Betrayal, theft, murder, and revenge. What lies behind the story of “American Atheists” and its founder Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

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Would the world be a better place without religions?

That is what the most militant irreligious activists constantly remind us, emphasizing their moral and intellectual superiority and the dark history of religions.

Yet perhaps they are unfamiliar with the history of “American Atheists”, the largest and oldest militant association of nonbelievers in the Western world.

A tragic story of greed, revenge, kidnappings, murders, and half a million dollars stolen.

 

Who Was Madalyn Murray O’Hair?

Organized atheism in the United States has a long and little-known history connected to Madalyn Murray O’Hair.

She became famous in 1960 after winning a lawsuit that made the recitation of prayers in public schools unconstitutional (she launched many other similar legal battles afterward, though without the same success).

Murray O’Hair was described as “the most hated woman in America,” but what contributed most to that reputation was her betrayal of her country when she unsuccessfully tried to become a citizen of the Soviet Union, promoting the efforts of the “communist revolution.”

She was in fact an admirer of Stalinism, which she viewed as the first true atheist dictatorship in history. A real paradise.

 

The Conversion of Her Son

In addition to being rejected by the Soviets, Murray O’Hair endured many personal defeats, beginning with those within her own family.

After multiple divorces, her son William J. Murray (known as Bill) became an alcoholic and drug addict, as well as a very young father to a little girl he was unable to care for. Murray O’Hair accepted little Robin as her own daughter.

Once he became an adult, however, Bill managed to rebuild his life: “I turned to a rehabilitation center to stop drinking,” he wrote, “and there I first became aware of the presence of a loving God.”

In 1980 he converted to Christianity, eventually even becoming a Baptist minister with the intention of “undoing” what his mother was doing. Today he leads the Religious Freedom Coalition, an organization that defends Christians in Muslim and former communist countries.

When Murray O’Hair learned of her son’s conversion, she declared: “This could be called a postnatal abortion by a mother. I totally repudiate him forever. What he has done is beyond human forgiveness.”

Bill responded in kind: “The family I come from is the mother of all dysfunctional families. Every misfit in America is sending my mother letters of praise with a check enclosed.”

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The Birth of American Atheists

Madalyn Murray O’Hair was already famous for founding American Atheists in 1963, serving as its first chief executive officer and president until 1986.

For more than twenty years she was the public voice and face of American secularism, appearing on television and radio programs while fighting religious influence with all her strength.

She launched dozens of legal battles against churches, priests, and charitable institutions. She even sued NASA in an attempt to prevent the Presbyterian astronaut Buzz Aldrin from taking the Eucharist to the Moon.

She never achieved much success: while celebrating her appearances in Hollywood films and writing speeches for pornographic publisher Larry Flynt, the nation elected the Christian Ronald Reagan as president, and in 1990 her anti-theistic “indoctrination” television programs were canceled.

 

Legal Troubles: Fraud and Debt

As if that were not enough, by the late 1980s the American Internal Revenue Service (IRS) sued her for using public assets for personal purposes.

Meanwhile, in California, Murray O’Hair was accused of fraud for attempting to gain control of a $15 million property belonging to a very elderly atheist activist.

She won the first ruling, but the plaintiff promised to appeal and, if successful, to wipe out American Atheists, which was already nearly bankrupt.

Convinced she would ultimately lose, she liquidated and hid most of her assets, totaling more than $1 million.

At the time she was 77 years old, walking with a walker because of health problems, while suffering from diabetes and obesity.

 

The Mysterious Disappearance in 1995

Then something completely unexpected happened.

On August 28, 1995, employees of American Atheists found a note hanging on the office door.

The note stated that the Murray O’Hair family had left town because of an emergency. A year later they were officially declared missing: everyone believed the family had fled with the organization’s assets.

This theory was promoted by David Roland Waters, the former office manager whom she had fired after yet another argument.

The conflict began when the Murray O’Hair family accused Waters of embezzling $54,000 belonging to the organization. During that dispute, Madalyn publicly revealed what she knew about him: he was a criminal, previously convicted of killing a young man at the age of 17 and assaulting his own mother.

That revelation fueled the man’s rage and hatred toward the organization’s founder, who never explained why she had appointed him office manager despite his past.

 

Massacred by the Organization’s Secretary

A private investigator began searching for the Murray O’Hair family.

It did not take long for him to discover that, the month before disappearing, the woman had ordered $600,000 worth of gold coins from a jeweler.

At the property of David Ronald Waters, the former office manager of American Atheists, investigators found DNA traces consistent with the missing family, as well as a hacksaw.

The man confessed that he had carried out the kidnapping together with accomplices, taken the gold coins, and ultimately dismembered the bodies of the leaders of American atheism (the woman and her children), burying the remains in a shallow grave.

The reports of the time described the cold indifference of the American public upon hearing the tragic fate of Madalyn Murray O’Hair: “The world shrugged. Ashes to ashes.”

 

A Macabre Story

A twisted story of greed, revenge, kidnappings, murders, and stolen money. On such foundations the world’s leading atheist organization was built.

Its founder was a 1960s iconoclast, the best-known secular personality in America, the country’s leading public blasphemer.

A tremendously unfortunate woman, brutally tortured and murdered by what had once been her closest collaborator outside the family: the former director of American Atheists.

The man confessed that he was obsessed with Madalyn’s ability to obtain so many dollars by allegedly defrauding the organization’s followers, to the point that she held countless bank accounts even outside the United States.

Personal tensions, together with his discovery of the woman’s attempt to liquidate and hide the stolen assets, became the motive behind David Roland Waters’ madness. He died in prison in 2003.

The successor to Madalyn Murray O’Hair as head of American Atheists was activist David Silverman, who was accused in 2018 of sexual assault.

The accusations were deemed credible, and he resigned from his position in December 2019.