THE PHILADELPHIA DAILY NEWS	Local Thursday, July 24, 1997

To fight extradition back to Philadelphia from France, where the murderer was captured last month, the city's most famous fugitive will battle the American justice system that permitted him to be tried in absentia for beating his girlfriend to death.

``We will continue to contest the extradition because we recognize that there are legal and international principles at stake that transcend even Mr. Einhorn's case,'' said Theodore Simon, Einhorn's attorney.

``This case legally, culturally and philosophically really asks an important question: Can you have a trial, a fair and meaningful trial, if the defendant is not there and did not participate?''

It will be up to the court in Bordeaux to answer that question during an extradition hearing, expected in early fall.

At that time, Simon will argue that Einhorn deserves a new trial in Philadelphia. The DA's office is unwilling to give it to him. It was Einhorn, after all, who went into hiding while out on bail and Einhorn who skipped his own murder trial.

``As long as he's in a jail in some country, it's not going to compromise what he did,'' said Assistant District Attorney Joel Rosen, who tried Einhorn's case in 1993.

For now, the DA's work on the case is finished.

The request for Einhorn's extradition, prepared by the DA's office, arrived in France late last week, Rosen said.

The papers detail Einhorn's 1979 arrest for the beating murder of Helen ``Holly'' Maddux two years earlier. They describe how detectives found Maddux's corpse rotting in a steamer trunk in Einhorn's closet and how Einhorn, out on bail, fled just before he was to stand trial in 1981.

The documents also describe efforts by the district attorney's office to find Einhorn as he moved from Ireland to England, to Sweden, and eventually to the South of France.

In 1993, just as Einhorn was settling into his final hideaway, the tiny ancient village of Champagne-Mouton, prosecutors here were conducting his trial. In his absence, Einhorn was convicted of the murder.

Einhorn, 57, finally was captured on June 13 in the quaint cottage he shared with his Swedish wife, Annika Flodin. He was using the name of an Irish friend, Eugene Mallon, and passing himself off as an English writer.

The guru, who once mesmerized Philadelphia's hippies and socialites and even made a stab at running for mayor, now sits in a jail in a town outside Bordeaux, reading and waiting.

Einhorn has asked that the lights in his cell be left on past 9 p.m.

``He has also been an extremely avid reader, and that has not changed,'' said Simon, a Philadelphia lawyer who is chairman of the International Law Committee of the National Association of Criminal Defense Attorneys.

Philadelphia Online -- Philadelphia Daily News -- Local News Copyright Thursday, July 24, 1997