thought all of the American Atheist Organization's potentially out-of-work employees. The family had just returned from vacationing in Virginia. It seemed out of character, but the Murray O'Hares were an eccentric crew. Those most concerned were eventually able to reach John and Robin on a cell phone.
Though he could not specify the family's exact location nor when they would return, John assured the staff with a noticeably strained voice that everything was fine. They had business to attend to in San Antonio and that they planned to meet up with the staff a week later in New York to picket the Pope. "The discussions with them was that they were going to be up in New York City the next week for picketing the Pope and that was the last conversation anybody had had with them and they didn't arrive."
The last conversation anyone had with any of the Murray O'Hairs was on September 28, 1995, the days and months after it flew by with no additional word. One employee eventually performed a welfare check on their house, but nobody was home, and it appeared that the family had left in a hurry. There was a half-eaten breakfast on the table. They left a refrigerator full of food.
Madeline's diabetes medication was found on the kitchen counter, and it was discovered that the family's three dogs had been left in the care of a local animal hospital. Seems kind of fishy, right? Wrong. The Austin Police Department did not think so.
The Austin Police Department is treating this strictly as a missing persons case, not a criminal investigation. In a written statement, police added it is not a crime to disappear, and if the Murray O'Hairs are found, police are not required to disclose their location. It is not a crime to disappear, and until there was any hard evidence that a crime had been committed, or until a family member reported them missing, no investigation would be launched. Fellow atheists were beginning to worry.
Without any evidence of theft or foul play, no one is calling the police. But her absence has left the financially troubled American Atheist Center in Austin vacant and a dwindling base of fellow atheists confused. We just have no idea. We have no idea. It may be that she just wants a little privacy for a while. Maybe Madeline Murray O'Hare just wanted some privacy, a planned departure, a joint retirement with the people closest to her.
Or maybe she had repented and taken a sabbatical to cleanse her body and soul. That certainly was one theory. Others suggested that there were more sinister forces at work. The Vatican had a hand in it, or the United States CIA. But the most popular theory was that the Murray O'Hairs had simply taken the money and fled, probably to New Zealand.
There were statements left behind at the office for a bank account in New Zealand that contained close to a million dollars, and $600,000 of it was missing.
It made the most sense, especially to the members of the American Atheists. The organization was having a financial crisis and everybody knew it. They'd seen the letters from the IRS seeking almost $750,000 in back taxes from John and Robin, as well as the statements for the tens of thousands in credit card debt the family owed, which included recent cash advances. Maybe they decided to clean out the accounts and disappear to conceal assets and avoid creditors.
The speculation was all over the place, but only God truly knows. For one year now, Madeline Murray O'Hare, America's most hated woman in 1962, when her lawsuit got Bible and prayer banned in public schools, America's noisiest atheist has been quiet as, well, a church mouse. A year passed before Bill Murray asked law enforcement to help track down his estranged family.
Bill hadn't seen his mother, daughter, or brother in over 10 years, and he did not think there would ever be another chance. "'Absolutely. I think they are dead,' he told the Austin Chronicle. "'I work in Washington. I have Washington contacts. I know where they are not. They are not in any nation that corresponds with the U.S. Either they are in the U.S., dead, or in Cuba, Libya, Afghanistan, or some other country like that, and I just don't think that's likely.'"
But the local authorities showed little interest, even after Robin Murray O'Hare's abandoned Porsche was found at the Austin airport a few days after her father filed that report. Not enough foul play for APD to even take a look, apparently. Couldn't be bothered to lift a boot.
Two more years went by without a lead. American Atheist staff was still maintaining the yard at the Murray O'Hare home and paying whatever property taxes the family owed, even though there were no signs that they were ever coming back.
and with no return in sight, the creditors came calling. The house was seized in February 1997 and sold in July 1998 for $240,000. All the belongings inside were eventually auctioned off, the proceeds of which benefited the Internal Revenue Service of the United States of America. The American Atheist Headquarters would be the next to go.
This warehouse contains almost all that was left behind by famed atheist Madeline Murray O'Hare. Property taken from the home she shared with a son and granddaughter includes everything from the ordinary to the ironic. The interesting things are like the Bibles, the two Bibles that we have found in the boxes.
In September 1998, the American Atheist Organization, now under the direction of Ellen Johnson, agreed to sell its Austin, Texas headquarters to the AIDS Services of Austin for $800,000, less than half of what the Murray O'Hairs paid for it in 1987. The organization planned to relocate to the friendlier confines of central New Jersey, where it remains headquartered today.
More than three years had passed since the disappearance and the mystery remained. What happened to Madeline Murray O'Hare? Though it seemed like law enforcement at every level seemed disinterested in answering that question, in certain newsrooms across Texas, the puzzle pieces were coming together.
