Madelyn Murray O'Hair: Life and Legacy

This comes around every so often; I've lost the earlier posting, so here it is again. O'Hair, like Nietzsche, took Atheism to its logical conclusion which is principle-free behavior to match principle-free beliefs. Her story, at least the details if not the essence, goes far beyond this.

Son calls famous atheist Madalyn O’Hair “evil”

"(Statement of William J. Murray first released in 1999)

My mother, brother and daughter were murdered by fellow atheists.

There is no getting around the evidence. For almost three years the national atheist organization my mother once led has claimed she left the country with a large amount of money. This was false and I will tell you in this letter why they told this lie over and over again.

First, I want to talk to you about spiritual matters that the general media does not understand.

My mother was not just Madalyn Murray O’Hair, the atheist leader. She was an evil person who led many to hell. That is hard for me to say about my own mother but it is true.
My Life Without God

In this autobiographical work William Murray exposes the bizarre dysfunctional family life that led to the removal of prayer and Bible reading from America’s schools including his mother’s attempted defection to the Soviet Union in 1960.

When I was a young boy of ten or eleven years old she would come home and brag about spending the day in X-rated movie theaters in downtown Baltimore. She was proud of the fact she was the only woman in the movie house watching this filth. My mother’s whole life circulated around such things. She even wrote articles for Larry Flynt’s pornographic magazine, Hustler. My mother lived in spiritual death as Paul writes: “But she that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth.” I Timothy 5:6

My mother delighted in hiring unrepentant criminals to work in her atheist office. She particularly enjoyed hiring convicted murderers who had served their time but were unrepentant about what they had done. She got a sense of power out of having men in her employ who had taken human life. It was love of power over people that finally caused not only her death, but the deaths of my brother and my daughter.

My mother had complete power over my brother, Jon, and my daughter, Robin. Although I was able to break away from the evil of this family, an evil that had been there for generations, they could not. My mother did not permit either my brother or my daughter to speak to me. She had total control of them.

My brother would have been forty years old the month he was murdered. He lived with my mother. He had breakfast with my mother. He went to work with my mother. He had lunch with my mother. He had dinner with my mother. He went on vacation with my mother. He never married. He never really even had the opportunity to have a serious relationship with a woman because Of the control my mother possessed over him. My mother had the same control over my daughter. She was just thirty the year she was murdered. She also lived with my mother. My mother used food to control her and make her unattractive to men. By the time she was murdered she was so heavy she had to purchase two airline tickets because she could not fit in one seat.

For twenty years I could not talk to my brother. He would hang up the phone on me or tear up my letters and send them back. The same was true of my daughter. They both called me “TRAITOR” because I had accepted Christ and changed my life. By “traitor” they meant that I no longer followed the absolute direction of my mother as they did.

The house they lived in had statuettes of mating animals on virtually every piece of furniture. There was a full cabinet of booze and a refrigerator full of foods high in fat and sugar. They liked to live a life which my mother called “high off the hog”.

I must admit that toward the end I had lost hope for my mother’s conversion. The last ten years of her life she became even more profane and vulgar as the demons she courted got their final hold on her. The media stopped courting her because of the number of profane words she would use which they had to edit out.

My hopes and my prayers remained for my brother and my daughter. I honestly believed that nature would take its course and that my mother would die naturally, leaving them behind. In my heart I believed that without her constant evil influence they would start to move toward the light of God. I had even written letters to Jon and Robin that I had planned on sending them when my mother died. Those letters will never be mailed, nor will they be read, because they died with her.

My mother was an evil person … Not for removing prayer from America’s schools … No … She was just evil. She stole huge amounts of money. She misused the trust of people. She cheated children out of their parents’ inheritance. She cheated on her taxes and even stole from her own organizations. She once printed up phony stock certificates on her own printing press to try to take over another atheist publishing company. I could go on but I won’t. All the money my mother made in this manner stayed behind. It did not go with her. “For we brought nothing into this world and it is certain we can carry nothing out.” I Timothy 6:7

My mother simply believed, “Do what thou wilt shall be the only law.”

