Lona Manning

January 1, 2007

They can look you in the eye, win your trust and melt your heart. They can lie about the past, the present, and the future. They are chameleons, changing names and identities as easily as we change our outfits.

by Lona Manning

They can look you in the eye, win your trust and melt your heart. They can lie about the past, the present, and the future. They are chameleons, changing names and identities as easily as we change our outfits.

They are conmen and women. They are sociopaths.

Some of the names of the victims in this article have been changed or withheld to protect their privacy.

Updated Sept 23, 2003

Madalyn Murray O'Hair

When atheist Madalyn Murray O'Hair, her son, and granddaughter mysteriously disappeared from their Austin, Tex., home in 1995, the police didn't lift a finger to find the family that had taken God out of America. Five years went by before a determined reporter would unravel the mystery of her disappearance.

by Lona Manning

"There is no God. There's no heaven. There's no hell. There are no angels. When you die, you go in the ground, the worms eat you."

-- Madalyn Murray O'Hair

When David Travis arrived for work on Aug. 28, 1995 at the headquarters of American Atheists in Austin, Tex., he knew something was wrong: The door was locked and a note was posted on it: "The Murray-O'Hair family has been called out of town on an emergency basis. We do not know how long we will be gone at the time of the writing of this memo."

As Travis, a 50-ish former Army sergeant, stood there reading the note, he felt the anger welling up. He couldn't say he was surprised that his employers were gone, and by the looks of things, so was his job as a proofreader. He'd been suspicious that the Murray-O'Hairs were up to something ever since he had opened a letter from New Zealand last spring and discovered a bank statement for an account he had never heard of, for almost a million dollars. And this was when Madalyn Murray O'Hair, his cantankerous boss, was always crying the blues about money and warning him that she might not be able to meet payroll.

O'Hair was always extremely secretive about the financial affairs of American Atheists, which she had founded in 1963 and dominated ever since. All financial records were kept locked up in a little room away from prying eyes. Recently, a seven- foot chain linked fence, topped with cyclone wire, had been built around the property, a fitting emblem of O'Hair's siege mentality. According to her, the world was a hostile place, particularly toward atheists. She and her family had been persecuted for 35 years for their courageous stand for the separation of church and state. But lately, as her health declined, and with it her energy and combative spirit, O'Hair had been known to talk about getting away from it all.

January 15, 2006

Photo credit: New York World-Telegram and Sun archives, Library of Congress.

Long before 9/11 became the date most identified with terrorism, New York's Wall Street District suffered through a massive bombing on September 16, 1920 that shocked the world. Italian anarchists orchestrated the bombing five days after Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were indicted on charges of first-degree murder.

by Lona Manning

Prologue

Out of a clear blue sky, a deadly terrorist attack in New York City brought grief and outrage. Initially, the country rallied in a wave of patriotism and vowed revenge on the perpetrators. But critics said that the government was using the terrorist threat as an excuse to curtail civil liberties. They warned that aggressive action against the terrorists would only provoke more violence and was harming America's reputation in Europe. And some charged that the president was just a puppet and the decisions were really being made by a handful of government officials who lied and twisted intelligence reports to carry out their repressive agenda. Supporters of the government policy countered that these critics were aiding and abetting the enemy while posing as champions of free speech. Strong measures were needed to crush a dangerous enemy, not naïve and craven appeasement.

The year was 1920.

March 4, 2007

More than seven decades after his execution for committing "the crime of the century," Bruno Richard Hauptmann still has his defenders and sympathizers.

by Lona Manning

As Bruno Richard Hauptmann counted down the days to his execution at the State Prison in Trenton, N.J., his wife Anna went on the lecture circuit, asking her fellow German immigrants to donate to the Hauptmann defense fund. Her husband was not guilty of the "Crime of the Century," she pleaded -- he had not kidnapped and murdered the little Lindbergh baby.

Many checks were mailed directly to Hauptmann at the Death House. He realized that the donors who sent only one dollar didn't necessarily believe in his innocence, they wanted him to endorse the check so they could have the autograph of the man condemned for killing the child of the world-famous aviator, Charles Lindbergh.

But he's acquired a host of new supporters in the decades since he died in the electric chair. Conspiracy theories abound about the Lindbergh kidnapping case, and many people unfamiliar with – or dismissive of – the evidence, believe Hauptmann was framed.

March 23, 2004

Who are they? These images are a sampling of unidentified victims profiled on The Doe Network.

There are thousands of unnamed corpses in the United States, so-called John and Jane Does who have turned up over the last few decades in woods, rivers, alleys and dumpsters without any identification. An Internet-based group of volunteers who call themselves The Doe Network is working to name the nameless.

by Lona Manning

Todd Matthews has always known where he belongs. His home is in the foothills of the Smoky Mountains in Tennessee, where the soft-spoken 33-year-old lives with his wife and two young sons. Home is where the ties to his past are as close as the quiet graveyard where his ancestors are buried. "I was born, live and work in a three-mile radius," Matthews explains. This may be why, he surmises, he is obsessed with helping people who are lost. Specifically, dead people who are lost.

Matthews's consuming passion is to investigate and identify "John Does," the anonymous corpses that are found in woods, rivers, by riverbanks, in alleys, and dumpsters throughout the country. There are over 5,400 John or Jane Does registered with the National Crime Information Center (NCIC), an FBI clearinghouse in West Virginia. There are thousands more cases -- nobody is sure how many -- reduced to a thin file folder, a box of bones in the evidence room, a nagging memory in the back of a retired detective's mind. Often, but not always, Does are the victims of foul play. Sometimes they took a wrong turn in life, becoming involved in drugs and crime. But, says Matthews, "No matter who they are, even no matter what they've done in life, you've got to think they're all God's children."

Updated January 14, 2007

Kelly Michaels

The Wee Care case that sentenced Kelly Michaels to prison for 47 years was typical of the child-abuse hysteria that gripped the United States in the 1980s. At the peak of the frenzy of the great day-care witch hunt, it was the day-care workers, not the preschoolers, who were at risk. As the preschoolers, urged on by overzealous social workers, child therapists and prosecutors, told their incredible stories of sexual abuse and satanic rituals in courtrooms across the United States, scores of innocent people were sent off to prison. Some are still there.

by Lona Manning