Jon Garth Murray

From Philosopedia

Murray, Jon Garth (1954 - 1995?)

Murray was managing editor of American Atheist, the magazine once edited by Madalyn Murray O’Hair. He became President of American Atheists. However, according to David Travis, an editorial, financial, and clerical worker who ended his association with the O’Hair group in 1995, Jon did not “even know when to be polite.” Travis called him a “screaming madman running around the office, shouting obscenities about everyone and everything.” Scott Kerns, another member, lamented that Jon “had no special training, nor a great number of social skills, as well as a speech impediment. He was at an extreme disadvantage, and he was aware that he’d been put in a position beyond his abilities to handle.” Allegedly, Murray alienated many atheist chapters so badly that they seceded, and those which did not were dissolved by 1991. Murray disappeared, along with his mother and sister Robin, in 1996. Although his body had not been found as of the end of 1999, the FBI was investigating whether David Waters and Gary Karr had anything to do with the disappearances.

Finally in 2001, the dismembered bodies of O'Hair, Jon Murray, and Robin Murray were found buried on a ranch in Texas. They had been sawed into dozens of pieces and could be identified only by dental records, DNA testing, and in Madalyn's case by her prosthetic hip. One of the persons involved but not the killer, David Waters, led the authorities to the site in return for a guarantee he would serve his time in a Federal rather than in a Texas state prison. In 2003, he died in prison of a liver disease.

(See entry for Madalyn O’Hair.)

{Time, 20 February 1997}