O’Hair, who made history and a raft of enemies with her successful 1963 lawsuit to ban prayer in public schools, abruptly vanished from her home in North Austin, Texas, in August 1995. She was 76. Her son Jon Garth Murray, 40, and her adopted daughter, Robin Murray O’Hair, 30, disappeared with her. Investigators discovered that someone had withdrawn nearly $600,000 from the bank account of one of O’Hair’s organizations. That triggered speculation that O’Hair and her children had run off with the money. “I think they’re kicked back somewhere, very comfortable and having chuckles,” said David Roland Waters, O’Hair’s former office manager.
But police now say Waters hatched a plot to kidnap and murder O’Hair and her son and daughter. The motives were money and revenge: in 1994 O’Hair charged Waters with embezzling $50,000 from one of her organizations, American Atheists, Inc. In reconstructing the crime, investigators have come to believe that Waters and two sidekicks, Gary Karr and Danny Fry, held O’Hair and her children hostage for about a month in order to extort some $90,000. On Sept. 21, 1995, they made a bigger score when Karr escorted Jon Murray into a New Jersey bank and forced him to withdraw the $600,000.
O’Hair and her children were murdered and dismembered within days, police say. Fry was killed, too, probably because Waters was afraid he’d talk. Fry’s body was found in October 1995, minus the head and hands; investigators think the skull and hand bones found at the ranch are his.
Waters and Karr are both in prison, probably for life. Karr told authorities the bodies were buried somewhere on the ranch. Waters, serving 60 years, agreed to lead investigators to the grave as part of a federal plea agreement guaranteeing that he won’t be charged in the killings. Though state charges are possible, the likely upshot is a triple murder in which no one will ever stand trial–and a brutal finale to an American iconoclast’s controversial career.
