Focus 580; Americas Most Hated Woman: the Life and Gruesome Death of Madalyn Murray Ohair

Life magazine once called her the most hated woman in America. Her 1963 Supreme Court case helped to end prayer in schools and over the following three decades she led the charge to keep church and state separate. She could be witty. She could be crude. She had the reputation for being a bully even to her supporters and she became something of a celebrity as a result of her campaign against religion then just as she began to fade into obscurity she vanished in 1995 in one of the strangest of America's true crimes. This morning in this hour of focus 580 we'll be talking about Madalyn Murray O'Hair and our guest is Anne seaman. She's the author of a newly published biography of Madalyn Murray O'Hair which is titled America's most hated woman continuum as the publisher. She's joining us this morning by telephone but this weekend on Saturday will be here in Champaign Urbana. She'll be doing an appearance on a book signing at Borders Books and champagne Saturday afternoon beginning at 2:00 saw if you're interested here in and around Champaign-Urbana you can head out there and meet her and of course if you're interested in the book you can go to

where divers. You like to buy books and can seek it out. Also here this morning in this part of focus 580 as always we welcome questions of people who are listening. The only thing we ask of people who call in is just that they are as brief as they can be and we ask that so that we can get in as many callers as possible and keep things moving along but anybody is welcome to join the conversation here in Champaign Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 we do also have a toll free line go to anywhere that you can hear us and that's 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5 3 3 3 WRAL and toll free 800 1:58 W while our guest and seem innocent native of Austin Texas or first book was a profile of televangelist Jimmy Swaggart which was titled swaggered The Unauthorized Biography of an American evangelist. She's also won awards for different kinds of writing that she's done writing and editing including documentary film narrations natural history publications and newspaper articles and again as I say she's joining us this morning by

telephone. Ms seaman Hello. Hello how are you. I'm fine thanks and yourself. Well thanks for joining us this morning we appreciate it. The book covers a lot of territory so I hope that we can at least give people a kind of an idea both of whom Madalyn Murray O'Hair was something of her background her place in American history and then the crime that. In which she and one of her sons and granddaughter were murdered that put her in the news again. At a point where she really had begun to fade from public view as maybe the place to start would be to talk a little bit about her childhood and her parents what was her family like. Well Madeleine actually had a kind of a rough start in life because her mother tried many times to abort her and and found it necessary to tell Madeleine this all the years that she was growing up and I am not really sure why her mother Lena had to do that.

But she you know she ate a whole jar of mustard and she threw herself down the stairs and and so on that Madeleine was apparently destined to be here because she survived and and the mother was a little bit superstitious. She read tarot cards and tea leaves but she also sent her kids to church and made them say their prayers that night just sort of covering all the bases. And I Madeleine had a difficult relationship with her entire family she was constantly quarreling with them and I guess they were all for Carling together she had a brother who was about two years older but she was always the smartest of all of her cousins and her crowd she was always the smartest kid and. He grew up to be a very restless intellectually restless person. She joined the Army and became a second lieutenant. And while she was in the Army met a man named William Ari and had his child.

He was a married Catholic and wouldn't leave that you know he couldn't divorce his wife. So I think that's kind of where Madeleine's antipathy for religion may have started with with her inability to make a bond a permanent bond with this man. She named her son Bill Mari William the Third after his father even though she didn't carry his name. But she took the mari name later when Bill was about five years old and it was Bill on whose behalf she found this lawsuit. In her younger life when Bill was a little boy she got a law degree in Houston Texas and she. Move to Baltimore with her or her parents and her brother and I all lived in a row house. And during that the ensuing years in the early 50s late 50s I'm sorry and by 1960 she had become kind of a communist idealogue and actually tried to defect to the Soviet Union. And that defection attempt was kind of what sparked her lawsuit because she was told that she would

be of more use back home. So that's kind of her beginnings. Where where along the line do you think the important influences were that maybe shaped her or her political ideological mindset. That's a really good question Madeleine have always from when I talk to her high school friends and and Ohio where she went to high school she had always felt like an outsider. And she felt this way from a very young age partly because she had a physical condition called excavate amidst a sort of like a depression in your chest in the right at the top of your chest and as she had a little misaligned ribs a little bit of maybe a goalie osis and she was very ashamed of her body and she was smarter than everybody else and felt and felt an outsider of that. It kind of just him her you

