THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS	Local Friday, June 20, 1997

Excerpts from ``The Unicorn's Secret: Murder in the Age of Aquarius'' by Steven Levy (Prentice Hall Press, 1988)

Last of Three Parts

When Ira Einhorn was released on bail after his arrest for the murder of Holly Maddux, he attacked the problem at first with the same vigor that he would direct to one of the perpetual global crises he dealt with on his network. This was a project, as was the Geller publicity campaign, or Sun Week, or his more recent offensive in alerting the world about the dangers of the Tesla effect.

One component of an effort like this of course is romancing the press. . . . So within forty-eight hours after leaving the Detention Center, Ira was presenting a lengthier version of events to Greg Walter, a Philadelphia Magazine reporter . . . Walter had called Einhorn on the very night Ira had been released on bail. ``It's a mess,'' said Ira of his situation. He spoke very quickly but sounded far from hysterical. The unspoken assumption in the conversation was Einhorn's innocence. ``If I were guilty it would be a lot easier,'' said the Unicorn. ``I could plead insanity or something of that sort, but since I'm innocent it's an impossible situation.''

Walter asked Ira how he was bearing this ordeal.

``I am fine,'' said Ira Einhorn. ``Believe it or not, my spirit is very and I'm feeling very good. I'm looking at my situation as clearly as I possibly can. I'm not depressed in any way. I'm just looking at my options . . . ''

They began by talking about Holly's disappearance. Ira told the same story he had related to others, more or less, since September 1977. On Sunday, September 11, Holly Maddux had left 3411 Race Street, saying she was going to the Ecology Co-op. When she did not return, Ira became worried, particularly because Holly was a diabetic who had recently sworn off her medication. . . .

Three or four days later, Ira said, around Tuesday, September 13, he received a phone call from Holly.

She just told me that she was okay, please don't look for her, and that she would get back to me, that she would keep in touch, that's what I extracted from her. . . .

My feeling was that she had made a decision . . . most of my actions at this point were controlled by two things: One was a phone call from her mother which cooled me out . . . about a month after Holly disappeared. . . . She called me and said, ``We haven't heard from Holly since the beginning of August'' or something of that sort. And I said, ``No, I've seen her since then.'' . . . And then we went back and forth, and I said ``I'm upset about it, but I don't quite know what to do.'' And her mother said, ``Holly is an adult. She's thirty-one years old, she's old enough to make her own decisions.'' And I said it's good to hear that. I said I'm feeling very responsible but I don't quite know what to do. And that was it.

Ira's explanation contradicted [ Maddux family private investigator ] J.R. Pearce's discoveries on several points. [ Friends did not ] recall Ira phoning them in search of Holly. Nor did people at the Ecology Co-op. And Ira's parents said that when he told of Holly's disappearance, he was not ``cool,'' but hysterical. Ira never mentioned Holly's phone call to them. Finally, Elizabeth Maddux's recollection of her conversation with Ira did not include her alleged reassurance that Holly was an adult and can make her own decisions.

IRA'S INITIAL strategy was to portray his plight as a global problem, something that affected everyone's well-being as much as his. He would imply that this was not a case of murder, but a scandalous cover-up demanding investigation. This attitude was implicit in the tone of the fundraising letter for the ``Ira Einhorn Legal Defense Fund.'' . . .

While this did not strike many on the network as an odd missive, and indeed Ira generated a few thousand dollars from the letter, some friends of Ira's were offended by it. Specifically, they objected to the letter's failure to mention Holly Maddux. Generally they did not understand why Ira was dealing with this as a political issue and not a personal legal problem. . . .

Just two weeks after Ira won bail, a pre-trial hearing was held to determine whether there was sufficient evidence to arraign Einhorn. While Ira sat calmly, assistant district attorney Joe Murray paraded witnesses to the stand -- a command performance of the main actors in J.R. Pearce's fateful report. . . .

[ Coroner Halbert ] Fillinger described the cause of death as ``cranio-cerebral injuries to the brain and skull.'' This clinical description, when elaborated upon, indicated that Holly Maddux was killed in a horrifying manner. The coroner reported that ``there are at least ten or twelve fractures and maybe more.'' Apparently, crushing blows had been delivered to the victim's head from above and from the right and left side. There was a linear fracture running below the left eye socket, a series of other fractures on the left side, a number of irregular depressed skull fractures in front of the right ear, as well as a number of fractures around the orbital area and right lateral aspect, underneath the eye. In addition, there was a depressed skull fracture on the right frontal bone over the right forehead. Also, the lower jaw was fractured, part of it driven in toward the mouth itself. Fillinger guessed that the injuries were caused by a blunt object, such as a board or the base of a lamp. It was impossible to tell how many blows had been given, because ``the holes in the skull are so big you can't define how many times one area had been struck.'' . . . Fillinger ruled out the possibility of an accidental death.

