It's a beautiful fall morning and I am visiting Einhorn at Houtzdale State Correctional Institution, in mountainous Clearfield County
"How was your trip?" he asks.
"Beautiful," I tell him.
It feels utterly surreal to be making small talk with Einhorn, who says that he hasn't given a press interview since his conviction.
He once held Philadelphia's rapt attention. A counterculture icon of the'60s and '70s, he was a hippie guru to the rich, famous and influential, mesmerizing them with messages of peace, love, intellectual enlightenment and global connectivity.
But awe turned to loathing in 1981 when Einhorn, on the eve of his trial for Maddux's murder, went on the lam for 16 years in Europe, becoming our most high-profile fugitive.
He was arrested in 1997 in France, where he was known as "Eugene Mallon." He lived in a picturesque village with a Swedish wife who bore an unsettling resemblance to Maddux.
But French authorities blocked his extradition to the United States, arguing that Einhorn had not gotten a fair trial (he'd been tried and convicted in absentia here), deserved a new one and should not be executed if found guilty.
The French finally sent Einhorn back to Philly in 2001. He was convicted in 2002, given a life sentence and sent to Houtzdale, where he's dwelled ever since.
I'd mostly forgotten about him, until his letter landed on my desk some months ago. He wanted to talk about the flawed U.S. justice system, he wrote.
So we arranged to meet. Not because I doubted Einhorn's guilt. He killed Maddux, and the bastard is where he deserves to be. But I wanted to see what had become of the man whose brazen flight from justice had once so incensed Philadelphians, they'd participated in an annual contest to throw tomatoes at a poster bearing his image.