know in her milieu that she grew up in where her anger and determination to change America came from outside the home with I think probably. When she was in high school in Ohio she became acquainted with someone who ran a drug store and he was sort of an idealogue and there were lots of exciting political discussions in his drug store and that was where she she kind of felt she had a place there where she didn't even in her own family feel like she belonged. But she she felt good about about that. I think it was I can't remember the name of the drug store it's in my book but I think that's where her her political idealism was sparked. She had two sons both of them with men that she. Had was not married to me as you mentioned she went into the military she was a in the Women's Army Corps she was a whack She was posted to Europe and when she met this man Joseph Murray she had a son William

by him. Then later when she came home she had a relationship with with another man and had another boy John Garth. So she had these these two sons. And what was her relationship. And of course that there there's a long and tangled story of her relationship with them particularly with with her son William who later became a born again Christian and turned became the complete opposite of what his mother was. But what what was her relationship like with her two boys what and what kind of a mom was she. Well Bill on whose behalf she filed a lawsuit and he worked for her for talking to his 30s and American Atheists helping her movement. He said he wrote a kind of a mommy dearest book when he was in his early 30s after he became a Christian. And that book described her as a neglectful mother. But but loving but her love was kind of Pearson and cannibalistic

she. She just it poured her her heart and soul into these kids and I sort of became her trophies are her they were they were supposed to like Bill remembers getting toys that were too complicated for him when he was little because she needed very much needed them to be smart. And then when Garth was born both of them born out of wedlock and this is in the 40s and 50s 1946 and Garth in 1954. And this just wasn't done. Having a child I mean the son all the time now but it just wasn't done. And so she had a quite a bit of anxiety about about that even though she was defiant about it she had a lot of anxiety and so she sort of needed for her kids to succeed greatly to overcome some of that. Her mother did most of the early child rearing up of the boys because they all lived together in the same house and Madeleine wore later in life after the after she had the falling out with William then for her second son

and they were very close together in age John Garth really became the person that she relied on and it seemed that he perhaps saw himself as her caretaker in a way was was her main support and then interestingly enough then this this kind of family unit formed involving men. John Garth and a granddaughter who was the daughter of her first son William who was married very young and then that marriage came apart and it seemed that neither of the two parents either wanted to or could care for this girl and so she ends up becoming up in a sense becoming the child of the grandmother. And so then the three of them not only were a professional kind of association because they were all very much involved in this organization she founded American Atheist but they constituted up a kind of a family. That's right I mean I can't believe you got that whole complicated mess out in such a short time but it is an Think story. Bill got a girl pregnant when Bill was

18 and the grove was 17 and they had this little daughter Robin. Madeline ended up adopting her because she was just pretty much neither parent. They were both teenagers and neither one of them was really. Interested and settling down and raising a little girl and Madeleine had always wanted a daughter and she just adored Robin and really Robin was a wonderful kid. But in the same way Madeleine had sort of fiercely loved her two sons. She visited that on her granddaughter Anne and so Robin was raised with just heaps and heaps of love and affection and approval and yet if she ever tried to break out on her own or do something her grandmother didn't approve. There were these sometimes subtle and sometimes not subtle ways that her grandmother just twisted her back and made her come back into the family circle. Bill got very tired of that and and there were series of just horrendous fights and horrible scenes between

Bill and Madeleine and he finally broke away from Madeleine and that really the only way he could do it was by just becoming the opposite of what she was. You know Christian you know him. Our guest in this hour focus 580 and Seaman She's the author of a biography of Madalyn Murray O'Hair It's titled America's most hated woman and it's published by continuum. And as I mentioned the beginning of the program she will be here in Champaign-Urbana for a talk and a book signing at Borders in Champaign on Saturday beginning at 2:00 in the afternoon. So if you're interested in meeting her you can head out there and of course anywhere that you're interested in buying your books or that you go to buy your books you should be able to find a copy of her book if you'd like to read it. Questions are welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5 5. We do have a caller and we'll bring them into the conversation here someone listening in Champaign. The line number one. Well I. My main question is Why do you think that the

