Man convicted for ties to 1995 death of 'Most Hated Woman in America' resentenced to nearly 50 years
AUSTIN (KXAN) — Dressed in a striped prison uniform, Gary Karr sat quietly in a wheelchair and listened to the judge through headphones.
He's in his 70s, with a grey beard that has grown out from under his face mask. The last time Karr sat in a courtroom, no one could have imagined how the coronavirus pandemic would have changed the judicial system.
While much has changed since his original conviction two decades ago for his involvement in the robbery and deaths of Madalyn Murray O'Hair and her family, it wasn't enough to change the mind of the federal judge overseeing Karr's 2021 resentencing hearing.
"The crime is as serious today as it was the day it was committed," U.S. District Judge Lee Yeakel said.
He called it "just about as serious a crime as I have ever seen in this court," before handing down the maximum sentence allowed under the current law for his convictions in the O'Hair case: 595 months.
O'Hair — well-known in the Austin area for her atheist views and as an activist for the separation of church and state — disappeared in 1995 with her son, adopted daughter and nearly $600,000 in gold coins. That launched a complicated, years-long investigation into their disappearance and ultimately into their gruesome deaths and dismembering of their bodies.
Karr back in court
In 2000, before the family's bodies were ever found, Karr was convicted of four crimes — Conspiracy to interfere with Commerce by Robbery and Extortion, Interstate Travel to Commit Crime of Violence such as Robbery, Conspiracy to Engage in Monetary Transaction with Criminally Derived Property and Interstate Transportation of Stolen Property.
He was acquitted on an original charge of kidnapping, but the first two counts earned him life sentences.
However, due to several Supreme Court decisions over the last decade, federal law changed — meaning Karr was able to appeal those convictions. According to a Public Affairs Officer at the U.S. Attorney's Office, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in Karr’s favor and sent the case back down to the District Court in Austin for resentencing in Yeakel's court.
His attorneys asked the judge to consider his "exemplary" conduct as a inmate over the last two decades, his age and health problems. They also argued the government was asking the judge to "second guess" the jury's original verdict for Karr.
"The government decided to go back to the well," said defense attorney Christie Williams.
U.S. Attorney Matt Harding, in turn, argued for the maximum sentence allowable under the law: 20 years for conspiracy to commit extortion, plus 20 years for interstate travel to commit robbery and a combined 115 months for his two other convictions in relation to this case.
Harding told the judge "no matter how old Mr. Karr is" his family could still write to him and speak to him. The same can't be said for the O'Hair family.
Madalyn Murray O'Hair: Why she was once the 'most hated woman in America'
Madalyn Murry O'Hair lived in Austin and founded the group American Atheists in 1963. She worked to ban prayer in public schools.
She first made national headlines after taking that fight all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, where in 1963 they ruled in her favor, overturning a Baltimore city school board regulation.
The court ruled 8-1 it was unconstitutional for any state to require public school children to read the Bible or recite the Lord's prayer.
At one point, a national magazine called her "the most hated woman in America," inspiring a similarly-titled book by Austin author Ann Seaman and a Netflix film that premiered at South by Southwest in 2017.
Netflix described O'Hair as a "complex character who was a controversial villain to some and an unlikely hero to others."
'As serious a crime as I have ever seen'
At the resentencing hearing on Friday, U.S. Attorneys walked the court through the timeline of the family's kidnapping and the gruesome details of their eventual deaths. They recalled testimony from Karr's trial in 2000, as they established the "close" relationship between Karr and a man named David Waters.
They called Waters and Karr "friends," pointing out the extensive, violent criminal histories of both men, prior to the O'Hair case.
In August 1995, the two men arrived at the American Atheists headquarters in van rented by Karr and kidnapped Madalyn, her son Jon Garth Murray and her biological granddaughter Robin Murray-O'Hair, who Madalyn had adopted as her own daughter. Testimony refers to them as a close family who "traveled together, lived together, worked together."
The plot? Capture and abduct the family in order to eventually take hundreds of thousands of dollars from them.
The original investigators and prosecutors on the case had already proven Waters as the "mastermind" behind the crimes. He worked at one point for the O'Hairs and their atheist organization. He was publicly fired, accused of stealing a computer.
Attorneys brought a special investigator with the Internal Revenue Service on the original case, Ed Martin, back to the stand in 2021.
He began by walking through the amount of money obtained by Karr and Waters — and a third man, Danny Fry — during the days after the O'Hairs went missing.
Martin told the judge about how the family was taken to San Antonio, the room were they were held at the Warren Inn, how they were moved to a La Quinta and eventually to a rented storage unit back in Austin, where their bodies were cut into pieces and placed into barrels — before being taken to a ranch outside of Uvalde and buried.
Martin testified about a trip taken during the course of these events, where Karr accompanied Jon "Garth" Murray on a trip to New Jersey to obtain thousands of dollars in gold coins. U.S. Attorneys pointed to this trip as key evidence of Karr's close ties to the case.
Karr's defense painted him, instead, as a small player in the scheme. They asked Martin if he thought the government tried the "little fish" with Karr first in order to get to the "big fish" in Waters.
Waters had been arrested on federal weapons and theft charges, facing lengthy state and federal prison sentences. So, in 2001, he agreed to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge in the O'Hair case in exchange for leading authorities to the bodies of the missing family.
He died of lung cancer in prison in 2003.
In their argument, Karr's attorneys told Judge Yeakel their client's punishment was even longer than Waters. Meanwhile, U.S. Attorneys maintained Karr worked alongside Waters in the plot — and Martin agreed, saying, "Every general needs people to help him."
The attorneys also spoke about the death of the third player, Danny Fry.
At Karr's original trial, a witness testified Fry seemed to be very upset about the murders and was not handling it well. Authorities believe Waters and Karr then killed Fry, after his body was found mutilated in Dallas County, but no one was convicted. Fry's dismembered head and hands were later found at the same site as the O'Hairs' remains.
Attorneys showed aerial pictures of the site near Camp Wood, Texas, pointing out that a map Karr helped draw at one point in the investigation marked a spot eerily close to the ultimate grave site.
They asked the court if it was "believable" a man who claimed he had only been there one time in the dark, with no other involvement in the burying of the bodies, had been able to assist in drawing such a near-accurate map.
Still, Karr's attorneys hammered on the point there was no corroborating evidence, aside from statements made by David Waters, that Karr was directly involved.
Ultimately, Judge Yeakel disagreed. He told the court Karr was "well-represented," but still handed down the nearly 50-year sentence to the man already in his seventies. To not pursue such a sentence, he said, "violates the bounds of any civil society."
Karr slowly took off the headphones he was utilizing before Yeakel had even finished speaking.
His defense team has two weeks to file an appeal.
KXAN's Wes Wilson contributed to this report. Information from the Associated Press was also used in the reporting of this article.