He was a hippie who referred to himself as a "planetary enzyme" and an "earthling." He eschewed showers. And one time, while teaching an alternative education class at Penn, he reportedly entertained his students by passing out marijuana joints and dancing naked.
Around campus and in nearby Powelton Village during the 1960s and 70s, Ira Einhorn was hard to miss, for better or worse.
"I always thought he was the Rasputin of West Philadelphia," said longtime West Philadelphia resident Richard Rogers, who lived around the corner from Einhorn's Race Street apartment during that time. "The mystery of his appeal always alluded me."
Although notorious for having a powerful body odor, Einhorn was said to never be without female companionship, including Texas native Holly Maddux.
But in March 1979, Maddux's mummified remains were found stuffed in a trunk in Einhorn's bedroom closet, a year and a half after she was last seen alive on a date with him.
"Ira did have the reputation for being a woman beater, long before Holly Maddux appeared," Rogers said. "But at that time, it was not too unusual because many men, particularly those on the left, had a very sexist attitude towards women -- women had to be dominated."
At the time of his arrest, Einhorn contended that he was framed by the CIA, but Rogers disagreed.
"Even in those days, the drugs weren't that good," he said.
Despite such quirks, Einhorn managed to attract a following of many of Philadelphia's most prominent citizens. In exchange for sharing with them his vision of a New Age world, Einhorn was rewarded with cushy consulting contracts and and free lunches, particularly at La Terrasse, the restaurant at 34th and Sansom streets he frequented.
"They said he had this incredible sense like Hitler did to be able to totally mesmerize a person by what he said," said La Terrasse bartender Karin Fortin, recounting the tales of several friends of Einhorn who occasionally swap stories at her bar.
One tale by this social activist that left many starry-eyed was his claim that he was one of the original founders of Earth Day, which was held in Fairmount Park in 1970. ÿÿÿÿÿ But in a letter made public in 1998, the nine-member 1970 Earth Week Committee of Philadelphia challenged Einhorn's claim, calling him a "fraud" who made his name at the ceremony only by refusing to give up the microphone for thirty minutes.
However, Einhorn missed the opportunity to speak at his 1993 trial in absentia, where Susan Duggan, Penn associate director of University Scholars, was one of the 14 jurors present.
Yet even with no defendant, "I really think that we got the real story," Duggan said, explaining that the evidence -- especially the infamous trunk -- "was just so graphic that you couldn't believe that it could have been made up."
Faced with these facts, the jury privately took only minutes to convict Einhorn, yet they remain sequestered for another two hours.
"We all looked at each other and said, `Well, we can't go out -- we have to look as if we thought about this,'" Duggan said.
However, she does not feel that Einhorn is a killer by nature, or that his wife in France, Annika Flodin-Einhorn, was ever in any danger.
"I just think that what he did with Holly was born out of whatever emotion he had at the moment, possibly fueled by drugs," Duggan said. "I'm not sure that he's a murderous person that's going to go around killing people that get in his way."
The passing of 24 years have erased the memory of Maddux's death somewhat, especially for the residents of Einhorn's former apartment building.
"It's a little unnerving, but it's a great location for an apartment," Drexel sophomore Kathryn Stanton said. "I don't mean to sound callous or anything."
But to ensure that the community won't forget about the crime, a memorial of two holly trees and plaques -- one for both Einhorn and Maddux -- was installed years ago at the Community Education Center at 3500 Lancaster Avenue.
Einhorn's plaque -- which reads that his tree is a marker until his extradition for trial -- is wrapped with thorns.
