Ira Einhorn was part of the counterculture, anti-establishment, and anti-war movements of the 1960s and 1970s. In 1971, he ran, unsuccessfully, for mayor of his home city of Philadelphia. Nine years later, after the body of his former girlfriend was discovered stuffed in a trunk in his apartment, he ran from the law. 

It took a quarter-of-a-century and several rounds of legal negotiations before Ira Einhorn, dubbed “The Unicorn Killer,” finally answered for his crime.

Ira Einhorn

Helen “Holly” Maddux grew up in Tyler, Texas, and had recently graduated with an English degree from Bryn Mawr College, a liberal arts school for women ten miles west of Philadelphia. She chose to stay in the City of Brotherly Love.

When Ira Einhorn saw Holly at his favorite restaurant, La Terrasse, in October 1972, he proceeded to charm and woo the bright and attractive but also naïve twenty-five-year-old. They began dating and she soon moved into his west Philadelphia apartment.

Holly Maddox

From the onset, the relationship was tumultuous and the two broke up several times. Holly told friends Einhorn wanted to watch as she had sex with other people of both genders. When he became physically and verbally abusive, Holly slowly weened herself from him.

After a tumultuous five years, Holly finally came to the realization that Einhorn was not the charismatic beau who had won her heart in the restaurant. The real Ira Einhorn was a possessive, manipulative, and violent man who thought only of himself.

In July 1977, Holly ended the relationship and moved out of Einhorn’s apartment without packing her belongings. She quickly began a relationship with another man, Saul Lapidus, and moved into his house at a beach resort on Fire Island near New York City.

Holly Maddux was again happy.

Holly Dumps Ira

Ira Einhorn, on the other hand, was irate. Shocked that Holly had not come crawling back to him, he called his former girlfriend and angrily said he would throw all of her belongings away unless she came to retrieve them immediately.

Ira’s Ire

Eager to get Einhorn permanently out of her life, Holly returned to Philadelphia on September 9, 1977. She never returned to New York City.

Saul reported Holly missing when she had not arrived home as scheduled.

Holly Disappears . . .  

The last people to see Holly were a couple with whom she and Einhorn had seen a movie on September 11, two days after her arrival in Philadelphia.

When questioned by the police, Einhorn claimed as he was showering, Holly told him she was going to the grocery store and never returned.

. . . Without A Trace

Four days later, Einhorn asked two friends to help him dump a large steamer trunk into the nearby Schuylkill River. Whereas his explanation to investigators for Holly’s disappearance was simple, Einhorn’s contention to his friends for wanting to dispose of the trunk was sensational: he claimed it was filled with secret Russian documents.

After his friends refused to help him, the trunk sat in Einhorn’s closet for another year-and-a-half.

From A Simple Story

To A Sensational Story

In March 1979, the tenants who lived below Einhorn told the landlord of a stench seeping into their apartment. Believing it to be a problem with Einhorn’s plumbing, the landlord called the plumbers. When they arrived at the apartment Einhorn was hesitant to let them inside but ultimately did so. When the plumbers entered, they were greeted with a strong stench. Einhorn refused to let them investigate his padlocked closet.

Knowing of Holly’s disappearance, the suspicious landlord contacted the police. A judge deemed the odor sufficient to grant a warrant to search Einhorn’s apartment.

The Net Is Closing In On Einhorn

Einhorn fancied himself a Renaissance man, but personal hygiene was not among his interests. He was known to go for months without bathing, and his aroma suggested it had been some time since he had frequented the shower when police served him the warrant. His body odor, however, paled in comparison to a stronger stench as they entered the apartment.

The decaying smell was emanating from Einhorn’s closet. Inside, police found the trunk he had tried to dispose a-year-and-a-half earlier. When it was opened, the full malodor sprang out. To the detectives, the awful odor was unmistakable: it was the smell of human remains.

Bones lay in the trunk beneath several blankets and newspapers dated August and September 1977, near the time when Holly Maddux had disappeared.

The Trunk Containing Bones

But No Russian Documents

An autopsy confirmed the remains were Holly’s. She had been beaten to death with a blunt force object, probably shortly after she was last seen.

Holly Was Beaten To Death

Einhorn offered a perfectly plausible account of how his former girlfriend’s remains were, unbeknownst to him, stuffed in a trunk in his closet: the FBI and CIA, likely in conjunction with the KGB, had framed him because he knew too much about their weapons development, psychic research, mind-control experiments, and global conspiracies.

