Fugitive Scientist Must Face Charges

PHOENIX —  Robert K. Stump, a high-living nuclear chemist who hid from the FBI at a Club Med in Mexico before being arrested in Arizona, Tuesday was ordered returned to California to face charges of bilking Livermore National Laboratory out of $250,000.

Stump, appearing before U.S. Magistrate Michael Mignella, waived a detention hearing pending his transfer to San Francisco. He was ordered held without bond.

Stump disappeared in April, 1987, and remained at large until Monday, when he was arrested in Chandler, Ariz., after authorities received a telephone tip.

Just before Stump vanished, he told superiors at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California that he had cancer and needed time off for treatment. But instead of checking into a hospital, he headed for Club Med.

Stump led bicycle outings and taught water skiing at the Club Med Sonora Bay until August, when he fled just minutes before Mexican federal police arrived to arrest him.

Stump, 46, worked on top-secret weapons projects at the Livermore lab for 2 1/2 years. On the job, he was considered a competent scientist. Off duty, he led a flashy life, driving expensive sports cars, tipping with $100 bills and throwing champagne parties on a 55-foot houseboat.

Stump was indicted after he vanished for persuading the lab, operated by the University of California under a contract with the Department of Energy, to buy a $250,000 piece of equipment he said he needed for his experiments.

The equipment never worked, something that wasn’t discovered until Stump had left. He allegedly received a $125,000 kickback from the company that sold the machine, a spectrometer, to the lab.