News on Ira Einhorn
This is a selection of news articles on Ira Einhorn last updated 19DEC99, refresh browser for latest additions at end of this page
http://www.phillynews.com/daily_news/99/Dec/03/local/MUMI03.htm
Philadelphia Daily News
December 3, 1999
Are 'Free Ira Einhorn' rallies next?
Could we have another Mumia on our hands?
Ira Einhorn probably wouldn't complain if he became a cause celebre the way
Mumia Abu-Jamal has. In fact, the fugitive guru raised the comparison
himself in a recent article in a French newspaper.
"Here, the ambiance is nothing like Philadelphia and its terrible cases, the
Mumia Abu-Jamal's, the black journalist wrongly accused of having
assassinated a policeman and whose death was promised for this Dec. 2,"
Einhorn told a reporter for Sud-Ouest Dimanche, the Sunday edition of a
large newspaper in Bordeaux.
"His case was reviewed, the international community has mobilized itself,
[French President Jacques] Chirac and [Prime Minister Lionel] Jospin are
intervening, next to Clinton. In these conditions, how can I not have entire
trust in France?"
Einhorn and his Swedish wife, Annika Flodin, have attempted - and, so far,
failed - to stir widespread support for Einhorn's "human rights" in France.
Although Einhorn has received favorable press in some French journals, no
groundswell of support has occurred.
In 1998, Flodin printed an on-line petition, pleading for support to keep
Einhorn from being extradited to the United States.
At first, Einhorn's extradition request was denied by French judges, but an
appeals court finally granted the U.S. request to return Einhorn to face a
possible new trial. Before Einhorn can be returned, Jospin must sign his
extradition papers.
- Theresa Conroy
©1999 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
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http://www.phillynews.com/daily_news/99/Dec/03/local/IRAA03.htm
Philadelphia Daily News
December 3, 1999
Ira wants a new image
Convicted killer seeks better PR
by Theresa Conroy
Daily News Staff Writer
Now Ira Einhorn wants to talk.
After years of running, hiding and refusing interviews, the fugitive guru is
shopping his story to about 300 reporters.
In a three-page e-mail distributed this week, Einhorn - writing from his
quaint cottage in the South of France - invited an "honest journalist" to
document "his side of the story" of the 1977 murder of his girlfriend, Holly
Maddux.
It was unclear yesterday whether Einhorn's urgent attempt to find a friendly
reporter was inspired by hurt feelings or fear.
Einhorn is angry about all his press coverage, most recently an Esquire
magazine article that portrayed him and his naked body extremely
unflatteringly.
He also may be getting scared about being sent home to Philadelphia.
Sources in France said they believed French Prime Minister Lionel Jospin
will soon decide to sign Einhorn's extradition papers.
Jospin's officer in charge of foreign affairs could not be reached yesterday
for comment.
Einhorn has fought extradition for more than two years. One of his main
complaints - and the issue that angered French judges - was that Einhorn was
convicted in absentia in 1993.
"It was a stupid thing for the DA to do and has never been adequately
explained," Einhorn wrote.
After Einhorn reached out by e-mail, the Daily News reached back. Einhorn,
however, has not replied.
Since Einhorn's capture in June 1997 - after 16 years on the lam in Europe -
the grizzled hippie has been demonized by the American media, Einhorn wrote
in the e-mail.
He is now seeking someone to investigate his allegations of prosecutorial
misconduct and unconstitutional behavior on the part of the Philadelphia
District Attorney's Office.
"The media . . . came to the conclusion that I was guilty and then
resolutely refused to deal with any evidence that contradicted their
original assertions, but did deal with the shopping habits of my wife at
Friday market in Champangne-Mouton, [France] so that the people of
Philadelphia could read about my dinner the same day that I was eating it,"
Einhorn wrote.
"I didn't know him from Adam until a couple of months ago," said David
Crockett Williams, who distributed the Einhorn e-mail. Williams corresponds
with Einhorn and others in a quantum physics chat group that often discusses UFOs and CIA conspiracies.
