Fugitive hippie Ira Einhorn yesterday lost his bid to avoid extradition from France to face U.S. charges of murdering his girlfriend 24 years ago.
Einhorn, 61, was escorted by gendarmes from his home in Champagne-Mouton and was expected to be flown to Philadelphia today.
Earlier yesterday, the European Court of Human Rights dropped its bid to spare Einhorn, saying it was satisfied with assurances that he wouldn’t face the death penalty for allegedly bludgeoning his girlfriend to death in 1977.
Holly Maddux’s body was found stuffed in a trunk in the Philadelphia apartment she and Einhorn shared.
Einhorn, known as “The Unicorn,” fled the United States in 1981 to avoid prosecution and was convicted in absentia of murder.
He will be tried again in Philadelphia as a result of a special law passed in Pennsylvania in 1998.
Einhorn, a former counterculture guru and radical leftist, slashed his throat with a kitchen knife last week to protest the efforts to extradite him.
Einhorn, who fought extradition for four years, has insisted CIA agents framed him because of his political views.
“I will be happy to go to the U.S. if the court gives me a new trial,” he told reporters yesterday.