Unless you’ve been living underneath a rock, you know that today is Earth Day. Insufferable liberals have made sure that we get inundated with preachy environmental messages each year about how we should turn all our lights off for Earth Day, or start composting garbage, or rid the planet of SUVs… many of which are completely worthless wastes of time. Now, in addition to all that nonsense, we have to see it online, too. Facebook prompts us to tell people how we’re “celebrating”; Google has a very special Doodle for the day. But you know what never gets mentioned? The fact that the founder of Earth Day, Ira Einhorn, murdered his girlfriend and then composted her.

When his girlfriend of five years, Helen “Holly” Maddux, moved to New York and broke up with him, Einhorn threatened that he would throw her left-behind personal belongings onto the street if she didn’t come back to pick them up.

And so on Sept. 9, 1977, Maddux went back to the apartment that she and Einhorn had shared in Philadelphia to collect her things, and was never seen again. When Philadelphia police questioned Einhorn about her mysterious disappearance several weeks later, he claimed that she had gone out to the neighborhood co-op to buy some tofu and sprouts and never returned.

It wasn’t until 18 months later that investigators searched Einhorn’s apartment after one of his neighbors complained that a reddish-brown, foul-smelling liquid was leaking from the ceiling directly below Einhorn’s bedroom closet. Inside 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.

After his arrest, Einhorn jumped bail and spent decades evading authorities by hiding out in Ireland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and France. After 23 years, he was finally extradited to the United States from France and put on trial. 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. He was convicted of murdering Maddux and is currently serving a life sentence.

Liberals now try to claim that he wasn’t actually the founder; he was just the emcee. (Which makes it better?) Einhorn himself says otherwise, though, steadfastly claiming that it was his idea, and that he launched it. He was also active in environmental groups in the 60s and 70s, cheered on the Viet Cong during the Vietnam War, and was a proud anti-establishment, counter-cultural activist. That Earth Day was chosen to be held on Vladimir Lenin’s birthday, then, is not altogether surprising. Einhorn’s flee from justice was aided by Arlen Specter, the senator who spent most of his life as a Democrat. Liberals defended him at his bail hearing, and one of his wealthy supporters put up the money to get him his freedom. Einhorn then spent his time in Europe doing everything he can to rub his freedom in the faces of American authorities, appearing on television frequently. One of the liberals who supported him was interviewed about the murder, and blithely stated, “Maybe she deserved it.”

So is it really that hard to believe that the liberal environmental lobby would try to rewrite history now? They aren’t just hiding that a man they worshipped years ago is actually a monster; they have to hide that they were complicit in letting the monster walk free.