THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS	Local Tuesday, June 17, 1997

Einhorn's mother once described the family as ``a typical Jewish family, not excessively religious, or excessively anything else.''

But excess was the keynote of the '60s, and Einhorn jumped into it with the frenzied energy that characterized all of his activities.

The sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll that marked the decade intoxicated the young Einhorn after he graduated with a degree in English from the University of Pennsylvania.

He took LSD regularly and he tried to get marijuana legalized, although he later denounced drugs.

He soon became a well-known leader of the dropout hippie community, a Pied Piper leading young people astray, as their elders might have said.

But he also charmed many leading lights of the city's intellectual, artistic and corporate worlds.

At a pretrial hearing in 1979, before his trial for the murder of his girlfriend, Helen ``Holly'' Maddux, character witnesses included an architect, a theater producer, an Episcopal minister, the vice president of a public utility, an economist, several business people, a lawyer and number of educators.

All had been bewitched by Einhorn's brilliance, his incisive, if somewhat cranky, comments on the state of the nation, as well as on the esoteric subjects that intrigued him: philosophy, the paranormal, Eastern mysticism and the environment.

Einhorn looked the part of a hippie guru, dressing himself either in the standard uniform of faded jeans or an African dashiki, and wearing a full beard, his long graying hair tied in a ponytail.

He taught at the University of Pennsylvania's Free University, where he discussed a wide range of subjects to classes of enthusiastic students, from the ideas of Nietzsche to harsh attacks on the nation's cultural and educational spheres.

Einhorn, a graduate of Central High School, described himself as a ``planetary enzyme,'' making things happen in the universe. He organized the city's first Earth Day in 1970 and several be-ins in the 1960s, ran for mayor in 1971 and opposed the Vietnam War.

His nickname, ``The Unicorn,'' showed up in a poem he wrote in 1969:

$ nonsense makes no sense

Nano seconds now

Can the emotions follow unicorn

He had no visible means of support. He never held a job, but people gave him money, he once said, ``just for being Ira.''

But Einhorn, now 57, had a dark side. He had a history of abusing women, and in 1979, police found the mummified body of Holly Maddux in a steamer trunk in his Race Street apartment.

She had been brutally beaten about the head. Shortly before his murder trial was to begin, he took advantage of low bail -- $40,000 -- to flee the country.

It was said that his rich friends supported him in his travels, first to Ireland, then to Sweden, and finally to France, where he was arrested.

People were still giving him money -- just for being Ira.

Philadelphia Online -- Philadelphia Daily News -- Local News Copyright Tuesday, June 17, 1997