"I said, 'It seems like the people are trying to roast you in the media over
here, maybe you should consider doing something of a concerted effort to
reach out and tell your story,' " Williams said.
"Over the last couple of weeks he said, 'I'm going to work up something and
I'll send it to you,' " he said. "Why he's gotten to that point, I don't
know. Maybe he's prompted by 'Esquire,' or what, I don't know. It may just
be coming to a point in his legal case that he feels that he has to get off
the dime and do something."
Einhorn has maintained that he did not bludgeon Maddux to death, then stuff
her body into a steamer trunk where it sat - mummifying and stinking - in
his apartment for 18 months. He has said that he believes the CIA or some
other powerful governmental agency killed Maddux to silence Einhorn about
his knowledge of psychic weaponry.
In his e-mail, Einhorn outlined areas of the case against him, pointing out
areas where the DA's office had delayed turning over favorable forensic
tests to defense attorney Norris Gelman.
Einhorn said that tests showed no blood or human protein was found in the
steamer trunk or in Einhorn's Powelton Village apartment.
"That's all true," Gelman said yesterday.
"They got nothing at all. They got no protein, no blood," Gelman said. "They
also went all through the other areas of the apartment."
"So, after they got the FBI reports, they turned them over to me, but it was
a long time after Ira's arrest. Maybe eight months or so, maybe more."
Prosecutors at the time said that 18 months of decomposition may have left
no viable traces of blood or protein in the trunk. And, forensic tests at
crime scenes in 1979 were not as refined as they are today.
"Let's do a DNA test, let's do something today," Gelman said. "Every time I
asked that question in the absentia trial in 1993, [Assistant District
Attorney Joel Rosen] objected."
Einhorn also pointed the finger at former Assistant District Attorney
Barbara Christie, who was assigned to prosecute Einhorn in his original
murder trial. Einhorn fled the country just before his trial was to begin.
"Barbara Christie built a career on such fraudulent practice which is coming
back to haunt her," Einhorn wrote.
Christie, once the city's top homicide prosecutor, has been accused by the
courts of prosecutorial misconduct that resulted in some overturned cases.
Christie left the DA's office in 1996 and now works as general counsel to
the Pennsylvania State Police.
She could not be reached for comment yesterday.
District Attorney Lynne Abraham said through a spokeswoman that nothing
Einhorn says has any value to it.
"Ira Einhorn is a convicted murderer," said DA's spokeswoman Cathie
Abookire. "Nothing he says is of any value to us. Nor should anyone believe
a word he says."
Send e-mail to conroyt@phillynews.com
©1999 Philadelphia Newspapers Inc.
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U.S. Fugitive Relaxed on Extradition
.c The Associated Press AP-NY-11-09-99 1824EST
By HOPE YEN
PHILADELPHIA (AP) - Fugitive killer Ira Einhorn is counting on support from
the French people to keep him from being brought to justice for the 1977
slaying of his girlfriend and having to pay a $907 million wrongful death
judgment against him.
``They're supporting me - they're freaked about the situation,'' the
ex-hippie guru told Esquire magazine in an interview to be published in its
December edition. ``It has nothing to do with guilty or innocent. It has to
do with the way I'm being treated. And they're just so shocked.''
The Associated Press received an advance copy of the magazine Tuesday.
Einhorn, a flamboyant figure in Philadelphia's counterculture in the 1970s,
jumped bail in 1981 rather than face trial for the bludgeoning death of
Helen ``Holly'' Maddux, whose mummified body was found stuffed in a
trunk in a closet at his home. He was convicted in absentia in 1993 of
first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Einhorn was tracked down and arrested at his home in the French countryside
in June 1997. However, a French court refused to extradite him because
French law does not allow for trial without the defendant being present. After
Pennsylvania passed a law promising a retrial, Einhorn was rearrested in
September 1998.
In February, a French court ordered him extradited provided that he be
retried and not face the death penalty. Einhorn remains free in France while
appealing the extradition order.
