International
Saturday, August 9, 1997

The session in a Bordeaux courtroom will be Einhorn's first opportunity to challenge the U.S. government's attempts to bring him back to this country, where he was convicted in absentia four years ago of killing his girlfriend, Helen ``Holly'' Maddux.

Einhorn, a leader of the Philadelphia counterculture in the 1960s and self-styled New Age guru in the '70s, has been in French jails since his arrest June 13 at his fieldstone estate in Champagne-Mouton, where, using the name Eugene Mallon, he had been living for four years with his Swedish wife, Annika Flodin.

French police arrested Einhorn, 57, after Flodin applied for a new driver's license.

He had been on the run for 16 years, having fled the country while free on bail in 1981. He was awaiting trial for the murder of his girlfriend, a Bryn Mawr graduate from Texas, whose body was discovered in a steamer trunk on the back porch of his Powelton Village apartment 18 months after she had vanished.

Einhorn faces a life prison sentence in the United States.

His Philadelphia attorney, Theodore Simon, said yesterday that Einhorn will challenge extradition. ``There are legal and international principles at stake,'' Simon said, and asked whether any trial in absentia can be fair, since the defendant is not present.

``We wanted him there. We would have preferred he were there,'' said Joel Rosen, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted Einhorn in the 1993 trial. ``Unfortunately, he chose not to attend. We invited him to the party and he chose not to come.''

The District Attorney's Office forwarded to French authorities a file that includes details of Einhorn's travels as a fugitive throughout Europe and documents authorities' efforts to capture him.

``It probably won't be the last hearing, is my guess,'' Rosen said. The French magistrate who will present the case for extradition, Defos du Rau, told Rosen yesterday that the hearing will be open to the public.