Waters Gets Sixty Years
By Frank R. Zindler
August, 1999
August, 1999
On 11 August 1999, Texas District Judge Wilford Flowers sentenced David Waters to sixty years in prison. Waters is widely suspected as being the mastermind behind the 1995 disappearance and possible murder of American Atheists founder Madalyn Murray O'Hair, her son Jon Garth Murray - then President of American Atheists - and her granddaughter Robin Murray-O'Hair, then Editor of American Atheist Press. It is important to emphasize that Waters has never been charged with any crime involving the Murray-O'Hair disappearance, despite the wide-scale finger-pointing in the media that would appear to implicate him.
The sentencing of Waters - a three-time felon who has served time for murder, battery (of his own mother), and forgery - came as a result of "adjudicating" a case predating the 1995 disappearance. Some months before that, Waters had pleaded guilty to stealing $54,400 from American Atheists Inc. Instead of receiving a sentence, he had been put on ten-years probation and ordered to repay a part of the stolen money. However, on 24 March of this year, federal authorities found 119 rounds of handgun ammunition in his Austin apartment - a violation of probation making him a "felon in possession."
After his guilty pleas to two counts of being a felon in possession of firearms and ammunition (he is to be sentenced on those charges on 20 August), it was decided finally to render judgment ("adjudication") on the 1995 theft case.
According to San Antonio Express-News reporter John MacCormack [12 August 1999], the sentencing hearing took an electrifying turn when a woman who had been Waters' girifriend at the time of the theft was called to offer her unexpected testimony. At one point she appeared to implicate Waters directly in the demise of the Murray-O'Hairs: "He said he was going to go over there and lay in wait for them, and kidnap and hurt them and probably kill them."
The testimony of Waters' former girifriend is particularly interesting for its claims concerning what actually happened back in April of 1994, when the O'Hairs and members of the Atheist boards of directors were in San Diego defending themselves and our organizations in a civil suit. As MacCormack reports the testimony,
"Waters had acquired guns, ropes, handcuffs and other implements of abduction and had laid off all the O'Hairs' employees in preparation for the crime..."But... he had a change of heart when she [the girifriend] called him - contrary to his emphatic orders - at American Atheist general Headquarters on the day the O'Hairs were to return to Austin and begged him to leave.
" 'I said, "Please get out of there." I guess he was kind of freaked out himself. They hadn't returned, and he hadn't heard from them,' she said. 'He was angry with me for not having any moxie'.""Instead, she said, Waters stole $54.400 from the O'Hairs during their absence and, as an alibi, said he had sent the money to the O'Hairs in San Diego. 'He said it was basically his word against Jon's, and he was going to say Jon had made a deal with him to hide the assets,' she testified.
"But the O'Hairs didn't lose the case in California, and a year later, after it was proved Waters wrote $54,400 in checks to himself, he pleaded guilty in state court here."
We cannot, of course, vouch for the accuracy of this and the rest of her testimony not recounted here. Dates and other details of the sometimes stunning testimony this woman gave in the course of the hearing could easily be in error as a result of emotional distortion and the passage of time. Then too there is the unsettling question of why she was brought into the hearing in the first place. It is not at all apparent that she was needed for the purpose in question - sentencing a man for a violation of probation to which he had already pleaded guilty. Her presence seems more than a bit gratuitous. The case is becoming "curioser and curioser," if we may quote Alice. It seems safe to say that more twists and turns in this case can be expected in the near future.
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