I hesitate to post this from the news because it brings up a lot of very unpleasant memories...But the circumstances are uncannily similar to what happened 39 years ago to my friend and high school classmate, Holly Maddux [Warning before clicking Holly's link; the crime scene photos are gruesome]...
From the original newslink above: "Police responded to a residence on Plaza Avenue at 5 p.m. on Sunday after receiving reports of a foul odor coming from the second floor apartment. When they arrived, they found the body of 40-year-old Melanie Heuberger in a bedroom closet."Judging from the suspect's photo, he is as much a scumbag as the despicable Ira Einhorn who took the life of my friend...Every once in a while, the details of that case start to fade from my memory, and then someone like this from the bottom rungs of humanity's ladder reaches the surface, and I get to review the particulars all over again...
Following high school, I lost touch with my classmates and was unaware of Holly's fate until the late 80's when I happened to be watching John Walsh's "America's Most Wanted," and began to hear the story of my friend's murder and the escape from justice of her killer...Like many people, I tend to only remember the more pleasant memories of a deceased friend, but for the life of me, I can't recall a single derogatory facet of Holly's life...
I would never characterize us as close friends, as she was one of the more popular and well-known students at John Tyler H.S., and I was just one of the faceless nobodies seen walking the halls from class to class...And yet, as Holly walked to her nearby home after school, she occasionally caught up to me and we talked as I walked to my car...
That she even recognized my existence always shocked me since she was one of the three most beautiful girls in my high school (for the life of me, when her face is on my mind, I can never remember who the other two were), in addition to being head cheerleader and Class of '65 Salutatorian...I recall that in an age when the fashion trends dictated huge, puffed out hairstyles and lots of makeup for the H.S. girls, Holly outshone them all with her straight natural hair, and no makeup whatsoever...She was also a gifted and accomplished dancer and artist, and held a black belt in judo...
I lost contact with all my former classmates when I enlisted in the USAF, but my later reading tells me that Holly went on to Bryn Mawr College, and subsequently became involved in the women's lib movement...From there she met self proclaimed guru and Earth Day founder, Ira Einhorn (who extrapolated his surname to "The Unicorn"), and began a live-in relationship with him...
After he murdered her in 1977, with blows to the head so violent that parts of her broken skull were driven into her brain, he stuffed her broken body into a trunk, and stored it in a closet of their apartment...The coroner later determined that she was still alive when he sealed her in the luggage...After numerous complaints of the foul odor by neighbors, police discovered the grisly remains 18 months later, and arrested Einhorn...
Days before his trial was to begin in 1981, he vanished, skipping bail that his wealthy environmentalist friends had posted...He was tried in absentia in 1993, and sentenced to life in prison without parole...He was located in 1997 in France where his extradition was blocked by squeamish French authorities who feared a death penalty if he were re-tried...
In 2001 he was finally brought to justice in the city of brotherly love, Philadelphia, and sentenced again to life in prison without the possibility of parole...Perhaps his modern day counterpart, Adam Plaeger, will take his cue from Einhorn and borrow his innovative defense that the CIA murdered his girlfriend, then framed him for the butchery...
The worst thing about Einhorn's horrendous crime is not just that he took Holly's life, but that he destroyed the potential from which the world could have profited...I can only hope that the family and friends of Melanie Heuberger will have closure for their loss in less time than it has taken for those of us who cared for Holly Maddux...
The long awaited conclusion and update to this story may be found here...
More articles concerning Crime and Punishment...
I know where you are my friend, depending on no more then the day of the week I'll be reminded of my mothers rape and murder or that of my twin sisters twenty years later. It's very hard for me to watch a lot of the "hit!" movies where the heros wreak havoc over a loved one. Lawdog had a sig line that described my mother's death, she was strangled with panty hose, not sure what LD was saying but it killed me to come on line sometimes. I sent him a message and he graciously took it down. Sometimes like you it is really hard to read the news. In my case I still grieve, it's better than the first three or four years but it's never going to go away and I'll never be "better" my twin sister and my mom....no, I'll never get better.
ReplyDeleteTime has a way of taking some of the edge off, but the scar lingers on...
DeleteI was reminded of one other thing elsewhere...Not that I would participate in an unlawful international plan to cause justice to be finally imparted, but a certain strategem by unnamed conspirators to which I may or may not have been privy was rendered moot by Einhorn's extradition, and summarily curtailed...We were too damned old for that stuff anyway...
ReplyDelete