Ira Einhorn, Counterculture Guru and Murderer, Dies in Prison at 79

Ira Einhorn was the darling of Philadelphia’s counterculture in the 1960s and ‘70s. A charismatic and flamboyant personality, he preached peace, love and environmentalism, and became a sought-after liaison in helping the city’s civic establishment grasp the upheavals in society.

Then his former girlfriend, Holly Maddux, who had left him, disappeared. Almost a year and a half later, the police found her mummified remains in a steamer trunk in his apartment.

He was charged in 1979 with her murder. But before his pretrial hearing, he fled to Europe, eventually marrying a wealthy Swedish heiress, Annika Flodin, and settling down in a converted windmill in France.

More than two decades later, after lengthy and convoluted extradition negotiations, in which he became a human rights cause célèbre in France, he was sent back to Philadelphia to stand trial. A jury quickly convicted him and he was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Mr. Einhorn had been in prison for nearly 18 years when he died on April 3 in the State Correctional Institution Laurel Highlands in southwestern Pennsylvania. He was 79.

The Somerset County coroner, Wally Miller, said in a phone interview that Mr. Einhorn died of longstanding cardiac problems, unrelated to the coronavirus pandemic.

His death brought an end to a bizarre melodrama that troubled Philadelphians for decades and drew worldwide attention.

“The chapter is finally, for real, closed,” Elizabeth Hall, one of Ms. Maddux’s sisters, told The Philadelphia Inquirer last week.

A big burly man with a full beard and electric blue eyes, he was an early avatar of the counterculture steeped in consciousness-raising, ecological awareness and illicit psychedelic drugs. He dropped acid as early as 1958 and later started a rescue service for people in the throes of bad trips. He also taught a series of free courses, including “Analogues to the LSD Experience.”

The Village Voice called him “indisputably Philadelphia’s head hippie” and the city’s “number one freak.” He attracted a wide range of friends, from the Yippies Jerry Rubin and Abbie Hoffman to corporate executives and civic do-gooders.

“Ira waxed eloquent about what was happening in the world,” Sam Katz, a former mayoral candidate and Philadelphia entrepreneur, said in a phone interview.

“It was the age of Aquarius and the Vietnam War and the generation gap, and he was articulate and dynamic and very approachable,” Mr. Katz said. Mr. Einhorn became a bridge between the anti-establishment and the establishment, he said, often speaking at civic events.

But his darker side and a monumental ego were emerging, most noticeably during the first Earth Day celebration in 1970, when 20 million people across the country gathered to draw attention to environmental problems.

As two environmental activists later wrote in an op-ed in The Inquirer, Mr. Einhorn had made himself unwelcome at organizational meetings in advance of Earth Day, and then, at the actual event, he “grabbed the microphone and refused to give up the podium for 30 minutes, thinking he would get some free television publicity.”

He later falsely claimed to have been a founder of Earth Day, a title generally accorded to Senator Gaylord Nelson, a Wisconsin Democrat.

As a condition for his extradition, he was granted a second trial, during which he took the stand. He said that the C.I.A. had killed Ms. Maddux and planted her body in his apartment in an attempt to frame him because he knew too much about military research into the paranormal.

He was found guilty and again sentenced to life in prison without parole.

The parting thoughts of those in the courtroom were not kind.

A juror said that Mr. Einhorn had a God complex. The presiding judge called him “an intellectual dilettante” who preyed on people.

The district attorney, Lynne Abraham, said, “Metaphorically speaking, Ira Einhorn and his Virgo moon are toast.”

source: nytimes.com