EVEN SOME of Ira's closest friends suggested that he might do well to plead guilty. Among them was Jerry Rubin, who after their 1969 argument had reconciled with Ira in the mid-seventies. The day Ira had been released on bond, Rubin -- in the wake of a recent EST experience, a big fan of self-confrontation -- insisted that Ira could do a great deed for the world by admitting that he had killed Holly in an overdose of male domination; he could proclaim himself an example of this negative character trait, and, after paying his debt to society, he perhaps could found an institute of violence to study the problem. Ira said it was an interesting idea, but irrevelant since he didn't kill Holly.

According to some of Einhorn's friends, [ defense attorney ] Arlen Specter himself advised that Ira's best hope lay in an insanity defense. But Ira was emphatically opposed to that course of action. Claiming insanity would be as disastrous as accepting the accusation that he murdered Holly -- either option would discredit his lifetime work. . . .

As the weeks went on, the momentum of Ira's defense effort waned. Arlen Specter, soon to begin his successful run for the United States Senate, turned over the role of lead attorney to Norris Gelman, a less imposing criminal lawyer who had worked for Specter in the Philadelphia district attorney's office. . . . The tactics necessary to defend Ira were also discouraging: Despite Ira's occasional boasts that he would expose the frame-up and present the world with a psychic equivalent of a Scopes trial, his lawyers never considered this. ``You think the Russians came to Powelton Village and threw a beam on him?'' Norris Gelman would later ask, mocking the very premise. Nor did Gelman urge that Ira plea diminished capacity. ``The most brilliant defendant that ever hit City Hall, and I'm going to claim he was insane? No way.''

IRA EINHORN'S carefully nurtured public profile was permanently marred. He was no longer a welcome fixture at La Terrasse. Tensions grew between Ira and many of his friends. . . .

Uncomfortable in Philadelphia, . . . [ and ] despite his status as released on bond pending a murder trial, he considered himself free to travel abroad.

From the very first days after his arrest, when he told Greg Walter that he was like Gary Gilmore in the sense that he would rather die than be imprisoned, Ira Einhorn had considered the possibility of fleeing. In June 1979, on the back of the form letter he sent to generate funds for his defense, he wrote a personal note to his friend Craig Samms in London:

``You can help as of course I will play it straight, forcing me, probably, to eventually have to flee. The shoe is now on the other foot and soon I'll be arriving at your doorstep. I'm not about to go to jail for life for a crime I did not commit. I may need a British passport. That is being worked on, so go slow and make very discreet inquiries. What you could work on is a place where I could disappear for a few years, a country house, a room on a large estate, a cottage in some safe far-off place. . . . Go slow, trust only those you can totally count on, and above all be silent. You should read this and then destroy it. I'll come to London as soon as I am certain it is jail or flight. . . . ''

IN NOVEMBER, 1979, Ira Einhorn received some good news . . . After months of urging from Ira's defense team, the prosecution finally handed over the results of the FBI laboratory's forensic study of the materials from Ira's closet. The conclusion was that neither the floorboards nor any other matter underneath the trunk tested positively for blood and/or human protein. In Ira's view, this proved that Holly's body had not been in the closet since September 1977, as the prosecution claimed. As far as the Unicorn was concerned, this development vindicated him totally. . . .

While in Montreal during the Christmas season, Einhorn mass-mailed the FBI report to potential supporters. His cover letter summarizes his hopes and state of mind at the end of 1979, his most difficult year:

`` . . . The media will soon carry more of the story, and my own book will clear up a lot of unanswered questions. Three years ago some members of my network stumbled upon information relating to matters of the gravest national security. In the face of threats and other dire consequences, we all refused to change our way of open sharing of information. I would do the same thing again, for if we fail to risk, we cannot protect the open society that is presently under siege on all sides . . .

``I look forward to resuming many interrupted interactions.''
WHEN IRA KNOCKED on Samms' Portobello Road door in 1979, he was not yet a fugitive. But he probably was scouting out locations in case he did decide to forfeit bond. ``He talked about places like Iceland and Finland, he asked me questions about European locations, but basically, I don't know how to be a fugitive,'' Samms says, insisting he made no efforts to fulfill the instructions in Einhorn's letter.

It required no great intelligence, though, to perceive the high probability that Ira Einhorn might flee before his trial. Ira would often assert that under no circumstances would he go to jail. . . .

For one thing, Ira's nemesis in court was Barbara Christie, to whom Joe Murray had assigned the prosecution. She was the most aggressive prosecutor in the district attorney's office, a workaholic bantamweight . . . woman who, in the awestruck description of one colleague, ``pisses ice water.''

Ira Einhorn knew that Barbara Christie's pit-bull persistence could spell doom for him. . . . The clincher in Ira's decision may have been a new series of tests performed on the floorboards, the rug, and the plaster sitting underneath the steamer trunk in which Holly Maddux's body was found. . . . Ira's slight advantage of the FBI tests was wiped clean by the results of the new tests by a laboratory in Willow Grove, not far from J.R. Pearce's office. Using different methods, these chemists found that there was human protein in the materials. Those who knew Ira at that time say he took this news very hard. When Harry J. Katz, Ira's gadabout publisher, discussed the case with him, he was frank in his assessment.

``H-J-K One,'' he said to Ira.

``What's that?'' Einhorn asked.

``You're going to be making license plates for the rest of your life,'' said Katz. ``That's my request for a vanity tag.''

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