Irvine Doctor Survived Murder Attempt in ‘70s

The biomedical researcher at the center of an investigation into the recent plot to kill his business partner was himself the victim of an attempted murder when he worked at UCLA more than 20 years ago, the detective who worked the case said Friday.

Dr. Larry C. Ford avoided serious injury because three cassette tapes tucked into his breast pocket stopped a bullet fired by an assailant who lay in wait for the doctor in a campus parking lot, the detective said.

The assailant fired four more bullets that missed Ford, then a resident gynecologist at the university, before fleeing into the night, said Arthur Longo, a retired detective with the UCLA Police Department.

There were few clues to the shooting, and UCLA police never identified a motive or a suspect. Longo said Ford offered little cooperation with their investigation. Police, however, did conclude that the gunman had targeted him specifically.

“It wasn’t a robbery, that’s for sure. There was somebody who wanted to kill him,” Long recalled of the attack, which he said took place in the late 1970s. “The guy upstairs was really looking out for him. . . .”

Ford’s life has come under scrutiny recently as police have investigated the attempted murder of his business associate, James Patrick Riley. A masked gunman wounded Riley in the face as the pharmaceutical company executive arrived Feb. 28 at the Irvine office of Biofem Inc.

Three days later, Ford fatally shot himself after police searched his home. Authorities have charged a Los Angeles businessman with driving a van in which the unidentified gunman fled the scene of the attack on Riley.

At UCLA, Ford was well-known as a brilliant, sometimes outspoken student and then medical resident, Longo said.

The doctor had a young family at the time, and the shooting so terrified him and his wife, Diane, that they kept knowledge of the incident from their children until a few weeks ago, said family attorney and friend Bill Bollard. “It was terribly frightening,” he said. “From what she heard from Larry, Diane thought that it was a random incident.”

Longo said Ford told detectives not to worry about the shooting, that it “was no big deal.”

“He really didn’t cooperate as much as we’d have liked him to,” Longo recalled. “That’s why I think that we didn’t get anywhere. . . . It was like pulling teeth.”