BALTIMORE (AP) After her arrest last June, Ruthann Aron blurted out: "Maybe I just lost it.''
There she was, a former GOP rising star and one-time candidate for U.S. Senate, arrested for allegedly trying to hire a hitman for $20,000 to kill both her husband and a lawyer who had opposed her in court.
This week, Ms. Aron will offer the legal version of the "maybe-I-just-lost-it" defense when she goes on trial.
The wealthy developer has pleaded not criminally responsible - the equivalent of an insanity defense - in the alleged plot to kill Dr. Barry Aron, who was planning to divorce her, and Arthur Kahn. Among other things, her lawyers are expected to argue she was a victim of child abuse.
Ms. Aron, 55, could get life in prison if found guilty of solicitation to commit murder.
Prosecutors said they have tapes of Ms. Aron telling an acquaintance to find a contract killer because she wanted two people "eliminated." The acquaintance went to the police.
Investigators have said they also found:
- The trench coat, wig, dark glasses and floppy hat she wore when she allegedly left a $500 down payment for the murders at a hotel desk.
- Books on how to make a silencer and the items required: empty plastic bottles, plastic foam pellets and a pair of lawn mower mufflers.
- A list of her intended victims' names and identifying information.
"If I'm on a jury I'm thinking, 'Hey, this is not a crazy person. She ran for the Senate,'" said Byron L. Warnken, professor of criminal and constitutional law at the University of Baltimore School of Law.
On the other hand, he said, the jury might think "this behavior is so bizarre, she must be crazy.''
Before Ms. Aron was arrested there was little outward evidence of anything wrong.
She and her husband of 32 years lived in a $700,000 brick home in Potomac. Ms. Aron, who had a law degree from Catholic University, started a development company in 1984 and got involved in local politics, joining the county planning board in 1992.
In 1994, she took her shot at the big time and ran in the Maryland Republican primary, but lost to former Tennessee Sen. William E. Brock. Brock went on to lose to Sen. Paul Sarbanes.
After the campaign, Ms. Aron sued Brock, claiming he defamed her by saying, incorrectly, that she had been convicted of fraud. Ms. Aron had reached out-of-court settlements with former business partners after civil juries ruled against her, but she had never been convicted of a crime.
She lost the defamation suit. When a judge dismissed her request for a new trial, one of Brock's lawyers commented: "I've never seen such a disgruntled loser in all my life."
Kahn had represented one of her former business partners and had also testified against her in the Brock case.
According to investigators, she wanted the attorney's killing to look like a robbery and her husband's slaying to look like an accident.
Her lawyers are expected to call nine doctors and psychologists to establish her mental state.
"Ms. Aron's mental illness is probably one of the most complicated I have seen,'' said defense attorney Judith Catterton. "She has brain damage and some biological problems. On top of that an acute episode of depression. There is not any way to talk about her without coming to understand really her whole life, in particular her childhood, which was horrible."
Prosecutors also contend Ms. Aron tried to kill her husband in April by lacing his chili with drugs. That case will be tried separately.
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