He Has Protested His Innocence For Years

EX-INFORMANT PLEADS GUILTY TO

Charges Michael Fulcher Was Convicted In 1999 Of Dealing Marijuana And
Money Laundering.

After years of protesting his innocence, former federal informant Michael
Edward Fulcher pleaded guilty in federal court Wednesday to drug and money
laundering conspiracy charges.

Fulcher, 45, and his mother, Ethel Vest Fulcher, 69, along with Fulcher's
ex-wife, Rosanna Sue Nichols, were facing a federal trial again in November
in connection with charges of dealing marijuana and money laundering out of
Bland Correctional Facility, where Fulcher was imprisoned.

The trio was convicted in 1999 but was granted a new trial after Don
Lincoln, former head of the Roanoke office of the Drug Enforcement
Administration, wrote a letter to Senior U.S. District Judge Jackson Kiser
on the eve of their sentencing. The letter stated that contrary to what
Lincoln had testified to during the Fulchers' trial, he could have given
Fulcher the impression that he approved of an undercover operation to smoke
out drug dealing at Bland.

With their plea agreements, Michael Fulcher and his mother are facing
substantially less punishment than they were after their 1999 convictions,
al though their ultimate sentence will be decided by Kiser. Assistant U.S.
Attorney Joe Mott agreed to recommend that Fulcher be sentenced to between
five and 10 years for the two felony conspiracy convictions. Fulcher, who
began serving a 35-year sentence in 1990 in connection with thefts in
Bedford County and another 19 months on a firearms conviction, was facing a
mandatory minimum sentence of 30 years after he was convicted of being part
of a continuing criminal enterprise because of his criminal record.

As part of Ethel Fulcher's agreement, she will not face any prison time.
She will also be allowed to pay the government $20,000 in cash in lieu of
forfeiting some real estate.

Charges against Nichols will be dropped at sentencing as long as Kiser
follows the plea agreements, Mott said. A sentencing date has not been set yet.

None of the lawyers in the case would comment. David Whaley and Marvin
Miller, who represented Michael Fulcher and his mother, respectively, met
with their clients for almost an hour privately after their guilty pleas
were scheduled.

When asked as part of his guilty plea if the government had promised him
anything outside the agreement, Michael Fulcher replied, "They said they
would give my mama her property back."

The Fulchers and Nichols were charged in January 1999 with 19 others -
guards, inmates at Bland, and their mothers, wives and girlfriends. Federal
authorities said they sold marijuana in prison and laundered drug money
from 1995 to 1997.

As part of her plea agreement, Ethel Fulcher also amended the time that she
agreed she was part of the drug conspiracy, dating it from July 1995 to Aug
ust 1996.

Michael Fulcher was one of Southwest Virginia's most successful informants
in the 1980s until he was blackballed by the DEA in 1990 for leaking
information.

But Fulcher maintained a relationship with Lincoln. As an informant,
Fulcher provided information on an inmate tax fraud scheme that the
Internal Revenue Service later prosecuted, about the 1998 Church Avenue
boarding house fire in which six people were killed, and about a
murder-for-hire case in Botetourt County.

When the Fulchers were indicted, Lincoln maintained that he never gave
Michael Fulcher clearance to do an undercover investigation into drug
dealing at Bland. After Lincoln changed his story, Mott accused Lincoln of
getting too close to his sources and of making "misstatements and
half-truths" on Fulcher's behalf.

"The cynical view is that Fulcher has something on him, and I hate to even
think that," Mott told Kiser at a hearing in December 1999.