Convicted murderer Einhorn was '60s guru, 'brilliant' U. student

Headlines throughout Philadelphia yesterday screamed that Ira Einhorn, the '60s guru, was convicted in absentia of first-degree murder in the death of his girlfriend, whose body was found in a trunk in Einhorn's apartment 16 years ago. It was quite a jump from past headlines of be-ins, teach-ins and Earth Days – in The Daily Pennsylvanian. Einhorn, who fled the country 12 years ago rather than go on trial for the murder of Bryn Mawr College graduate Holly Maddux, is a member of the University's Class of 1961. Einhorn's prominence in Philadelphia's 1960s counterculture gained him national renown, and turned numerous heads among his University classmates. "Einhorn was a brilliant student," Pennsylvania Gazette Editor-in-Chief Anthony Lyle said, remembering the guru from an 18th century British literature class. "He was head and shoulders above the rest." "He was very much a figure in the University community," said History Professor Michael Zuckerman, a friend and classmate of Einhorn's from high school through college and beyond. "He was incredibly energetic and lively and riveting, and full of ideas that relatively few other people had, with a kind of verve to do something about them," Zuckerman added. After graduation, Einhorn was one of the founders of Free University of Pennsylvania, a movement of alternatives to conventional education that stood for "everything that the real universities were not," Zuckerman said. "The idea was that there would be an alternative to the driven, rat-race squirrel-cage classes," he said. "The teachers had no power except the power of their ideas." The Free University of Pennsylvania, open symposiums that many say attracted as many substances as students, was "the biggest free university in the country, and Ira was a huge factor in that," Zuckerman said. "He was charming, elfin and constantly teeming with ideas," Zuckerman said. "He radiated a sort of excitement." Lyle, however, remembers a different Einhorn. "I saw him once at the Annenberg School [after he graduated] – he seemed to have gone off the deep end," Lyle said. "There was a sense that he was in communication with Martians, almost." Lyle felt pity for his former classmate. "There was a kind of pathos to that," he said. "I don't really think he was all there. It wasn't like back in the English class days. Something had happened, and I think drugs were part of it." Einhorn is credited with bringing the Age of Aquarius to Philadelphia, organizing the city's first Be-In in 1967, as well as the subsequent Smoke-In, Earth Day and Sun Day. Zuckerman said he was amazed at the wide range of company Einhorn kept in Philadelphia, which ranged from fellow guru Allen Ginsberg to corporate executives clad in three-piece suits. "He began to move in still wider circles, with serious money and serious power," Zuckerman said. "[Einhorn] spent a fair amount of time with big time executives at General Electric and Bell, predicting the future for them." But Einhorn's vibrant participation in the counterculture movement lost some of its luster when Maddux's decomposing body was found in a steamer trunk lined with newspapers and styrofoam in Einhorn's Powelton Village apartment. Einhorn was subsequently arrested and released on $40,000 bail. He fled before the trial and, with the exception of a spotting in Sweden in 1988, has not been seen since. Yesterday, Einhorn's empty chair in the courtroom heard the Common Pleas Court's verdict of guilty, which entails a life sentence – if he is ever found. Zuckerman said he lost touch with Einhorn after 1977, and while the jury has come to a verdict in the case, he can't be quite sure his friend is guilty. "There was a streak in him that was clearly very powerful, violent, experimental and keen to experience feelings and emotions," Zuckerman said. "But it was as plausible to think it was a put-up job by the C.I.A. or the government. "By sheer inertia and by sheer absence of Ira, it seems to me to be more plausible that he actually did do it," he said. "But I wouldn't want to bet my life on it, even to this day."

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