He also claimed he had not smelled the stench, an explanation that was slightly more believable because of his own body odor.

The Slob’s Story

Ira Einhorn was charged with the murder of his former girlfriend, Holly Maddux.

Einhorn Arrested

After a parade of supposedly prominent people testified to Einhorn’s character, his attorney, future Pennsylvania Senator Arlen Specter, was able to get his client’s bond reduced to $40,000.

Einhorn’s friends provided the $4,000 he was required to put up for bail.

Einhorn And Attorney Arlen Specter

The remaining $36,000 was put up by Barbara Bronfman, a Montreal socialite who married into the wealthy Bronfman family, owners of the Seagram Company, at one time the largest alcoholic beverage line in the world.

She had met and developed a friendship with Einhorn through their mutual interest in the paranormal.

Barbara Bronfman

Ira Einhorn remained free on bail for twenty-two months. In January 1981, two days before a scheduled pretrial hearing, he fled the country.

INTERPOL tracked Einhorn to Europe, determining he had initially fled to London, where he stayed for a time with a friend and was soon joined by an American girlfriend. Einhorn and the woman then went to Dublin where he lived under the name Ben Moore. The couple were later evicted from their apartment after landlord Denis Weaire learned of his tenant’s true identity. He informed the FBI but there was nothing they could do because, at the time, the United States and Ireland did not have an extradition treaty.

Einhorn Flees Abroad

Einhorn and his American girlfriend broke up in 1984. She returned to the United States in 1988 and told authorities the fugitive was still being monetarily aided by Bronfman. When questioned, Bronfman admitted sending money to Einhorn until earlier that year when she became convinced of his guilt after read a book about him.

Bronfman told investigators that Einhorn had lived in Stockholm, Sweden, for the past year with Annika Flodin, a thirty-seven-year-old Swedish woman whose parents were wealthy. Swedish police determined Einhorn, under the name Ben Moore, had Flodin. They located Flodin’s address in Stockholm; when they arrived at the residence, Einhorn was not there. Flodin insisted her husband’s name was Ben Moore and that she had been his landlady before they married. Swedish authorities surveilled the home for several months, but saw no sign of Einhorn.

Three years later, Annike Flodin moved to Denmark. Shortly afterwards, she disappeared, leaving the home address of Dublin bookseller Eugene Mallon as her new residence.

Annika Flodin

For the following decade Ira Einhorn was further tracked across Europe, living primarily in Ireland and Sweden, but also in England and Wales. Each time, as INTRPOL closed in, he slipped away.

In 1996, fifteen years after fleeing the United States, the state of Pennsylvania tried Einhorn, in absentia, for Holly Maddux’s murder. He was convicted after only two hours of jury deliberation.

Convicted In Absentia

That same year, Swedish investigators discovered a 1994 DMV application that an “Annika Mallon” had made for a foreign driver’s license. The discovery was made because the woman had also listed her previous license issued in Sweden under the name of “Annika Flodin.”

INTERPOL followed the trail, tracking Flodin to Champagne-Mouton, a small rural town in west-central France, two-hundred-sixty miles southwest of Paris. In 1997, French police began surveilling her home. They observed a man who rarely left the residence; locals told them he was arrogant, had few friends, and claimed to be a British mystery writer.

Of particular note, the man had said his name was Eugene Mallon. After a month of surveillance, French authorities determined the man was Ira Einhorn. During his time in Dublin, Einhorn had befriended the real Eugene Mallon, who investigators suspect had harbored the fugitive and given him his identification.

Annika And Ira

Investigators determined Flodin and Einhorn had been living at the residence since 1993. The home had formerly been a bakery and a windmill.

Einhorn’s Home In France

Friday, June 13, 1997, was particularly unlucky for Ira Einhorn as he arrested at this home.

It had taken seventeen years to get the elusive fugitive in handcuffs. Getting him back on American soil also proved a tedious process.

Einhorn Is Nabbed . . .

Under the terms of the extradition treaty between France and the United States, either country can refuse a request if its government believes a defendant may not receive a fair trial.

The French government contended Einhorn was deprived of a fair trial by being tried in absentia without an opportunity to present his defense. In addition, France does not extradite fugitives to jurisdictions allowing capital punishment without assurance that the death penalty will neither be sought nor applied. Einhorn had been convicted of murder, but the sentence had not yet been imposed.

