"We Fled"

Mrs. Madalyn Murray, the Baltimore atheist with the flawless legal touch when persuading courts to ban school prayers or cancel tax breaks or churches (TIME, May 15), suddenly found herself in a peck of trouble with the law. Last week, she packed up her mother, her brother, two sons, daughter-in-law, cat and dog and flew to Hawaii. Madalyn's family thereby 1) jumped bail bonds totaling $8,750, 2) violated two Baltimore court orders, 3) fled a dozen charges ranging from assault to contempt of court.

Mrs. Murray explained it all in her own profane way: "We fled persecution. We fled for our god-damned lives." The persecution, as she put it, began a month ago when a Baltimore anesthetist named Leonard Abramovitz and his wife accused Madalyn of inducing their 17-year-old daughter Susan to give up her Jewish faith and move into the Murray household. A Baltimore court placed the girl in the custody of her aunt and uncle, and forbade the Murrays to have any contact with her. Instead of staying with her relatives, a fortnight ago, Susan upped and married Madalyn's son Bill, 18.

"Hit 'Em Harder." Last weekend the police came by the Murray home to see if Susan was there. She was, but since the cops had no warrant, Madalyn had no intention of turning her in. The discussion led to a push here, a shove there and finally to a full-fledged brawl, as neighbors shouted, "Kill them! Hit 'em harder! Get that bitch!"

Taken to court to hear the charges against the family, Son Bill did not help matters by locking his legs around a table and howling: "I won't go back to that cell." As six policemen carried him out of the courtroom, Bill yelled at Judge Joseph Finnerty: "You Christian! You Catholic!" The judge promptly added a contempt-of-court charge to the list of Bill's other offenses.

Released on bail, Mrs. Murray decided that enough was enough. "If I go before that kangaroo court, I wouldn't stand a chance," she said. "The police would bring in 250 witnesses--neighbors who hate me." At the Washington airport, she announced that Hawaii would be a good place to carry on her work as head of two nationwide atheist organizations, since "80% of the Hawaiians are Buddhist, and Buddhists are absolute atheists."

Unpleasant Surprises. Reaching Honolulu, Madalyn faced a few unpleasant surprises. Buddhists, who do not like to think of themselves as atheists, constitute only about one-third of the island's population. The majority of the rest of Hawaiians are Catholic. And back home in Baltimore, a judge added two more contempt-of-court citations to the charges, arising out of the police melee, that a grand jury returned. Mrs. Murray may never have to face the music. Although she is legally subject to extradition, Baltimore seldom tries to recapture defendants on the lam except for serious crimes, and the state's attorney general says that Mrs. Murray "isn't worth extraditing." Besides, many felt that it might be better to let the whole matter drop; the Baltimore Sun declared that the city had "treated Mrs. Murray shabbily."

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