The Unicorn Killer’s trunk with body. Seized by the Philadelphia police.
Privileged Killers is my forthcoming true-crime book, and I’ll be periodically posting about it here in my blog, slang for web log. Like a ship captain’s log, it’ll inform you of how I’m navigating the stormy seas of publication.
My seventh book, Privileged Killers, tells the story about what happened when parts of my criminology class syllabus came shockingly alive, not unlike the monsters that come to life in the labs of Hollywood scientists.
One by one, four different monsters charmed Lady Justice when she peeked under her blindfold and noticed they were white, male, and either rich or supersmart. She let ’em off easy.
I knew Ira Einhorn – Philly’s brilliant and celebrated knight of nonviolence – well before he killed his girlfriend and kept her mummified body in a trunk in his apartment.
It was a year and a half before the police found her remains. The killer – a big talker who’d befriended the rich, the famous, and the powerful (people from Hollywood, academia, and the business world) – was dubbed the Unicorn Killer when arrested. He won his freedom at his bail hearing and then fled to Europe, eluding authorities for over 20 years.
Einhorn and his ex GF whom he killed and mummified.
The Paper Bag Killer, who attacked and killed San Franciscans in broad daylight —from 1972 till he was caught in 1974— was the son of friends of my family. The Psycho-ologist worked beside me for several years as an academic colleague. One day he brutally strangled and stabbed his wife 13 times, leaving her for dead.
All these white males were rich and brilliant…and Lady justice essentially let them walk.
Nothing, though, tested my liberal ideology and my survival more than an old boyfriend of my wife, who unbeknownst to her, hog-tied and shot his employer and nearly killed a co-worker.
This Executioner was safely locked up in prison in another state, but Lady Justice paroled him after just 7 years. He decided he still loved my wife. He attacked her, then assaulted me. I battled parole officers and peace officers, insisting they reign him in. When he kept coming after my wife and me, we defended ourselves as best we could.
The Unicorn’s mug shot after a 20 yrs flight from justice.
Privileged Killers details my interactions with these cold-hearted killers. It also chronicles the death of my idealism.
At the start of my professorial career, I believed in the teachings of my longtime friend Joan Baez and the Bible—unlock the prisons and set “the oppressed” free. Also, I endeavored to disarm the police, just like the Bobbies and other police forces in Europe.
This is a true-crime tale and an expose’ of failings in the criminal justice system. It also shows how the failings changed me as a criminologist.
It didn’t help that I also bumped into several nonviolent psychopaths in my life. Perhaps you have too. In which case, Privileged Killers should help you deal with ’em. And break free of ’em!
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