‘Unicorn Killer’ who murdered his ex-girlfriend and stored her remains in steamer trunk dies in prison at 79
SOMERSET COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA: Ira Einhorn, also known as ‘Unicorn Killer’, died of natural causes in state prison early on April 3. Einhorn was serving a life sentence in State Correctional Institution Laurel Highlands in Somerset County for murdering his former girlfriend in 1977.
The 79-year-old, who loved to be called himself "unicorn" because that is the English translation of his last German name, was pronounced dead at 4.23 am by a jail nurse, Susan McNaughton, state Department of Corrections spokesperson, said.
She also said Einhorn's death was not related to the novel coronavirus.
The former hippie guru had killed his former girlfriend, Helen 'Holly' Maddux, aged 30, in 1977 and stuffed her body into a locked steamer trunk that he kept in his West Philadelphia apartment for 18 months.
However, just before his trial in 1981, Einhorn fled to Europe. He lived there under assumed names before he was finally caught in 1997 in a converted windmill in France, where he lived with his Swedish-born wife.
Four years later, in 2001, he was extradited from France after the French government was assured he would be given a new trial and not face the death penalty.
Though Einhorn was convicted in absentia in 1993, a Philadelphia jury again convicted him of first-degree murder in 2002 in Maddux’s slaying. He was sentenced to life in prison.
After Einhorn’s death, one of Maddux’s sisters said, “Honestly, my first reaction was that of surprise, because he has so thoroughly been wiped from my everyday consciousness that I forgot about him. He didn’t live in my head, and he didn’t occupy my life anymore. It was surprising, then satisfaction. The chapter is finally, for real, closed." “I’m just glad it’s still newsworthy. I think a lot of people in Philadelphia were waiting to hear that. He became part of the city’s consciousness in an ugly way. Some people, when you say, ‘Dallas,’ it’s Kennedy. It’s not what Philadelphia’s about. I think it shuts a door that needs closing.”
Meg Carlson of Seattle, another sister of Maddux, said, “It’s been over 40 years, and we still miss her terribly. This is a crime that didn’t need to happen. We shouldn’t have had to be missing our beloved sister for over 40 years.”
Recalling the time when Maddux, who grew up in Tyler, Texas was alive, Carlson said that her sister had moved to the Philadelphia area to attend Bryn Mawr College, from which she graduated. However, after college, she stayed in the area because she loved it.
She also claimed that Maddux, who was the oldest of five siblings, had broken up with Einhorn after being together for about five years at the time of the crime. She wanted to start a bohemian-style dressmaking shop. “She was an amazing artist. She was very, very creative,” said Carlson.
“As bad as I feel about anyone dying, I’m not going to lose sleep about his passing away," retired Upper Darby Police Superintendent Michael Chitwood, who discovered Maddux’s body in 1979 when he was a Philadelphia homicide detective, said of Einhorn’s death.