Einhorn, who spends his days tending a fruit and vegetable garden, swimming
in one of two streams on his property, or e-mailing his Internet UFO group
about government conspiracies, has said little since his arrest in 1997 and
has refused most interviews.
``It's an utter delight to live here because of the quality of life,'' he
said. ``Some things I miss, but I'm willing to put up with it to live here
for the rest of my life.''
The 59-year-old former anti-war activist, futurist and adviser to
Philadelphia's rich and powerful maintained his innocence, blaming Ms.
Maddux's death on a conspiracy involving ``large intelligence agencies.''
``Ira Einhorn is a convicted murderer and no one should give credence to
anything he says, especially when he's hiding out in France,'' Philadelphia
District Attorney Lynne Abraham told AP on Tuesday.
AP-NY-11-09-99 1824EST
Copyright 1999 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP
news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise
distributed without prior written authority of The Associated Press.
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http://www.lawstreet.com/journal/art990226einhorn.html
LAWSTREET JOURNAL
Ira Einhorn May Finally be Extradited
- The Elusive Flight of the Unicorn
February 26, 1999
Web posted at: 18:00 EDT (2200 GMT)
Bordeaux, France -
Ira Einhorn jumped bail in 1981 after he was charged with the death of his
girlfriend, Helen "Holly" Maddux. Since then, he has lived in Ireland and
Europe as a genteel expatriate. This week, a French court finally agreed
that he can be extradited. He remains free pending an appeal of the French
decision, and some fear he will flee again.
When Einhorn jumped bail nearly two decades ago, he left behind his lawyer,
soon-to-be-senator Arlen Specter, and a social circle that included
Philadelphia's liberal elite. Einhorn was the icon of a peace-loving hippy,
traveling globally as a leader in the peace and environmental movements, and
calling himself "the Unicorn." But when the badly beaten body of Maddux, who
had disappeared at the age of 30 in 1977, surfaced in a trunk in Einhorn's
apartment, that image began to unravel.
In the early days of 1981, Einhorn sold his car and withdrew what was left
of his bank account. He fled to Ireland and then Sweden in the '80s, and
eventually settled in the Champagne-Mouton region of France with a new
bride, wealthy Swede Annika Floden. There he has remained, defeating every
effort of Philadelphia authorities, who caught up with him in 1977, to bring
him home for trial. Einhorn's legal team has exploited a combination of
French pride and opposition to the death penalty to defeat extradition.
Einhorn was convicted in absentia in 1993 by a Pennsylvania court and
sentenced to death. In December of 1997, a French court ruled that Einhorn
could not be extradited because Philadelphia could not promise him a new
trial if he was returned to the United States.
Pennsylvania responded by passing legislation guaranteeing fugitives in such
circumstances a retrial upon their return. Einhorn was re-arrested by the
French last year, and his case reheard. The three-judge panel of the Chambre
d'Accusation of Bordeaux's Cour d'Appel -- a midlevel regional court --
ruled that if the United States agreed to grant that trial, Einhorn should
be returned to the United States. The court added three conditions:
1) Einhorn must indeed be granted an "equitable" new trial, if he asks for
one;
2) he must have the right to appeal;
3) and he must not be executed if found guilty.
The last point is moot, since the crime was committed prior to the passage
of Pennsylvania's death penalty statute. In the ruling, the court rejected
assertions by Einhorn's French attorneys that the Pennsylvania law granting
Einhorn a new trial was unconstitutional and that he could face the death
penalty once he was returned to the United States.
Einhorn's attorneys have five days to appeal yesterday's ruling to a
superior court, the Cour de Cassation, which can "break," or reject, the
decision if it finds that the Bordeaux panel followed improper procedure.
Such a rejection would be quite unusual, however. France's Ministry of
Justice and Premier Lionel Jospin would have to agree to sign an extradition
decree formalizing Einhorn's extradition. Einhorn could still appeal to the
Council of State, France's highest administrative body, but it is considered
unlikely that the council would overturn the decree. Einhorn lawyer
Dominique Tricaud pins his client's hopes on a groundswell of support by the
French people, goaded by an anti-American press and political
rabble-rousers.
