Ruthann Aron was born Ruthann Greenzweig in Brooklyn, New York. After graduating from Cornell University, she moved to Maryland with her husband and two young children, acquired a law degree at Catholic University and became a real estate developer. Aron completed several big deals and became a member of the Montgomery CountyPlanning Board. In 1994, she lost Maryland's RepublicanSenate nomination to former Tennessee Senator Bill Brock, who was in turn defeated by Democratic incumbent Paul Sarbanes. After Brock lost to Sarbanes, Aron sued Brock for slander based on comments he made about her implying that she had been criminally convicted of fraud during her business career. In reality, juries had ruled against Aron in two civil lawsuits in which former business partners accused her of fraud or other offenses. A federal judge overturned one of the verdicts, and Aron settled both suits out of court after agreeing to pay about $175,000 in each case. At the slander trial, Aron cited Brock's use of the term "convicted" for verdicts that had come in civil court. Lawyer Arthur G. Kahn, who had prosecuted one of the fraud cases, testified against Aron at the February 1996 trial, which Aron lost. Nonetheless, it was the first time that a losing federal candidate was able to get the winner into court over words spoken in a campaign.
Contract killings
Aron was arrested in June 1997 for trying to hire a hitman; she had approached William "Billy" Mossberg, a local landfill owner, who immediately went to the police. Secretly working with investigators, Mossberg met with Aron and agreed to murder her husband and Kahn. At the time of her arrest, Aron was planning to run, as a Democrat, for an at-large seat on the Montgomery County Council. She was removed from the Planning Board two months after her arrest. In Aron's first trial, she used nine expert witnesses to argue that a brain injury and childhood abuse had rendered her incapable of realizing that what she was doing was illegal. She was diagnosed as having borderline personality disorder by multiple psychiatrists. One juror held out on her behalf, and a mistrial was declared. In July 1998, Aron pleaded no contest, and in November 1998 she was sentenced to two consecutive 18-month prison sentences.
Aftermath
Aron's son, Joshua, was an employee at Cantor Fitzgerald's offices at the World Trade Center and was killed in the 9/11 attacks. Her daughter, Dana Aron Weiner, is a psychologist who works at Northwestern University in Chicago. At Aron's trial, Weiner pleaded for clemency on her mother's behalf. Aron was still living in New York City as of September 2011. In 2004, Aron's case was profiled on the Oxygen Network series Snapped, which profiles female criminals, and also on the truTV series Dominick Dunne's Power, Privilege, and Justice. In 2006, her case was profiled in an episode of A&E's City Confidential.