that the Murray O'Hair case became the symbol for separation of church and state issues when right here in Champaign we had the McCollum case. Quite a good five years earlier. Yeah well it was it was the McCollum case was actually I think decided a 948 and I was r you got good 13 years. Yeah and Madeline's was 1963 and in fact there was a lot of communication between the McCollam family and Madeline. But I think and Mrs. McCollum had she wanted to solve a problem and that was that her son was being put out in the hallway during the school mandated because half an hour every Friday or something of a church instruction that that is a public school. And she tried to work it out with the school district but couldn't and she just she said this is just not right. Children shouldn't have to. Children should not be going to church on Fridays in school. You know send them to church you know they have churches for this and

it was a very clear cut you know violation of the separation of church and state at least in my mind. But Mr. McCollum just wanted to solve a problem. Madeline really wanted to build an empire and the reason that she got so much notoriety is because she actively went out seeking it. She she really was savvy about how to use the media and and how to sensationalize things. She was called the most hated woman in America partly because of some of the things that she said publicly like you know God is sadistic and brutal and a representation of hatred and vengeance and you know she said that she'd turn every church into a hospital or sanitarium because Leave it to God and it won't get done. Things that offended the devout Christians. You know she said The Lord's Prayer was something muttered by worms groveling for an existence and so on. So you know to me it what it was like like a little kid who was

holding her breath in order to get attention. Madeline never held her breath. OK you and yelled at the top of her long yell that the overlong you know it's easy to dismiss Madeline as attention seeking and a lot of people did that over the years finally after years and years of her really a lot of stunts that she pulled to get attention. She was kind of dismissed and reports you know she was sort of became a semi tabloid figure in Austin when she finally ended up in Austin. But at the same time it just can't be underestimated how much attention she did bring to these issues and and her other big legacy was that in the 50s and 60s when she was doing this there was this big communist scare and beginning of the Cold War and and communists and atheists were considered synonymous. And you know the general public didn't seem to be able to allow anybody to just be unchurched or atheistic

without hating them. And so there was a lot of persecution and Madelyn brass enough to undercut all of that. You know she also formed a huge international network of free thinkers and then you know church state separation the secular humanists and like minded thinkers. So. That's her place in history she was courageous she she weathered all kinds of death threats her entire life. And she was it could be she was a beacon for a lot of people who were persecuted by religion. Yeah but don't you often think that she was she did just about as much harm to her those of us who just don't happen to believe in and we get tarred with her you know what that that is that is the question that my book raises. Because what I when I first started on this book I thought that Madeleine's case with Bill Maher you know getting a

reading of the Lord's Prayer This is mandated by the Maryland Public School I believe by the state but certainly by Baltimore. And she heard this and it's been pretty clear that to me that yeah you don't have to. That shouldn't be mandated in school. You know they say that the school so that was a good way to start the day put people in the right frame of mind and that may be true maybe a moment of silence or something that is good for the beginning of the day. But. But after a while some of the suits that she started to file. She called them educational food or attention getting you know and partly because you know she sort of made them outrageous or people felt they were she to get the under God taken out of the Pledge of Allegiance and In God We Trust off of our money. And she you know has the she in Austin filed the lawsuit first and she lost that or she filed in the wrong direction or

something but to get that big stone tablets of the Ten Commandments off of the capitol grounds in Austin and that's when the Supreme Court right now they're going to announce that this month. So she had some like very big attention getting lawsuits and and that that was how she sort of kept in the public eye and then the smaller lawsuits like churches can't play bingo you know churches can't have big polling places you can't have free parking on Sunday you know baccalaureate services. You know she she sued or she was involved in a suit in North Carolina which the state road maps contained a little prayer for safe travel. She you know there were many She tried to get a little cross out of the city seal of Austin. Things like that that were just seemed so trivial that when you start we are awash in them.