Regardless of how evil and lawless my mother was she did not deserve to die in the manner she did.

Yes, I understand that the circumstances were of her own making. She hired convicted murderers to work for her. She put one of those murders in charge of her office and he stole more than $54,000 from her. That same murderer is now suspected of killing her and Jon and Robin. He is also suspected of murdering and decapitating one of the men he recruited to kidnap my family.

Still, she was 77 years old when she was kidnapped. She and my daughter were held for almost 30 days, probably tied and gagged, while my brother desperately tried to obtain ransom money. At all times my brother was escorted by one of the kidnappers. Should he have run? Should he have tried to get help? I would have.

But, my brother was a total slave to my mother. He saw himself as her provider and rescuer. All his life she had talked down to him and made fun of him and now, in his mind, he would show her his worth by single-handedly rescuing her. He was murdered for his faithfulness.

Both my brother and daughter believed in my mother’s “importance” because she declared it constantly. Many times a day my mother would declare, “I am Madalyn Murray O’Hair.” She honestly believed she had singled handedly removed prayer from school. She honestly believed she had “liberated” America sexually.

In reality my mother did not create the times, the times created her. She was what America was about in the sixties and seventies. There were several cases going to the Supreme Court to remove prayer. Her case just got there first. The left-wing Court of the day wanted prayer out of the schools and to allow abortion on demand. They virtually were advertising for cases to change America. But my mother saw the secular and sexual turn in America as centered around her.

I can see her now looking down the barrel of a gun and saying, “You don’t dare shoot me, I AM MADALYN MURRAY O’HAIR.” Of course, the killers did not care who she was just as most Americans didn’t care. To the majority of Americans and to the media she was just another celebrity fruit cake, sort of the Hulk Hogan of atheism.

The media asked me if I would hold a funeral and if so would there he prayer. My answer was simple but Biblical and sort of surprised them I am sure. I said, “They are already either in heaven of hell, praying over them now will not make a difference.”

I made that statement knowing the torture they must have gone through the last thirty days of their lives. Did Robin pray to receive Christ as she was bound and gagged? Perhaps. Did my mother or brother cry out to the Lord just before they were murdered? I don’t know.

Christ is there for the vilest offender. The serial killer whose prayer at the hour of his death is genuine is also forgiven. My mother, my brother and my daughter may well await me in heaven. On the other hand, they may have stood their ground defying God to the end, in which case they are now spending yet another day of eternity in hell. If that is the case I will never see them again.

The deaths of my mother, brother and daughter should make all too clear the need for Christ to others that proclaim atheism. But those who would follow my mother continue to fight against God and His authority. “Fools make a mock at sin… ” Prov. 14:8

During Easter, what is left of my mother’s American Atheist organization held a convention in New Jersey. My ministry placed an advertisement in the newspaper there to tell them about Jesus. The new atheist leader, Ellen Johnson, ranted and raved against me, against Christ and against the Holy Spirit.

Johnson told the media that the whole idea of my mother being murdered was a fabrication. She told the newspapers that I had “manufactured” the story using my connections to Congress to trick the FBI into getting involved. Why does this woman protest so much? Why does she not even shed a tear for her departed leader?

The FBI is involved because one of the individuals has confessed. How many others he will point his finger at I don’t know. But I do understand the “wisdom” of Ellen Johnson. Her “wisdom” is found in Psalm 14:1 “The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God.”

Please continue to pray for this ministry and for my family. This is a difficult time. The news media calls day and night about my mother. The FBI even offered to provide a counselor for my wife Nancy and me. I said no thank you, I told the agent my family already has a counselor – the Great Counselor, Jesus Christ.

(This statement was written by William Murray in May of 1999. The dismembered bodies of Madalyn Murray O’Hair, Jon Murray and Robin Murray were found in January of 2000 near Camp Wood, Texas. One of the killers, David Waters, led the authorities to the site in return for a guarantee he would serve his time in a Federal rather than in a Texas state prison. He died in prison of liver disease in 2003. A second killer was sentenced to life in prison.)"