Police End Search for 2nd Fugitive

Police said Monday they are still looking for whoever shot Newport Beach pharmaceutical executive James Patrick Riley outside his Irvine Spectrum office on Feb. 28, but have dropped the search for an accomplice.

They would not say if the decision to narrow the search stems from the suicide Wednesday of Dr. Larry C. Ford, whom police had considered a suspect in a plot to ambush Riley.

“We’re still putting that all together,” Irvine Police Lt. Sam Allevato said. “We’re looking for the shooter, trying to get him identified. We don’t have a name.”

Riley, who was the partner with Ford in the Biofem pharmaceutical development company, is recovering from face wounds he suffered when a masked gunman shot him after he arrived for work at his Irvine Spectrum office. The shooter fled in a van.

Police have said they believe there was a financial motive in the shooting.

Biofem attorney Raymond Lee said Monday that neither the company nor anybody else had an insurance policy on Riley or Ford. Such “key man” policies are common to protect businesses against the loss of a vital employee.

Police arrested 56-year-old Los Angeles businessman Dino D’Saachs two days after the shooting, alleging he drove the gunman to and from the scene. D’Saachs, a patient of Ford’s, pleaded not guilty to a charge of attempted murder last week. He is being held without bail.

According to the criminal complaint filed against D’Saachs, police at first were looking for the shooter as well as another suspect believed to be the mastermind of the plot.

The complaint alleged that D’Saachs telephoned this second suspect and confirmed his location and that he phoned again to report the arrival of Biofem employees just before the shooting.

But now Allevato said the search is focused on finding just one other culprit, the shooter.

Riley, 58, and Ford, 49, were equal partners in Biofem, a company that is developing a female product intended to prevent pregnancy and the spread of sexually transmitted diseases. Riley was the company’s chief executive, and Ford was the director of science.

Before Ford’s self-inflicted death, his Irvine home was searched by police. Afterward, officers again searched the house for biomedical materials and took away containers of an unknown substance, which was still being tested, Allevato said.

Allevato said a woman employed by Biofem, whose car and home in Newport Beach were searched last week, is cooperating and is not considered a suspect.

Police evacuated part of the Irvine civic center and a nearby child-care center March 3 after a tip that hazardous materials were stored in the woman’s car, which had been impounded as part of the investigation. A hazardous-materials team found no dangerous substance but did discover more evidence, police said.

Biofem attorney Lee said that Riley was recuperating in an undisclosed location and that the executive and his family were asked by police not to make any statement.

Riley “should be completely healed very soon,” Lee said. “As soon as the police let him get back to work is when he’ll get back to work. . . . He’s starting to get better physically, but obviously it’s still very emotional to him.”

The company’s scientists are back at work, despite the confiscation of some computers by police, Lee said.