Leavitt a family man, eccentric entrepreneur

By Susan Greene
Review-Journal

      William Job Leavitt Jr. -- one of two men charged with possessing a biological weapon of mass destruction -- is a fire extinguisher entrepreneur who dabbles in alternative medical research.
      The 47-year-old Logandale businessman and member of a prominent Southern Nevada pioneer family has served as chairman of the Moapa area's town board and fire district, a member of a Clark County citizens committee and a bishop in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
      By some accounts, the 1968 Valley High School graduate is quiet and intellectual, a religious man devoted to his family and community.
      "He is remarkable in that he is fairly unremarkable," said A.C. Robison, a political consultant and Logandale resident who has known Leavitt about nine years.
      Others describe Leavitt as an eccentric fixated on money-making schemes involving obscure medical research.
      Dr. William Murray, Leavitt's next-door neighbor in Logandale, said if his friend were in possession of biological agents, it would be for reasons to benefit mankind.
      "Anything he does, he does to help people," Murray said.
      The family practitioner said he had worked on AIDS research with Leavitt in Overton and said Leavitt also has done cancer research. Murray said both he and Leavitt had worked out of different clinics in Tijuana, Mexico, for a while, but would not say what their work involved.
      Leavitt and his wife, 53-year-old homemaker Valerie Leavitt, have three children. Their home sits on 12 acres containing three buildings, including the family's brown brick house and a single-story white building that neighbors said is Leavitt's makeshift laboratory.
      Both husband and wife are Republicans, according to county election officials.
      Property records show Leavitt owns 10 parcels of land in Logandale and Las Vegas with assessors' appraised values totaling $687,570.
      Neighbor Gary Marshall described him Thursday as "very private," saying "he doesn't talk a lot, and doesn't associate much with the rest of us."
      Marshall, a retired Las Vegas police officer, said Leavitt is a good neighbor and "he's not a terrorist. But if he figures there's a dollar to be made, he'll do it."
      Marshall's family noticed Valerie Leavitt hastily packing clothing into her car about 10 a.m. Thursday, some 15 hours after her husband's arrest. The family's home telephone went unanswered later in the day.
      Marshall said he was surprised and disturbed by Leavitt's arrest.
      "We're just hoping they weren't mixing any of that stuff around here," he said of the biological materials that Leavitt is charged with possessing.
      "I guess the lesson is it's a crazy world and you have to be on guard all the time," said Clark County Commissioner Bruce Woodbury, a longtime acquaintance of Leavitt.
      Neighbors say Claire Leavitt is Bill Leavitt's eldest daughter and a music student enrolled at Southern Utah University in Cedar City. Contacted in Utah by telephone Thursday, she refused comment about her father's arrest.
      "I really don't wish to talk to you," she said, then hung up her phone.
      Bill Leavitt's mother, Betty Leavitt, lives near Oakey Boulevard and Eastern Avenue. She works as an accountant at Battista's Hole in the Wall, an Italian eatery east of the Strip.
      Betty Leavitt peered out of her front door Thursday afternoon but refused an interview with a reporter. Her neighbor, Betty Garehime, said Betty Leavitt phoned her early Thursday to tell her about her son's arrest.
      "She was crying and doing terrible," Garehime said.
      As Garehime tells it, Bill Leavitt is an only child who grew up in the neighborhood where his mother still lives. She said his father, who he is named after, worked at Nellis Air Force Base and died several years ago. Bill Leavitt visited his mother regularly and often spent the night, Garehime said.
      She described him as "a respectable individual."
      "As far as I know, he's a very good Mormon man," Garehime said. "This really is hard to understand."
      Nevada secretary of state records show Leavitt used his mother's Griffith Avenue address for two of his businesses -- AAA Fire Protection Corp. and American Industrial Services Inc.
      His resume claims his fire protection company has had contracts with Nevada Power Co., Central Telephone Co., Levi Strauss & Co., Clark County government, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority and the Las Vegas Valley Water District.
      Leavitt also owned a company called Natureplay Research Corp., located on an industrial storage site he owns in Logandale. The state revoked the company's permit in June 1997.
      During their most recent conversation in the fall, Robison said Leavitt told him about his business venture: funding research for a cure for multiple sclerosis.
      "My impression was that he was traveling a lot, going to Mexico for work," he said.
      At his 25th high school class reunion, Leavitt told former schoolmates he was heavily involved in research with a Mexican laboratory on an AIDS treatment that entailed taking patients' blood and using an additive to filter out HIV before returning it to the patients' bodies.
      Robison said Leavitt gave him the impression that he relied on his fire protection company to make a living and to help subsidize his medical research, which Robison called "his pet project."
      He said Leavitt seemed interested in the research both for entrepreneurial and humanitarian reasons.
      "It struck me he was excited that he might be able to cure people," he said.
      Robison described Leavitt as "a kind of cerebral-type businessman."
      "There's nothing in my mind that this guy was out in the right fringe somewhere," he said.
      Woodbury, who appointed Leavitt to Moapa's town board, said, "I'd be shocked if he was involved in any criminal activity."
      Former high school classmate Marty Kravitz, a lawyer and former Clark County School Board trustee, described Leavitt as "mild-mannered, soft-spoken, a very nice person. Everybody who knows him likes him."
      Still, Kravitz said when his secretary told him one of the anthrax suspects was a classmate of his, he immediately thought of Leavitt.
      "I thought, `Please don't let it be Bill Leavitt,' " Kravitz said. "He's the only one I knew with access to that kind of knowledge. He always was a science-major kind of thing."
      When Leavitt graduated from Valley High, he was as fresh-faced and All-American as they come. He was the manager of the football team, a member of the National Honor Society and Spanish Club and a trumpet player in the band. He went to Carson City during his senior year to shadow state legislators as part of the prestigious Boys' State program and was chosen as the first alternate to go to Washington, D.C., for the even more selective Boys' Nation.
      In October 1997, Leavitt finished a 150-hour emergency medical technician training program and was certified by the Clark County Health District. The program, offered three times a year and taken by 30 students at a time, involves two five-hour classes per week for three months.