It may be two years before a final ruling, giving Einhorn plenty of time to
go underground once more, and many expect that he will. "He has the money to
flee and the wherewithal to flee - what does that tell you?" says
Philadelphia D.A. Lynne Abraham.
----------------------
Nude Ira Einhorn Enrages US State Department and Philly DA
Dear News/Editor:
The article about the frustrated extradition of Ira Einhorn in today's
Philadelphia Daily News, "It's too much to bare - Angered by Ira pix, DA
turns to feds", would almost be funny if it were not so serious. The DA has
a psychotic episode over a naked man photo and "the tabloids" lap it up and
spew it out.
Transparently "yellow journalism" articles like this one incite the American
lynchmob mentality fostered by the Philly DA, Lynne "Faulty Information"
Abrahams, who is also misrepresenting the truth on other very important
aspects of this case according to attorney John W. Packel, Chief of the
Appeals Division of the Philadelphia Public Defender Office for 30 years.
In one of several notarized affidavits he has filed on the Einhorn case, on
November 27, 1998, he responds to Abraham's affidavit "guaranteeing" that
Einhorn will receive a new trial (a reported prerequisite for Frances'
extradition permission) and her overtures to the State Department by saying:
"Frankly I am appalled, but not surprised, by the District Attorney's
'guarantee' which refers to the statute granting a new trial but makes no
reference whatsoever to the controlling decisions of the Pennsylvania
Supreme Court unequivocally holding that
any such statute is invalid [because] the legislature has no authority to
impair or overturn a judgement of the courts. Furthermore I am surprised
and disappointed by the State Department's blind endorsement of this
misleading document. ...the District Attorney ignores, making absolutely no
reference to, clear and compelling authority establishing that the statute
it drafted is unconstitutional, unenforcable, and invalid."
What's going on with the Philly DA and the US State Department that they are
resorting to unconstitutional means and misrepresentation to close the case
on the Maddux murder by trying to extradite Einhorn under false and illegal
pretexts?
This is but one example of the witch-hunt, Inquisitional, McCarthyism kind
of practices of the American "Judged by the Media" mentality manifest in
Philadelphia where the US Constitution is flaunted by increasing numbers of
in-absentia trials disallowing the accused to confront his/her accusers.
If Einhorn was framed for this crime, as he claims and piles of affidavits
from prominent witnesses in his attorney's possession evidence, all this may
indicate the potentially high levels of complicity to silence Ira Einhorn,
the person described in the Daily News on April 14, 1978, as "Philadelphia's
tireless activist and warm-hearted humanist".
If the ignored evidence on file, gone unreported and disallowed at Einhorn's
in-absentia trial, does prove that he was framed, then Philadelphia should
hire a DA more psychologically stable and honest to find Holly's real
murderer.
Oh well, whatever sells newspapers is the name of the game, at least so
claimed Theresa Conroy of the Daily News in her recent phone conversation
with me.
David Crockett Williams 661-822-3309
Tehachapi, California, December 17, 1999
PS Keep checking links at https://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/agenda.html
for regularly updated inputs of additional overlooked facts and comments
about this case and related issues, some forwarded to me directly by Ira
Einhorn from France.
----------------------------------------
http://www.phillynews.com/daily_news/99/Dec/17/local/IRAA17.htm
Philadelphia Daily News
Friday, December 17, 1999
It's too much to bare
Angered by Ira pix, DA turns to feds
by Theresa Conroy
Daily News Staff Writer
Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne Abraham is getting some help in
hauling fugitive Ira Einhorn back home.
U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright has taken action on a plea
Abraham sent to Albright in a Dec. 1 letter.
"The secretary did receive the letter that was sent by Lynne Abraham. It
arrived Dec. 6," Philip Reeker, a State Department spokesman, said
yesterday.
