One woman, a sordid life, determined 350 million Americans right to prayer in public places of education.
March 21, 2017
Updated: March 24, 2017 2:23 p.m.
On Aug. 27, 1995, O'Hair's life took a fateful turn.
In the late '90s San Antonians were shocked to learn one of the most infamous kidnapping and murder cases in U.S. history happened right in their backyard.
The Alamo City set the scene for the final days of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the nationally-known atheist whose lawsuit led to prayer being banned in public schools in 1963.
Now, in a film set to premiere Friday, Netflix is taking on O'Hair's story, more than 50 years after a historic ruling was handed down from the Supreme Court, which made her the"most hated woman in America."
Years after the lawsuit, O'Hair moved from the Northeast to Austin, Texas, founding the American Atheist Center where she waged "often profane warfare" against religion.
Three atheists disappear in Texas
That day, O'Hair, her son, Jon Murray, and her granddaughter, Robin Murray O'Hair, were kidnapped by three men and taken to San Antonio. The disappearance, though sudden, was not initially viewed as strange by those close to the family.
A note was left at the American Atheist Center office, presumed to be from Murray, and friends and family assumed the group left to enjoy retirement overseas. There were other theories at the time as well, but Austin police, and atheist center officials, treated the situation as if the O'Hairs left on their own.
Murray kept contact with employees in Austin using a cell phone for three weeks after his abduction, and no red flags were raised.
The captors took the O'Hair family to the Warren Inn on the Northwest side of San Antonio, where the group lived for a month in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom rental. While in captivity, the O'Hairs played card games, Monopoly and had philosophical discussions. Murray and a captor would leave to pick up Mexican food at La Fonda, often staying for beers or margaritas.
In September 1995, Murray had $600,000 wired to the U.S. from New Zealand, which was then used to buy gold coins. On Sept. 29, Murray picked up $500,000 worth of coins from a small jeweler on Fredericksburg Road. He never returned to get the remaining $100,000.
That same day, the O'Hairs were moved to a La Quinta Inn on Culebra Road and Loop 410. In the hotel room, the captors strangled each family member.
After they were killed, the bodies were rolled up in a bedspread and the captors swept the hotel room, finding notes Madalyn had hidden for someone to find, and the bodies were stuffed into a van and taken to Austin.
In Austin, a captor later told the FBI, they chopped up the bodies and loaded the pieces into three 55-gallon metal drums, then drove the haul to Camp Wood in Real County, Northwest of San Antonio, where they were buried.
Before disposing of the bodies, two of the captors turned on the other. They shot him then dismembered him, cutting of his hands and head and burying the severed parts with the other victims.
The headless, handless body was disposed of along the Trinity River in Dallas days later.
In the year following the disappearance and killings, authorities, and the public, did not suspect foul play in the O'Hair case. But that all began to change, albeit slowly, with a story in the Express-News.
Unraveling the mystery
In August 1996, John MacCormack, a reporter for the San Antonio Express-News, was tasked with writing an anniversary piece for the newspaper. He interviewed people at the atheist center, checked clips and re-checked details.
His initial story uncovered little that wasn't already known at the time, as he later put it: "they disappeared, no one knew anything, there was a quirky transaction involving a car shortly before they disappeared."
Three months later, MacCormack got some “friendly advice” about tax documents that led to several pieces of key information and would give the odd tale new life.
Atheistshttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Madalyn_Murray_O%27Hair