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Thursday, February 1, 2001
O'Hair mystery solved
Violence put an end to a tumultuous life lived in controversy.
Some questions remain, but it appears the mystery surrounding the fate of militant atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her two adult children has finally been solved.
When a man long suspected in the case took them to a site on the 5,000-acre Cooksey ranch near Camp Wood last Sunday, investigators found three dismembered bodies. The most significant find: a titanium artificial hip joint. Since O'Hair had undergone hip replacement surgery, that suggests strongly that the remains are indeed those of O'Hair and her children.
This appears to bring to a close an investigation that has sputtered on since the three disappeared in 1995. Investigators spun out endless scenarios. Some thought O'Hair might have absconded with the funds of the United Secularists of America, which she headed; others suggested she and her children wanted to vanish from the glare of publicity and controversy.
In the end, though, the most prosaic theory appears to be the correct one. They were murdered by associates who were driven by one of the most primal, and squalid, of motives: plain greed.
The man who led the authorities to the site - and the prime suspect - was David Roland Waters. He and two others apparently abducted the O'Hair trio, forced them to turn over $500,000 in gold coins, then killed all three.
By the terms of the deal he struck, he has not been and will not be charged with murder; but since he was already in prison, and now faces an extortion charge, he is unlikely ever to emerge from behind bars.
Meanwhile, the fate of Madalyn Murray O'Hair, the self-described "most hated woman in America," is a mystery no more. It was a grisly and bleak end to a life steeped in controversy - one that even her most outspoken detractors could not have wished on her.
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© 2001,
a Scripps Howard newspaper. All rights reserved.
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