THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS	Local Wednesday, June 18, 1997

She wants to ask the killer why he did it, even though she doesn't expect an answer.

And she wishes her parents, heartbroken by the loss of a daughter, had lived to see the killer finally caught after fleeing 16 years ago.

But more than anything, Meg Maddux Wakeman -- who of all the children looks the most like her slain sister Holly -- wants to get a look at Ira Einhorn.

Rather, she wants Einhorn to get a look at her.

``I want him to look at me and see my sister in me,'' said the 41-year-old Seattle mother, who shares the blue eyes and high cheeks of her blond-haired older sister, murdered nearly 20 years ago at age 31.

``I want him to see in my eyes what my sister's future could have been.''

The future of an entire family was altered when the Bryn Mawr-educated former cheerleader from Tyler, Texas, disappeared in 1977 -- and turned up 18 months later, mummified in a steamer trunk in Einhorn's Powelton pad.

But news of the pear-shaped hippie guru's capture in the south of France gives family members relief and vindication -- and after years of false hopes, the first real hope they can heal wounds two decades old.

``For the first time in his spoiled life, he is accountable,'' said Holly's brother, John Maddux, 49, an investor from Alvarado, Texas.

``We had acquired a measure of justice when he was convicted, but that was only the half of it. We knew the day was coming -- someone can just run so far.

``He stole all of Holly's tomorrows.''

Holly's sister Buffy Hall also wants to face the fugitive.

``I want him to see us standing there, unified and let him know that the little guy won,'' she said.

``He bamboozled and befuddled and bewitched a whole load of people, including Arlen Specter,'' said Hall, citing the now-U.S. senator's role in winning the paltry $40,000 bail for Einhorn.

``Nobody said anything about how they were so stupid, but they inferred Holly was . . . I'd love to know what these wonderful upstanding people think now.''

Wakeman, a nurse for the health department, said life without her sister -- and before the capture of her killer -- had been a daily challenge.

``It's been half my life . . . And there's a relief that we now have the answer to the one question that's been nagging us for 20 years: `Where is he?' ''

The Maddux children lost a big sister who gave advice on boys, sent hand-painted birthday cards and baked sugar cookies for them when they were down.

Like Meg and John, Buffy said she never quit hoping.

``I just quit expecting it,'' said the 37-year-old homemaker from Arlington, Texas. ``I needed to stop making myself crazy with the thought that he would never get his . . .''

The Maddux family first met Einhorn in the early 1970s when he visited their home in Tyler with Holly.

``I could tell he was trying to make my parents mad, saying my father was a Nazi and putting his feet on the dinner table and smelling and leaving during a conversation,'' Hall said.

``My father was good at naming people and he called him `Swine-Man' and `King of the Pig People,' '' John Maddux said.

The siblings all attribute their parents' slide into poor health to Holly's murder.

``My father's life was never the same again,'' said Hall. ``The torture they went through until she was found -- and the sheer grotesqueness of how they found her . . .''

Buffy named her first daughter Holly, so her parents ``would have something happy to think about'' when they heard the name. But nothing could fill the void.

``It broke a part of their hearts that could not be fixed,'' said Wakeman. ``It took the life out of them.''

Fred Maddux died in May 1988. Elizabeth Maddux died in June 1990. They are buried in Tyler, next to Holly, who would be 50 now.

Wakeman remembers the dream she had a few weeks before Einhorn's 1993 murder trial was set to begin.

``Holly came to me in the dream, and she was dressed all in white and she said `Meggy, you're just going to have to forgive him.' I remember getting a call from my mom later that day to tell me he had jumped bail.''

Now, 16 years later, Wakeman and her siblings will again see the man who has only been a ghost in their nightmares.

``I want to see him in jail in his prison jammies, in the handcuffs and taken away,'' Buffy Hall said. ``Then I'll really believe it.''

``The intensity that I feel toward this guy has not diminished,'' said John Maddux. ``The old saying that anything can be forgiven but murder is absolutely true.''

Wakeman has even contemplated going to France, though she doesn't expect much.

``I want, I need nothing from him,'' she said. ``I want my sister back.''

Philadelphia Online -- Philadelphia Daily News -- Local News Copyright Wednesday, June 18, 1997