Evan Moore of the Houston Chronicle reported that back on September 5th, 1995, about a week after the family's disappearance, John Murray's 1988 Mercedes Benz was sold to a San Antonio real estate agent via a classified ad for $15,000 cash, which was $6,000 under the market value. The man who delivered the car said his name was John Murray, but didn't fit the missing man's description. John was tall and dark and not at all handsome.
The sky was shorter, blonder, and in a tremendous hurry. The gentleman that I dealt with was about 5'4", 5'5", stocky build, looked like a weightlifter, had blondish curly hair that was cut short on the side, the 70s style, and in the back was kind of pushed back and wavy. Okay.
Even more curious, it had also been discovered that the $600,000 that had disappeared from the family's New Zealand bank account had been moved to the States. As part of their 19-month investigation, John McCormick at the San Antonio Express News, with the help of a private investigator named Tim Young, located the jeweler who exchanged that missing cash for gold.
Corey Tickner said John Murray ordered $600,000 worth of gold coins from his shop in San Antonio on September 22, 1995. A week later, John, the real John, met up with the coin dealer to collect the gold. However, only $500,000 worth of the $600,000 in coins had arrived. Tickner said John never came back for the remaining $100,000. It was eventually seized by the IRS, and the Murray O'Hairs were never heard from again.
and it is not likely that their disappearance would have ever been solved without a stroke of luck. But sometimes that's all it takes to create everything out of nothing. And everybody in the world can go to hell. Madeline Marie O'Hare is missing. Now, for many of you, that may not mean much, but ask anyone who was around during the 60s and 70s. She had the dubious distinction of being known as America's most outspoken atheist.
On October 2nd, 1995, a headless and handless male body was found on the banks of the Trinity River outside of Dallas, Texas, about 200 miles north of Austin. There were no scars or tattoos or any way to identify the remains. The only notable feature of the mutilated corpse that had stumped detectives was it was extremely hairy.
a detail that caught the eye of Express News journalist John McCormick, who just so happened to be doom-scrolling the newswire three years later. Could it be Danny Fry? McCormick wondered. Danny had been missing almost as long as the Murray O'Hairs. He had traveled to Austin from Florida for a job during the summer of 1995, but hadn't been heard from since late September of that year. Danny Fry's daughter was the last person to speak to him when he called to wish her a happy 16th birthday.
He might have been a con artist, Lisa Fry remembered, but he was a good dad. That same day, Danny's brother Bob had received a letter in the mail. The outside of the letter was marked "Do not open until October 3rd." It was only September 30th, so of course Bob Fry immediately opened it. Danny wrote that if he didn't make it home by a certain date, then something serious had happened.
He instructed Bob to contact the authorities and give them the name Dave Waters. Quote, Dave Waters planned what we did. The name David Roland Waters was very familiar to John McCormick and everybody else immersed in the O'Hare case. At one time, Waters had been the office manager of the American Atheist Organization. He was caught and convicted for writing more than $50,000 in checks to himself from the company's accounts.
David Waters pleaded guilty to that theft on May 22, 1995, but Madeline Murray O'Hare asked the judge for restitution without jail time. She knew that David was a habitual offender who would have no way of paying her back if he was stuck behind bars, but that did not mean Madeline lacked a plan to get even. She wasn't the type to let things slide. In the July 1995 edition of the American Atheist Newsletter, in the form of a six-page essay,
Madeline Murray O'Hare detailed every one of David Waters' prior crimes. Like how in 1964, when he was 17, David and three friends beat a 16-year-old boy to death with a hedge post. For that, he had served 12 years of a 30-year sentence. And a year after his release, David Waters was arrested again, this time for assaulting his mother with a broom handle and urinating in her face.
There were also the burglary charges and the violated curfews, drunk and disorderly conduct. The list goes on. David Waters was reportedly furious with the expose from his former boss and vowed revenge. He told his girlfriend that he fantasized about using pliers to remove each one of Madeline Murray O'Hare's toes.
Truth be told, even though Waters had always consistently denied having any involvement for those closest to the case, he had always been the prime suspect in the family's disappearance. There just hadn't been anything physical or concrete to tie him to it, until now. The planned date for Danny Fry's return to Florida came and went, so Bob Fry called David Waters to ask about his missing brother and to confront him about the letter, which Bob had told David he had yet to open.
David Waters reminded Bob Fry that his brother Danny was an alcoholic and he talks too much, but he'd probably just wandered off with some dirt leg and would eventually turn up. There's probably nothing to worry about, David assured. The day after that phone call, David Waters and another man were on Bob Fry's Florida doorstep demanding the letter, but left empty-handed. Bob told the men that he had burned it.
