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Date: Mon, 14 Oct 2002 12:36:01 -0700
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Einhorn Set to Take Stand in Trial
Einhorn Set to Take Stand in Trial
http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/national/AP-Einhorn.html
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
October 13, 2002
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Even Ira Einhorn laughed at the rambling testimony of a
defense witness who generated giggles at his murder trial. Now, his lawyer
says, it's up to the former hippie guru to convince a jury that he should go
free instead to jail for the 1977 slaying of his girlfriend.
``He has a humongous job; the circumstantial evidence in this case is
extremely damaging,'' said defense attorney William Cannon. ``It ultimately
rises or falls upon Ira's testimony.
``He's going to win this case or lose this case by himself.''
Einhorn, 62, intends to take the stand Monday and testify that the CIA
killed his girlfriend Holly Maddux and framed him for the murder because of
his research into ``psychic warfare.''
Some of the witnesses who have testified in his defense so far have elicited
stifled giggles or outright laughter from the jury, the audience -- and in
one case, the defendant himself.
A woman who never met Einhorn but said she once stayed at his apartment took
the stand and instantly caused giggles when Cannon greeted her with a ``Good
morning'' and she looked heavenward, asking ``Who's talking to me?''
``It's my throwing my voice trick,'' replied an exasperated-sounding Cannon.
Dorothy McComb said she spent a weekend alone in Einhorn's apartment in
1978 -- a time when prosecutors maintain Maddux's body was decomposing in a
trunk on Einhorn's porch -- to attend an event held by her guru. She
described unusual happenings like three jars of a mysterious brown liquid
that disappeared from a shelf overnight and about how she opened a trunk on
Einhorn's back porch and found only newspapers inside.
At one point, she appeared mixed up by her own testimony. ``I have to go
chronologically,'' she said.
How was she able to open the trunk, which she said was locked?
``It was a big lock,'' she offered.
Why did she look in the trunk in the first place?
``I thought there might be bedding,'' she testified. ``When I was growing up
we kept our bedding in a trunk so that's why I looked in it.''
Einhorn started to snicker and shook his head. Several jurors burst into
laughter.
Another woman, a former ballerina and self-described ``psychic
archaeologist,'' testified that she met Einhorn through his research into
mind-control experiments including ``psychotronic warfare'' and ``remote
viewing.''
Like most of the women who testified on Einhorn's behalf, Anne Cavers
acknowledged that she had been sexually involved with him but soon ended the
relationship. After Maddux's disappearance, Einhorn asked her to travel from
her home in Canada and spend a week with him -- so they could use her
psychic abilities to locate his missing girlfriend.
She declined, not because she sensed his intentions were less than noble,
but because she psychically sensed ``we all were in danger'' -- Einhorn,
Maddux, herself and others who were being ``watched'' by people she would
not identify.
Even in the years before he fled the United States, Einhorn had an interest
in the paranormal, and counted spoon-bending illusionist Uri Geller among
his friends.
He became known in hippie culture by organizing ``be-ins,'' was involved in
the city's first Earth Day in 1970 and ran for mayor as a ``planetary
enzyme -- catalyst for change.''
He jumped bail weeks before his trial was set to begin in 1981, and lived in
Europe under assumed names until he was found in 1997 living in France. A
French appeals court allowed the extradition in July 2001 after receiving
assurances that Einhorn's 1993 conviction in absentia would be vacated.
Assistant District Attorney Joel Rosen doesn't view Einhorn's testimony as
the key element that will tip the scales one way or the other in his murder
trial.
``The defense is counting on him as their last gasp to save the case,''
Rosen said.
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