Victimless crime

She posed for porno shots, took heroin and other drugs, helped Waters steal from the O'Hairs and destroy evidence, and then abruptly left him in late 1998 to marry another man after the first newspaper story about Fry was published in Texas. Steffens also admitted to receiving $16,000 in cash from Waters during September 1995, while he was away in San Antonio, allegedly stripping the O'Hairs of their assets. She used the money to buy a pickup.

On October 3, 1995, the day after Danny Fry was purportedly killed and beheaded, she enjoyed room service, a facial, a massage, and other upscale amenities while she and Waters spent the night at Austin's priciest hotel, The Four Seasons. But, she reminded the court, she didn't kill or kidnap anyone. "I have accepted money and done some really stupid things. I didn't do anything to those people. I didn't participate in the planning of it," she said.

Then, early last year, when Fry's headless body was identified, a panicked Steffens ran straight to the FBI. Offered immunity in exchange for her testimony, she started talking. During trial, Steffens told how Waters' antagonism toward O'Hair became deeply personal after the atheist leader used her July 1995 newsletter to reprise his lurid personal and criminal past. "He was furious with her and, not to be melodramatic, vowed revenge. He had a genius IQ, and he considered her to be the true intelligentsia, and he just had fantasies about separating her from her money," she said. "After that newsletter appeared, a calm came over him about Madalyn. I really think he wanted to prove a point to her, face to face."

Steffens also testified how Karr, Waters, and Fry returned from their mysterious one-month mission at the end of September 1995, heavy with cash, fatigue, and bad vibes, and then how the three again left a day or so later. She said that when Waters and Karr reappeared without Fry, both were in a good humor and joking about how Waters could not read a map. And it seemed Waters had been in a fight. "David had on a short-sleeved black shirt, and his arms were covered with deep fingerprint bruises," she recalled. Asked about it, Waters had said, "Oh, it's just boys horseplaying," Steffens recalled.

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As this trial proved repeatedly, unhappy old girlfriends are not always an ex-con's best friend.

Charlene Karr, a lanky woman with dark hair piled on top and spilling over her forehead, traveled from Florida to tell the jury how she met her future husband more than 25 years ago in Illinois.

"I met him on a highway," she testified. "We were cruising. I just thought he was a very handsome man."

An inconvenient crime spree and a resultant 30- to 50-year sentence for Karr took the flame out of the romance, though somewhere an ember still burned. And after Karr was released from prison in early 1995, the couple picked up where they left off after Karr came to see her in Florida.

"I was coming home from work, and he was sitting on my front step," she said.

Then, she testified, after working in Florida for a few months for a contractor, Karr went to Texas to visit David Waters and make some money.

"He told me he was going to play in a big card game, that David Waters had the money to put up and Gary would play the cards," she recalled.

When he returned, Karr was dressed in Armani suits and had three Rolex watches, lots of cash, and some improbable stories about people never making it home alive. According to Karr, Waters said he had killed them.

"He told me it was Madalyn O'Hair, that she took the prayer out of schools, and that David Waters hated her. He told me about the daughter and the son, and how David disposed of them," she testified.

Eventually, Charlene testified, the romance could not survive the weirdness going on in Texas, particularly when Karr threatened to shoot her over what she knew about his peculiar activities there.

"He has threatened to kill me. He told me he hid behind a tree in front of my house and waited for me to get home. He was with someone. He wanted to kill me because I knew what I knew," she testified.

Karr also talked with Arthur Miller, his employer in Florida during parts of 1995, about his visits to Texas. Here, too, Miller testified, Karr's story about a high-dollar card game didn't hold up. It gave way to another tale of helping atheists flee the country. But after Karr's final visit to Texas, the talk was about hiding bodies. "He said it didn't go well. He felt that David had killed these people and buried their bodies in an arroyo, and he and David had spent a couple of days running around in West Texas cleaning up David's mess," Miller said. "Waters was concerned that if these assumed bodies washed up, there would be a problem."

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For all the gruesome testimony about treachery, dismembered bodies, and other wickedness, the trial was not without comic relief, and much was provided by three guys from San Antonio.