There's no question. Yeah well you know the debate comes up as to how much of a Christian nation our way and where do these things become so intertwined as you drill farther and farther down have they become so intertwined that you you really can't separate them without without just destroying the harmony of the fabric of the culture. You know forgive me for jumping in there as one of the things the caller and say we're getting very close to a midpoint here and I think we're getting somebody else set up and others would like to call you're certainly welcome 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 and toll free 800 to 2 2 9 4 5. Again we're talking this morning with an RO seaman. She's the author of America's most hated woman the life and gruesome death of Madalyn Murray O'Hair and published by continuum. I'm sure that some people would argue that in leading social movement movements for social change you have to have someone to pick up the metaphor that you in the color used you have to have someone who's willing to yell and at the same time though I'm sure that within those social

movements there are people who look at these kinds of leaders and just sort of shake their heads and think I wish we could have someone a little bit more prudent. Someone who is probably a little bit more of a diplomat somebody who you know could be a little could get our message across and yet somehow be more subtle now maybe that doesn't work maybe you have to have the parade. You know you maybe you need agitators. Again I guess I would say yes we we definitely yeah agitator. But I guess what I'm thinking of is within the within this this vast movement of people who are concerned about the issue of separation of church and state. How did people feel about the fact that she was perhaps the most prominent She was the person who was out front. She was the person who was in the spotlight. How did her own. Yes. Yes well it was extremely dichotomous just you know just like most things in Madeleine's life there were two very dramatic sides and and one one camp said she is a complete hero to me. I was so persecuted and you know you can tell this by some of the hate mail that

Madeline got in that there was a persecution problem for people who were I guess they were considered godless communists you know. One guy was run out of this small town and when he revealed he was an atheist he had his head shaved and was run out of town. Somebody else's business of the boycotted somebody else got their phone disconnected by the phone company. You know the people were persecuted and hurt by religion some people had personal stories to tell about you know being you know just being hurt by it and there's there's news stories too about children being allowed to die I guess there you know. Religious sects that refuse medical care for their kids. And so there was a problem. And then on the other hand there were the people that said Madlen is not respectable She's profane. She would write these letters. And just put them in the mail with all kinds of filthy language and she got

mad at her followers for she would she wrote one guy who had worked real hard for her for come down volunteered from Ohio she wrote him a letter just Golding letters and your pants were too tight your fingernails were dirty you were a disgrace and he had just spent a week working his head off to help her. So there's no protect you know you can't really land on one side or the other when you're when you read this book you you just shake your head because there are so many things to admire and so needs that she filled and she sort of ran it into the ground and broke it off and people were saying my gosh you know she won't get her hair fix she won't lose weight she's not very presentable and and yet you know she was she was a beacon to people. So I think I figured well had stuck with someone else. We have another caller here. Again I believe in champagne. Is Lie number two. Hello good morning. Yes a couple comments. One we're talking about you know her

yelling and you go have people in some movement yelling and things like this. I used to think that we should do things in a subtle way always. But then I came across as a gay rights organization called the 85 percent coalition and their whole goal from this couple years ago was to seem kind of radical to stand outside right wing legislator's office and you know seem radical out of that way. The organizations who are fighting for social change or state that were already established would seem more moderate. You know that's really a very good point and it's actually worked in Illinois. You know just if you noticed just the year Illinois finally passed the equality minute equality law and so you can discriminate against gay people anywhere. Now that's a good analogy. Then also just like in the comment as an atheist I find her as almost a hero. I just know she was very abrasive and

and at times very rude and I was she wasn't bad. But as a educator in chanting school district I am inundated daily with God. It seems to be passively accepted to mention god of assemblies too. Just for instance at our graduation the other day God was mentioned seven or eight times. That seems to be ok all the time even though our schools are very diverse. Buddhist Muslim you know everything in our school. So although I think we've come a long way towards separate insert church and state it seems to be still ok too. Yeah yeah I think it makes you wonder if it can really be separated if it's so important to people to be able to say god and every you know school is. It's not just secular You know it. People when people go to school they bring with them their backgrounds and it seems like a

question to me it seems like a question of how. How to find a balance. But right and I'm not I'm just Madeleine's biographer it's not up to me to really write how to find about smell and Madeline didn't want balance really she wanted that eradicated and she actually said many times she wanted religion eradicated. Yeah I'm with you on the religion eradicated I understand it's very important to a lot of people but I do get frustrated on daily basis because you know in my school if you like look for instance all me people don't like me and things like that will start chitchatting over so it will come up and watch all you Ali is that you know you're not I want you to. What would it be. I guess that of course they are very christian of you not like me now but that's a good a good answer but I'm just wondering if you would you be more comfortable if the word God wasn't mentioned at all in school or if it was forbidden.

