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Court reads diary Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
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Posted on Wed, Oct. 16, 2002
Tearful Einhorn reads his work
Prosecutors sought to paint his diary entries about love and death as the words of a killer.
By JACQUELINE SOTEROPOULOS
Philadelphia Inquirer
Reading a diary passage that described his ex-girlfriend Holly Maddux as an angel who lingered in his mind, Ira Einhorn wiped his eyes Tuesday as prosecutors used his own words to build their murder case against him.
Einhorn read the jury various diary entries - penned 25 to 40 years ago - that described his passions, his rejections, and the "red rage" of violence he felt when spurned by lovers.
From the witness stand, Einhorn called his writings "literature."
And as the crush of courtroom spectators rumbled with disbelief, he wiped his eyes when his attorney asked him to read a diary entry from Oct. 5, 1977 - about four weeks after Einhorn says Maddux disappeared, and four weeks after prosecutors contend he beat her to death and stuffed her body in a steamer trunk.
"Holly and Ira fifth anniversary - what a way to celebrate," Einhorn, 62, read before exhaling loudly and shaking his head slowly.
Looking up from a thick, yellowed journal, Einhorn rapidly blinked his eyes.
"Talk about Holly eases the pain... . An angel lingers in my mind," Einhorn read aloud, wiping his eyes.
Assistant District Attorney Joel Rosen later told reporters: "I saw him rubbing his eyes and sniffing like he was crying. It was a total act. It was totally phony."
Maddux's sister Meg Wakeman told reporters: "I was a little astonished that he would stoop so very, very low... . It was revolting."
'Emotions got to him'
But defense attorney William Cannon told reporters: "It seemed to me this afternoon that the emotions of the moment got to him... . It looked to me as though he had tears formed in his eyes.
"I think the jury may think his emotional breakdown was sincere," Cannon said, adding that he believed his client's daylong testimony was strong.
Einhorn's emotional moment, like most of his 41/2 hours on the witness stand yesterday, focused on the counterculture leader's daily journals.
In thick, bound volumes, Einhorn filled pages upon pages with his tiny-print handwriting of personal musings, graphic sexual details, and stream-of-consciousness accounts of his activities.
When asked to read portions aloud, Einhorn said he would happily do it and spoke dramatically. He objected when Rosen began reading portions to the jury with improper inflections.
"This is my journal!" Einhorn exclaimed.
"But it's his cross-examination, Mr. Einhorn," Common Pleas Court Judge William J. Mazzola said.
Maddux vanished on Sept. 11, 1977. Einhorn said she left their apartment to make a phone call. Her family and friends never saw or heard from her again.
In the weeks leading up to that date, Einhorn frequently wrote of deep frustration, rejection, hurt and jealousy sparked by Maddux's new love affair with a man she met on New York's Fire Island.
Maddux had planned a long sailing trip with her new beau, and she was moving out of the Powelton Village apartment she shared with Einhorn for nearly five years.
"Twelve days on a boat is crazy - a honeymoon with another lover," Einhorn wrote on Sept. 7, 1977.
"Were thoughts of violence going through your head?" Rosen asked.
"It is possible, yes," Einhorn responded.
Who were those thoughts of violence against? Rosen asked.
"Myself, probably as much as anyone else," Einhorn responded.
The defendant denied that he entertained thoughts of choking Maddux or beating her with a Coke bottle - as he had done years earlier with another lover, Judith Sabot.
He also said that although Maddux was moving out, he was not upset because the two planned to remain lovers.
Rosen reviewed journal entries from the 1960s, when two of Einhorn's love affairs ended with violence.
"To kill what you love when you can't have it seems so natural that strangling Rita last night seemed so right," Einhorn wrote on July 31, 1962. Rosen printed those words on a giant board behind Einhorn, for the jury to study.
Wavers on choking
But on the witness stand, Einhorn wavered when asked if he had choked his former girlfriend, Rita Resnick. Instead, he described "intense" sexual encounters with the Bennington College student, where he said the dancer scratched him until he bled.
"There may have been some strangling in the sexual play," Einhorn told the jury.
When Rosen suggested that Einhorn's words "kill what you love when you can't have it" should be taken literally, Einhorn became exasperated.
"It was a metaphorical expression for the battle we were in... . It was part of the crazy situation we were living out," Einhorn lectured.
Four years later, Einhorn wrote about the end of his relationship with Sabot.
"Once again, I feel completely paralyzed," Einhorn wrote on March 14, 1966. "Violence creeps over my body as I reach towards the destruction of Judy... . We must come together or die."
Three days later, after he smashed her head with a Coke bottle and choked her, Einhorn wrote: "Violence always marks the end of a relationship."
Rosen wrote that in large letters on the display board as well, once again irritating Einhorn with a literal interpretation of the words.
"This is literature. It's metaphorical. I was thinking of destroying the part of her that resided in me," Einhorn said of his diary entries.
But he acknowledged that he was "angry" and "frustrated" with Sabot and admitted he struck her with the bottle.
Trying to crack Einhorn's credibility, Rosen played a video of a televised Connie Chung interview with Einhorn after his 1997 arrest in France, after 16 years on the run.
In that interview, Einhorn steadfastly denied beating a former lover with a Coke bottle and choking her.
Einhorn told the jury yesterday he did not then remember the beating, and was not sure who Chung was speaking about.
Rosen also consistently tried to trip up Einhorn - about dates on which he bought the steamer trunk and locks; when he inquired with friends after Maddux went missing; and what he previously told reporters about the stench in his apartment building around the time Maddux vanished.
"You're not making this up as you go along, are you Mr. Einhorn?" Rosen asked after Einhorn stumbled several times.
"No, I'm not making this up as I go along," Einhorn replied testily. "You're talking so fast, I'm a little confused."
At the end of the day, psychiatrist Donald Nathanson testified as a final witness for the prosecution to rebut Einhorn's claims that he was a leader of the first Earth Day and was the official announcer for the 1970 festivities in Fairmount Park.
"He got on the stage, commandeered it, and stayed on for a considerable period of time," Nathanson told the jury. "He was just talking to the crowd... . He didn't have a theme - it wasn't very coherent."
Today, the jury of six women and six men is expected to begin deliberations after closing arguments conclude in the morning. If convicted of first-degree murder, Einhorn faces life in prison.
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Contact Jacqueline Soteropoulos at 215-854-4497 or jsoteropoulos@phillynews.com
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