Report: Court document reveals O'Hair blood evidence

Thursday, March 2nd 2000, 12:00 am

By: News On 6

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- Authorities investigating the disappearance of atheist leader Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her two children have linked bloodstains on a storage unit to two of the missing family members, court papers said.

The findings represent the first physical evidence that suggests O'Hair was murdered when she and her children vanished from San Antonio along with $500,000 in gold coins in September 1995, the San Antonio Express-News reported today, citing court papers it obtained.

The papers also detail the method that law officers believe was used to dispose of O'Hair and her two adult children after they were allegedly abducted and slain.

O'Hair and her children -- Jon Garth Murray and adopted daughter Robin Murray O'Hair -- have never been located. Authorities have repeatedly searched a large ranch near San Antonio for evidence, but no bodies have been found.

A laboratory analysis of "suspected bloodstains" from a storage unit in Austin found that they contained human DNA that is similar to DNA shared by two missing family members, according to a motion in Austin federal court.

The motion was filed by prosecutors in response to a request by David Waters, who authorities allege is the mastermind of the plot, for the return of his personal property seized in the raid on his Austin apartment last spring.

Gary Karr, a Detroit handyman, has been charged with kidnapping and robbing the family, but Waters, O'Hair's former office manager, has not been charged in the disappearance.

The body of a third suspect, Danny Fry, was found on a Dallas riverbank two days afte rthe O'Hairs vanished.

In an affidavit filed last spring, federal authorities accused all three of abducting and killing the family for the coins. Waters and Karr were accused in court papers of killing and beheading Fry, although neither has been formally charged with murder.

Authorities had initially questioned whether the O'Hairs were victims of foul play or merely ran off with money from their organization, United Secularists of America. Founded in 1963, it is now based in Parsippany, N.J.

O'Hair is best known for a case that led to a 1963 Supreme Court decision that, along with a decision the previous year, struck down organized prayer in public schools as unconstitutional.

According to an earlier affidavit detailing the government's case, the manager of an Austin storage facility told police he observed three men and several large blue plastic barrels in the storage unit a few days after it was rented by a single man in late September 1995.

Law officers contend that Karr "told an informant that the bow saw found by the FBI was one of two saws used to cut up bodies in a storage unit and put the bodies in 55-gallon drums."