On September 9, 1977, Helen “Holly” Maddux was ready for a fresh start. The 30-year-old from Tyler, Texas, had finally gathered the courage to break up with her boyfriend Ira Einhorn, an environmental activist who nicknamed himself “Unicorn” because his German last name translates to “one horn.”
Einhorn may have preached peace and free love and claimed to have helped found Earth Day, but Maddux knew that his flower-power facade hid a dark side—and a history of violence. When she left the apartment they shared in Philadelphia, he threatened to throw her stuff into the street if she didn’t return to pick it up.
So Maddux made the fateful decision to go back one last time—and was never seen alive again. Einhorn later told police that she had gone to the grocery store to buy tofu and disappeared. But 18 months later, after one of his neighbors complained that a reddish-brown, foul-smelling liquid was leaking from his ceiling, police searched Einhorn’s closet, and found Maddux’s beaten and partially mummified body.
Michael Chitwood, the police detective who found Maddux, told Time that he will never forget Einhorn’s response to the discovery. “I turned to Einhorn and said, ‘It looks like we found Holly.’ And he said to me, ‘You found what you found,’” Chitwood said.
After his arrest, Einhorn tried to convince powerful friends in his social circle—which included socialites, politicians, and even spoon-bending illusionist Uri Geller—that he had been framed. Many people were shocked that Einhorn, who preached tolerance and even had a teaching fellowship at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government in 1977, could be capable of the shocking crime.
Just before his trial began in January 1981, Einhorn jumped bail and spent decades evading authorities by hiding out in Ireland, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and France.
In 1993, Einhorn was convicted in abstentia of Maddux’s murder, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A massive manhunt followed, with America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh saying that Einhorn could appear to be both a “drugged out hippie psychopath” and a “visionary genius.” When authorities finally caught up with him on June 13, 1997, he was living an idyllic life in the south of France under the name Eugene Mallon with his German-born wife, Annika Flodin.
Einhorn spent several years fighting the complex extradition case, but after 23 years was sent back to the United States from France and put on trial in 2002. Taking the stand in his own defense, Einhorn claimed that his ex-girlfriend had been killed by CIA agents who framed him for the crime because he knew too much about the agency’s paranormal military research.
He was convicted of killing Maddux and is currently serving a life sentence in Pennsylvania.
Read more: Time
All photos courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
