In her days as a government official, Ruthann Aron took target practice with Montgomery park police. (Montgomery County Department of Parks and Recreation)

By Manuel Perez-Rivas and Jon Jeter
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, June 11, 1997; Page A01

The attorney for Ruthann Aron, the Montgomery County politician charged with trying to hire a hit man to kill her husband and a Baltimore lawyer, asked a judge yesterday to send her to a psychiatric hospital to be evaluated and put on a 24-hour suicide watch.

Montgomery County District Court Judge Louis Harrington agreed to consider the request and scheduled a second bail hearing for today for the 54-year-old mother of two whose alleged plot to kill her husband and the lawyer left the county's political establishment incredulous.

Police say she tried to hire a hit man to kill her husband of more than 30 years, urologist Barry Aron, and lawyer Arthur G. Kahn, who represented two lenders who sued Aron for fraud and breach of contract a decade ago.

Defense attorney Barry Helfand did not argue for Aron's release yesterday, instead asking that she be transferred to a private psychiatric hospital in Baltimore for evaluation and for her own protection, a move he said her husband supported. "She'll be safe," he said, "and everybody else will be safe."

Montgomery County Deputy State's Attorney Matthew Campbell did not oppose the delay in setting bond but said that prosecutors planned to oppose the g ranting of any bond, effectively keeping Aron in custody until the completion of a trial. He suggested that Helfand's proposal was a ploy intended to construct an insanity defense should the case go to trial.

Aron was being held without bond at the Montgomery County jail.

Police arrested her at a pay phone in Rockville on Monday afternoon as she tried to return a telephone page from an undercover police officer posing as a hit man, authorities said.

She faces two charges of solicitation to commit murder, which carries a maximum sentence of life in prison.

Speaking to reporters after the hearing, Helfand said it was too early to say what strategy he would pursue in defending Aron. But while acknowledging that prosecutors appear to have formidable evidence against her, he repeatedly referred to her mental state at the hearing and in conversations with reporters.

"I am very concerned about her mental health as well as I am about her physical health," Helfand said. "I believe . . . she is in a fragile state."

Appearing on a closed-circuit television monitor, Aron did not speak during the hearing. She wore dark sunglasses and a neck brace, which Helfand said was for a pulled muscle that occurred before her arrest. Aron had been taking several kinds of medication recently, Helfand said, although he didn't say which drugs or for what purposes.

Sources close to the investigation said yesterday that on June 1, Aron allegedly approached William H. Mossburg Jr., the owner of a waste transfer site in the county who has been at odds with Montgomery officials for years over his property, about hiring a hit man.

Mossburg would not confirm that he played a role in the case. But several well-placed sources said he cooperated fully with investigators and put Aron in touch with the undercover police officer posing as the hit man.

Over the weekend, police said, she had several conversations with the man she thought she was hiring to kill Kahn and her husband. They allegedly agreed to a total price of $20,000.

On Monday morning, wearing a trench coat, an oversize hat and big sunglasses, Aron allegedly walked into a Gaithersburg hotel and left a package labeled "Universal Systems" that was later picked up by police. The package contained a $500 down payment for the slaying of her husband, whom she allegedly asked to be killed first. Police later found a wig in her car.

Barry Aron declined to comment yesterday.

A spokeswoman at Kahn's law offices in Baltimore said Kahn declined to comment on Aron's arrest. Kahn, 47, joined Levin & Gann as a principal and chairman of its litigation department in 1996. He was senior trial counsel for a Washington-based firm when he represented the two investors suing Aron. A jury in the civil suit found her liable, and the case was settled out of court.

Aron's alleged involvement in the case has stunned and rattled the county's political community. Those who know her were especially puzzled, because she seemed like a woman who had it all: a loving family, a house worth more than $700,000 in an exclusive community, a husband who is a prominent physician, and a promising albeit bruised political career.

But she did have many setbacks. She lost a bitter Republican primary campaign against William E. Brock III in 1994 and then last year lost a civil suit against Brock alleging defamation over comments he made to reporters about her during the race.

At a campaign appearance, Brock had referred to a lawsuit filed against Aron in the 1980s by two lenders in a real estate deal who accused her of fraud and breach of contract. Kahn represented the plaintiffs in that case, and he testified for Brock at the defamation trial.

There were no indications that Aron was suffering from any financial difficulties in her political affairs. Campaign finance records show that in March 1996, she gave up hopes of recouping $228,000 she had lent her 1994 Senate campaign. The records show that Aron converted the loan into a personal contribution, a standard practice for losing candidates.

On the personal side, her marriage was under a strain, according to two sources. One of the sources, who is close to Barry Aron, said the couple had spoken of divorce in recent months, although neither followed through on the matter.

Yet over the past year, many believed Ruthann Aron was getting her political career back in order. County Democrats cheered last fall when she switched party loyalties and announced her support for President Clinton's reelection.

Since then, she was widely expected to register as a Democrat and run for an at-large seat on the County Council next year, a seat for which some considered her a front-runner.

"This is a nightmare. I'm hoping for her sake, for Barry's sake and for the children's sake, that we'll wake up tomorrow and none of this will have happened," said Aris Mardirossian, the founder of a convenience store chain and a key county political contributor. He had been one of Aron's chief backers and a longtime acquaintance of her family. "Something flipped."

But just as Aron had supporters within the county's Democratic ranks, she also had many detractors. This spring, the county's Democratic Central Committee returned a $100 check she had sent in to pay for an ad in the program for the party's annual spring ball. Mardirossian and other Democratic supporters then took out an ad on her behalf instead.

Some county Democrats did not take to a candidate who once campaigned as a conservative Republican. And Aron's often acerbic style did not help matters.

Still, people who knew Aron and had seen her in recent weeks said she seemed in good spirits and showed no signs of stress or depression. She and her husband were seen at a number of county functions together without apparent rancor. She seemed to look forward to a run for County Council.

"That's why this is so baffling," said Stephen A. Friedman, Barry Aron's attorney. He said Barry Aron is extremely concerned for his wife's safety and wants her to be placed in a psychiatric institution for evaluation, as Helfand requested in court. The couple's son, Josh, flew in from New York to be with his father. A daughter, Dana Aron-Weiner, lives in Chicago. She declined to comment last night.

Colleagues described Barry Aron as a successful physician who has been a backbone of the medical staff at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital in Rockville. A surgeon specializing in urology, Aron was one of the original doctors who began to work out of Shady Grove Adventist when it opened in 1979.

During 1993 and 1994, he was president of the hospital's staff, a position that also made him a member of the hospital's governing board.

"It is astonishing. I've known them as a couple, mainly through medical functions," said Edward C. Gilbert, a urologist who also works out of Shady Grove. "I've never had an inkling they were in trouble, but who knows?"

Staff writers Michael Abramowitz, Charles Babington, Dan Beyers, Paul Duggan, Amy Goldstein and R.H. Melton contributed to this report.