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Ex-activist and guru to face ‘
More articles on this topic: Ira EinhornFormer fugitive Einhorn on trial in slaying of young woman in Philadelphia
The Associated Press, Sep. 23, 2002
http://www.sunspot.net/
PHILADELPHIA — It has been a quarter century since Holly Maddux, a willowy blond Texan with a penchant for art and a love of nature, was bludgeoned to death and stuffed in a trunk. Now, after a lifetime of frustration and dashed hopes for family, friends and prosecutors, the former hippie guru Ira Einhorn is about to go on trial in her slaying. Jury selection is set to begin Tuesday.
“This to me is the final chapter. It’s here,” Maddux’s sister Buffy Hall said Monday by telephone from her Texas home. “We trusted the system would work and it ultimately did, even against astronomical odds.”
The oldest of five siblings, Holly Maddux left her conservative Tyler, Texas, home in 1965 to attend Bryn Mawr College, a liberal arts college here. Friends have said the aspiring ballerina felt as out of place among the Northern blue bloods of Bryn Mawr as she did in her no-nonsense East Texas hometown.
In 1972, she met Einhorn — a bearlike and unkempt philosopher, Age of Aquarius intellectual, philanderer and high-profile member of the city’s cadre of movers and shakers. Two weeks later, she moved into his apartment near the University of Pennsylvania, his alma mater.
When teaching an alternative education course at Penn in the 1960s, Einhorn was said to have once stripped naked and danced in the classroom after passing around marijuana to his students. He also was awarded a one-semester fellowship to Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in the 1970s.
Einhorn hobnobbed with hippie superstars Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin, organized “be-in” events and ran for mayor as a self-proclaimed “planetary enzyme, a catalyst for global change.”
Acquaintances described the couple’s relationship as tempestuous, with Einhorn the egocentric and dominant half and Maddux his waiflike and insecure foil. They often fought — some said he was physically abusive — and separated several times before Maddux called from Fire Island, N.Y., and finally said they were through.
He became hysterical and summoned her to Philadelphia, threatening to throw her belongings into the street. She was last seen Sept. 10, 1977, the day she returned to Philadelphia; Einhorn said she went to the local food co-op and never came home.
Police found her mummified remains March 28, 1979, inside a locked steamer trunk in the apartment they once shared after Einhorn’s downstairs neighbors complained of odor and ooze coming from the apartment above. Around the body, still clad in corduroy slacks and a plaid blouse, was foam packing material and newspapers dated August and September 1977.
She had suffered at least six crushing blows to the head.
“This case has been part of my life and career for 23 years, so of course I’m very grateful that his day in court has arrived,” said Michael Chitwood, the detective who discovered Maddux’s remains and is now chief of police in Portland, Maine. “It’s time for closure for the Maddux family and everyone else associated with this case.”
Defense attorney William Cannon said he would introduce witnesses who will “disrupt the theory” of Maddux’s death as presented by prosecutors.
At least three people will testify they saw Maddux after prosecutors say she was killed, including a former police officer who is sure he saw her “alive and well” in May 1978, Cannon said.
He said he also will present blood evidence that raise questions as to the place and time of death.
Einhorn, who by the late 1970s had developed a keen interest in the paranormal, maintained that he was framed for Maddux’s murder by the CIA because of his knowledge of their secret mind-control weapon experiments.
Many wealthy benefactors and corporate sponsors who joined Einhorn’s inner circle over the years, enchanted by his New Age philosophy and seeking to tap into his futurism-inspired business theories, rushed to his aid.
Represented by soon-to-be Sen. Arlen Specter at an April 1979 hearing, Einhorn was released on just $40,000 bail after testimony from prominent Philadelphians regarding his excellent character. His bail was paid by Barbara Bronfman, then an heiress-by-marriage of the Seagram distillery family who shared Einhorn’s interest in the paranormal.
Einhorn vanished on the eve of his 1981 trial. In 1993, he was convicted in absentia and sentenced to life in prison for first-degree murder.
He lived in England, Ireland and Sweden under pseudonyms before he was apprehended in 1997 at a converted windmill in France, where he lived with his Swedish-born wife.
He was returned to the United States in July 2001 after a European court refused to halt his long-fought extradition. His retrial was ensured after the Legislature passed a law allowing his conviction and sentence to be vacated to satisfy a French requirement that foreign nationals not be extradited based on trials in absentia.
“We got closure in July of last year; this is just icing on the cake,” Hall said. “We’re going to write the end of this story — not him — and I don’t think the ending will be to his satisfaction.”
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