No I don't want to forbidden I will but you should be on a on an official program. Because because religion is a religion is a huge part of our country's history and it will always be part of our country. But when we have a situation where we have kids. Like I said before we have a sort of religiously diverse population. When you just mention God. Well then what are these Buddhist kids thinking and one of these Hindu kids thinking you know they're like in the other group that really aren't counted just because we make up 3 percent of the group. Well you know what you're saying. God I don't know I don't know if there's so much objection to that to the concept of God as there is two different kinds of gods a cross right image and the image of Jesus Christ a lot. Yeah and that's what I found when I did my research that the Jewish kids are sort of you know made very uncomfortable by all this talk about Jesus you know we we had an assembly last year.

An individual who is very important our school a very popular school. We're going to have simply not going to him seeing and he's so prestigious and I thought oh great you'll see some great about the program. And he got up there and went on a five minute rant on how each child needs an older personal savior. And yeah yeah. And this was on live radio all over town. Now that's that's that's a Right now it's a metaphor as a thank you for writing the book I'm going to go out and get it. Thank you. I was very happy that she came along. I'm glad this topic is still being talked about. Yeah I don't think people realize how much is a sort of metastasized and to confusion about people really are confused about whether I mean I was listening to a radio talk show one day and that and the caller said is it OK if I say he was going to say Merry Christmas or something on the air and he said you know because these are public airwaves and so it's sort of like

you know my my First Amendment rights to say you know Merry Christmas over the air are gone because the public has these airwaves. It's just mass confusion. People really don't know whether it's OK to. You know the so you have a moment of silence in their school but you know they really don't know. I want to think the caller we got some other folks here we're now coming into our last half of the show and our guest is Anne seaman She's the author of a biography of America as well. That's the title book America's most hated woman. It is a biography of Madalyn Murray O'Hair and it's published by continuum and she will be here in Champaign Urbana this weekend she'll be doing a book signing and talk at Borders and champagne Saturday afternoon starting at 2:00. So if you're interested in meeting her you can stop by there and of course if you want to read the book you can go to wherever it is you like to buy books. Just before we get some other calls I do want to have you talk at least a little bit about the other big part of this story and that is the what happened to Madeleine.

Her son and granddaughter. Yeah. This takes us back to 1995 and this was at a time when it seems to me at least they had been out of the national spotlight for a while and in fact I seem to recall reading some of those first stories about their disappearance and thinking to myself gosh I haven't heard that name. Madalyn Murray O'Hair for you for years and years. Yeah. And what happened was in that it was the summer of 1995 the three of them. Vanished along with a significant amount of money and there were a lot of stories floating around there was speculation about the fact that they had embezzled this money from their organization and they had left the country and that they were gone too. You know you fill in the blank about where you think they had gone. And of course what happened was ultimately up was they had been kidnapped. They had been held for ransom and they had been murdered. Yeah and by the three of them you're that Madeleine and her younger son John Karr and her bill had long fled into the family and Rob and the

granddaughter the granddaughter of John Garth was 40. Robin was 30 and Madeline was 76 and now they had been planning to flee. They had been setting up a a secret flight to New Zealand and they had been funneling millions of dollars over into New Zealand in order to do that. It was a secret nobody knew about it but a couple of a couple of insiders and they were playing because they were they were afraid they're about to lose two big lawsuits and one of them had to do with the IRS suing them for unpaid taxes and and the other one had to do with their lawsuit against the Truth Seeker corporation. And that's a complicated story but really it's got a lot of Madeleine's emotional life and kind of surfaced in those two lawsuits that she was fighting that they had long had a long history with her medal of hatred for the IRS and her her that she kept

watching the Truth Seeker foundation becoming the corporation become richer and richer and richer and she felt like she should be part of that and was justified in some ways. But those were what she was fleeing. And in 1993 she hired a David Waters to be her office manager a very well-spoken intelligent educated guy nice looking guy charming with a genius IQ and a to at least two murders under his belt at the time he went to work for her and she didn't know about the murders. But but they were so devious It was unbelievable how cunning he was. He started as a typesetter and he worked his way into the into Madeline's trust and became the manager and was able to have access to all kinds of information that other people didn't know about and he knew she was squirreling money away in New Zealand. It didn't take very long for David to get crosswise of Madeleine and

