Bogeyman

I am famous for being an atheist, likely the most famous and most-despised atheist in America. My name is constantly circling on spurious Internet petitions although I have been dead since 1995.
I was born in 1919 in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I graduated from Rossford High School in Rossford, Ohio. I enlisted and served in the military in Europe during WWII. I got a BA from Ashland College (now University) and a law degree from South Texas College of Law.
During the 1950s I attended Socialist Workers Party meetings while living in Baltimore townhouse with my sons, parents and brother. In 1959 I applied for Soviet citizenship. The following year, after receiving no response, my two sons and I traveled by ship to Europe with the intention of defecting to the Soviet embassy in Paris and living in the Soviet Union. The Soviets refused us entry, and we returned to Baltimore in 1960.
One day my thirteen-year-old son William told me that he could no longer, in good conscience, participate in reciting coerced prayers in school. We talked it over, and William decided that he would ask the school to excuse him from the daily ritual. The school refused.
In 1960 I filed a lawsuit against the Baltimore school district in which I claimed it was unconstitutional for my son William to participate in Bible readings in public schools. In 1963 this suit reached the United States Supreme Court which voted 8-1 in my favor, effectively banning "coercive" public prayer and Bible-reading at public schools in the United States.
Following the Supreme Court decision, I founded American Atheists, a nationwide movement which defends the civil rights of non-believers, works for the separation of church and state, and addresses issues of First Amendment public policy.
In 1995 I disappeared mysteriously from my house and there was speculation that I had run off with hundreds of thousands of dollars of my organization’s money. However, several months later police were able to prove definitely that I had been murdered by an ex-convict who worked in our offices.
I achieved posthumous notoriety among users of the Internet through an urban legend. An e-mail claimed I was attempting to get TV programs such as Touched by an Angel and all TV programs that mention God taken off the air. It cited a petition RM-2493 to the FCC which had nothing to do with me, and which was denied in 1975, concerning the prevention of educational radio channels being used for religious broadcasting. A variant acknowledging my death was circulating in 2003, still warning about a threat to Touched by An Angel months after the program's last episode had been aired. In 2006 similar e-mails were still being reported, eleven years after my disappearance and long after my confirmed death.