Meanwhile, the Florida Fire Marshal's Office, the FBI, and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives continued their investigation of the fire, reported about 1 a.m. Sunday at American Family Planning in Pensacola.
"The arson dog was there. We gathered samples and sent them back to the lab," Fire Marshal's Office spokeswoman Alexis Lambert said.
Brigham's attorney in Maryland, C. Thomas Brown, did not return a call for comment.
Brigham, 55, has run American Women's Services since the early 1990s, despite a raft of professional and regulatory violations that have cost him his medical license in four states - most recently, New Jersey. The Voorhees-based corporation is the umbrella for 14 abortion clinics in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and West Virginia.
The murder charges involve a secret, unregistered clinic that Brigham set up in Elkton - in a state where he has never had a medical license.
In August 2010, after a complaint from a critically injured patient, Elkton police raided the storefront facility and turned up 35 fetuses, several just a few weeks shy of full term.
Maryland does not ban abortion of fetuses that could survive outside the womb. However, it is among 38 states that recognize that "viable" fetuses may be considered murder victims in cases where a pregnant woman is attacked or murdered.
The law, enacted in 2005, has never been used in abortion cases.
"Has it ever been used in this way? No," said Edward D.E. Rollins, state's attorney for Cecil County.
Brigham's codefendant, physician Nicola Riley, 46, is in jail in her home state of Utah awaiting extradition on two counts of first-degree murder.
The grand jury's indictment, issued after a 16-month investigation, remains sealed pending the defendants' arraignments.
Authorities were tight-lipped about the fire, with Lambert refusing to say even who now owns the Pensacola property.
Long a focus of antiabortion demonstrations, the clinic was known as the Ladies Center in 1994, when protester Paul Hill killed physician John Britton and a volunteer escort. Brigham flew to Pensacola every other week for months to stand in for Britton.
That same year, regulators' records show, New York state took Brigham's license for botching two late-term abortions, and Florida soon followed suit, citing New York's action.
The Pensacola clinic voluntarily closed in 2009 after failing to pay a $413,000 state fine for a laboratory licensing violation. In April 2010, a company that lists Brigham's wife as the authorized agent bought the clinic, and American Women's Services began answering its toll-free line.
Contact staff writer Marie McCullough at 215-854-2720 or mmccullough@phillynews.com.
