<p>Today is Earth Day, a good time to remember that the guy who claimed to have founded this &#8220;peace and love&#8221; environmental celebration was a convicted murderer.</p>
<p>Ira Einhorn was a tie-dye-wearing, long-bearded hippie &#8220;guru&#8221; in Philadelphia who originally <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42711922#.WPudZ4jytPY" target="_blank" rel="noopener">became</a> known for his environmental activism in the 1960s and &#8217;70s.</p>
<p>Today, he&#8217;s better known for killing his girlfriend and stuffing her body in a trunk.</p>
<p>A famous <a href="https://time.com/5242190/earth-day-founder/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">photo</a> shows Einhorn flashing a peace sign on stage at the first Earth Day in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970, and he later claimed that Earth Day was his idea.</p>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en">Just your annual reminder that one of the original <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/EarthDay?src=hash&amp;ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#EarthDay</a> leaders murdered and composted his girlfriend.</p>
<p>(The Left and the media—but I repeat myself—have tried to distance the festival from Ira Einhorn, but the photos and history books don&#8217;t lie.) <a href="https://t.co/PLciuHG6YW">pic.twitter.com/PLciuHG6YW</a></p>
<p>— Michael Knowles (@michaeljknowles) <a href="https://twitter.com/michaeljknowles/status/1253000708749582337?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 22, 2020</a></p></blockquote>
<p>He became popular with ecological groups during the counterculture movement of the &#8217;60s and protested the Vietnam War. He was a teacher at Temple University, but his contract was not renewed after he <a href="https://books.google.com/books?id=YEVIDQAAQBAJ&amp;q=temple#v=snippet&amp;q=temple&amp;f=false" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> he offered students &#8220;straight answers about the delights and dangers&#8221; of cannabis and LSD. Their parents were definitely thrilled.</p>
<div id="attachment_910865" style="width: 313px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-910865" class=" wp-image-910865" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1603199-229x300.jpg" alt="" width="303" height="397" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1603199-229x300.jpg 229w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1603199-439x576.jpg 439w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1603199-768x1007.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1603199.jpg 781w" sizes=" (max-width: 303px) 100vw, 303px" /><p id="caption-attachment-910865" class="wp-caption-text">Ira Einhorn (Getty Images)</p></div>
<p>He nicknamed himself &#8220;Unicorn&#8221; because his last name translates to &#8220;one horn.&#8221; Later, he became known as the &#8220;Unicorn Killer.&#8221;</p>
<p>In 1977, Einhorn&#8217;s girlfriend of five years, Holly Maddux, broke up with him and moved to New York City. In September, she returned to their Philadelphia apartment to get her belongings, which Einhorn had allegedly threatened to throw out on the street. She was never seen again.</p>
<div id="attachment_910863" style="width: 308px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-910863" class=" wp-image-910863" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1479906-225x300.jpg" alt="" width="298" height="397" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1479906-225x300.jpg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1479906-433x576.jpg 433w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-1479906.jpg 769w" sizes=" (max-width: 298px) 100vw, 298px" /><p id="caption-attachment-910863" class="wp-caption-text">Holly Maddux (Getty Images)</p></div>
<p>It was a year and a half later, when a neighbor <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42711922#.WPudZ4jytPY" target="_blank" rel="noopener">complained</a> about a reddish-brown, stinking liquid leaking from the ceiling right below Einhorn&#8217;s bedroom closet that police showed up and searched his apartment.</p>
<p>They found Maddux&#8217;s mummified, somewhat decomposed body stuffed in a trunk along with Styrofoam, air fresheners, and newspapers.</p>
<p>&#8220;It looks like we found Holly,&#8221; a cop <a href="https://archive.wikiwix.com/cache/index2.php?rev_t=20110224092300&amp;url=http%3A%2Fwww.time.com%2Ftime%2Fnation%2Farticle%2F0%2C8599%2C168382%2C00.html#federation=archive.wikiwix.com&amp;tab=url" target="_blank" rel="noopener">said</a> to Einhorn.</p>
<p>&#8220;You found what you found,&#8221; he allegedly replied.</p>
<p>When police questioned Einhorn about his girlfriend&#8217;s disappearance, he claimed that in true hippie fashion, she had gone out to the neighborhood co-op to buy some tofu and sprouts and never returned.</p>
<p>Making matters even more darkly comical, his new girlfriend <a href="https://www.anothergaze.com/cecelia-condits-body-of-becoming-women-and-the-dark-forest-of-dreams/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">reportedly</a> could not smell the body in his apartment thanks to a medication she was taking that affected her sense of smell.</p>
<p>Days before his murder trial was to begin in 1981, Einhorn fled the country and <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna42711922#.WPudZ4jytPY" target="_blank" rel="noopener">lived</a> in Europe for 20 years before he was finally extradited back to the United States.</p>
<div id="attachment_910869" style="width: 378px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-910869" class=" wp-image-910869" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-542412654-1-300x200.jpg" alt="" width="368" height="245" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-542412654-1-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-542412654-1-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-542412654-1-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/04/GettyImages-542412654-1.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 368px) 100vw, 368px" /><p id="caption-attachment-910869" class="wp-caption-text">Ira Einhorn (KLEIN STEPHANE/Sygma via Getty Images)</p></div>
<p>When the murder case began, Earth Day organizers distanced themselves from Einhorn.</p>
<p>Two organizers of Philadelphia’s first Earth Day wrote to Time Magazine to complain about the idea that Einhorn had come up with the event, saying he was not even a member of the committee that organized it.</p>
<p>&#8220;The photo you ran was taken during a one-hour period when Einhorn literally occupied the podium, refusing to get off the stage and delaying Senator Edmund Muskie’s keynote speech,&#8221; the organizers <a href="https://time.com/vault/issue/1997-11-03/page/20/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">told</a> Time. &#8220;It was an unsuccessful attempt — at least at that time — to seize 15 minutes of fame. Now a notorious murder, flight, trial in absentia and foreign capture are giving Einhorn the national media attention he so desperately craved.&#8221;</p>
<p>Einhorn was eventually extradited from France and took the stand in his own defense, <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20100831230541/http://dir.salon.com/story/news/feature/2002/10/18/einhorn/index.html" target="_blank" rel="noopener">claiming</a> his girlfriend had been murdered by CIA agents who framed him — we&#8217;re dealing with an extremely stable hippie here, folks.</p>
<p>He was convicted in 2002 and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He died in prison in April 2020 at age 79.</p>
<p>Happy Earth Day!</p>

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Guy Who Claimed To Invent Earth Day Was A Hippie Who Murdered His Girlfriend