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My journey from growing up in a Christian home to becoming an atheist included many influences. I read Hindu, Buddhist and Taoist texts and the writings of many atheist philosophers. The person who influenced me the most personally was Madalyn Murray O’Hair—the woman Life magazine called the most hated woman in America. I deeply admired her strength and tenacity, but never dreamed we might actually work together.

Because of the long-distance friendship we developed as fellow atheists, I’ll address her by her first name during this article. We eventually took different paths and I still feel a deep sadness about what happened to her years later. More about that at the end of this article.

I first talked with Madalyn in the late 1960s when I helped produce a radio talk show in Florida. I had filled in as a talk show host in a small radio market, but then moved to a larger market where I learned from a seasoned talk show host how to produce and host talk shows.

Madalyn Murray O’Hair had quite a reputation by the time I talked with her. She sued the Baltimore Public School System to end Bible reading and prayer in public schools. Madalyn’s lawsuit was consolidated with another lawsuit and the U.S. Supreme Court voted 8-1 in 1963 in favor of the plaintiffs. Bible reading, prayer and recitation of the Lord’s Prayer were no longer allowed in public schools. You might imagine what Christians thought of Madalyn after that. 

1963 was the same year Madalyn founded the Society of Separationists (also known as American Atheists). She was outspoken about her belief in the separation of church and state and her disbelief in the existence of God. That became a primary point of argument in her writings and radio programs. Madalyn started her own radio program in Austin, Texas in 1968 and published her first book, What On Earth Is An Atheist (American Atheist Press, 1969), which was composed of transcripts from her radio program. 

Madalyn Murray O’Hair was such a controversial figure that in 1964 Life magazine called her “the most hated woman in America.”

Madalyn Murray O’Hair was one of the litigants in the case of Murray vs. Curlett, which led the U.S. Supreme Court, in a 1963 decision, to ban organized prayer in public schools. The decision made Madalyn Murray O’Hair by far the country’s most famous atheist.

She founded the group American Atheists in 1963 and remained its leading spokesperson for three decades, appearing on TV and radio to promote the separation of church and state (and often caustically ridiculing belief in God). Over time she published books including What On Earth Is an Atheist? (1969), Freedom Under Siege (1974) and An Atheist Epic (1989).

O’Hair kept active in atheist affairs until her life ended tragically in 1995. She and two of her adult children vanished after leaving a note saying they would be away temporarily. The trio appeared to have taken with them at least $500,000 in American Atheist funds; one private investigator concluded that they had fled to New Zealand.

Eventually suspicion turned to David Roland Waters, an ex-convict who had worked at the American Atheist offices. Police concluded that he and accomplices had kidnapped the O’Hairs, forced them to withdraw the missing funds, and then murdered them.

David Waters eventually pled guilty to reduced charges and in 2001 he led police to three bodies buried on a remote Texas ranch, which proved to be Madalyn Murray O’Hair and her children.

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(b. 13 April 1919 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; disappeared and presumed dead 1995?), atheist who successfully sued to prohibit prayer in public schools, and who gained notoriety for her spirited attacks against religion before mysteriously disappearing.

John Irvin Mays, a building contractor, and Lena Scholle Mays, baptized their daughter Madalyn in the Presbyterian Church and gave her what she later described as a happy and secure childhood. As a girl, she regularly attended church services and Sunday school. In 1929 her father lost his business as the Great Depression began. He sought work as a handyman and carpenter, traveling with his family from state to state.

O’Hair recalled that her first pangs of spiritual disbelief struck as an adolescent. She said she read the Bible from beginning to end when she was thirteen years of age and was shocked by the brutality in the Old Testament. She found the New Testament too fantastical.

As a young woman, she attended several colleges before eloping with John Roths in 1941. World War II soon separated them, with Roths serving in the Pacific and she, a cryptographer, in North Africa and Europe, where she had an affair and became pregnant by Army officer William J. Murray. She and Roths divorced after the war. Though Murray refused to marry her, she took his name and gave it to her son, William Murray III. O’Hair then moved to Houston, where she attended the South Texas College of Law.

In Baltimore in 1954, she gave birth to Jon Garth Murray, by a different father. As with her older son, O’Hair had him baptized. Although she dabbled in left-wing politics, it was not until young William Murray complained about the recitation of the Lord’s Prayer in his school that O’Hair found a cause to which she could devote her considerable energy and rhetorical talent.

In Murray v. Curlett, she sued the Baltimore schools, arguing that the prayers were unconstitutional. She lost in the state courts, b

Madalyn Elizabeth Mays was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania on April 13, 1919. In her late 20s, after already having been married and divorced, she began referring to herself as Madalyn Murray—taking the last name of William Murray, with whom she had an adulterous relationship, and never married. At the age of 46, Madalyn married Richard O’Hair and became forevermore known at Madalyn Murray O’Hair—the poster-child of atheism in America during the 1960s, 70s, and 80s.

Relatively few people knew anything about Madalyn Murray the first 40 years of her life. She was a single mother of two boys, both born out of wedlock. According to Madalyn’s oldest son, William Murray III, his mother couldn’t keep a job because of her “dysfunctional, argumentative personality.” Such unemployment and instability led her to Marxism, which led her to atheism (“Marxism…,” 2012). After an unsuccessful attempt to defect to the Soviet Union through the Soviet Embassy in Paris in 1960, Madalyn returned home angry, agitated, and seemingly looking for trouble—which she found later that same year.

In the fall of 1960, “Madalyn found her cause” (Woodhead, 2006). Madalyn became irritated that students in her oldest son’s school participated in prayer and Bible reading, and filed a petition demanding they cease. After the Baltimore courts ruled against her, she appealed her case all the way to the Supreme Court, who overwhelmingly ruled in her favor in 1963: school-sponsored Bible reading and prayer were banned in public schools. Americans were devastated; Madalyn was delighted. Her defining moment had arrived, and she positioned herself as “America’s number one atheist”—“the atheist—Madalyn Murray” (Le Beau, 2005).

“God’s Noisy Challenger”

Madalyn’s Supreme Court victory (in which she was actually a secondary litigant) was just the beginning. Two years later, she founded American Atheists, Inc. and served as its director for more than two decades. She filed