Pennsylvania officials countered that because the state did not have the death penalty at the time of Holly Maddux’s murder in 1977, Pennsylvania law, as well as the ex post facto provisions in the United States Constitution, prevented Einhorn from being subject to capital punishment.

. . . But Fights Extradition . . .

Nonetheless, the Court of Appeals in Bordeaux, France and the European Court of Human Rights rejected the extradition request on the grounds that French law, requires a new trial when a defendant is tried in absentia and hence unable to present his/her defense.

French President Jacques Chirac criticized the ruling, but he was unable to do anything. Under the invoked French doctrine of separation of powers, the French President cannot give orders to courts and cannot intervene in extradition requests.

In December 1997, following France’s rejecting America’s extradition request, Ira Einhorn, only a few months after his arrest, was again released.

. . . And Is Released

Ten months later, however, Einhorn was arrested again and extradition proceedings recommenced following Pennsylvania’s passing of the “Einhorn Law” allowing defendants convicted in absentia to request another trial and ensuring they would not be subject to the death penalty.

Einhorn’s attorneys argued the extradition request should again be denied on the grounds that the law was inapplicable, but each branch of the French government declared itself unable to rule on the constitutionality of foreign laws.

Upon court approval, extraditions, under French law, must then be approved by the executive (head of state.) New Prime Minister Lionel Jospin rejected Einhorn’s appeals and issued an executive decree ordering his extradition. Einhorn then petitioned the Conseil d’Etat (essentially, the French Supreme Court) and the European Court of Human Rights, both of which also ruled against him.

The ”Einhorn Law”

With all options exhausted, Einhorn tried one last desperate attempt to avoid extradition, by making a half-hearted attempt to slit his throat. The semi-suicide effort failed to garner sympathy and his extradition was again ordered.

Nice Try

On July 20, 2001, over four years after his arrest in France, and over twenty years after going on the international lam, Ira Einhorn was returned to the United States to be retried for the murder of Holly Maddux.

Welcome Home, Stinky

Einhorn’s second trial began in October 2002. Two former girlfriends testified they had ended relationships with him because he had been physically abusive toward them.

Einhorn testified on his own behalf, insisting Holly was murdered by CIA agents who framed him due to his investigations on the Cold War and psychotronics, a branch of parapsychology suggesting an energy or force emanates from living organisms and affects matter. The statements brought chuckles throughout the courtroom.

On October 17, again after only roughly two hours of deliberation, the jury affirmed Ira Einhorn’s murder conviction. He was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

You Gotta Believe Me!

The Government Framed Me!

Einhorn served most of his sentence at the State Correctional Institution in Houtzdale, Pennsylvania. In April 2016, as his health was deteriorating, he was transferred to SCI Laurel Highlands, a minimum security prison providing care for inmates with health needs.

Stinky In The Slammer

The imprisoned Ira Einhorn died on April 3, 2020, at age seventy-nine.

Good Riddance

It took over a quarter-century, and much legal wrangling, but Holly Maddux’s killer was ultimately brought to justice.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/6816551/holly-maddux

Justice For Holly

While Einhorn was still fighting the extradition proceedings in 1999, a civil jury ordered him to pay the Maddux family $907 million in damages as part of a wrongful death suit. I could not find how much, if any, of this money was ever paid.

Civil Judgement Against Einhorn

Ira Einhorn falsely claimed credit as the organizer of the first Earth Day celebration held in 1970. The real coordinators of the pro-ecology observance still held yearly today say his only involvement in the initial event was, as shown in the photo, rambling for over an hour at the podium and angering organizers and attendees by repeatedly refusing to get off the stage.

Einhorn At The 1970 Earth Day Rally in Philadelphia

Shortly after Holly Maddux disappeared, Ira Einhorn began dating filmmaker Cecelia Condit. She was in Einhorn’s apartment multiple times during the period when other tenants began smelling the odor, later learned to be from Holly’s lifeless body, emanating from Einhorn’s closet.

Condit did not detect the stench due to medication hindering her sense of smell. In 1981, she made a short film about the experience, entitled Beneath the Skin.

Cecelia Condit

SOURCES:

• America’s Most Wanted
• FOX News
• Murderpedia
• NBC News
• New York Times
• People Magazine
• Philadelphia Daily News
• Philadelphia Inquirer
• TIME Magazine
• Unsolved Mysteries