But in reality, the letter was safe and sound, and eventually Bob shared it with journalist John McCormack who had written about David Waters in articles about the O'Hare disappearance. The description of the headless body three years later had triggered McCormack's memory, so he organized a DNA comparison between the corpse and the Fry family. It was a perfect match.
Bob Fry also granted private investigator Tim Young access to Danny Fry's phone records. There were calls made to and from David Waters' apartment, a San Antonio motel room, and a woman named Charlene Carr, the wife of Gary Carr, David Waters' former cellmate who had also traveled to Austin in 1995 for some quote-unquote work.
Of course, everything remains circumstantial, but John McCormick and Tim Young theorized that David Waters had recruited Danny Fry and Gary Carr to help kidnap, rob, and ultimately murder the Murray O'Hairs. A few days after the deed was done, it's presumed Waters and Carr then disposed of Danny Fry over worries that he would slip up or rat them out. McCormick published his thoughts in an article for the San Antonio Express News on January 31st, 1999.
It motivated witnesses to come forward. Young, on the other hand, was having trouble finding anyone that cared. The private investigator broke down the evidence in a letter to the Austin Police Department that went almost entirely ignored. Then he left a message with the FBI but received no response. Finally, Young contacted Special Agent Edmund Martin of the IRS's Investigation Division.
Martin had been tracing the Murray O'Hare money trail ever since they disappeared, but still lacked that missing piece to pin it on anybody. But the newly discovered phone records were that missing piece. It was evidence that David Waters and Gary Carr had been in direct contact with Danny Fry around the time he was dismembered and abandoned by the river. There was no smoking gun or surveillance video, but it was evidence enough for Special Agent Martin to secure a search warrant for both men.
Seven weeks later, on March 24th, 1999, agents from the IRS, the FBI, and the Dallas County Sheriff's Office raided Gary Carr's apartment in Walled Lake, Michigan. Initially, he refused to talk. 50-year-old Carr had spent practically his whole life behind bars for kidnapping a judge's daughter and for indecency with a child. He did not want to go back anytime soon.
but when investigators uncovered two loaded handguns inside of the part-time handyman's residence a freedom that former felons are not afforded gary carr's fate was sealed he would be going back to prison anyway perhaps playing ball would help lighten the load also tonight investigators believe the mystery of madeline murray o'hare may be solved
Over the course of a few hours, Gary Carr admitted to everything. He said he had helped David Waters and Danny Frye kidnap and rob Madeline, John, and Robin, but he himself had never hurt a soul. According to Gary Carr, it was David Waters who killed that family and Danny Frye. Carr claims he was just there for muscle and support. He signed Agent Martin's affidavit and even drew a map so that authorities could find the bodies.
Carr claimed that the Murray O'Hairs had been dismembered and buried in 55-gallon drums on a ranch 120 miles west of San Antonio. Two searches of that location yielded no results, but investigators did find a hair that belonged to Gary Carr. But the confession was just the cherry on top of the countless financial records, phone calls, car rentals, and plane trips that Special Agent Martin and the journalist had compiled.
In December 1999, an Austin grand jury indicted Gary Carr for the planned and executed scheme to abduct, kidnap, and murder the atheists. While waiting for his trial, a fellow inmate of Gary Carr's said he admitted to using a .22 caliber pistol to kill Danny Fry. That inmate testified against Carr during his three-week trial in the summer of 2000.
Gary Carr was found guilty of conspiracy to commit extortion, traveling interstate to commit violent acts, money laundering, and interstate transportation of stolen property. He was acquitted of charges for conspiring to kidnap because authorities had yet to locate the Murray O'Hare bodies. In August 2000, Gary Carr was sentenced to two life sentences by U.S. District Judge Sam Sparks.
David Waters was finally indicted on charges related to the Murray O'Hare case in September 2000. He had already been sentenced to eight years for possessing a weapon as a felon, on top of a 60-year sentence for violating the terms of his deferred adjudication. David had failed to pay the restitution owed to the American atheist for his earlier embezzlement.
After seeing the results of Gary Carr's trial in January 2001, David Waters and his lawyer cut a deal with federal authorities. Waters agreed to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge if allowed to transfer out of Texas' state prison system to a federal facility. In return, David Waters would tell all, including leading investigators to exactly where the bodies were buried.
Over the course of several days, David Waters laid out the entire scheme, which he claimed had taken months to prepare. Waters said that on August 27th, 1995, he, Gary Carr, and Danny Fry posed as a delivery man to abduct the Murray O'Hairs. The atheists were taken to their home in Northwest Hills to collect enough things for a weekend getaway. That night, the kidnappers rented a van and transported the family to a truck stop motel in Buda, Texas.
