Opinion
Thursday, June 26, 1997

By Rachel Simon
News flash for Ira Einhorn: It's no longer the Age of Aquarius.

No more doing your own thing while everyone else is so into doing their own thing that they're oblivious. No more treating your chick like one of the harem. No more greeting guests in the nude.

No more mandalas announcing you're for peace when, behind closed doors, you're getting off on a display of fists. No more tunes about love heals all when, buried in your closet, your long-time squeeze suffers with a malady no love can cure.

That paisleyed era faded to black long ago.

Now comes Mr. Einhorn back into the headlines, his timing so impeccable, it would make an editor shudder with incredulity. After all, he hits our attention as the papers are teeming with stories alleging teenage baby-killing mothers, a Main Line wife-killing sex addict and a mild-mannered child-killing rapist.

It's poetically brilliant. Just when we're inundated with our own 1997-style bad deeds, we find ourselves welcoming back an intellectual guru who, 20 years ago, did in his old lady, then stuffed her corpse in a trunk in his Powelton Village apartment.

Presumably, he thought no one would notice that she was missing or that his closet contained a mummified body. He could get away with it, as long as nobody saw.

Many didn't see. They thought he was too nice. So nice that, when the remains were found a year and a half into rigor mortis, a plethora of dignified Philadelphians vouched for his character. So nice that, when Einhorn skipped town just before his trial, folks took a good while before they admitted that he was a skunk. So nice that, when police found him after 16 years, he allowed himself to be handcuffed while lying in bed.

At first glance, Einhorn's capture seems like a blast from the past. B.M.O.C. of be-ins; hippie visionary for truth, justice and the American disobey; crusader for make love, not monogamy, Einhorn symbolized an era.

But his return is very 1997. Not just because he's a tarnished symbol, but because his karma -- or bad luck -- has made him part of what's happening now.

Think about it: Einhorn disappears as Reagan gallops into town and Bush takes up the rear. America stands tall. Evil empires collapse. And crime mutates in new ways -- ways unforeseen in Einhorn's time.

Then, we feared the bomb and communists. Now, despite conscientious objector Clinton leading our cavalry, we fear each other. Strangers do in strangers. Husbands blow away wives. Parents chill kids.

But maybe it's not as bad as we think. Maybe Einhorn's second coming -- at this particularly appalling time in Philadelphia crime history -- will further verify that, even with the continuous infusion of can-you-top-this atrocities, we might be getting on the right track.

Let's look at what's been going on lately.

Neighbor Jesse Timmendequas rapes, smothers and disposes of the girl who lived across the street. What was going on in his twisted head? Who knows? But this much we can guess: He told himself that no one would notice him, so he couldn't be accused.

Nice, doting husband Craig Rabinowitz is alleged to have strangled his wife, dragged her upstairs and deposited her in the tub. If it's true, what the hell was he thinking? Many things, no doubt, but one major thought was probably that no one would notice the tell-tale signs of murder, or, if they did, they wouldn't suspect him.

Nice, affluent teenagers with names like Amy and Melissa allegedly deliver babies no one knew they were carrying, and the babies turn up dead in the trash. Some say they weren't thinking at all. Maybe, but here's one thing I bet they were thinking: Even though there's a body, I'm so nice, no one will notice.

But here's the kicker. We do notice. Homicide tends to leave something in its wake.

Of course, we've always noticed dead bodies. And perpetrators have always been dumb enough to think we wouldn't. But now the consequences are greater, because in the '90s, we talk when we find corpses. And we talk loud, from coast to coast.

So the pedophile who murders in his private nightmare of self-loathing is exposed to a furious nation. The husband accused of strangulation in his secret lust for a stripper is vilified in offices across the land. And the teens who silently deliver soon-to-be-dead babies get their faces on the cover of People.

All of them reaping international humiliation greater than anything they ever could have possibly imagined.

Forget the Age of Aquarius. At this beautifully rare moment in crime history, it's the Age of Accountability. If we catch you, we publicize you -- even if you're a nice person. Your secrets become our dinner conversation, your stupidity our jokes.

In 1967, we said, Do your own thing. In 1997, we say, Heard the latest on the prom mom?

So Einhorn returns, professor emeritus of the No One Will Notice University. At a time when so many others are stumbling along in his footsteps -- and so many of us are noticing them.

Remarkable, isn't it? Because if he'd returned at a different moment -- when criminals were more crafty or felt less worried about looking nice, or confessed their sins with pride -- he'd have been out of step.

But instead, Ira Einhorn still fits in with the times, the latest buffoon in our modern Hall of Shame, where the doors stay wide open for eternity.

Rachel Simon teaches creative writing at Bryn Mawr College. Her latest book is The Writer's Survival Guide.