Has Madalyn Murray O’Hair Met Her Maker?
God only knows. In the meantime, FBI agents dig up a ranch in South Texas, an ex-con with a violent past sits in jail, and atheists everywhere happily adjust to life without the “most hated woman in America.”
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He mocked Bob Fry’s claims about the letter. “You mean the one that conveniently was destroyed? If I got a letter from my brother that suggested what this letter supposedly suggested, not only would I not destroy that letter—that letter would be in my safe deposit box.”
And he said that he didn’t know who the mysterious Illinois ex-con could be. “But I’ve got a hunch that just about anybody I do know, once MacCormack finds out I know him or have had any affiliation with him, it’s somehow going to come to the forefront here.” He called the reporter his “nemesis” and accused him of tunnel vision. “I think there’s a number of things he has probably come across that he’s put out of the way because they do not coincide with what his theory is.” Waters denied any involvement in the O’Hairs’ disappearance. The truth, he said, was in the faxes: They had absconded and were living it up somewhere far away. This is the conclusion of an unpublished book he has written (with his agent, Harry Preston) based on his experiences with the O’Hairs. About his role in their lives, he writes: “Madalyn had me pegged as a fall-guy from day one.”
Was Waters the classic wrong man—a patsy convicted in the press by an ambitious reporter? All the evidence to date was circumstantial—no smoking gun or dripping knife, and no bodies other than Fry’s—and Waters had not been charged with anything. Besides, killers don’t generally write books about their victims. And he certainly did not act like a guy who was sitting on half a million dollars in gold. “Most everything I own I’ve hocked, sold, or bartered,” he said. He had had to get a cashier’s check from Illinois to pay Preston $2,500 for ghostwriting the book and still owed him another $2,500. He was at risk of being sent to prison because he couldn’t pay his $200-a-month restitution to AA. Lisa Grumbles, who dated Waters for four weeks last fall and stayed in touch with him afterward, says she never saw any evidence of hidden wealth. “He was very conservative with money. If he had a lot of money, he wouldn’t have kept that old Camaro.” The car eventually quit running, and Waters had to rely on his bicycle. He was out of work, fired from his last job “brokering cars” because, he said, his boss read about him in the paper. He was behind in his rent and would soon get an eviction notice. “I’m trying to keep a positive mental attitude,” he said in March. “But I seem to be going down the tubes. I wish I had about half a million dollars to dip into. Why does everybody think I’m gonna be arrested?”
ON MARCH 25, WATERS SAT IN U.S. magistrate judge Stephen Capelle’s courtroom. The day before, on his fifty-second birthday, federal agents had searched his apartment for more than eight hours. They found 119 rounds of handgun ammunition. “As a convicted felon,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Gerald Caruth told a reporter, “Mr. Waters is prohibited from possession of firearms or ammunition.” Because of Waters’ criminal history, he was held without bond.
Outside the courtroom, reporters buzzed about what wasn’t being said: Waters’ arrest concerned more than a bunch of bullets. His attorney, Patrick Ganne, said that Caruth had told him, “People are rolling over on your client, and he better get right with God and tell his side of the story.” Somebody was trying to tie Waters to the disappearance of the O’Hairs. Authorities had questioned three other people, including Gary P. Karr, a violent ex-con from Illinois who had come to Texas in the summer of 1995. (Karr would be arrested in Michigan on weapons charges the day after Waters was and also held without bail.) Ganne said that in their conversation, Caruth had used the phrases “conspiracy to solicit murder” and “death penalty.”
None of this came as a surprise to the many observers who’d been casting wary eyes at Waters ever since the revelations about Danny Fry. What was surprising, they thought, was that Waters had never flown the coop. “The guy’s got balls like this,” says one writer who has been following the case and is certain of Waters’ involvement. In addition to Waters’ violent tendencies and all the circumstantial evidence, the writer and others point out that Waters knew the personal and business habits of the O’Hairs and surely had information about some of their bank accounts—in particular, the $600,000 trust fund—but not others, such as Jon’s five untouched personal accounts in New Zealand containing $130,000. Moreover, Waters, like everyone who dealt with Madalyn, had an ax to grind: He had almost gone to jail for life because of her.
