Back in 2002, the Philadelphia Daily News offered a mocking headline, Bon Voyage, Stinky, which eluded to convicted murderer Ira Einhorn being sentenced to prison, and to the fact that the "Hippie Guru" did in fact often smell bad, as he had questionable personal hygiene.
Julie Shaw at the Philadelphia Inquirer reports on the
death of Einhorn, who died in prison.
Ira Einhorn, 79, the convicted murderer known as the
“Unicorn Killer,” died of natural causes early Friday in state prison,
authorities said. His death was not related to the coronavirus, according to
Susan McNaughton, a state Department of Corrections spokesperson.
Einhorn was housed at State Correctional Institution Laurel Highlands
in Somerset County. A prison nurse pronounced him dead at 4:23 a.m., McNaughton
said. She declined to elaborate or say if he had been sick.
Einhorn was found guilty of fatally bludgeoning his girlfriend, Helen
“Holly” Maddux, 30, in 1977 and stuffing her body into a trunk that he kept in
his Powelton apartment for 18 months. In 1981, just before his trial, he fled
to Europe, and he remained on the lam for two decades. He was extradited from France
in 2001, and a Philadelphia jury convicted him of first-degree murder in 2002
in Maddux’s slaying. He was sentenced to life in prison.
Einhorn, a hippie guru in the 1960s and ’70s, reportedly called himself
“Unicorn” because that is the English translation of his last name from German.
The media dubbed him the “Unicorn Killer.”
You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:
You can also read my Crime Beat column, Peace, Love and
Homicide: A Look Back at the Unicorn Killer in Philadelphia, via the below link:
