Holly Maddux was done with her relationship. She and Ira Einhorn had been together for five years, but things weren’t working out. She left Philadelphia and moved to New York City, but when she returned to her former home to collect the rest of her belongings, she would never leave again.
When he was a student at the University of Pennsylvania, he became active in ecological groups. He joined the counterculture, anti-establishment and anti-war movements of the 1960’s and 1970’s. Not only did he join, but he rose through the ranks, becoming an active and vocal political activist.
Einhorn was an English instructor at Temple University during the 1964-1965 academic year, however that was all he would teach. They did not renew his contract after he conceded his “contempt for the academic world” and boasted of proffering “straight answers about the delights and dangers” of cannabis and LSD to students in an interview.
Ira Einhorn gave himself the nickname the “Unicorn” based on the translation of his surname (Einhorn means one-horn in German) and the idea that the mythical creature with the single horn rising from its head suggested an aura of mystery and magic, which appealed to the followers he was steadily amassing. He had become Philadelphia’s “official hippie.”
In October 1972, Einhorn met Helen “Holly” Maddux, a graduate from Bryn Mawr. The couple was a startling contrast. Einhorn was described as unbathed, wild haired and bearded, while Holly was described as the “all-American girl: a cheerleader in her Texas high school and a talented dancer with an “ethereal beauty.” She looked beyond his scruff, taken in by his charisma and musky animal magnetism.
“I was immediately attracted to her,” he said. “She had a strange lost quality about her and I was probably collecting lost people at that time.” The couple wasted no time and were living together within just two weeks.
Holly wasn’t the only person to see beyond the “dirty hippie,” in fact, he had numerous wealthy benefactors.
After about five years of living with Einhorn and his political/environmental activism and growing paranoia, Holly was done. The couple had been having troubles for a while, very vocal fights, and heated arguments poisoned their relationship.
“She would go to work with a black eye, but also bruises on her neck, bruises on her arms,” said Meg Wakeman. “And you have to have the purpose of hurting someone in order to inflict those injuries.”
Though he wanted to reconcile, she made the move to leave.
Holly found herself in New York City where she became involved with Saul Lapidus. Einhorn was furious. He began making pleas for her to return to Philadelphia to visit him, or at the very least collect the remainder of her belongings. Against her, and her friends’, better judgment, she made the trip on September 9, 1977.
That was the last time anyone saw Holly Maddux alive.
She was reported missing to the Philadelphia police, but they had no leads. The Maddux family hired private detectives, but Einhorn refused to cooperate. “I didn’t like her family in terms of what they did to me,” he said. “They had the district attorney call me up and accuse me of stealing her money.”
Questioned by authorities, he claimed Holly had gone out to the neighborhood co-op to buy some tofu and sprouts and never returned. He was busy with so many humanitarian projects for the city of Philadelphia, that he wasn’t able to worry about her as well. “We seemingly were getting along as far as I could say,” he said. “And then she left. She disappeared.”
For the next eighteen months, Holly’s family in Texas were devastated, desperate for answers. They were certain that Einhorn had played a role in her disappearance.
Meanwhile, Einhorn continued down the same path, cultivating new contacts and relationships among the local politicians and corporate executives. He was well known, well liked, and invited to parties by the socialites. He was hired by businesses to perform the role of counterculture consultant. He was lecturing at Harvard University.
But as you might suspect, things were not what they seemed. Einhorn’s neighbors noticed a foul smell, like that of dead animals, coming from his apartment. A downstairs neighbor noticed a brown fluid oozing through the ceiling. Workers were called to the apartment, looking for the source of the ooze, but Einhorn refused them entry.
When they complained, the authorities became suspicious. On March 28, 1979, detective Mike Chitwood led seven investigators on a search through the apartment. In the closet they came upon a large steamer trunk, locked with a padlock. Using a crowbar, they pried it open and inside was the body of Holly Maddux.
“The first thing I observe is the hand,” Chitwood said. “And the hand is in a mummified position, almost as though somebody had been put inside there alive and they were trying to push.”
Holly’s corpse weighed only 37 pounds, and her skull had been shattered, according to the coroner’s report. She had been bludgeoned to death.
Ira Einhorn was arrested and his attorney, Arlen Specter, negotiated a bail of $40,000. His bond was posted by Barbara Bronfman, a Montreal socialite who had met him through a shared interest in the paranormal. Released from custody, he tried to clear things up with his supporters.
