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Date: Sun, 20 Oct 2002 22:42:42 -0700
From: radtimes <resist@best.com>
Subject: Einhorn found guilty of first-degree murder
Einhorn found guilty of first-degree murder
http://www.philly.com/mld/philly/news/4306129.htm
Oct. 17, 2002
By Jacqueline Soteropolous
Inquirer Staff Writer
"The Unicorn" will spend the rest of his life in a cage.
Ira Einhorn - the self-named "planetary enzyme" who seized the mantle of
Philadelphia's counterculture movement in the '60s and claimed it as his
own - was convicted of first-degree murder today and sentenced to life in
prison for the 1977 slaying of ex-girlfriend Holly Maddux.
The Common Pleas Court jury's quick verdict, reached after 21/2 hours of
deliberation, was a powerful repudiation of the essence of his defense: that
his ex-girlfriend was killed by government agents out to frame him because
of his secret research. And the subsequent life prison term ensures that his
long years on the lam are long over.
Clad in a navy blazer and dark, striped tie, the 62-year-old Einhorn set his
jaw as jury forewoman Diane Green announced the verdict. He began to blink
rapidly, and twice raised his hand to wipe his eyes. He said nothing as he
was led out.
Judge William J. Mazzola, before formally issuing the sentence, told Einhorn
that life in prison was justified.
"I think that the testimony has adequately demonstrated to my satisfaction
that this particular defendant was - in the most complimentary terms that I
can come up with - someone I would call an intellectual dilettante who
preyed on the uninitiated, uninformed, unsuspecting and inexperienced
people," Mazzola said.
The six women and six men on the jury were equally unimpressed with Einhorn,
who earlier in the week took the witness stand in his own defense.
"It was all about him - that he was egocentric, a megalomaniac," forewoman
Green later told reporters.
She said the entire jury sent its condolences to Maddux's siblings.
After the verdict was read, Maddux's brother, John Maddux, who had been
sitting in the first row with his sisters Elisabeth "Buffy" Hall, Mary
Maddux, and Meg Wakeman at his side, smiled broadly. His sisters' eyes
filled with tears.
The murder, Einhorn's years on the run, and his lengthy battle to avoid
extradition from France had "devastated" the family, Wakeman told the judge
today.
"The blight that has been Ira Einhorn - on my life and my family's life -
has been erased," Hall said.
After 25 years of waiting for her sister's killer to come to justice, Mary
Maddux said: "The only victim of this trial is Holly Maddux. Ira is no
victim - he's nothing."
Defense attorney William Cannon said Einhorn "was disappointed in the
verdict. He was always optimistic that the jury would see the case his way."
"It all came down to Ira's ability to sell Ira to the jury," Cannon said.
"And Ira was not successful in selling his story."
Einhorn maintains his innocence and plans to appeal, Cannon added.
In Champagne-Mouton, France, Einhorn's wife and steadfast supporter, Annika
Flodin Einhorn, described the jury's finding as a devastating blow.
During a telephone interview, her voice was emotional and she frequently
halted to gather herself.
"I am just feeling so very, very sad and shocked," the 51-year-old Swede
said. "Even if the possibility, of course, had been there, it's one thing to
have a possibility and another thing to have a reality."
In Glenside, Montgomery County, Einhorn's younger brother, Stephen, said:
"He was falsely accused and falsely convicted. But he will be vindicated. I
know he didn't kill her. He wanted to marry her."
But in Philadelphia, skewering the former "hippie guru" quickly became the
order of the day.
"Metaphorically speaking, Ira Einhorn and his Virgo moon are toast," a
jubilant Lynne M. Abraham said outside the courthouse, referring to
Einhorn's rambling monologue on the witness stand in which he said he has an
astrological "Virgo moon." Einhorn also had insisted that violent journal
entries were both "metaphors" and "literature" - not literal records of how
he treated lovers.
Abraham's investigators spent years tracking Einhorn across Europe until he
was found in 1997, living in France under an assumed name. He had fled
Philadelphia in 1981, on the eve of trial. In 1993, he was convicted in
absentia of first-degree murder.