you know him. And at the time he quickly stole $54000 from her and she had filed a suit against him and he was the one that kidnapped her. John Robin and the strange thing was that he held them for a month in San Antonio and then a residential motel and there was sort of a Stockholm syndrome took over and David had two guys helping him guard the O'Hare's while they repatriated this New Zealand money back to you know back to the United States. And David had it converted into gold coins. Five hundred thousand dollars worth of gold coins had come in and there were still a hundred thousand to go when things took a very bad turn in San Antonio and that necessitated the killing of all three of the of the O'Hare's. So that's in a nutshell what happened but

basically that kidnapping once they were kidnapped and left nobody really looked for him very much. The Austin police did a very sloppy job and they weren't that interested in everybody in fact because they wouldn't look for the O'Hare's because the O'Hare's were atheists and that I don't think that was true I think it was just they had a brand new detective on the case who hadn't had never done a homicide. But that true crime thing. Hell the basically a reporter in San Antonio unraveled this mystery and handed the FBI two thirds of their case and the family was missing for five years and they finally David Waters have gotten backed into a corner and finally revealed where they were buried. The authorities apparently always suspected him of being the mastermind he have since died he said. He died in in prison and yeah 2003 he had cancer. But you had the opportunity to meet with him and talk with him in

jail in a few occasions. Did he. What did he say about his role in this. David always presented himself as a victim and he did it very well with a lot of confidence and a sort of you know he basically presented himself as a victim. But what. And that's just the posture that a lot of guys have in prison there. And nobody ever really did anything wrong in prison and but he let me know that he he had sort of an admiration for Madeleine. Everybody really admired her intellect and her courage. And people like David Myers her sassy belt profanity and stuff too. But. What he essentially told me was that she was a mark waiting to be had and and she she probably would have robbed her in some way even if she hadn't made him angry.

What she did that really set him off was after he stole the $54000 from her she published a newsletter and a magazine and in her newsletter she published she found that a whole lot of real bad Daria on him including the fact that he had beaten his mother and you're neither Thomas mother and and and she published that in her newsletter and sent it out to all our members and someone sent him a copy and he was absolutely furious that having his cover blown and having you know these humiliating things about him so widely now. So he was but even if he hadn't been that angry he would have he would have robbed their center like a Christian just solved a little vulnerability there that was what he was like yeah. After he led the authorities to the place where the bodies were buried. Yes eventually Madeleine's older son William got the authorities must have felt that he would be the most and appropriate person to take responsibility for the remains of his brother and his his mother his brother and his

daughter and had. Them had them buried it in an I guess an undisclosed location. You know what. What sort of service was conducted the seem to me to be one of the ironies that their mod had any words at all spoken over this woman who was so famous for being an atheist. That's right. Actually there was a big contention over the remains once they were dug up on the ship from the shallow grave in south Texas. The American Atheists organization that Madeleine had had founded in the still thriving in New Jersey now they asked for for her for the remains of all three of the heroes because they haven't spoken to Bill for 20 years. And you know they considered bill a traitor and Madeline definitely have. Have disowned him and said he she didn't want him to have anything to do with any of the burial and she certainly didn't want the prayers said over her and. But the FBI who had possession of the remains that they had first they had to be identified by a

forensic anthropologist and after that took about a month and then. Then the FBI had to decide and they decided in favor of Bill just because the Texas law of that remains go to the next of kin. So but Bill wanted it to be a secret. There are decent burial that he gave them in a proper cemetery and there were really only a handful of people there about six people. And I was one of those and there were FBI patrolling the perimeter make sure that no none and no one from American Atheists had found out where the place was. And that kind of service that was conducted. Bill said to everybody there he said. You know my mother didn't want to be prayed over and I'm not going to pray over any of my relatives. But he said I just let this. I said I can't stand to have more of a circus act around my mother and brother and daughter. Their life had become a circus and I just wanted to end right here and he said all I'm all I want to

