Puzzle Deepens in Irvine Shooting and Suicide

They had planned to be rich by now, the doctor and the businessman.

In December 1997, Dr. Larry Ford and his partner in Biofem Inc., Pat Riley, issued a 29-page business blueprint filled with ambitious details about how their Inner Confidence female contraceptive would give women a “proven method of protecting themselves” from pregnancy and sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.

By now, according to the plan, Inner Confidence should have been on store shelves. Sales should have been booming, surpassing $46 million by year’s end. And Ford and Riley, as founding partners, should have been wealthy.

Instead, Ford is dead and Riley is in hiding.

In a case that becomes more bizarre as time goes on, police say Ford, a soft-spoken researcher and practicing Mormon, may have been behind a plot to murder Riley, 58, who was shot in the face as he arrived for work at Biofem’s Irvine Spectrum office Feb. 28. The gunman remains at large.

The shooting seems incredible to those who knew Ford, 49, who apparently killed himself three days later. But then, Ford’s friends were unaware of many aspects of the doctor’s life, including the illegal weapons and military explosives he buried in his side yard and his tangential involvement with South Africa’s apartheid-era biological weapons programs.

“It’s pretty baffling,” said Raymond Lee, Biofem’s attorney, who is in regular contact with Riley. “We talk daily, and each time we’re both going, ‘I don’t get it.’ ”

As investigators struggle to unravel disparate threads of the case, from secret weapons caches to suspected biological samples stored like applesauce in an Irvine refrigerator, those in Ford’s and Riley’s lives are left with more questions than answers.

The doctor and the businessman hailed from starkly different backgrounds.

Ford was born and raised in Mormon country: Provo, Utah. A family story about how he and his future wife came together squeaks with wholesomeness.

“They met at a Sunday school party, playing Twister. It was my dad’s game,” said his son, Larry C. Ford Jr., a microbiology major at Brigham Young University. That game has become a running family joke. “We still have it at the house, so my sister was never allowed to play with that game with boys.”

A Mysterious Murder Attempt

After graduating from BYU, the senior Ford moved with his wife to Los Angeles around 1970 to attend UCLA Medical School. He stayed on there to teach, practice medicine and conduct research.

One part of his life, police said, led someone to try to kill him.

Around 1978, an unidentified gunman hid in bushes outside a UCLA parking garage late one night and opened fire on Ford as he approached his car. Four bullets missed. A fifth struck Ford in the breast pocket, where a stack of cassette tapes deflected the bullet.

Ford sought to play down the incident with investigators, said Arthur Longo, the now-retired UCLA Police Department detective who worked the case. Neither a motive nor a suspect was ever found.

The incident didn’t disrupt his work. Ford eventually wrote or co-wrote dozens of scholarly articles on topics such as gynecological cancers and the use of antibiotics to control postoperative infections.

He also was coming up with product ideas, including a method to reduce scarring and a potion, drafted from a student’s research, to cure male baldness.

And he was lecturing. In the mid-1980s, Ford delivered a lecture to UC Irvine medical students and faculty through a distinguished-speaker program.

“He was considered a real authority on gynecological infectious diseases,” said Dr. Philip J. Disaia, director of the division of gynecologic oncology at UC Irvine Medical Center.

While Ford was moving into his medical career, Riley was moving into business.

Riley, an Illinois native, studied science as an undergraduate at Cal State Long Beach but apparently didn’t pursue it as a career.

In 1973, at age 32, he became the founding chief executive officer of First Meridian Financial Corp. in Newport Beach, brokering securities and insurance, according to a Biofem biography. He sold portions of that company in 1987, when sales topped $25 million, and spent the next three years as part of a management team for ToppMed Inc., marketing a weight-loss dietary supplement.

Riley was busy with side projects too, establishing a series of limited partnerships in the 1980s to invest in real estate, including a firm called White Oak Partners Ltd. that bought 300 acres of open land outside Houston. One White Oak investor, William K. Russell, said he met Riley through the Big Canyon Country Club, near Riley’s current home near Newport Beach’s Fashion Island. Russell described Riley as a deal maker who used his insurance business to find investors for the land ventures.

