Second Murder Trial For Einhorn Begins

Opening statements began Monday in the murder trial of Ira Einhorn, the former hippie guru accused of bludgeoning his girlfriend more than 20 years ago.

It is Einhorn's second trial for the murder. He was convicted in absentia in 1993, but that conviction was later vacated.

Einhorn, 62, is accused of killing Holly Maddux in 1977 in their West Philadelphia apartment and stuffing her body in a steamer trunk. He jumped bail on the eve of his 1981 trial and spent two decades on the lam before he was nabbed.

The jury was chosen in just a few days last week, more quickly than expected. Lawyers on both sides had thought the media frenzy that has surrounded Einhorn since he was caught living in France in 1997 until his return to the United States in July 2001 would make it hard to find people without an opinion on the case.

Einhorn's lawyers might call celebrities such as Ellen Burstyn and Peter Gabriel as character witnesses. They also plan to offer expert testimony from the medical examiner in Washington, D.C., who supervised the autopsy of former federal intern Chandra Levy.

And Einhorn, who has always maintained his innocence, may take the witness stand to defend himself.

Family and friends of Maddux also planned to be in court for the trial.

"This to me is the final chapter. It's here," Maddux's sister Buffy Hall said last week. "We trusted the system would work and it ultimately did, even against astronomical odds."

Maddux's mummified remains were found in 1979, two years after she disappeared, when neighbors complained about an odor coming from Einhorn's apartment. Einhorn had told police that Maddux went to the store and never returned.

Einhorn was arrested, but released on bail after several prominent Philadelphians vouched for his character. He fled and spent 20 years hiding in Europe before he was arrested in 1997 living with his Swedish wife in a converted windmill in southern France.

He was returned to the United States in July 2001, but only after prosecutors agreed to a French request not to seek the death penalty and the Legislature passed a law allowing his 1993 conviction in absentia to be vacated.

Einhorn has said he was framed for Maddux's murder by the CIA because of his knowledge of their secret mind-control weapon experiments.

Einhorn, a bearlike New Age philosopher who earned a Harvard fellowship and once ran for mayor, presided over the city's first Earth Day celebrations in 1970 and mixed with counterculture figures Abbie Hoffman and Jerry Rubin.

He met Maddux, a willowy blond from Texas with a love for art and nature, in 1972. Voted "most likely to succeed" by her high school class in Tyler, Texas, she had moved to the East coast to attend Bryn Mawr University.

Maddux's four surviving siblings said they have tried to keep the pressure on Einhorn over the years, for the sake of both Holly and their parents, who died believing he had beaten the system.

"If you love somebody, this is the kind of thing you're supposed to do. You're supposed to fight for them, and do what you can," Buffy Hall, a sister from Texas, told KYW-AM.