But how could anyone keep three people—especially these three people—for a month in an apartment complex? Well, Madalyn may have been “an old warrior,” as Travis puts it, but she was frail, maybe even dead. The kidnappers would have had physical access to the only two people who meant anything to her, two people who had so little experience in dealing with people not under their thumb that they would have been incapacitated with fright. In the end, a lot of Madalyn’s power came from her bluster. “Nobody stood up to her,” says Roy Withers. “She always relied on shock value. When that didn’t work, there wasn’t anything underneath.”
I do not believe in God. . . . But I believe in Man. In man’s redeeming power; in man’s remoulding energy; in man’s approaching triumph, through knowledge, love, and work.—English theosophist Annie Besant, 1887
THEIR VANISHING IS FULL OF MYSTERIES, but the biggest one may be this: How could the brilliant Madalyn Murray O’Hair—shrewd enough to take on the system and win—have been so stupid as to isolate herself and her children so completely? Despised and vulnerable, the O’Hairs were doomed. Says Roy Withers: “They’re pushing up West Texas sand.” Or Hill Country scrub. At dawn on April 2, more than thirty Texas Rangers, FBI agents, and IRS agents—acting on information provided by Gary Karr—showed up at a ranch near Camp Wood, about one hundred miles west of San Antonio. The officers brought with them dogs trained to find cadavers. After three days of searching, they seemed to come up empty-handed—at least for the moment. Karr may have gotten the wrong pasture, but authorities seem sure they have the right man. During Karr’s two-day, sixteen-hour interrogation, according to FBI agent William O’Leary, the ex-con admitted to extensive involvement in four killings in Texas, one involving decapitation and the severing of hands. O’Leary’s version of the questioning mentions no names, but Karr’s public defender, Richard Helfrick, told John MacCormack: “Given that they are talking about a triple homicide and this other body that was decapitated, I think it’s obvious they are talking about O’Hair and Fry. How many cases fit that description?” One of the details Karr offered: He had flown to New Jersey from Texas with one of the victims for a wire transfer.
At press time, attorney Ganne was unavailable for comment, as was his client, David Waters, who awaits trial on federal weapon charges. Meanwhile, John MacCormack is keeping a close eye on the story. Tim Young has opened a business in Arizona locating missing people. Lisa Fry has moved far away from her past and, in all the hubbub about the missing atheists, doesn’t want anyone to forget her father. “He was my best friend,” she says angrily. “He was my life. And some lunatic cut his head off and left him on a riverbank.”
The Austin Police Department, which in January was still claiming there was no evidence of foul play, watches as the feds grab the headlines in the city’s biggest missing persons case ever. Bill Murray and his conservative Washington political action committee, Government Is Not God, are trying to get prayer put back in the public schools. And late last year, American Atheists moved its headquarters from Austin to New Jersey. The group will be opening a new headquarters sometime this year in Cranford.
But there are still atheists in Austin. Not long after O’Hair disappeared, a small bunch began gathering weekly at the Hot Jumbo Bagel Shop on Fifth Street. You can find 25 to 30 members of the Atheist Community of Austin (ACA) there every Sunday morning, chatting, gossiping, and planning group events. There is an insistent democratic spirit—a constitution, bylaws, elected leaders—as if to correct the errors of the past. “The best thing that ever happened to Free Thought in America was that Communism died,” says Keith Berka. The second best is that O’Hair is gone. “A lot of us were in American Atheists but dropped out, became offended,” says ACA co-chair Don Rhoades, his daughter bouncing on his knee. “There was a big collective sigh of relief when she left.”
With its angry leader gone, atheism looks like what it basically is: humanism that embraces everything from Darwin fish car-magnets to New Age crystals. As members of the new breed sit around chattering on a Sunday morning, it’s clear how out of place the bitter, vengeful Madalyn would be here. You can still have faith in people if you don’t believe in God. In truth, you don’t have a choice.
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