say is that. I just hope this is the end of of this curse for our bloodline. And and that was that and then he he is an ordained minister Bill. And he gathered a small group of us over in another part of the cemetery and prayed for healing and for the police work that still remained to be done to to hold everyone responsible who had participated in all of this. We have about 10 minutes left. We have some calls I get back to them right no and again maybe I'll just mention once again that our guest is and Seaman she is the author of this book about Madalyn Murray O'Hair Woods title America's most hated woman continuum is the publisher. Let's go next to talk with someone in Dewitt County line. More below. Good morning. Morning thank you. Oh it goes along with the uncovering of the throat. Recently you said Follow the money and it's like everything

about her life Elise or later life came down to that in the same way it has and for a couple of civil rights leaders who just missed the opportunity to show their faces and collect more money. Well that was definitely the case with Madeline but it was also for John McCormick the San Antonio reporter who is he was nominated for a Pulitzer for his work on the O'Hara case I think he found about over more than 80 stories on Madeleine and he followed the cell phone calls because that's really what they had a cell phone in San Antonio and he tracked down. But you know he tracked down David Waters came onto his radar screen. Very early on. And but the cell phone and the money those were definitely the things he followed for sure. I have this man you say committed two murders were convicted of those or one of them he committed when he was 17 and

he and some buddies beat a 16 year old boy to death in Peoria where he's from. And the second murder occurred in 84. And the police in Peoria thought they thought he did it. But David was actually he was paroled from the first murder. He only served 12 years even though he drew 30 to 60. He only served 12. And the 1984 he simply was even about 38 years old he. He killed a guy named Billy King but they couldn't pin anything on him all day but they were pretty sure it was David he had a really long rap sheet and there were some other. There was another person who was last seen in David's company around that same time who was never heard from again. And then David's wife was mysteriously murdered. In 1980 he has a lot of stuff. He had a lot of stuff behind him and and more to come. And 95.

One other question a little arcane but the Madeleine never go after the Freemasonry symbols that are so promise Yeah. Yes you do. And she went after anybody who. Who. Forgotten the way that she went after the Masons but there I have a list here of some of her lawsuits from the 77 and they're they're pretty good pretty comprehensive you know. And the Masons are in that list for something they were doing wrong I can't remember exactly what it was that our nation wasn't one of them founded as a Christian nation that was founded by Freemasons. Well you know there were the Mayflower Compact was sworn. You know in the presence of God and in the in the colonial period there were rules that stated that. All of our rights came from God that public servants had to believe in the Bible. People could be fined for working on Sunday you know. You know stuff like that so there was a

heavy hand of religion that helped form the ideals of this country. The cornerstone of the Capitol Building was laid by George Washington and a Freemason ceremony. Yeah OK. Well thank you very much I want to thank you. Let's go to another caller here next champagne. Line 1. Hello hello thank you for a very interesting program and I had one comment and sort of a question. Did you know that Mrs. McCullum is still living. Yes I do. OK. You know she's living in this town and is doing very well and I just called her and said that her court case was the favorite Lee mentioned on your. Yeah. Yes she she had a. Her case was just really way above the fray. I mean she just she did this it was a big sacrifice for her. It was it was a very courageous thing that she did and then when the problem was solved she went back to her life. Right. This is Madeline made this whole thing her life and she built a multimillion dollar empire on it.

So you know. Well Mrs. McCollum suffered quite a lot too. And I had a couple of other comments earlier this morning on NPR they had a interesting piece about the Air Force Academy graduation. Did you happen to know I didn't hear that what happened. Well there's some controversy because there's been quite a lot of fundamentalist Christian activity and they actually had an investigation and they're having these classes for religious tolerance. It was a very interesting piece. You might want to. Yeah. Yeah this is it. It's the line between religious tolerance and tolerating the violation of the Constitution is a very very fine. And there are some areas where you really have to throw up your hands. You really the scales of tipped down were in the in the nitty gritty of where people live when when these decisions are made. You come up with things like the

thirst the third grader who said you know God Bless America or something that Laci and was you know put on probation you know for things like that. Just things that it seems to be sort of a waste of our time to you know to deal with. But but that's how confused people are. All right let's talk with someone else here Bloomington Ind.. The line number two about that confusion it is confusing and it's absolutely made a this doctrine this legal doctrine of separation of church and state. It's caused a lot of confusion. You might be interested in the fact that the chief justice of our Supreme Court William Rehnquist agrees that it has caused a lot of a lot of confusion. You know you can't conclude anything else when you when you ask yourself you know should we sandblast the carving of Solomon off the Supreme Court building or what. Right. You know Justice Rehnquist made a historical study of the history of the wall of separation found there was no historical basis for it.

