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Tuesday, June 17, 1997

  Click here to meet investigator Rich DiBenedetto of the DA's office who relied on hunches and his wits in a 16-year search.

French gendarmes arrested Einhorn, 57, on Friday in a converted windmill where he was living in the village of Champagne-Mouton, about 240 miles southwest of Paris. Einhorn was in bed at the time and put up no resistance, authorities said.

``I can say I feel a tremendous source of gratification and relief, and I will be very pleased to see Mr. Einhorn come . . . for formal sentencing in the not-too-distant future,'' Philadelphia District Attorney Lynne M. Abraham said at a Center City news conference.

Officials said they would move quickly for Einhorn's extradition to Philadelphia, where he was tried in absentia in 1993, convicted of first-degree murder in the death of Helen ``Holly'' Maddux, and sentenced to life in prison.

The French treaty with the United States provides for extradition of fugitives within 40 days, said Bob C. Reutter, head of the Philadelphia office of the FBI. A contested extradition, however, could take more than a year, he said.

Einhorn's longtime attorney, Norris E. Gelman, said yesterday that his client would fight extradition. Gelman and co-counsel Theodore Simon, who specializes in international law, said there was precedent for the French to deny extradition when a defendant was convicted in absentia.

At the very least, Gelman said, he will push for the French not to release Einhorn to U.S. authorities without the promise of a new trial in Philadelphia.

Einhorn, who officials said had been living in France since December 1992 under the alias Eugene Mallon, was transferred yesterday from a lockup near his home to a larger prison near the city of Bordeaux.

Einhorn, who grew up in Mount Airy and attended Central High and the University of Pennsylvania, was a colorful, brilliant eccentric-around-town during the 1960s and 1970s -- a self-proclaimed ``planetary enzyme'' and ``advance man'' for the counterculture with a ready quote on LSD, ESP, politics and any number of other subjects.

In September 1977, Maddux, 27, a Bryn Mawr College graduate from Tyler, Texas, was reported missing from the couple's home in the city's Powelton section. Einhorn denied any knowledge of her whereabouts or any role in her disappearance.

Yet as time went by, police suspicions focused on Einhorn, particularly when neighbors complained of a foul order emanating from the apartment. During a search on March 28, 1979, detectives found Maddux's mummified remains in a steamer trunk in a closet, along with her suitcase and other belongings. Investigators found a Sept. 15, 1977, copy of the Philadelphia Bulletin stuffed in the trunk with the body.

Einhorn was arrested, then released on $40,000 bail after prominent civic leaders, professors and lawyers came to a bail hearing to vouch for his character. In 1981, a month before he was to stand trial, Einhorn disappeared.

``I was sickened when he got bail, because we knew he was going to take off,'' Michael Chitwood, a former Philadelphia detective who was lead investigator on the case, said yesterday.

Einhorn was later sighted in Ireland, Sweden and Denmark, but a combination of international legal problems and luck allowed him to elude his pursuers, most recently in 1988, when an apparent tip allowed him to flee Sweden ahead of the law.

The trail remained cold until earlier this year, when two key investigators -- Rich DiBenedetto of the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office and FBI agent Michael Carbonell -- decided to take a fresh look at Annika Flodin, a Swedish woman with whom Einhorn had been living in Stockholm.
Investigators discovered that in 1994, Flodin had applied for a French driver's license. French authorities had asked Swedish officials to confirm that Flodin, who by then had adopted the surname Mallon, held a valid Swedish license.

Swedish officials, responding to the French inquiry, said Annika Mallon listed a French address -- Le Moulin de Guitry, in Champagne-Mouton, a town of about 1,000 in the province of Charente, a farming region.

A spokesman for the Champagne-Mouton police said yesterday that U.S. authorities notified the French of the fugitive warrant for Einhorn and arranged to have Einhorn's dossier shipped to the French by Interpol, the international law enforcement agency. About three weeks ago, he said, police began watching the comings and goings of the couple, who lived in the converted windmill with the red-tile roof.

The French police spokesman said Einhorn, who listed his profession as writer, seemed to be keeping a low profile. He was not seen around Champagne-Mouton, except for an occasional visit to a tobacco shop where he bought cigarettes. He and Flodin drove a red Fiat that was about five years old.

Jack Jouaron, the mayor of Champagne-Mouton, said yesterday that Einhorn grew his own vegetables. ``We almost never saw him, because it was his wife who did the shopping in the village,'' he said.

While under surveillance, French police reported, Einhorn was ``very cautious, almost wary, and suspicious,'' said Reutter, the FBI official.

At 7:30 a.m. Friday, French time, 12 gendarmes and three French judicial police officers surrounded the 100-year-old, single-story, seven-room stone house.

Einhorn was in bed. His grayish-blond hair was cut short, and he wore a goatee instead of the bristling full beard he sported in Philadelphia.
Gelman, Einhorn's lawyer, said he learned of the arrest Sunday morning, when he got a call from Flodin, whom he identified as Einhorn's wife.

``She was devastated, just devastated,'' Gelman said.

Gelman said he got a second call from Flodin yesterday. ``She wants to fight it; she's committed to contesting Ira's extradition,'' he said.

Einhorn's arrest promises a legal debate over international treaties and U.S. and French criminal law. Although the Pennsylvania Supreme Court let stand Einhorn's trial and conviction in absentia, Gelman said there was no guarantee that the French would look favorably on that ruling.

Simon, the Center City lawyer who represented Michael Fay, the Ohio teenager whose caning in Singapore for vandalism became an international cause celebre, said the French had refused extradition in similar cases unless the defendant was guaranteed a new trial.

``Something you forget . . . whatever our Constitution permits or doesn't permit is not controlling upon what the French authorities do under their statutes, laws and constitution,'' Simon said. ``This will be evaluated by the French authorities based upon their laws and based upon their sovereignty.''

A woman who answered the phone at Einhorn's house in France yesterday declined to give her name. Speaking in foreign-accented French, she said, ``I have nothing to say to you,'' and hung up.

Reached at her Mount Airy home yesterday, Einhorn's mother, Bea, said: ``I have no comment to make.''

DiBenedetto, who has spent much of his 22 years with the District Attorney's Office chasing Einhorn, said his thoughts yesterday were of Holly Maddux and her family.

DiBenedetto, 48, called Abilene, Texas, and broke the news to Maddux's brother, John Maddux, who, with Holly's two sisters, attended the 1993 trial at which Einhorn was convicted. The case fostered a bond between the two men, he said, and Maddux had stayed with him during the trial.

``He was shocked,'' DiBenedetto said of the brother. ``He was beyond words.''

``I'm just sorry that Mr. and Mrs. Maddux could not be here,'' said DiBenedetto, referring to Maddux's parents, Fred and Elizabeth, both dead. ``Over the years, I spoke with Mr. Maddux, and he was always a gentleman, and he was always very patient. So, I give my salute to him and his family.''

Inquirer staff writers Larry Fish and Thomas J. Gibbons Jr. contributed to this article, which contains information from the Associated Press.