SUCH A MANNER

True Confession: A killer's statement details the murder of Madalyn Murray O'Hair (John MacCormack, 7/10/03, Dallas Observer)

When a tough-talking, scar-faced convict named David R. Waters died of lung cancer in January in a federal prison hospital in North Carolina, an unusual flurry of coverage followed.

The news hook was Waters' role as evil mastermind of the infamous kidnapping and murder of Austin-based atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair and two family members in 1995. Two years before his death, Waters had finally confessed to the crimes and led federal authorities to a shallow grave in the Hill Country that contained the dismembered and burned bodies of the O'Hairs.

The caliche hole near Camp Wood also contained the head and hands of Danny Fry, a con man from Florida who played a supporting role in the brazen abduction in Austin in August 1995. It was Fry who ended up as the headless, handless corpse that was found on the bank of the Trinity River near Seagoville on October 2, 1995, three days after the O'Hairs were dispatched in San Antonio.

The finale of the story gets really interesting, The Murder of Madalyn Murray O'Hair: America's Most Hated Woman (Lona Manning, Crime Magazine):

After the identification of the remains was confirmed, they were given to Bill Murray for burial, and he announced that, in accordance with his own beliefs and his late mother's wishes, he would not pray at the burial site.

As an evangelical, I do not pray for the dead. Baptists believe that upon death the fate of the soul is sealed. The deceased person is in Glory with God, or in Hell. In either event, prayer is fruitless at that point.... The group (at the burial site) removed themselves... (and) said a prayer for the remaining family members and for the law enforcement officers who had worked on the case and suffered emotionally as a result.

One of the law enforcement officials was close to tears on several occasions. The details of the last days and hours of my mother, brother and daughter were so brutal that even men accustomed to violence were emotionally shaken.

Of the many ironies involved in the O'Hair story, one is that Madalyn O'Hair battled the government all her life and conscientiously avoided paying taxes. She was especially suspicious of the FBI, believing Hoover's organization to be the malevolent agent of the evil theocracy that was the United States. But it was the FBI and the IRS who finally avenged her murder. And some of those agents involved in the case, those who searched for her, found her, and attended her burial, expressed the deepest sorrow over the horrors that she and her family had endured at the hands of David Waters, Gary Karr and Danny Fry.

''I hope I live my life in such a manner that when I die, someone cares - even if it is only my dogs. I think I want some human being somewhere to weep for me.''
-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair

Who would not weep that fellow men were killed in such a manner and dumped in a caliche hole. Posted by Orrin Judd at July 12, 2003 4:33 PM