Oh God, O’Hair Is Still Missing

They pulled moving trucks up to the O’Hair house a few weeks ago and emptied it.

They took the furniture and the appliances and all the belongings of Madalyn Murray O’Hair--America’s foremost atheist--and loaded van after van. Then they put a red-white-and-blue sticker on the house, declaring it government property, and drove away.

Sometime soon, the Internal Revenue Service intends to auction it all off to satisfy a lien for personal taxes unpaid in 1980, 1986, 1987 and 1988.

Of course, O’Hair could stop them by stepping forward to appeal the seizure. Or by paying off the debt.

But don’t count on it.

It has been more than 17 months since she disappeared with one of her two sons, Jon Garth Murray; her adopted daughter, Robin Murray; and tons of money. They have left a trail of tantalizing clues that so far have led absolutely nowhere.

Are they alive? Are they on the lam, with more than $600,000 in funds that are missing from organizations led by O’Hair? Or has something more sinister happened to America’s first family of godlessness?

Somehow, it seems fitting that the person at the center of this mystery is one of the most outrageous Americans of current times--a woman who tried to remove the phrase “In God We Trust” from U.S. currency, and to stop potential jurors from saying, “So help me God.”

O’Hair, 77, first gained fame when she took credit for a suit, already filed, which ultimately removed the Bible and sponsored prayer from public schools.

She has moved into and out of the spotlight in the decades since, challenging God in the courts and on television while creating her own empire and many enemies--atheists and Christians alike.

One day in August 1995, when employees arrived for work at the bunker-style brick building in Austin that houses American Atheists Inc., they found a note from O’Hair posted on the door: Their jobs were on hold. They had been laid off.

Few who were close to the family were concerned. They said O’Hair and her family had just returned from a trip to Virginia where they had visited old friends and viewed Civil War sites.

Atheist leaders said the family was in contact by cellular phone; they talked about a plan to picket the Pope in New York. Staffers were told the family was handling “business” in San Antonio and would return within weeks.

Meanwhile, there was speculation. Did O’Hair, who has suffered from diabetes and dizzy spells, go somewhere to die privately so Christians could not pray over her at the end?

Then, at 4:35 p.m. on Sept. 28, all contact with the organizations ceased.

“To my knowledge nobody has talked to them since then,” said Spike Tyson, who occupies O’Hair’s office at American Atheists and who lived in the family’s Austin home until it was taken by the IRS.

Since then, there have been a series of intriguing disclosures. Among them:

* Jon Murray, 42, had sold his 1988 Mercedes on Sept. 4 through an ad in the San Antonio newspaper. The transaction was clandestine, done through a cellular phone and handled by a man who identified himself as Jon Murray, but did not resemble him.

* Robin’s Porsche 944 was found parked in a lot at Austin’s Robert Mueller Municipal Airport.

* Atheists found that the family’s three dogs had been left unclaimed at a kennel. The family’s breakfast dishes were still on the table of their home.

Tyson moved in to housesit and dog-sit--until the two young dogs that belonged to Jon and 31-year-old Robin “just disappeared” from the yard one day, he said. O’Hair’s 17-year-old poodle, Gallagher, was left behind.

* The Houston Chronicle reported that as much as $1,000 a month has been charged to Robin Murray’s American Express card since August, and the monthly balances have been paid. Vanity Fair reported that the three were sighted in Auckland, New Zealand.

Activist Ellen Johnson took over the presidency of American Atheists from her New Jersey home. Until late last year, she maintained that there was no evidence of foul play and no money was missing.

But money is missing--a great deal of it. Two of the five nonprofit atheists organizations headed by O’Hair and her family--American Atheists and United Secularists of America--have told the IRS they are missing $627,500 from a New Zealand trust account. Along with at least another $25,000, the cash disappeared about the same time as the trio.

“These reports are true,” Johnson wrote in the American Atheist newsletter. “It was my decision to wait before making all discovered information public, in the hope that we would find the O’Hairs first--whether dead or alive.”

There is no shortage of people who are looking for the family. The atheists are among them, although Johnson says her group would not press charges against the three.

“We’ll never do something like that. There isn’t the slightest thought in my mind that they’ve done something criminal. I cannot emphasis that enough,” she said.

The IRS wants them. Police also want to know whether foul play was involved, although little progress has been made, according to Austin police Detective Stephen Baker.

And then there is the odd situation of William Murray--son of Madalyn, birth father of Robin and atheist apostate.

The child involved in his mother’s school-prayer lawsuit, William later found God and became a minister. In so doing, he lost his mother; he has been estranged from his family for 20 years.

Nonetheless, William Murray has been frustrated by the lack of progress in the search for his mother. He has sought the help of Texas Gov. George W. Bush. He has tried to generate interest in the case.

“It became really apparent to me in the last six months that nobody is really interested in finding these people, except maybe the media,” he said.

William Murray thinks his mother is dead: “Standing between my mother and a camera was a danger place. Just the fact that she hasn’t appeared in the middle of all this is cause to believe she is dead.”

But others are not so sure.

“You find the dogs, you’ll find the O’Hairs,” says a neighbor of O’Hair’s. “They loved those animals. They never would have left them.”