Madalyn Murray-O'Hair

Madalyn Murray O'Hair (née Mays) born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. She was a militant feminist activist, well known as the American atheist activist, founder of American Atheists, and the organization's president from 1963 to 1986. Madalyn Murray O'Hair become famous for the Murray v. Curlett lawsuit, which led to a landmark Supreme Court ruling ending official Bible-reading in American public schools in 1963. Madalyn Mays was born in the Beechview neighborhood of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, to Lena Christina (Scholle) and John Irwin Mays. She had an older brother, John Irwin Jr. As an infant, she was baptized into the church as a Presbyterian. In 1936, she graduated from Rossford High School in Rossford, Ohio. In 1941, she married John Henry Roths. They separated when they both enlisted for World War II service, he in the United States Marine Corps, she in the Women's Army Corps. In April 1945, while posted to a cryptography position in Italy, she began a relationship with an officer, William J. Murray, Jr., a married Roman Catholic who refused to divorce his wife. Mays divorced Roths, adopted the name Madalyn Murray, and gave birth to a boy whom she named William "Bill" J. Murray III. In 1949, Murray completed a bachelor's degree from Ashland University. In 1952, she received an LL.B. degree from the then unaccredited South Texas College of Law; however, she failed the bar exam and never practiced law. On November 16, 1954, she gave birth to her second son, Jon Garth Murray, fathered by her boyfriend Michael Fiorillo. Madalyn and her two sons traveled by ship to Europe, planning on defecting to the Soviet embassy in Paris and residing in the Soviet Union, due to that nation's promotion of state atheism. However, the USSR denied them entry. They all returned to the Loch Raven section of Baltimore, Maryland in 1960 to live with her mother and brother. On August 27, 1995, Madalyn Murray O'Hair, her son Jon Garth, and granddaughter Robin suddenly disappeared. All three of them was murdered on September 29, 1995, San Antonio, Texas, by David Roland Waters, a convicted felon out on parole, and his fellow career criminal Gary Karr. Waters was an employee of the American Atheists.