By Michael M. Bowden
Staff writer
At-A-Glance
Size of Verdict: $907 million
$752 million in punitive damages
$155 million in compensatory damages
Status: Collection procedure commencing.
State: Pennsylvania
Date of Verdict: July 27, 1999
Length of Trial: 2 days.
Length of Deliberations: 1 hour.
Case Name: Theodore H. Swan, Jr., as Administrator of the Estate of Helen Maddux, et al. v. Ira Einhorn
Court: Court of Common Pleas, Philadelphia County, Penn.
Plaintiffs' Lawyer: James Beasley of The Beasley Firm in Philadelphia (17 lawyers)
Defense Lawyers: None
When a Philadelphia jury awarded $907 million to the family of a girl killed two decades ago by onetime hippie guru Ira Einhorn, it was a grand symbolic gesture – an almost perfect ending to the TV-movie saga that had helped make the case famous.
But will the family ever see the money?
Probably not. The verdict wasn't meant to be directly collectible. Its real purpose is to prevent Einhorn – a notorious publicity hound now living as a fugitive in the south of France – from making any money off the murder by selling the book or film rights to his story.
The jury's message to Einhorn was, "If you do [sell the story], you'll be wasting your time, because you'll never make a nickel out of it," says Philadelphia lawyer James Beasley, who provided free representation to the family of victim Helen "Holly" Maddux.
The civil trial also provided the Maddux family with some degree of closure.
"Families do not have a say in criminal matters, and this is one way they can have their voice heard by a jury," Beasley explains.
Einhorn was charged with the Maddux murder in 1979. His lawyer, Arlen Specter – now a United States senator – got him out on bail and Einhorn disappeared just days before his trial was set to begin in 1981. He was convicted in absentia in 1993, and sentenced to life in prison. In 1997, police discovered Einhorn's French hideaway, but to date the U.S. has been unable to effect extradition.
While U.S. and French authorities worked to settle their diplomatic differences, Beasley brought his civil action to trial in July. Einhorn was properly served in the case, but chose to ignore it.
So Beasley proceeded alone, addressing a jury of five men and one woman.
Because Einhorn provided no defense, the court deemed him automatically liable. The only outstanding issue was damages.
'You Found What You Found'
Beasley began the two-day trial by telling the jury, "We want to show you the suffering and pain for punitive damages. You must know what Holly went through."
Through witnesses and statements read into evidence – including portions of the transcript from Einhorn's 1993 criminal trial – Beasley set the murder's grisly scene.
According to testimony, Maddux and Einhorn first met in 1972 and soon became a couple. Theirs was a classic abusive relationship: Einhorn would fly into rages and beat Maddux brutally, then apologize. Maddux would flee from him over and over, only to return again. They were on the verge of yet another reconciliation the day Einhorn went too far, bludgeoning her to death with an unknown object.
Much of the crime's horror, however, lay in its aftermath: Einhorn locked Maddux's body in a steamer trunk, locked the trunk in a closet of his apartment, and left it there for 18 months. Neighbors complained about the stench emanating from Einhorn's apartment, and the foul brown liquid seeping through his floor to the ceiling of the apartment below.
During much of this time, Einhorn continued living in the apartment.
"Within 10 feet of his bed lay the coffin of Holly Maddux," Beasley told the jury at trial. "What type of individual could conceivably spend 18 months within 10 feet of a corpse that he put in a trunk?"
At that time, however, the authorities had no reason to presume that Holly Maddux was dead – she was just another missing person case. No immediate suspicion fell on Einhorn, who was well connected and something of a local celebrity in Philly. Indeed, in the months following the murder, he passed a peaceful semester as a fellow at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government. But his hostility toward private investigators hired by the Maddux family to locate Holly eventually drew police suspicion, and his apartment was searched.
Beasley had the steamer trunk hauled into the middle of the courtroom as he called Detective Michael Chitwood to detail the body's discovery. A reporter covering the trial for the Philadelphia Inquirer observed that jurors "couldn't seem to take their eyes off what had served as Maddux's coffin," and noted the distinct, sickening "death-smell" that wafted through the courtroom when the box was opened.
Chitwood testified that when he first forced the box open, "I saw a hand. It was mummified. I saw a blue flannel shirt. I went down to the elbow, then I stopped searching."
Chitwood turned to Einhorn and said, "Looks like we found Holly."
Einhorn replied, "You found what you found."
Building Up Damages
Beasley presented economic testimony that Maddux, a straight-A high school student in Tyler, Texas, and a Bryn Mawr College graduate, would have earned more than $4 million in her lifetime.
But he told the jury their verdict should be considerably more than that, "so large that if [Einhorn] ever tries to benefit, he'll never get a penny of it."