"She directed that a cable be sent to the embassy in Paris instructing them
to go in at senior levels at the [French] Ministry of Foreign Affairs and
the Ministry of Justice to express our serious concern about the lack of
progress for the resolution of this important extradition case," he said.
Abraham said yesterday that she sent the three-page letter to Albright to
"move the process along."
Einhorn - a fugitive for more than 16 years - was discovered and arrested in
France in June, 1997. He has been fighting extradition back to Philadelphia,
where he was convicted in absentia in 1993 of killing his girlfriend, Holly
Maddux.
Abraham sent a copy of her letter to the U.S. ambassador to France.
"I want France to live up to its treaty obligation," she said.
Abraham told Albright in the letter that she was recently disturbed by an
Esquire magazine photo that showed the paunchy fugitive - in all his naked
glory - playing in a stream that runs along his country home in Southwestern
France.
"There is really no earthly reason why Mr. Einhorn should be able to cavort
in the nude while the extradition order sits unsigned," she said.
"His performance in that pond on his home was disgusting," she said.
In May, a French appeals court agreed to send Einhorn home, but his
extradition papers must first be signed by French Prime Minister Lionel
Jospin.
Jospin has the option of refusing to sign off on the extradition, although
international experts have said this might inspire strained diplomatic
relations between France and the United States.
Abraham said this was her first direct plea for Albright's help. She also
said that she heard from "reliable sources" that Einhorn's extradition
papers have not even been delivered to Jospin.
But Abraham's information from France has been faulty in the past.
Abraham said in May that the prime minister was required to take action on
the extradition within two weeks. It has been nearly seven months - there
was no such requirement.
Abraham also maintained at the outset of Einhorn's extradition hearing that
the case in France was safely in the hands of a French prosecutor assigned
to represent Philadelphia in court.
In fact, that prosecutor went on vacation, passing the case on to another in
his office. In turn, the new prosecutor went on vacation and passed the case
onto a woman who appeared to have almost no knowledge of the case.
It was after that courtroom debacle - during which Einhorn's attorneys
misrepresented facts without question by the prosecutor - that a Bordeaux
court at first refused to return Einhorn.
The case has limped along since that initial wounding.
Abraham yesterday declined to reveal the sources of her information on
Einhorn's case.
Send e-mail to conroyt@phillynews.com
[note: above letter to editor was sent because Conroy acknowledged in her phone conversation to me that she is aware of details of illegality of a new trial for Ira Einhorn but has not reported these or many other facts contraindicating Einhorn's guilt of murder and she has apparently chosen instead a decidely hostile policy of their ommission in favor of "selling newspapers" via the hystrionic inflammatory provocative half-truth "tabloid" journalism style]
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ttp://www.phillynews.com/inquirer/99/Dec/19/front_page/IRA19.htm
Philadelphia Inquirer
Sunday, December 19, 1999
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
The convicted killer reads, gardens, and works on the Internet.
In France, Einhorn has few worries
Ira Einhorn, 59, was convicted in absentia of murdering ex-girlfriend Holly
Maddux in 1977. He has been a fugitive from Philadelphia for 16 years.
(Daniel Rubin/Inquirer Staff) [photo]
By Daniel Rubin
INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
CHAMPAGNE-MOUTON, France - He has no passport, no driver's license, no
wallet even.
"I am the wallet," his wife says, looking up from the lamb bourgignon she
has been preparing for three hours at Moulin de Guitry, the century-old mill
she bought with $100,000 from the sale of her Stockholm apartment.
His last paycheck? "Harvard," he says. "In 1978."
Ira Einhorn. Convicted in absentia for murdering his former girlfriend,
Holly Maddux. A fugitive from Philadelphia for 16 years. A prisoner, for
now, of the French countryside.
Their abundant garden between the rivers L'Argent and L'Or has helped the
couple keep their expenses down to $1,100 a month - again, her contribution.
