Philly's 'Lone Wolf' aided Knox

HE DEFENDED the American teen flogged with a rattan cane in Singapore. He was recruited to help fight the extradition of hippie guru Ira Einhorn from France back to Philadelphia.

And most recently, he was one of the attorneys defending pretty-girl-next-door Amanda Knox in her high-profile murder case in Italy.

Theodore Simon, a bespectacled, bearded and brainy Center City lawyer, specializes in international law and is known for defending Americans arrested abroad.

"He's a lone wolf," said Peter Goldberger, a criminal-defense lawyer and friend of Simon's, adding that Simon "practices by himself and doesn't travel in a pack."

Yesterday, when an Italian appeals court threw out Knox's murder conviction and ordered her freed, Simon was in New York, awaiting the verdict and being interviewed by national media.

Goldberger, who has known Simon for decades, said Simon has "worked quite a number of great results because he's smart, he's worked hard, he's creative, and he thinks outside the box."

Goldberger, who briefly spoke with Simon yesterday, said Simon "was very excited, he was very pleased" by the Knox decision. Simon did not return repeated calls or an email from the Daily News.

Yesterday's verdict was a stunning and emotional reversal for Knox, an American student from Seattle, who had been jailed for the 2007 death of her British roommate, Meredith Kercher, in Perugia, Italy. Prosecutors claimed that Kercher, 21, was strangled and stabbed as part of a lurid and bungled sex game also involving an Ivory Coast national.

Knox, 24, collapsed in tears after the verdict overturning her 2009 conviction was read, clutching her face with her hands. Her co-defendant, Italian Raffaele Sollecito, also was cleared.

About 90 minutes after the verdict, a black Mercedes carrying Knox was seen leaving the prison. An Italian lawmaker who has championed her case, Rocco Girlanda, said she was due to fly out today from Rome.

An eight-member jury acquitted both Knox and Sollecito of murder after a court-ordered review of the DNA evidence.

The judge upheld Knox's conviction on a charge of slander for accusing a bar owner of carrying out the killing. He set the sentence at three years, meaning for time served. Knox had been in prison since Nov. 6, 2007. Before the verdict, Simon told KYW radio yesterday: "I know it was a horrible, violent, bloody murder, yet there was no physical evidence of Amanda Knox in the room or on the person of Meredith Kercher. And this is compelling - there was no hair, fiber, footprint, shoe print, palm print, fingerprint, hand print."

Philadelphia lawyer Norris Gelman, who represented Einhorn in his 1993 absentia trial, recruited Simon to help fight Einhorn's extradition from France. (Einhorn was convicted of the 1977 murder of his former girlfriend Holly Maddux.) In 1981, Einhorn fled to Europe, becoming the city's most high-profile fugitive. He was arrested in France in 1997.

"I called him [Simon] and he was more than willing to help, and he went to France," Gelman said. "He went to see Ira in the prison; he went to see Annika [Flodin, Einhorn's wife] . . . The next thing I know he's in People magazine with all these pictures."

In another high-profile case, Michael Fay, an 18-year-old Ohioan living with his mother and stepfather in Singapore, went on a spray-painting spree in 1994, vandalizing cars. He spent 83 days in jail and received four floggings. After Fay was released, Simon, his attorney in the U.S., appeared with him on CNN's "Larry King Live."

The Associated Press contributed to this report.