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In September 1995, Madalyn Murray O'Hair vanished without a trace from her home in Austin, Texas, along with her son Jon Garth Murray, adopted granddaughter Robin Murray-O'Hair, and $629,500 from the coffers of atheist organizations she founded.

A plausible theory regarding the disappearance of O'Hair and her relatives has been pieced together by San Antonio Express-News reporter John MacCormack. "I believe that they were kidnapped and taken to San Antonio, held for a month, and then, after procuring a half-million dollars in gold, they were murdered," MacCormack told CT. William J. Murray, O'Hair's estranged son, believes MacCormack has solved the mystery, and Ron Barrier, spokesperson for the American Atheists group started by O'Hair, says the theory is credible.

"I would like to think there was foul play involved because it would absolve the image of Madalyn O'Hair and the organization of being thieves or running off with money," Barrier says.

While O'Hair is long gone, William Murray contends that organized atheism has both won important victories for its ideas and lost a key reason for its existence as an insurgent social movement. "It is the liberalization of theology in America that has spelled the death knell for atheist organizations," says Murray, who became a Christian in 1980 at age 33 and now directs the Religious Freedom Coalition in Washington, D.C. "I can find Baptist preachers—in big churches—that will tell me that Christ isn't the son of God. I don't need to go to the atheists to have somebody to tell me that."

On January 23, the image of O'Hair, who was 76 when she vanished, came to a new light with the auctioning of her diaries. The Internal Revenue Service ordered the sale after seizing her property to pay back taxes and creditor fees. The auction raised around $25,000.

The diaries chronicle O'Hair's passion for power. A 1973 entry reads, "By age 50, I want a $60,000 home, a Cadillac car, a mink coat, a cook, a housekeeper. In 1974, I will run for the governor of Texas and in 1976, the president of the United States."

While O'Hair did amass wealth, she never realized political power. By 1977, the diary shows a more pessimistic view. "I think atheism is done for this time," she wrote. "I have failed in marriage, motherhood, as a politician." In at least a half-dozen entries she pleaded, "Somebody, somewhere, love me."

RETURN TO INFLUENCE? Her atheistic heirs are not dwelling on the past, however. Following in the tradition of some influential activist feminist and abortion-rights groups, small atheist organizations are trying to wield momentous clout for their size.

O'Hair is still reviled by religious leaders as the woman who removed God from public education, accelerating America's moral decline. In reality, her case, Murray v. Curlett, was but a companion to two more significant cases upon which the Supreme Court based its 1963 decision to prohibit public schools from initiating prayer. O'Hair's reputation grew in the wake of the 1963 Murray v. Curlett decision, in which her then 16-year-old son William was the nominal litigant. O'Hair proudly adopted the "America's most hated woman" moniker.

In 1999, American atheists still see courtrooms and classrooms as their most important battlegrounds. Today they are strategizing to gain credibility by enhancing their social and intellectual respectability. And while continuing to make legal challenges to what they consider government entanglement with religion, they are recruiting youth, engaging in public debate with conservative Christians, and promoting atheistic "values," all as a way of establishing a positive public image of atheists as America's most reasonable freethinkers.

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March 1 1999, Vol. 43, No. 3