Page One
Wednesday, June 18, 1997

For the Maddux siblings from Tyler, Texas, it has taken a long time to remember Holly without anger.

So many of the images -- of the funky bohemian who hand-painted birthday cards and fed them health food, of the doe-eyed teenager who glided through ballet class, of the big sister who baked them sugar cookies -- were smothered by thoughts of her death and the man who killed her.

Over the years, Holly Maddux's family slipped through four separate hells as they tried to untangle their thoughts of their sister without her killer. To remember Holly. Period.

But first, they had to survive the haunting void of her disappearance in 1977. Then the discovery in 1979 of her mummified remains locked in a trunk in her boyfriend's Powelton apartment. The initial relief over the speedy arrest of hippie guru Ira Einhorn and the twisting fury when he fled the country less than two years later.

And then there was the wait, the years punctuated by false sightings and dashed hopes, outlasting their parents and at times, their patience.

Monday, nearly 20 years after Holly's disappearance, the Maddox family learned that Einhorn had been captured in rural France. For John, Meg, Buffy and Mary, there was a sense of satisfaction, and a whiff of exhilaration.

``I don't believe he deserves any of my energy,'' sister Meg Wakeman of Seattle said of Einhorn. ``What deserves energy is honoring the memory of my sister.''

There is no real joy among the Madduxes over the incredible capture of one of the city's most notorious escapees. The emotions are mixed with the mistrust learned over the last two decades: that this strange, cruel punctuation mark on their lives may not be the end.

``The resentment and the anger, a lot of it is there,'' said Elisabeth ``Buffy'' Hall, 37, of Everman, Texas, who lost her sister after graduating from high school. ``I keep it put away, until today. It served no purpose in getting it out.''

Yet after all these years she has made some progress.

``I can say `Happy Birthday, Holly' and not cry now.''

Helen ``Holly'' Maddux would be 50 now. Maybe still painting with watercolors. Maybe perfecting her German. Maybe a mom.

``I like to think now, sort of speculate what kind of person she'd be like,'' said Hall, the second youngest. ``Such a wonderful earth goddess. The coolest person on the block.''

For after all, amid the oil fields and pine groves of conservative East Texas, Holly was the coolest person in their world.

She was Helen when she came home from the hospital, the first child born into the very middle- class household of Fred and Elizabeth Maddux. He worked for the state, a draftsman planning roadways; she was a housewife. The Madduxes had seen a bit of the world; she was raised in Minnesota, and voyaged overseas with the Red Cross during the war. He, a son of Huey P. Long's Louisiana, flew with the 82d Airborne. They met in Germany and married.

As the eldest of five, Holly enjoyed pampering the brood. She took the two youngest children out trick-or-treating and taught them to swim.

The Madduxes brought their worldliness to their children. A family inheritance allowed them to send the children overseas for study. Holly was a linguistic sponge. Norwegian. Greek. German. She danced. She wrote. And she could create anything out of pencil, oil, pastels or watercolors.

``Everything she accomplished I wanted to accomplish,'' Wakeman said. ``She was way cool.''

In '65, Holly chose Bryn Mawr College on the recommendation of a relative. Initially the move was a shock to her -- the casual lifestyle, boisterous politics and intimidating intelligence of her peers, all mixed with the turbulence of the times. Eventually she tried to introduce aspects of her new life to her family, like cooking them health food. She seeped herself in the culture of the moment, delving into tai chi and feminist workshops.

``She lived in a dichotomy -- getting all her education in the East, but her heart and her head were still in East Texas,'' Wakeman said. ``She was always figuring out a way to meld the two together.''

But she settled into the city, joining women's groups, grabbing various jobs. At one time, she set the type for TV Guide. Under the threat of firing, Holly managed to get a page printed listing a movie starring Holly Maddux and Meg Maddux. Wakeman has kept it.

She was different in other ways. Tall, with a cap of honey-colored hair, a winsome, slightly ironic smirk and arched eyebrows, Holly was striking.

That caught the notice of Einhorn, a leader of Philadelphia's counterculture groupies and campus fixture.

``She was a very intelligent person and a very beautiful person and back in the '60s, girls were supposed to be one or the other,'' Hall said. ``She had trouble because she was both. Here she met a guy who thought: `Yeah, you're good looking, but I like you for your brain.' ''

Thus began a turbulent five-year relationship that alternately frustrated and captivated Holly. It appalled her family.

In 1975, she brought her beau home for a weekend in Texas. Wakeman remembers Einhorn being loud and self-absorbed. She also recalls that he got poison ivy on a walk and sat at the dinner table, scratching the baking soda off his body. The Maddux parents smiled and said nothing. Privately, Holly's father called Einhorn ``King of the Pig People.''

``I knew immediately not to allow him into my own world,'' Wakeman said. ``I stayed away from him.'' When Holly and Einhorn traveled to Europe the year young Meg was studying abroad, she chose not to see her sister rather than put up with him.

``It crushed me,'' Wakeman said. ``I just adored my sister.''

In a stream of letters from Philadelphia to her siblings in the mid-'70s, Holly alluded to problems in the relationship. It would be years before they would learn of the stormy fights.

By the summer of 1977, Holly wrote that she had resolved to leave Einhorn. She had dreams of opening a business designing clothes made from the antique lace and vintage dresses collected in London.

Then there was nothing. In October -- when mother and two of the girls had birthdays -- no one received one of Holly's famous care packages or a birthday card with her painted frogs. Holly had gone off on her own a few times, hitchhiking around Europe, but she had never missed birthdays.

Einhorn's subsequent arrest and then release -- on $40,000 bail -- still burns the family. Their father never really recovered from the loss of his daughter. Fred Maddux died in 1988, his wife in 1990. In 1993, Einhorn was convicted in absentia for the murder.

``The last 20 years didn't have to happen,'' Hall said bitterly. ``But people were stupid and inconsiderate and did not accord Holly or any of us the dignity and respect they should have as the victim and the victim's family. They let him go without any regard for us, because we weren't bigwigs up in Philadelphia.''

It is a rare spurt of raw anger, something the women have learned to keep tamped down for fear it will consume them.

Somehow, they cartwheeled through life, marriages, children and new jobs. John, 48, a former investor, is a Texas hay farmer; Wakeman, a public health nurse and mother; Mary, 34, a graphic artist; and Buffy, a homemaker and mother of two. Hall named her ballet-dancing daughter Holly. And she resolved to stop waiting.

``I never gave up hope that he was going to be caught, but I did quit expecting it,'' Hall said. ``In the last couple years, I started working in my own mind, doing a lot of talking to God so I don't spend the rest of my life agonizing over this. I know he's going to get his judgment, even if I'm not around to see it. Maybe I'm not going to get to see it, but he's going to spend the rest of his life looking over his shoulder. . . .

``And lo and behold, I got a surprise; he wasn't watching.''

Hall is planning to to bring roses to the grave, outside Tyler, in two weeks and tell Holly and the folks the news. Of course, she wants to be there when Einhorn returns to Philadelphia in shackles.

``I just want him to see me. I want to give him a big smile.''