Beasley gave Einhorn a voice at trial by playing television reports about the case in which Einhorn protested his innocence. (The case had appeared on NBC's Unsolved Mysteries and Dateline; ABC's 20/20; and a number of other shows. A popular book about the case, The Unicorn's Secret, was published in 1990, then serialized as a two-part television movie, The Hunt for the Unicorn Killer, in May 1999. "Unicorn" was one of Einhorn's self-bestowed nicknames.)
Using more testimony and statements, Beasley recreated Einhorn's fugitive years, and his battle to avoid extradition to the U.S.
After fleeing the U.S., Einhorn lived a transient but comfortable life around Europe, hobnobbing with world-renowned scientists and even rock stars like Peter Gabriel. How he supported himself is unclear, but many past acquaintances have noted Einhorn's facility for living well with no visible means of support.
In the early '90s, Einhorn settled in the picturesque village of Champagne-Mouton, near Bordeaux, France, with his new, wealthy Swedish wife Annika. But when Annika applied for a driver's license in 1997, Interpol tracked down the couple and threw Einhorn in jail.
A team of top-notch international legal advisors (including Ted Simon, who represented Michael Fay, the American teenager sentenced to caning in Singapore in 1994) won his release six months later. In the interim, French public opinion had transformed Einhorn into a human-rights poster boy, victimized by the "barbaric" U.S. legal system.
Some French politicians and international activists protested Einhorn's in absentia conviction, and demanded that the U.S. give fair hearing to his contention that the murder was a CIA set-up, aimed at silencing a popular voice of the counterculture.
The resulting political fervor stymied the extradition process. France insisted that Einhorn be guaranteed a new trial without the possibility of a death penalty, and the U.S. finally agreed to these conditions. On May 27, 1999, France's supreme court ruled that Einhorn could be returned to the U.S. to stand trial. Now the order must be signed by the French Prime Minister, who still hasn't gotten around to it. Until he does, Einhorn will remain at liberty.
That was all the jury needed to hear. It awarded $155 million in compensatory damages to Maddux's estate and family members, plus $752 million in punitives.
"The jury was angry about the way Einhorn thumbed his nose at justice," Beasley says when asked about the verdict's extraordinary size. "And they wanted to make absolutely sure he would not profit from this. I told the jury, 'He's in France, sipping wine and enjoying himself. Holly Maddux is here, waiting for justice. And it's your responsibility to see that she doesn't wait any longer.'"
Family members conceded they would probably never see the money, but took comfort in the fact that Einhorn never would either. With the civil verdict in hand, Beasley can financially cripple him.
"Holly Maddux will follow him for the rest of his life," Beasley says.
What Happens Next
Beasley has written formal letters to Einhorn, informing him that he must begin making payments on the judgment. He plans to register the judgment in France – and wherever else Einhorn may go in the future – so he can attach any earnings or property Einhorn may accrue.
"The judgment is probably a billion dollars now, with interest," Beasley notes.
Although Einhorn has not responded, he recently provided a glimpse of his reaction to the verdict. Having shunned the media since being ambush-interviewed by Connie Chung in 1997, Einhorn finally agreed last summer, after months of negotiations, to speak to a reporter for Esquire. In the resulting profile, which appears in the magazine's December issue, Einhorn comes across as a likeable, patrician bon vivant, but with dark tendencies toward domineering, defensive and manipulative behavior.
He steadfastly maintains his innocence, but his alternative explanation – delivered with deadpan seriousness – is straight out of The X Files. Einhorn says a faction of the CIA committed the murder to frame him, so that he would not expose a U.S. government conspiracy to cover up evidence of extraterrestrial life.
"This story is the defense that Ira might have offered at trial had he been there," notes Esquire reporter Russ Baker. "It is impossible to tell whether he has actually brought himself to believe it."
The civil verdict came down during Baker's visit with Einhorn and, although the fugitive initially avoided the subject, it slipped into his conversation during an evening of drinking and revelry.
"Ira thinks it's the funniest thing he's ever heard," Baker recounts. "Great material for after dinner mischief. 'I guess I'll call Mom and ask her to lend me a billion,' he says, laughing. Then, in French, he pronounces it crazy: C'est fou."
Next Einhorn proposes a toast: "To a billion dollars!" he says. "He shows all of his teeth and wails with laughter, a great, heartfelt fuck-you belly laugh. … Ira is across the table in his own world, enraptured with the funniest joke he has ever heard."
Einhorn's wild laughter continues for an uncomfortable length of time, long after the others at the table have fallen silent.
"Over on the wall, above the mantel, the antique clock ticks," Baker concludes. "Very soon, Ira Einhorn will be going home."
Or maybe not.
"I don't think he'll ever get back here," Beasley says. "I think they'll extradite him, but I believe he'll have enough lead time to flee to another location. His track record shows he's able to do that. And what would he gain by coming back here? He would most certainly go to jail, there's no question about that."
© Copyright 2008 Lawyers USA. All Rights Reserved.
