By Karl Vick
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday, November 27, 1997; Page C04

The two handguns reported missing from Ruthann Aron's home after her arrest last summer have been discovered in her Potomac home by her husband, Barry, whom Aron is charged with trying to kill.

Montgomery County prosecutors had leaned heavily on the mysterious disappearance of the guns in arguing to keep Aron, a prominent developer and politician, in jail. The prosecutors suggested that Aron had hidden the .38 caliber Colt revolver and 9mm pistol, and that if allowed out of custody before her trial on charges of hiring a man to kill Barry Aron and a Baltimore lawyer, she might pick up the weapons and do the job herself.

"Well it turns out to be the most miraculous discovery since the Immaculate Conception," said Ruthann Aron's attorney, Barry Helfand, who revealed the discovery at an unrelated hearing yesterday.

Helfand's sarcasm drew smiles from Montgomery Circuit Court Judge Paul A. McGuckian, who will preside at Aron's Dec. 15 trial for solicitation to commit murder, and Deputy State's Attorney I. Matthew Campbell, who later declined to comment.

Aron, 54, has pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to the solicitation charges, and not guilty to separate charges that she tried to poison her husband. The second trial is set for Jan. 5.

The former U.S. Senate candidate was arrested in June after being recorded by an undercover officer posing as a hit man, but she was freed on $25,000 bond this month. A condition of her release was that she stay away from her husband, a successful urologist, and their $700,000 home except to pick up clothing or other belongings. Such visits were to be arranged through Stephen A. Friedman, who represents her husband.

Friedman said that when Ruthann Aron was about to be freed he asked Barry Aron to thoroughly search the house for the guns he had noticed missing after her arrest. The earlier police search, Friedman said, was only cursory: "They didn't dig up the flower bed. They looked around."

Barry Aron found the guns fairly quickly, his attorney said. One was in a gym bag on the floor of a large master bedroom closet. The other turned up in a storage box on an overhead shelf in the same closet.

"Neither one of these guns was where it was supposed to be," Friedman said, noting that one belonged to Barry Aron, who normally kept it in a special box in his night stand.

He said his client had mixed emotions about the discovery.

"On the one hand, he felt unsettled by the fact that they were sort of stuck away," Friedman said. "On the other hand, he was very relieved that they're accounted for."

Meanwhile, Ruthann Aron, who is living in the Silver Spring home of a friend, still hasn't been able to get into her house. Friedman has demanded that a Montgomery police officer also be present.