Well the language doesn't come from the Constitution it comes from a letter that Thomas Jefferson wrote to some people in Dan Barry Connecticut. Yeah which means just exactly the opposite of how the court has construed it. And of course it also has no legal bearing. It was a letter. Yeah it was a letter and I think it was in the. I think it's under the Warren court that that phrase was picked up in and sort of began to become sort of a substitute for the word for the words of the Constitution that would harm has been used very liberally. Jefferson was quoted earlier and before before before he was quoted it as the evidence for separation of church and state he was quoted earlier in the 1800s. And Reynolds versus the United States to demonstrate that that be just just the opposite that the the only way that religion would enter into the law would be actions through actions rather than through beliefs. That's

what somebody said. But but the point that Justice Rehnquist found and no historical basis. Four for Separation of Church and State. He complained about it in one of it and one of the legal cases he wrote about it and that it was a dissent. But in the case of Wallace vs. Jeffie Justice Rehnquist he's kind of expressing his frustration and interest when he says this is a quotation from his dissent. He says there is simply no historical foundation for the proposition that the framers intended to build the wall of separation. And no amount of repetition of historical errors in judicial opinions can make those errors true. The so-called wall of separation between church and state is a metaphor based on bad history a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide for judging U.S. there's frustration there now countersuing and it should be frankly and explicitly abandoned. Well you know the first. A lot of people interpret the First Amendment to not even prohibit establishing religion in each individual state. Each state

can establish a religion if it wants to. The First Amendment only forbids a national religious establishment. Then the First Amendment says Congress shall make no law. Yeah very well. However the 14th Amendment the 14th Amendment was adopted after the Civil War. Right the 14th Amendment's been used for a lot to globalize a lot of a lot if I didn't have it. But the religious guarantees were not were not originally devolved upon the states just for citizenship and to abolish slavery had nothing to with religion. Yeah I think the Fourteenth Amendment has really been expanded to include a lot of things then and actually. That the result is sometimes or at least some people feel that the sovereignty of the states is undermined by the 14th Amendment. Well I'm going to jump in here because we're pretty much out of time. I'm sure this debate will continue because it certainly seems that we're debating these issues just as as intensely

No. When these Supreme Court cases that we have discussed where new and I don't expect that that's probably going to be resolved ever. Do you think. No I don't think there's going to be an ultimate resolution I just think it will be like any other paradigm has reached its maturity and started to create more problems than it solves and then it's time for a new paradigm and I think that that's what's happening to the wall of separation. Well just going back to for a moment here to finish up our conversation about this one individual that we talked about Madalyn Murray O'Hair What do you think is her her overall legacy as far as America is concerned. Well her legacy is partly just the confusion that we talked about but her legacy is also too. Two make two. She's eradicated this are her activities and her prominence eradicated

this stigma on people for not for being on church than for you know just having having their beliefs. That was one and she often said that her major triumph that she felt was her first one was was removing the stigma for being a communist and being a traitor to your country. But she also. She fought for for she felt like she was fighting for people's rights and freedom and raising their awareness and and she felt like she was giving unbelievers a whole a whole safe harbor. And and she started a major network of like minded thinkers all over the world. And she she left a big body of writings and she started a library that preserved tons and tons of Freethought materials that are priceless and part of our history. Well there we will have to leave it because we are here at the end of the time again for people who would like to read more on this story. You can look for the book it's titled America's most hated

woman the life and gruesome death of Madalyn Murray O'Hair by our guest Ann Wroe seaman's published by continuum. She will be here in Champaign Urbana this coming weekend she'll be doing a signing of a talk at Borders in Champaign on Saturday beginning at 2:00 in the afternoon so if you're interested you can stop by there otherwise if you'd like to look at the book you go down to where it is you like to buy your books. Thank you very much. Well thank you very much I really enjoyed that.