Russell said Riley guaranteed nothing but anticipated that the value of the Houston land to grow by a factor of 10 within three to four years. White Oak still exists as a partnership, but Russell said the profits never materialized, and he’s informally written off his $30,000 to $40,000 investment. Another land deal, called Riley Land Partners, went bust when the partnership couldn’t make the payments.

“It was just a lark, just a gamble to invest in some stuff and see what the return was,” Russell said. “He was a fun guy, and he liked playing golf. He was a nice, friendly guy.”

Disaia said he invested about $100,000 in White Oak after meeting Riley through a mutual friend. He also knew Ford separately, through medical circles.

“Larry was the nicest guy when I knew him,” he said. “They’re both kind of mild-mannered people. This has really blown me away.”

Disaia said his impression was that Riley became involved with Ford and Biofem after the land deals didn’t pan out.

“Pat’s a businessman,” Disaia said. “He can be tough, but most of the time he’s a very gregarious kind of guy. He’s a great guy to have a couple of drinks with.”

Disaia recalled going to First Meridian Financial Corp.’s offices in Newport Beach to discuss his investment. Over the years, he said, the size of the office dwindled.

“It was a big outfit,” Disaia said. “He had lots of people working for him. By 1990, it was just he and his wife.”

By then, Riley had joined Ford.

A Change of Mind Is Fateful Step

Riley met Ford through a mutual business friend who knew Ford had a project and Riley was looking for ventures. They met at UCLA, and Riley initially balked at Ford’s plans, said Lee, Biofem’s lawyer.

Ford called Riley a few weeks later to renew the contact. The two men met again, and Riley decided to join Ford.

It’s unclear whether Riley knew exactly what he was getting into.

Riley remains in hiding, and through Lee has declined several requests for interviews.

But Lee said Friday that Riley “was not aware of anything Ford was doing outside the scope” of their company, including his role advising South African researchers in biochemical warfare.

Ford was introduced to South African weapons developers through Dr. Neil Knobel, former chief medical officer for the South African army. Knobel said he met Ford at a party hosted by the South African trade attache in Los Angeles in the 1980s.

Knobel said he and Ford shared an interest in AIDS research. A year later, Knobel spoke at an international conference in Hawaii, where he again saw Ford and met Riley.

During the apartheid era, Knobel had administrative oversight of South Africa’s covert biochemical program, called “Project Coast,” directed by Dr. Wouter Basson.

Basson, nicknamed “Dr. Death” by South African media, is on trial on charges ranging from fraud to murder stemming from his role in apartheid--including directing a program that used commercial laboratories as fronts to develop biological and chemical weapons.

In an interview with The Times, Knobel said he introduced Ford to Basson. Basson later organized a 1987 seminar with Ford for some of his top researchers, said one of those present at the seminar. Ford was not well received.

“Larry Ford in my mind is a fraud, same type of category as Basson is,” said a weapons researcher who asked not be identified because he has been called as a witness in Basson’s trial. “They came with big talk and fancy stuff and gave us a lot of so-called dirty tricks materials. When we analyzed it, it came to nothing of substance. He offered stuff to us. There was not any question of us giving stuff to him. The stuff he gave us was useless.”

The Business Outlook Is Good

For Biofem, however, the future looks rosy, according to Lee.

“It’s hard to say that in the face of a tragic event like this,” Lee said. “It seems cold. Larry is going to be missed.”

In recent months, an unidentified East Coast venture fund came up with the money Riley and Ford had sought since 1998 to launch clinical trials for Inner Confidence, Lee said. Ford and Riley had reportedly disagreed about the trials, but Lee dismissed the dispute as just part of the normal flow of business.

“In a 12-year relationship, there are going to be some disagreements,” said Lee.

Lee said the trials are still planned. Dr. Peggy Pence, who is in charge of them, said they probably will begin late this year.

But the tenor has changed.

Riley “still wants to believe that Larry is not the guy” who tried to have him killed, Lee said. “He thought they had a relationship that was a strong one, and he did not know about this part of Larry’s life. Pat did care for Larry, and he’s still struggling. What it’s coming down to is that Pat is a pretty good judge of people. He’s shocked that he missed all of this.”

*

Times staff writer Jack Leonard contributed to this report.