What he provides is "the brain food," as he calls it. He devours between 300
and 500 pages a day, from as many as 10 books at once. On his night table at
the moment: a Mark Helprin novel; a history of psychosomatic medicine;
philosopher Henri Bergson; Nabokov in English; Proust in French.
He does most of his reading in bed, lying on his back. He needs little
sleep.
His window on the rapidly changing world is the Internet. As part of
negotiations with ABC for last spring's Connie Chung interview, the network
bought him a top-of-the-line Dell computer. It allows him to correspond with
old allies in the battle for information about UFOs, genetic engineering,
drug policies, pharmacology and the environment.
For such an information animal, there are many gaps in the Philadelphia
landscaped in his mind. No skyscrapers soar past Billy Penn's hat in the
city he remembers. He is shocked to find Frank Rizzo dead, Edmund Bacon
still active.
Ira Einhorn is a bull, a Taurus, charging from idea to idea, while having to
stay put. Nothing turns him on more, he says, than when discussions rev up
into such a state that friends are firing half sentences at each other.
"I don't think," he says. "I'm totally intuitive."
He gets little of this sort of exchange at home now, and this is good, too,
he says. He has learned to slow down, be patient, be present. He talks a lot
of presence, how the French in this farm community "get it." No cell phones
in cars, no 3 a.m. wake-ups to check the Tokyo Exchange, no pagers, beepers,
call-waiting.
"They know it would be rude," he says, "to interrupt a conversation to
answer the phone."
Philadelphia still runs through him, from the way he pronounces atty-tood,
to Super Bowl Sundays, when he and his wife check into a motel that has a
television. She bakes him soft pretzels.
"I also make blintzes," Annika Flodin Einhorn says, her voice a soft Swedish
lilt, as though she is talking about feeding a homesick child. "He also
talks about hoagies - not all the time, but enough."
He rarely listens to the radio, doesn't have a TV. He owns all of Mahler's
symphonies on CD and was writing a novel about the composer when arrested in
June 1997. That would have been his sixth book written on the run.
Now that Holly Maddux's family has won a $907 million civil wrongful-death
verdict, it is unlikely that a publisher would take a chance on his writing,
he realizes.
Yet he seems at peace with his current life. Dinner at the Einhorns last
weekend included beet root and avocado salad, pate, a sampling of local
cheese, baguettes, the lamb bourgignon, and pears in a warm ginger-honey
sauce - all washed down with a 1996 Rothschild Bordeaux. "As good as the
last one," he pronounced.
A dinner date with Einhorn at Moulin de Guitry begins with a dance, a
seduction. There are messages through his lawyer, then phone conversations
and e-mail messages - all conveying his desire to talk about the issues he
says his case raises:
The hollowness of the U.S. promise that he would get a new trial. Problems
with the prosecution that resulted in his conviction in absentia and a life
sentence. How his decades of activism have been reduced, by a prosecutor's
phrase, to his being "a bum who Xeroxes things."
He promises to entertain all questions. "I'm at my best," he says, "when
pushed."
"My wife asks that you come for three or four days."
First, there is a meal at home. Nothing too ambitious for the first visit.
Get to know each other. Find out what makes each other tick. His eyes never
waver.
At 59, he is robust, a man described by a French reporter as having the back
of a Siberian wrestler. His chest measures 58 inches. He proudly carries the
V-shaped torso of the Central High School running back who won a scholarship
to the University of Pennsylvania.
The ponytail and bard's beard have been replaced with cowlicky white locks
and a wispy goatee with a few wild hairs.
Only on the second night, when he gets into the passenger seat for the ride
to dinner and the crescent moon plays on his face, electrifying his blue
eyes and outlining the point of his beard, is there anything chilling about
his countenance.
Annika, meanwhile, is tall, lovely, patient, red-haired and gracious. "Not,"
he says firmly, "another Holly."
He corrects her English, she corrects his memory. She is good on details.
They met at a friend's in London in 1987, and within 10 days had decided to
travel together to the Canary Islands. She was running the fabric department
of her mother's three haute-couture stores in Sweden. She was 11 years
younger, without higher education.
