Why Bury Explosives In a Suburban Yard?

By Margot Hornblower and Cathy Booth/Irvine

Among the $500,000 homes and turquoise pools in one of the fancier precincts of Irvine, Calif., the gumshoes in white moon suits and gas masks looked weirdly out of place. But there they were last Friday digging up the yard of a churchgoing suburban gynecologist who had just committed suicide. And there they were removing--gingerly--six tall plastic canisters full of military-type weaponry, high-grade C-4 explosives with blasting caps, and possibly biomedical-research products.

Relatives of the gynecologist, Dr. Larry Ford, who was a partner in a small biotech firm, had told police of the weapons cache, and police feared the canisters might contain dangerous biological or chemical compounds. A local newspaper had linked Ford to South Africa's biological-weapons program. So before police searched Ford's property, they closed a nearby elementary school and evacuated about 50 families from the neighborhood, putting them up at a local Hyatt Regency. One of the neighbors, a balding, middle-aged man loading up a van for a family ski trip, shook his head in bewilderment. "This doesn't happen in yuppieland," he said.

Oh, yes, it does. And the story just gets stranger. Ten days earlier, at an Irvine office park, Ford's business partner, a gregarious 58-year-old named James Patrick Riley, had been shot in the face by a gunman wearing a ski mask. Riley survived. When police tracked the getaway car, its driver turned out to be an acquaintance of Ford's. "This conspiracy to commit murder was financially motivated," a prosecutor told reporters after searching Ford's home. Ford referred reporters to his lawyer, saying only, "It's just a crazy, crazy situation."

Just how crazy? The next day, Ford shot himself in his bedroom. "He was fine. Nothing in his manner indicated he would kill himself," said his lawyer, Stephen Klarich, who spent the morning with him.

Klarich has refused to tell a grand jury what Ford told him about the bungled hit against Riley, or anything else, arguing that attorney-client privilege applies even to dead clients--"just like the Vincent Foster case." But other lawyers, speaking for Ford's family, say that he left a note near his body, saying "I was set up...prove it," and expressing his love for his wife and children.

By all accounts, Ford was a devout Mormon and family man who sat down to dinner every night with his wife and his two sons and daughter, who are now in college at Brigham Young University. He taught Sunday school and gave free physicals to Boy Scouts. Hunter Hammill, a Baylor University professor who has known Ford since they were medical residents at UCLA, says Ford was a "boy genius" who not only won awards and patented treatments but also "knew everybody and everybody liked him."

The company Ford and Riley founded, Biofem, sought to develop and market a vaginal suppository, Inner Confidence, to protect women against HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, but had yet to win FDA approval.

Ford was known for the black Converse sneakers he always wore, even with business suits. He was also a big-game hunter; his house was festooned with trophies, including the skin of a lion he shot in Africa. Friends accounted for Ford's possession of thousands of rounds of military-style ammo as a normal passion for a gun collector.

Meanwhile, police shipped baby-food jars and vials of liquid taken from Ford's refrigerator to a federal lab for analysis. The Los Angeles Times quoted the former surgeon general of the South African Defense Force as saying that Ford was an "informal consultant" on protecting soldiers against biological weapons.

"He's definitely CIA," said one of Ford's neighbors. "Or in witness protection," chimed in another. But Hayley Rosenberg, 12, a neighborhood child, only wanted to know, "Who do you think should play me in the movie?"