'I'VE GOT TO FIGHT,' MIMI RORHER SAYS OF TRIAL

Author: ANN W. O'NEILL, Daily News Staff Writer

Mimi Rohrer says she's ready to return to her murder trial in Camden Superior Court today and do battle with "two brilliant lawyers" - prosecutor Anthony Zarillo and her own defense attorney, Raymond M. Brown.

"It's a war," Rohrer said, describing the case and her fight to replace Brown with another lawyer. "I've got to fight."

Rohrer, 43, has repeatedly tried to fire Brown, and, she said in an interview, "I asked my husband a hundred times to fire him and he refused."

She said her husband, William, 74, a prominent South Jersey banker and longtime Haddon Township mayor, has already paid Brown's Newark law firm ''close to a half-million dollars." Camden Superior Court Judge David Eynon has denied Brown permission to withdraw from the case.

Explaining why she left her trial Oct. 9 midway through the prosecution case, Rohrer said she was ill with a virus and upset over not being able to replace Brown. She was arrested in Philadelphia on fugitive charges two days later and returned to New Jersey last Wednesday.

Brown, who is defending Rohrer on charges she murdered her adopted son, Billy, 2, in 1975 "through a pattern of child abuse," attempted to visit her Saturday at the women's annex of the Camden County Jail, where she is being held without bail.

But Rohrer refused to see him.

"I don't want that attorney. I never wanted that attorney. I don't even want my husband anymore," Rohrer said. "We adopted together. We risked together, and now he's bailing out."

She added, "I'm like Israel. This is oppression. I'm fighting this all by myself . . . This is Nazi Camden County, Nazi Haddon Township, and all they did was put me in a concentration camp."

Rohrer said she would ask today to read a statement in court. "I've been misrepresented. The judge thinks I'm crazy. He thinks I'm a spoiled brat . . . The judge thinks I'm an undisciplined broad."

Rohrer said she telephoned her husband before she left New Jersey; he has not lived at home since shortly before the trial began, she added.

"I notified my husband, who has paid a half-million dollars for my defense, and I can't even be sick for one day?"

Rohrer said she traveled by train to Washington, D.C. There, she visited the congressional offices of Geraldine Ferraro, Democratic candidate for vice president, to seek advice about how get Brown off the case. She said she thought Ferraro "would understand as a woman."

She also visited the campaign offices of Democratic presidential candidate Walter Mondale, and two other "legal places" she refused to discuss. She said she was treated for the virus at the hospital at George Washington University. Rohrer said doctors gave her medication and asked her to return to the hospital the next day. But instead, she traveled to Philadelphia and was arrested after trying to check in to a Center City YMCA.

"I recovered at the Roundhouse (the Police Administration Building)," she said.