Pathologist in trial of Einhorn describes victim’s skull fractures

PHILADELPHIA (AP) – Spectators at the murder trial of former hippie guru Ira Einhorn gasped as photos of his former girlfriend Holly Maddux’s severely fractured skull were projected on a courtroom screen Friday.

Einhorn, extradited from France last year to face trial in the 1977 killing, put his glasses on, raised his hand to his chin and examined the autopsy photos without expression. Some of Maddux’s family members put their heads down to avoided looking.

Maddux had been struck in the head at least six times, with the outline of one fracture resembling the mark that would be left by the end of a two-by-four, Dr. Halbert Fillinger, a forensic pathologist who conducted the autopsy, testified.

“All of these fractures are going to require a great deal of force, a great deal of impact,” he said.

Defense attorney William Cannon said later that Einhorn has seen the photos before, so they didn’t come as a shock.

“He’s not going to cry,” Cannon said. “It’s not his personality.”

Fillinger also showed photos of the mummified body of the 5-foot-61/2-inch Maddux, which was found in a steamer trunk in Einhorn’s closet.

He said it was impossible to determine when the 30-year-old was killed, since it could have taken weeks, months or even years for a body to reach that condition.

Authorities say Einhorn, 62, bludgeoned Maddux in September 1977 in their West Philadelphia apartment after she tried to end their five-year relationship. Her remains were found 18 months later.

Einhorn said Maddux went to the store and never returned, and he claimed to have knowledge about so-called psychic warfare and mind-control experiments that he said got him in trouble with the CIA, and got him framed for the murder.

He jumped bail in 1981 and lived in Europe under assumed names for 20 years before he was caught and returned to Philadelphia.

On Thursday, James Jafolla, who lived below Einhorn and Maddux during his years as a graduate student, testified about an encounter with Maddux in which she was crying in front of their building. He asked her if she needed help and she said no, then taped an open note under the doorbell to the apartment she and Einhorn shared and left.

“It said: ‘To the woman that’s coming to visit Ira, I want you to know that he’s throwing me out of the apartment so he can spend the night with you,”‘ Jafolla testified.

Cannon has been trying to establish that Einhorn and Maddux were involved in an “open relationship” by mutual agreement, but prosecution witnesses have said that it was generally one-sided.

Also testifying on Thursday was Cindy Grady, who met Einhorn through their common interest in the paranormal and said he once asked her to help him dispose of a trunk he said contained “top-secret Russian documents on psychic warfare.”

“He said that the KGB was after him and it was very dangerous for him and for everyone,” she said. She refused and soon after severed ties with Einhorn, saying their meetings to discuss parapsychology were nothing more than opportunities for Einhorn to talk about himself.

At their final meeting in Einhorn’s apartment, sometime after Maddux’s disappearance, Grady testified that she smelled a “putrid” odor that made her cut the visit short.