After a month of travel, he moved to her apartment in Stockholm, and when he
feared an old friend was about to tip police to his whereabouts, he told her
his name and that he was falsely blamed for the murder of his girlfriend.
She hid him, whisked him off to other apartments, lied to police and, years
later and still on the run, looked into her mother's eyes and swore she knew
nothing about the American fugitive who had been in the newspapers.
Her mother returned her gaze, saying: "I understand if you did it out of
love."
For three days, he has talked - the ghastly steamer trunk, the safe house,
the secret rooms and plain luck that allowed him all those years of good
living and accommodating women.
But now Annika wants to say something, and he falls silent, watching his
wife across the dining room table, bathed in afternoon light.
The question is, did she ever think that maybe the story was true, that the
man who preached peace and love in the '60s had killed his girlfriend in
1977, stuffed her body into a trunk, and buried it in his back-porch closet?
"Of course," she says slowly. "I had to. I had to face the possibility: Was
my love for him conditional? Conditioned on the fact I perceived him to be
innocent?"
He was in prison at the time - her mistake. The gendarmes came with guns
drawn in June 1997, after she had listed their address on a Swedish driver's
license application.
While Einhorn was behind bars, playing bocce with gangsters and the fallen
ex-mayor of Angouleme, Annika began to wonder whether he'd been lying to her
all the time.
Three times a week, she rose at 4 a.m. and drove the 130 miles to La
Gradignan, a medium-security facility outside Bordeaux, bearing new books
and fresh laundry. For half an hour, she would grill him.
After a visit one Friday, she steeled herself and sat down with the American
newspaper clippings a friend had sent as well as excerpts from The Unicorn's
Secret, Steven Levy's book detailing the bludgeoning death of the Bryn
Mawr-educated, blond Texan.
"That night, I went to bed, and I was clearly and definitely married to a
murderer."
The words hang for a moment, and her voice drops to a whisper.
"The impact of the accusations of all that came through from the papers was
so negative. I woke up the next morning and thanked God that I was married
to Ira, and not to the person described in those pages."
He leans back, breathes. She is not done. She says that she concluded two
things: that she loved him either way, and that he did not do it.
"I cannot say with 100 percent certainty that he didn't kill Holly. He
knows."
His story has not changed. Five times Connie Chung asked him whether he
killed Holly. If Annika had not been napping during the taping, he says, she
would have stopped the interview.
Once he assaulted a woman, he says. He lost it, and that was wrong. OK. But
ask him whether he's a murderer, and his answer is the same as it's been for
20 years, since police opened his trunk to find the mummified body of the
woman who 18 months before had told friends she was going to leave him for
good.
"No, I didn't kill Holly," he says, his voice calm.
Then who did? This is that part that gets vague, and he understands that his
answers sound as far-out as ever: CIA. DIA. KGB. Someone who wanted to
discredit his work uncovering psychic warfare. He says he cannot say more,
because he does not yet have all the "data."
"If there was a body in that apartment, I wouldn't have been able to live
there," he says. "I'm not talking about psychologically. I'm talking about
the actual physical smell."
His wife adds: "If you have a dead mouse in your floorboard, you're very
uncomfortable."
"All I can say is," Einhorn continues, "I'm not an idiot. The impulse would
not have been to move the trunk. The impulse would have been to wrap the
dead body in something and carry it out of the apartment. I had a car. . . .
I had a friend who owned lots and lots of places for burying things. . . .
And I'm also not squeamish - as far as I know. I've never really handled
dead bodies, maybe that's unfair for me to say, in terms of getting rid of
something."
There are things worth looking into, he says. Three people working at a
North Philadelphia bank told a private investigator that they saw Maddux
half a year after she disappeared, but that information was not initially
given to his lawyer, Norris E. Gelman.
