90 Miles From Tyranny

Sunday, April 22, 2018

FLASHBACK: Earth Day Co-Founder Killed, Composted His Girlfriend

Here’s an inconvenient truth about a self-described co-founder of Earth Day: he murdered and composted his girlfriend.

Environmental activist and self-proclaimed Earth Day co-founder Ira Einhorn had a dark side. Einhorn was found guilty of murdering his ex-girlfriend and stuffing her “composted” body inside a trunk, NBC News reported in 2011.

After five years of being together, Helen Maddux broke up with Einhorn. Enraged, he threatened to throw Maddux’s belongings onto the street if she didn’t come by to get them. She went to Einhorn’s apartment to retrieve them on Sept. 9, 1977, but was never seen again.

Maddux went missing after going out to the neighborhood co-op to buy tofu and sprouts, Einhorn told police several weeks later. However, 18 months later, authorities searched his apartment after neighbors complained that a “reddish-brown, foul-smelling liquid was leaking from the ceiling directly below Einhorn’s bedroom closet,” NBC News reported.

In the closet, police found Maddux’s “beaten and partially mummified body stuffed into a trunk that had also been packed with Styrofoam, air fresheners and newspapers,” according to NBC News.

Einhorn jumped bail and spent 23 years evading authorities and hiding out all over Europe. Finally, he was caught and extradited to the U.S. from France, where he was put on trial and convicted of murder. He is currently serving a life sentence.

“Taking the stand in his own defense, Einhorn claimed that his ex-girlfriend had been killed by CIA agents who framed him for the crime because he knew too much about the agency’s paranormal military research.” NBC News reported.

Earth Day was created in the spring of 1970 to raise awareness of and take action on the pressing environmental issues of the time. Einhorn was master of ceremonies at the first Earth Day celebration at Fairmount Park in Philadelphia on April 22, 1970. The holiday was Einhorn’s idea and he was responsible for...

13 WORST PREDICTIONS FROM EARTH DAY 1970!

The 1970s were a lousy decade. Embarrassing movies, dreadful music and downright terrifying clothes reflected the national mood following an unpopular war, endless political scandals and a faltering economy.

Popular culture was consumed with decline, especially Hollywood. The Omega Man, Soylent Green, Damnation Alley and countless other dystopian films showed a planet wrecked by war, pollution and neglect. In large part, the entertainment industry was reflecting the culture at large.

In 1970, the first Earth Day was celebrated — okay, “celebrated” doesn’t capture the funereal tone of the event. The events (organized in part by then hippie and now convicted murderer Ira Einhorn) predicted death, destruction and disease unless we did exactly as progressives commanded.

Behold the coming apocalypse as predicted on and around Earth Day, 1970:

"Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind." — Harvard biologist George Wald

"We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation." — Washington University biologist Barry Commoner

"Man must stop pollution and conserve his resources, not merely to enhance existence but to save the race from intolerable deterioration and possible extinction." — New York Times editorial

"Population will inevitably and completely outstrip whatever small increases in food supplies we make. The death rate will increase until at least 100-200 million people per year will be starving to death during the next ten years." — Stanford University biologist Paul Ehrlich

"Most of the people who are going to die in the greatest cataclysm in the history of man have already been born… [By 1975] some experts feel that food shortages will have escalated the present level of world hunger and starvation into famines of unbelievable proportions. Other experts, more optimistic, think the ultimate food-population collision will not occur until the decade of the 1980s." — Paul Ehrlich

"It is already too late to avoid mass starvation," — Denis Hayes, Chief organizer for Earth Day

"Demographers agree almost unanimously on the following grim timetable: by 1975 widespread famines will begin in India; these will spread by 1990 to include all of India, Pakistan, China and the Near East, Africa.

By the year 2000, or conceivably sooner, South and Central America will exist under famine conditions….

