The True Story Behind The Most Hated Woman In America

So, given this reputation as a magnet for criticism, and given the significance of her life’s work, you’d think that people would notice when a woman who had been causing a fuss her entire life suddenly disappeared.

On August 27, 1995, O'Hair, her son Jon, and granddaughter Robin vanished. On the locked door of the American Atheists was a cryptic note: “The Murray O'Hair family has been called out of town on an emergency basis. We do not know how long we will be gone at the time of the writing of this memo." Yet O’Hair’s messy house, replete with open pill bottles and abandoned dogs, wasn’t the home of a person on a pre-planned trip.

Despite the apparent fishiness of this scene, everyone, from the Austin police to the American Atheists society, went on with business as usual. A missing persons report was filed. The missing persons report went cold.

It was only years later, when a private investigator, Tim Young, and a reporter, John MacCormack, teamed up to write a story about the O’Hairs that the truth finally came out . In March of 2001, the dismembered bodies of O’Hair, her son, and her granddaughter were found buried on a ranch in Texas. And this brutal murder wasn’t the work of her political enemy. David Waters, a disgruntled former office manager at the American Atheists, orchestrated and carried out the killings.