A judge ordered a hearing into the matter but found no fault. The
prosecutor, Barbara Christie, said the lapse was an accident. At the 1993
trial, Gelman was able to produce only one of the witnesses, a security man
who became less certain under cross-examination. Gelman says he didn't have
the money to stage a proper defense. By then, Einhorn had jumped bail, and
Gelman defended an empty chair.
Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham has a rejoinder for Einhorn.
"Fine," she says. "Come back and raise these issues at a new trial."
The French courts said they would extradite Einhorn only if he could be
assured of a second trial. So the Pennsylvania legislature passed a law
granting him one.
Gelman and Ted Simon, Einhorn's other American lawyer, say the Constitution
prevents the legislature from undoing a decision by the judiciary.
"It's a great irony," Simon says. "He is this 'horrifying' person they love
to hate, yet he stands for a proposition that is very important."
The place to argue these matters is in American courts, Abraham says. "Let
him talk about the CIA to a jury here."
Papers ordering his extradition await the signature of French Premier Lionel
Jospin. The court battle ended last summer, but the Ministry of Justice has
not sent over the paperwork. Earlier this month, Abraham wrote to Secretary
of State Madeleine K. Albright, asking her to apply diplomatic pressure.
How worried is Einhorn? He has been working hard, planting rosebushes in his
garden. He expects to see them bloom.
"He's really convinced everything that's gone against him is so highly
unethical," says Meg Wakeman, a Seattle nurse who is the oldest of the
surviving Maddux sisters. "There is no room in his mind for the victim,
because he's made himself the victim."
At Chez Jacot, a dark cafe in town, the legal and diplomatic complexities of
the Einhorn case seemed lost on the five men who sat around the table
drinking wine. They were more concerned with the identities of those who
betrayed the Resistance in World War II, or terrorists who have set bombs
recently in Paris.
"We don't care about their past," a retired mechanic named Jean Dumas, 75,
said of the Einhorns as he sipped white wine with a dash of peach syrup.
"All we see is that they are ordinary people in an ordinary town."
Annie Devarrieux, a retired literature teacher who spends summers near the
Einhorns, says that the arrest shocked the town, "but little by little, the
people were conquered by the kindness of Annika and her intelligence."
"They were a lot more suspicious of Ira."
But then Mayor Jack Jouaron let everyone know he supported the couple, she
said, and he began a petition drive to oppose extradition. "The whole
population is with them."
Hans Das is not so sure. He and his wife, Maria, had been friends of the
couple - until the arrest, and the Dases' media interviews. Das says Annika
Einhorn made it clear she no longer wanted to see them.
At best, Das says, locals treat the Einhorns with indifference. On Monday
afternoon, the Einhorns were walking to town, where twice a week he must
sign in with gendarmes. The couple accepted a ride to nearby Ruffec for
shopping.
In a gift shop, Annika spoke animatedly with the proprietress. The woman
complimented her on her French, and Annika explained that they had been
living in the country eight years. They wished each other a merry Christmas,
and the woman asked whether Ira was British.
"Absolutely charming," Annika said, smiling, as she walked out into the
rain. The conversation had been so pleasant. "She must not read the
newspapers."
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Daniel Rubin's e-mail address is dan.rubin@phillynews.com
For information on Einhorn's legal situation and issues:
November 27, 1999, "Facts for Openers", by Ira Einhorn
https://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/facts.html
DECLARATION of evidence Einhorn was set up and framed for murder:
https://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/declaration.html
Review of NBC movie on Einhorn, "Hunt for the Unicorn Killer"
https://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/hunt.html
Continuing selection of newspaper articles on Einhorn/Unicorn case
https://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/ienews.html
Continuing selection of commnents on Einhorn/Unicorn case & issues
https://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/comments.html
Ira Einhorn's letter of support for Global Peace Walk 2000 "An Agenda for Peace"
https://www.angelfire.com/on/GEAR2000/agenda.html
For ease of posting, some additional news articles and more detailed comments over time will be accessible at http://www.egroups.com/group/ira-einhorn where those interested may also subscribe to a list to receive updates by email on postings to this site and other comments related to Ira Einhorn case and related issues.