By the year 2000, thirty years from now, the entire world, with the exception of Western Europe, North America, and Australia, will be in famine." — North Texas State University professor Peter Gunter

"In a decade, urban dwellers will have to wear gas masks to survive air pollution… by 1985 air pollution will have reduced the amount of sunlight reaching earth by one half." — Life magazine

"At the present rate of nitrogen buildup, it's only a matter of time before light will be filtered out of the atmosphere and none of our land will be usable." — Ecologist Kenneth Watt

"Air pollution...is certainly going to take hundreds of thousands of lives in the next few years alone." — Paul Ehrlich

"By the year 2000, if present trends continue, we will be using up crude oil at such a rate… that there won't be any more crude oil. You'll drive up to the pump and say, ‘Fill 'er up, buddy,' and he'll say, ‘I am very sorry, there isn't any.'" — Ecologist Kenneth Watt

"[One] theory assumes that the earth's cloud cover will continue to thicken as more dust, fumes, and water vapor are belched into the atmosphere by industrial smokestacks and jet planes. Screened from the sun's heat, the planet will cool, the water vapor will fall and freeze, and a new Ice Age will be born." — Newsweek magazine

"The world has been chilling sharply for about twenty years. If present trends continue, the world will be about four degrees colder for the global mean temperature in 1990, but eleven degrees colder in the year 2000. This is about twice what it would take to put us into an ice age." — Kenneth Watt

Every so often there comes a long a dramatic case of the strange that is hard to classify. In such cases it is difficult to ascertain if we are dealing with a mystery monster, aliens, ghosts, or something else entirely. Such is the case of a strange visitor that made its way to a rural community in the state of Illinois, in the United States, and proceeded to leave a trail of bafflement and mystery in its wake. Stalking through the nighttime woods, the enigmatic apparition which would hold a whole community in the grip of terror is a prime example of either a bizarre cryptid which we may never understand, or the profound effect of myth, legend, and hysteria on the human psyche.

The southern part of Illinois was already long steeped in the bizarre well before the mysterious intruder came to terrorize the area. Native Americans and early settlers often told of experiencing a wide range of strange phenomena here, including seeing strange orbs of light, shadowy phantoms or frightening entities stalking the forests, and hearing bizarre howls, shrieks, or screams in the night. The Natives tribes of the area believed this land to be a cursed place prowled by evil spirits, and the region gained the intimidating nickname the Devil’s Kitchen. It was a place that has long been permeated with paranormal phenomena, and both settlers and Native Americans mostly avoided it. It was to this mysterious cursed land of specters, phantoms, and high strangeness that a sinister entity would emerge to maraud across a small town and earn its place among the most bizarre mystery monsters of cryptozoological lore.

What would go on to be called the Enfield Horror first made its appearance in the small community of Enfield, Illinois, located in the southeastern corner of the state. On the evening of April 25, 1973, 10-year old Greg Garrett was out playing in the backyard of his rural home as his parents watched TV inside. The boy’s parents were startled when their son purportedly suddenly burst in through the back door, crying hysterically and with a terrifying story to tell. Greg claimed that as he had been playing out in the yard, a hideous, misshapen beast had emerged from the darkness to attack him. According to the boy, the creature was an otherworldly abomination around 5 feet tall, with three legs, short stumpy arms tipped with taloned hands, gray skin covered with slime, and disproportionately large, red eyes. The malicious beast had then stepped forward and actually stomped on the boy’s feet, ripping his shoes with its claws in the process, before he had retreated to his house in terror. Police who arrived at the scene could find no trace of the entity the boy had described.

A mere half an hour later, the creature would make another appearance, this time in the yard of the Garrett’s neighbor, a Henry McDaniel. It started when McDaniel’s children claimed to hear something scratching at the outside of the house, and when he went to investigate he too heard the odd scratching noises. McDaniel at first thought it must have been some sort of animal, perhaps a stray dog or cat, and he went out to confront whatever it was. When he opened the door, what he saw was no dog. There looming over the front porch was a bizarre monstrosity which would prove to exactly match the description of what little Greg Garrett had seen just half an hour before. McDaniel would later describe it to authorities thus:

It had three legs on it, a short body, two little short arms coming out of its breast area and two pink eyes as big as flashlights. It stood four and a half feet tall and was grayish-colored… it was trying to get into the house!

Fearing for his life, McDaniel slammed the door shut and rushed off to retrieve a pistol he kept in the house for home defense. When he went back to open the door, the monster was still there scratching away, and reportedly hissed at the man “like a wildcat.” McDaniel then frantically fired several shots at the beast, hitting it dead on, after which it...