The next day they checked into a two bedroom suite at the Warren Inn in San Antonio. Everyone had the run of the house. Believe it or not it was almost a family situation, Waters told detectives. It got to the point where it was real bizarre and John and I were like working together. He was like responsible for his group and I was responsible for my group. One of his primary responsibilities was to control Madeline. All he was concerned about was that I control Carr. They were terrified of Carr.
For the next month, the three abductors and the three abductees lived together in that motel room while John Murray retrieved the funds from overseas accounts in exchange for their release. Gary Carr even traveled with John to New Jersey to collect the cash. When they returned, that money was converted into half a million dollars in gold coins. When those gold coins arrived, the extortion was complete and the family's time with the kidnappers had come to an end.
Waters and company convinced the Murray O'Hairs that they needed to be transported to a different motel before they could be set free. But Waters told detectives that, in reality, the kidnappers wanted a room on the ground floor for easier transport of a body or three. On September 29th, 1995, each member of the Murray O'Hair family was strangled individually.
David Waters said it took all three kidnappers to keep John Murray down, even with the plastic bag over his head. Then, according to Waters, Gary Carr took care of Robin, while Danny Fry choked Madeline. Waters said Madeline started to scream but was, quote, Ah yes, the most common last words.
When night fell, the kidnappers covered the bodies with bed sheets and loaded them into the rented cargo van. That night they drove to Austin and crashed at David Waters' apartment. The whole experience must have spooked Danny Frye, who announced his intentions to leave. But David convinced him to stay an extra day and help them find a proper dumping spot for the bodies. Outside of Dallas, the van pulled over near the Trinity River.
Waters told investigators that they climbed out to inspect on foot, and he purposely fell behind and shot Danny Fry in the back of the head. He never saw it coming. That was the plan all along. Quote, Danny's assistance was chosen because he was considered expendable from the get-go. Back in Austin the next day, Waters said that for a $50,000 bonus, Gary Carr volunteered to chop up the bodies with a large knife inside of a rented storage unit, and he stuffed them into barrels.
Danny Fry's head and hands were included. The following morning, the barrels were driven four hours away and buried at a secluded ranch near Camp Wood. David Waters eventually led authorities to the exact spot. When Waters and Carr returned to Austin, they engaged in a spending spree. They checked into the Four Seasons on Town Lake, where hundreds of dollars was spent on room service and champagne. They bought new Armani suits complete with shoes, watches, and neckties. Gary Carr bought a Harley.
In total, the two men blew through $80,000 of the $500,000 in a matter of days. They stored the rest of the loot in a suitcase and stashed it in a self-storage locker on Burnett Road. Funny enough, that same night, October 3, 1995, by pure coincidence, three young men from San Antonio traveled to Austin to break into a single random storage unit and hit the jackpot, a suitcase full of gold coins.
The men lugged the heavy bag back to one of their parents' houses and divided the score. When one of the men was apprehended years later for unrelated crimes, he testified that they spent the entire fortune in less than four years, mostly on cars, guns, vacations, and strip clubs. Poor David Waters. All that work, months of planning, four murders, a successful robbery, and nothing to show for it.
Can it be divine intervention if the story involves a family of atheists? How about this? The universe works in mysterious ways. On March 30th, 2001, David Roland Waters was sentenced to 20 years in federal prison and ordered to pay back more than half a million dollars to the American atheists, as well as the estate of the Murray O'Hairs. He died from lung cancer less than two years later at a federal medical center in North Carolina.
On this remote 5,000 acre ranch 70 miles west of San Antonio, FBI teams using cadaver-seeking dogs have found the remains of at least three people. They believe the bones may belong to Madeline Murray O'Hare, one of her sons and a granddaughter. Today, among the remains discovered was an artificial hip that may match the one O'Hare had implanted. There's evidence to suggest that Madeline Murray O'Hare would have been satisfied with her ending.
In an article printed in the American Atheist's November 1986 newsletter, she wrote that when she died, quote,
I have told John and Robin that when I die, they should gather me up in a sheet, unwashed, drag or carry me out and put me on a pyre in the backyard and burn my carcass. I don't want any damn christer praying over the body or even putting his hands on it. Rest in peace. But with all the battles you've lost, one son is one direction, the social life you've lost, but if you look back, would you consider your life has been a success?
Oh yes, I think I'm an unqualified success as a parent, believe it or not. And certainly as a cause person with one of the most difficult causes that anyone can attempt to involve themselves in. Yes, my life has been well worth living and if I had it to do all over again I would do everything in the same and probably make all the same damn dumb mistakes and all of the same successful moves.
Swindled is written, researched, produced, and hosted by me, a concerned citizen, with original music by Trevor Howard, a.k.a. The Former, a.k.a. The Cryster. For more information about Swindled, you can visit swindledpodcast.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter at Swindled Podcast.
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