By Manuel Perez-Rivas and Jon Jeter
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, June 10, 1997; Page A01

Ruthann Aron, a Montgomery County political figure who ran a bitter and unsuccessful campaign for the Republican Senate nomination in 1994, was arrested yesterday on charges that she tried to hire a man to kill her husband and a Baltimore lawyer, police said.

Aron, who is a member of the Montgomery County Planning Board and has been active as a developer, was arrested about 5 p.m. as she made a call from a pay phone at a Rockville hotel. Police said she was returning a page from an undercover Montgomery County police officer who was posing as a hit man.

Earlier in the day, police said, Aron left a $500 down payment for the slayings at the front desk of a Gaithersburg hotel. They said she had agreed to pay $20,000 for both slayings.

Barry Aron, her husband of more than 30 years, is a prominent Montgomery County urologist whom Ruthann Aron met while they were college students in New York. They have two grown children and have lived in the county for more than 20 years.

The second intended victim, police said, was Arthur G. Kahn, a lawyer with the Baltimore firm of Levin & Gann. Kahn represented two lenders who sued Ruthann Aron, alleging fraud and breach of contract in a real estate deal. That suit later was cited by her opponent, William E. Brock III, in comments at a news conference during the 1994 Republican primary campaign for the Senate. The nomination went to Brock, whom Aron later sued unsuccessfully, claiming that he had slandered her.

In the slander suit, Kahn testified for Brock, who lost the election to Democratic incumbent Paul S. Sarbanes.

Attempts to reach Kahn by telephone were not successful.

County police charged Aron with two counts of solicitation to commit murder. If convicted, she could be sentenced to life in prison. She was being held last night at the county jail in Rockville pending a bond hearing today.

Police said they had been investigating Aron since June 3, when an informant told State's Attorney Robert L. Dean (D) that Aron had recruited his help in finding a hit man.

In recorded telephone conversations with the informant and the undercover officer, Aron "said that she had an interest in having someone eliminated," Deputy Police Chief Fred Ailes said at a news conference, recalling her words from recorded telephone conversations he said he had listened to.

According to charging documents, she also told the undercover officer in a telephone conversation on Saturday that she wanted Kahn's name to "appear in the obituary column of the newspaper." On Sunday, according to the documents, she called the informant and said she wanted her husband killed first.

Aron and the undercover officer spoke by telephone at least three times during the weekend, police said, and she specified that she wanted the slayings to appear accidental. Police said the officer agreed to that, and Aron agreed to leave the $500 down payment at the hotel yesterday morning.

She did so shortly after 11 a.m., and police retrieved the package, they said. Hours later, they paged Aron, who had been playing golf, and arrested her without incident after she stopped to return the page.

Ailes said Aron's motives were a mystery to investigators. "This all moved very, very fast," Ailes said. "Now we go back to untangle the rest."

The news and circumstances of Aron's arrest shocked members of the county government and the political establishment last night.

Planning Board Chairman William Hussman, who had seen Aron only hours earlier at a charity golf event, said the allegations were "just not believable. I know [Barry Aron] to be a wonderful person. I'm sure that he, like she, must be devastated right now. It's very sad. It's a terrible thing to happen to anyone. It's not possible, from my point of view."

Gus Bauman, who was Planning Board chairman when Aron was appointed to the board by the County Council in the early 1990s, said he last saw the Arons at a function honoring the county's retiring park police chief two weeks ago. Everything seemed normal, he said.

"I'm speechless," he said. "This is just one of those things that you can't believe."

At the Aron home in Potomac last night, a man who came to the door said, "I'm sorry, I can't talk to you." Later, a man who identified himself as Steve Friedman, Barry Aaron's attorney, emerged and said his client didn't want to come out. "This is a very, very difficult time for the family," Friedman said.

A short time before, police emerged from the home carrying a computer and a cardboard box and drove away. Friedman said that police had been at the home looking for evidence.

Despite her failed Senate bid three years ago, Aron was considered a potentially formidable Montgomery County politician because of her ability to raise money. Having burned many bridges within the Republican Party, however, she had recently made forays into the county's Democratic circles. There was widespread speculation among county politicians that she would switch party allegiances in time for a run for an at-large seat on the County Council next year, although she had not announced a candidacy.

She had a reputation for toughness that she encouraged, particularly during her 1994 Senate campaign. "I don't mind it," she told an interviewer at the time. "This is who I am. And if I were a wimp, they would say, `Oh my goodness, she should go home.' "

In her campaign against Brock, she pulled no punches, interrupting him at media events, and she began airing attack ads in the campaign for the September primary as early as April.

During the campaign, Brock told reporters that his opponent had been "convicted, or found guilty by jury, of fraud." Two juries in civil cases had found Aron liable, but the cases were settled out of court. Aron insisted that Brock's use of "convicted" and "guilty" were deliberate attempts to imply that she had a criminal record. Although Aron lost her slander suit against Brock, she sought a new trial. Last week, the Maryland Court of Special Appeals ruled that she had the right to request a new trial.

During the 1994 campaign, Aron went into seclusion after her father was bludgeoned to death in her home town of Fallsburg, N.Y., in the Catskill Mountains. David Greenzweig, 77, had been robbed of several hundred dollars and his 1984 Cadillac El Dorado, police said.

A 38-year-old handyman was arrested in the slaying 2 1/2 weeks later in Florida. Montgomery County police said yesterday they were not looking at that case in connection with the current investigation.

At the time, Aron told the Associated Press she was sorry New York did not have capital punishment for murderers.

Staff writers Allan Lengel, Susan Levine and Martin Weil contributed to this report.