Madalyn Murray O'Hair (née Mays; April 13, 1919 – September 29, 1995)[1] was an American activist supporting atheism and separation of church and state.

After she founded the American Atheists and won Murray v. Curlett, she achieved attention to the extent that in 1964, Life magazine referred to her as "the most hated woman in America".

In April 1945, while posted to a cryptography position in Italy, she began a relationship with officer William J. Murray Jr., a married Roman Catholic.

[14][15][16] On their return from Paris, Murray and sons went to live with her mother, father, and brother, Irv, at their house in the Loch Raven, Baltimore neighborhood.

She instructed William to keep a log of all religious exercises and references to religion for the next two weeks, saying, "Well, if they'll keep us from going to Russia where there is some freedom, we'll just have to change America.

Because of hostility in Baltimore against her family related to this case, Murray left Maryland with her sons in 1963 and moved to Honolulu, Hawaii.

[20] She had allegedly assaulted five Baltimore City Police Department officers who tried to retrieve her son William's girlfriend Susan from her house; she was a minor and had run away from home.

Most American men feel threatened sexually unless they're taller than the female, more intellectual, better educated, better paid and higher placed statuswise in the business world.

Well, I just can't see either a man or a woman in a dependency position, because from this sort of relationship flows a feeling of superiority on one side and inferiority on the other, and that's a form of slow poison.

[28] In the article "The Shoah: hope springs eternal" in the August 1989 issue of the American Atheist magazine, O'Hair downplayed the Holocaust:[29][30] Although it is not generally reported, Auschwitz was simply, first, and foremost, a slave labor camp — and the labor provided was much needed by Farben, Krupp, et al. for the war effort.In the same article, she claimed that "investigative and scholarly studies undertaken during the last fifty years", such as a book by Paul Rassinier established that the total number of Jewish victims was between 1 and 1.5 million, adding, "[t]his is a far cry from an alleged 6,000,000", then elaborating on this point: Over and over again in the analysis of the situation, one compelling fact becomes clear.

Perhaps that is why the United States continues to send Israel $6 billion a year as a gift; guilt has its obligation.After settling in Austin, Texas, O'Hair founded American Atheists in 1963.

It identifies as "a nationwide movement which defends the civil rights of non-believers, works for the separation of church and state and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy".

[9] She filed several lawsuits challenging governmental practices, based on upholding and defining the constitutional separation of church and state.

Murray O'Hair commented, "One could call this a postnatal abortion on the part of a mother, I guess; I repudiate him entirely and completely for now and all times ... he is beyond human forgiveness.

[3] A typewritten note was attached to the locked office door, saying "The Murray O'Hair family has been called out of town on an emergency basis.

He noted that the investigation was being led by agents of the Internal Revenue Service (with whom American Atheists had a long-running dispute over taxes owed), the Federal Bureau of Investigation (due to the possibility of the O'Hairs having absconded with organizational funds), and the Dallas County Sheriff's Office (where Danny Fry's headless, limbless corpse was found in October 1995, but had been unidentifiable until February 1999).

[39] When Waters received a lenient sentence, O'Hair published an article in the American Atheists newsletter in which she exposed the theft of the money – along with his previous crimes.

[38] Federal agents for the FBI and the IRS, along with the police, concluded that Waters and his accomplices (Gary Paul Karr and Danny Fry)[40]) had kidnapped all three Murray/O'Hair family members, forced them to withdraw the missing funds, gone on several shopping sprees with their money and credit cards, and killed and dismembered all three.

The search revealed ammunition of various calibers; Waters, a convicted felon, was not allowed this material and he was arrested, while the contents of his apartment were seized.

The weapon charge was dismissed, and Karr was transferred to the custody of the United States Marshals in Austin because he needed to be tried for the deaths of the O'Hairs.

[41] Waters was arrested and prosecuted; in a January 2001 plea agreement solely on the charge of conspiracy, he agreed to lead authorities to the site where the dismembered bodies of the O'Hairs had been burned and buried.

[21] When Waters, under the plea agreement, led federal agents to the O'Hair's burial site on a Texas ranch,[21][36] they discovered that the legs of all three of the victims had been cut off with a saw.

[21] Murray's 1960 lawsuit against the Baltimore City School System was later consolidated with a similar one from Pennsylvania, when these reached the US Supreme Court on appeal.

[47] In 2012, a memorial brick for Murray, her son Jon, and her granddaughter Robin was placed at Lou Neff Point in Zilker Park in Austin, Texas.

[49][50] O'Hair was incorporated into a popular urban legend stemming from an erroneous characterization of RM-2493, a proposal made to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 1974.

False rumors spread that O'Hair was a proponent of RM-2493, and that its intent was to ban the broadcast of religious services, and the reading of the Bible over the airwaves.

Subsequent iterations of the rumor included allegations that O'Hair was campaigning to remove Christmas programs and songs from public schools and "office buildings".

Other variations mentioned specific religious leaders who were supposedly being targeted for removal from the airwaves, or stated that the television series Touched by an Angel was threatened with cancellation because of the proposal.

Evangelical Christian leader James Dobson became falsely associated with the legend as well, purportedly leading opposition to the FCC petition.

[38] The October 2004 episode "Eosphoros", of the series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, is loosely based on O'Hair's murder.