Ex-Senate Candidate Held On Murder-For-Hire Rap

Ruthann Aron was wearing a floppy hat, a wig and a trench coat when she was arrested. In her car were what prosecutors say were the makings of silencers. She had just dropped off a $500 down payment on a $10,000-per-head contract to kill her husband and her lawyer, police say.

Her arrest June 9, disguised and alone at a hotel pay phone, was a far cry from her campaign for the U.S. Senate in 1994.

Aron’s apparent meltdown shocked friends who described the woman with three college degrees as a brilliant politician and aggressive developer.

The 54-year-old member of the Montgomery County Planning Board is being held without bail on suspicion of soliciting murder and could get life in prison. Two psychiatrists hired by her lawyer diagnosed her as depressed and possibly suicidal.

“This is just a very bizarre case,” said Montgomery County Executive Douglas Duncan. “Clearly, it’s a very tragic situation.”

Prosecutors refused to discuss a motive, but one of the potential victims, attorney Arthur Kahn, opposed Aron in a civil trial arising out of her Senate campaign in 1994. She lost the GOP primary to former Tennessee Sen. William Brock, who went on to lose to Democratic Sen. Paul Sarbanes.

After the primary, she sued Brock for saying during the campaign that she had been “convicted” and “fined” $300,000 in two development disputes, when in fact she had paid settlements in civil cases.

Dr. Barry Aron, 56, a urologist, called the evidence against his wife “very frightening.”

The couple had been married 32 years but had slept in separate beds in their $700,000 Potomac house since 1993. Aron agreed last year to a divorce but asked her husband to remain by her side through a County Council campaign in 1998.

She routinely wore a holstered handgun when home alone, her husband said. Police also found an assault weapon with a laser sight in her bedroom.

One person claimed he knew Aron had serious problems. Richard LaVay, a former home builder and a GOP member of the House of Delegates, said he dealt frequently with her during the early 1990s.

One time, he said, she decided not to pursue a real estate deal with him. But after hearing LaVay had found a buyer for the piece of land, she arrived on his doorstep at 8 a.m. on a Sunday with paperwork to get into the deal.

“She was so volatile, there was something wrong there,” LaVay said. He said he used to joke with fellow lawmakers: “One day, I’m afraid she’s going to show up with an AK-47 at the planning board.”

“I felt she was violent and I was right,” LaVay said.

Prosecutors contend she had been scheming since March to carry out the killings - by herself, if necessary.

Aron’s plans came to light after she contacted William Mossburg Jr., asking if he could recommend someone to do a killing, police said. Mossburg’s son had been charged two years earlier with trying to hire a hit man to kill his father. The charges were later dropped.

Police said Mossburg, who has known Aron from political and development circles, helped them tape incriminating conversations with Aron.

Police arranged for Aron to drop off the $500 in an envelope at the front desk of a hotel. After making the drop, she got a call on her pager from the supposed hit man. She was arrested when she stopped to return the call.

In her car, police found empty plastic soda bottles, packing peanuts and two lawn mower mufflers. Prosecutors said the materials were for making silencers for guns, as described in books in the car. She also had brochures on obtaining false IDs and had a stolen license plate.

Aron graduated from Cornell University, earned a master’s in education at New York University and got a law degree from Catholic University. She started a development company in 1984 and developed a reputation as a tough operator.

Delegate Jean Cryor, a Republican who knew Aron for 15 years, characterized her fall as a Greek tragedy. “Obviously the pressure of all of this just kept building. She didn’t seem to be able to step back and look at it with a cool eye,” Cryor said.

Aron’s lawyer, Barry Helfand, said she will plead innocent.