First he claimed that she had obviously been murdered by agents of a secret government conspiracy and her body brought to his apartment and hidden there to frame him. Then he claimed that he returned to the apartment one day and found her murdered.
Einhorn told his followers that she had been killed by either the FBI or the CIA and left there to frame him. He feared no one would believe him, and knowing it was too late to help Holly, he hid her body in the trunk, hoping it would never be found.
Ira Einhorn reminded his followers that the Feds considered him an agent provocateur and that they were still furious with him for his participation in the antiwar movement and his communications with peaceniks behind the iron curtain. He claimed that they also wanted him out of the way because of his pioneering work on the internet and his desire to make it international in scope, beyond the control of the federal government.
Two months before his trial was to begin, Einhorn ran.
He fled to Ireland, which did not have an extradition treaty with the United States at that time. As authorities got closer to finding him, he traveled to Spain, Britain, and Denmark using identification lent to him. Along the way, he met and married Annika Flodin and the two settled in the southwest of France in 1993.
During his absence in America, and since he had already been arraigned on charges of murder, the state of Pennsylvania convicted him in absentia of Holly Maddux’s murder in 1996. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Back in France, Einhorn was living under the name “Eugène Mallon”. He had been financially supported by Barbara Bronfman, until she reportedly read Steven Levy’s book on Einhorn, The Unicorn’s Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius. She decided to tip off authorities, telling them to look for a wealthy Swedish woman by the name of Annika Flodin.
In 1997 he was arrested in Champagne-Mouton, France. Under the extradition treaty at this time, either country could refuse extradition under certain circumstances. Einhorn used every excuse to avoid being extradited, and at first, he was successful. The French consider trials in absentia an abuse of human rights, and considering that was how he had been tried, they refused to extradite him.
Einhorn’s attorney’s also argued that he would face the death penalty if he were returned to the United States, even though he had already been given a life sentence. France, like many other countries that have abolished the death penalty, does not extradite defendants to jurisdictions that retain the death penalty without assurance that it would be neither sought or applied.
Pennsylvania authorities pointed out that at the time of the murder, the state did not practice the death penalty, and therefore Einhorn could not be executed because the state and federal constitutions forbid ex post facto law.
Still denied extradition, in 1998 Pennsylvania passed a bill, nicknamed the “Einhorn Law”, which would allow defendants convicted in absentia to request another trial. Einhorn’s attorneys criticized the bill, calling it unconstitutional, however the French court ruled itself unable to evaluate the constitutionality of foreign laws.
In the end, the French agreed to return him to the United States. Einhorn arrived in Pennsylvania on July 20, 2001.
Einhorn maintained his innocence, stating, “As far as I can tell, [it was] one of the large intelligence agencies [that killed her],” he said. “But I don’t have the data so that’s speculation. When you’re in my situation, it is very difficult when you have large forces operating against you to come to any secure conclusion.”
During testimony, Judith Sabot, one of Einhorn’s former girlfriends testified that she was a sophomore at the University of Pennsylvania when she met him in 1965. They fell in love and had an intense four-month relationship. Then she tried to end things.
“My feelings had started to change. I was feeling very silenced; I found Ira to be more domineering and manipulative,” she testified, citing in particular his efforts to have her sever ties with her family because he said “families were outmoded” and she was “doomed to a boring and ordinary life” if she did not.
Judith testified that he smashed her over the head with a bottle and nearly strangled her.
“Ira came out from behind the door and smashed me over the head with a bottle; I was bleeding and I reeled across the room,” she testified. “He came at me at least a couple more times. I was twisting to get out of the way. I fell to the floor. … He then dropped the bottle and came at me with his hands and started to choke me with his thumbs over my windpipe.”
Judith, who was 20 at the time, thought her life was over. “I felt and believed I was dying,” she said. “I believed that this was it. But then he stopped and he was gone.” She required stitches to close her head wound.
On October 17, 2002, 62-year-old Ira Einhorn received an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole. He died of natural causes on April 3, 2020 in the Pennsylvania SCI Laurel Highlands.
If you found this story interesting, I recommend the story of Tracy Andrews and the Murder of Lee Harvey.
Leave a Reply