A Whacky Affair

By Tony Kornheiser

Sunday, June 15, 1997; Page F01
The Washington Post

—

By now you're all familiar with Ruthann "Annie Knuckles" Aron, right?

She's the Montgomery County politician who is accused of trying to hire a hit man to kill
her husband and a lawyer. As the investigation continued, the police found what they
think was a hit list, which contained the name of another lawyer. That makes two
lawyers, and I think everyone knows what you call two dead lawyers: a start.

Obviously, it isn't every day that a wife tries to arrange to have her husband killed --
and I know I speak for many men out there when I say: Whew. Because most men
would hate to think they'd worked so hard to install the automatic garage door Genie,
and this was their reward.

Nor is it every day that the accused wife is a former candidate for the U.S. Senate. I
guess we should have sensed something was amiss when Ruthann made her campaign
slogan: "A Vote for Ruthann Is a Vote to Rub Out Her Husband."

First, Lorena Bobbitt. Now this. It's enough to make the average man lock himself in
the bathroom for the rest of time. (Except, of course, if he has teenage daughters. Then
he can't actually get into the bathroom, so he'll have to drive to a gas station and lock
himself in one of its bathrooms.)

There must be some wild, untapped rage in women out there -- unless all those years of
going to planning board meetings drove Ruthann over the edge. Have you ever been to
a planning board meeting? They drone on forever about variances and easements and
rights of way. They make a convention of certified public accountants seem like a
cockfight.

I feel sorry for Ruthann's husband, Barry, though my sympathy is tempered a teeny bit
by knowledge that Barry is a urologist. As a middle-aged man, I am intimately
acquainted with urologists and the fine work they do administering prostate exams.

Hey, Barry, how does it feel being on the receiving end for a change?

Apparently, Barry had no sense that his wife's ardor might have cooled to the point
where he was about to be iced. This despite the fact -- according to published reports
-- that Ruthann kept a stash of guns at home, including an assault rifle with a laser sight
and flash suppressor. Supposedly, she also sometimes walked around the house
wearing a gun, like Bat Masterson.

That, to me, is a clue that perhaps Ruthann had something other than l'amour on her
mind. If this were a movie -- and surely Joe Pesci would be in there somewhere -- at
that point someone would be paging, "Barry Aron, please pick up the white courtesy
phone. Will Barry Aron please pick up the white courtesy phone."

Me, I would have started to wonder. I would have started sleeping with a heater under
my pillow. Better yet, a bazooka.

The notion of hiring a hit man is fascinating. I mean, where does the average
54-year-old Republican politician look for a hit man? How many can there be at the
country club? It's not like you're driving around the Beltway and you see someone
holding up a sign: "Will Kill for Food."

The police say Ruthann offered to pay $20,000 to do in her husband and this lawyer
who represented folks who sued Ruthann. That's $10,000 a hit. That's nothing. I've
been to school auctions in Montgomery County where people pony up more than that
for a gourmet fall foliage weekend in Vermont. You can't get a good hit man for that
little, can you? Wouldn't you end up with those guys from "Fargo"?

Did you get a load of the books the prosecutor says police found in Ruthann's car?

One is titled "How to Make a Disposable Silencer." Another: "The Hayduke Silencer
Book: Quick and Dirty Homemade Silencers."

Don't get me wrong, I like a gal who's handy, who can sew on a button, or change the
oil in the car, or even re-shingle the roof. A woman with a tool belt is sexy. But this is
ridiculous. How would you feel if you were leafing through your wife's cookbooks and
you came upon "How to Build a Scaffold for E-Z At-Home Executions"?

And who writes these books?

Who reviews them? (" `How to Make a Disposable Silencer' will blow you away" --
Montana Literary Quarterly.)

Does the author of "How to Make a Disposable Silencer" have a book signing at
Borders? More important, what kind of people show up to buy it? How many of them
are immediately put in the FBI's Rolodex? Because, really, who needs to know how to
make a disposable silencer? Wouldn't most of us be better off learning how to put
together a Weber grill?

How stupid I am, writing columns for a living. Clearly, the big money in publishing is in
do-it-yourself assassination manuals. Here's the title of my next book:

"Tony Kornheiser's Greatest Hits."

The Tony Kornheiser Unofficial Home Page
Anyelet's Demesne
GeoCities