Today, the Maddux family presented Assistant District Attorney Joel Rosen
with a courtroom artist's fanciful sketch - of the prosecutor grilling a
little green alien on the witness stand.
"This is the Einhorn defense," Hall said in reference to Einhorn's various
claims over the years that the CIA or the Soviet KGB had planted Maddux's
mummified corpse in his Powelton Village apartment.
Einhorn - who gave himself the nickname "the Unicorn" during the time that
he was falsely taking credit for staging the first Earth Day and creating
the federal Environmental Protection Agency - has maintained that it was his
interest in the paranormal and "psychotronic" mind-control weaponry that
resulted in Maddux's murder.
His defense included a witness whom the press and prosecutors quickly dubbed
"the psychic ballerina," for her interest and self-proclaimed skills in the
paranormal.
Einhorn's defense did not include witnesses like rocker Peter Gabriel or
actress Ellen Burstyn, with whom he hobnobbed in the 1960s and '70s. Early
in the trial, Cannon had promised to invite the stars as character
witnesses.
Einhorn himself commanded the witness stand for two of the trial's 14 days,
reading his journal entries with a flourish and dropping names of friends
and acquaintances.
Green, the jury forewoman, said that the jury was not impressed during
Einhorn's testimony when he exhaled and wiped his eyes when he read aloud
from his diary: "The memory of an angel lingers in my mind."
"It offended us, and we thought it was affected," Green said.
Einhorn testified that although he and the blond 30-year-old Texan shared
loving times during the five years they lived together, as their
relationship progressed she became increasingly dissatisfied with his
promiscuity.
But he insisted that he neither beat nor killed Maddux.
Prosecutor Rosen led jurors through Einhorn's violent diaries and his
troubled history when rejected by women.
"Violence always marks the end of a relationship," Einhorn penned in 1966,
after beating a lover over the head with a Coke bottle and choking her.
The fatal violence, Rosen said, occurred when Maddux vanished on Sept. 11,
1977.
In the weeks leading up to that date, Einhorn frequently wrote of deep
frustration, rejection, hurt and jealousy sparked by Maddux's new love
affair with a man she met on New York's Fire Island.
Maddux had planned a long sailing trip with her new beau, Saul Lapidus, and
she was moving out of Einhorn's apartment into a place of her own.
Einhorn said she left their apartment to make a phone call. Her family and
friends never saw or heard from her again, and Maddux's mummified body was
found in a trunk inside his apartment 18 months later. She had been killed
by six or seven powerful blows to the head.
Lapidus - who testified early in the trial that Einhorn demanded Maddux
return to him in Philadelphia - said today: "I am sad for the anguish and
sorrow of the family and friends of Holly.
"I am satisfied because the work of so many people paid off with the
conviction of this egotistical lowlife, charlatan, con man who lived off
people he had duped with his paranormal psychobabble.
"He really has not added anything to this world except deceit and grief,"
Lapidus said.
Through his attorney, Einhorn declined to address the court before the judge
officially set the mandatory life sentence.
Einhorn's wife said she followed the trial closely through news reports on
the Internet. She could not travel to Philadelphia to attend the trial,
because prosecutors refused to guarantee she would not be prosecuted for
aiding a fugitive.
She declined to discuss her 14-year relationship with Einhorn or whether any
testimony at his trial or its outcome had changed her feelings about him.
"I cannot know the truth," she said. "I've always felt that Ira's innocent.
I feel nothing of the violence. I've never, ever felt afraid with him."
In the French countryside, Einhorn lived in his wife's picturesque converted
mill.
But with the mandatory sentence of life imprisonment, Einhorn is expected to
spend the rest of his days at Houtzdale state prison in Central
Pennsylvania's Appalachian Mountains.
The medium-security facility, which is 30 miles north of Altoona and 30
miles west of State College, houses many of the state's older male
prisoners.
In an effort to ensure that neither Einhorn nor his wife tries to capitalize
on the murder and high-profile case through book or movie deals, in 1999 the
Maddux family won a record-setting $907 million lawsuit verdict against
Einhorn. Not a penny has been paid.
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Contact Jacqueline Soteropoulos
at 215-854-4497 or jsoteropoulos@phillynews.com.
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