“The Hunt for theUnicorn Killer”
Sunday and Monday at 9on WNBC/Ch.4
“THE Hunt for the Unicorn Killer” is no less engrossing for having been a long-running, high-profile case that was back in the news only this winter.
“Unicorn” was the “underground” nickname Ira Einhorn chose as he built himself into a hippie guru oozing with charisma that allowed some very important people in Philadelphia to overlook some very strange ideas and bestow radical-chic celebrity status on him.
In 1977, Holly Maddux, the live-in lover he’d controlled and run around on for six years, went to collect her things and begin over again with a man (Brian Kerwin as Saul Lapidus) who didn’t abuse her.
Instead, she disappeared.
It wasn’t until 18 months later that the Philly cops found her mummified remains stashed in a trunk in his apartment.
This scene on Monday night pops out in graphic contrast to a the rest of the miniseries, which is a chilling psychological profile of a masterful manipulator who is, literally, a ladykiller.
The script is a smart and thoughtful one based on Newsweek editor Steven Levy’s “The Unicorn’s Secret,” which would have been a more accurate title for the two-parter executive produced by Dan Wigutow (“Fatal Vision”).
The performances add layer upon layer of reality. Naomi Watts (“Dangerous Beauty”) is convincing as Holly, a young woman who longed to be more free-spirited than she was long after she worked up the courage to try Bryn Mawr a second time.
Tom Skerritt makes Fred Maddux a study of middle-America fatherhood at a time when mores were changing faster than the folks back in Texas could comprehend, or approve.
But the biggest star turn is Kevin Anderson’s (“Nothing Sacred”) as the self-styled “mythical beast” whose surface said love-and-peacenik but whose psyche was wrapped up in paranoia and paranormal.
Even when we are all too aware of the artificial edges of Anderson’s scruffy beard, we buy Anderson as a man who believes he is better than everyone else.
On the eve of his murder trial in 1981, Einhorn fled the country. He was tried and convicted and sentenced to life without possibility of parole in absentia, a twist that made France reluctant to extradite him after he was captured in Bordeaux in 1997.
In February, a French court finally ordered him sent home for a new trial. He is still free in France on appeal.
If all goes as expected, come another sweeps ratings period, we can look forward to a just coda to a fascinating tale.
Sadly, there will be no such neat conclusion for what’s left of Holly’s family.