tified the dentist as a major drug distributer with

tified the dentist as a major drug distributer with connections through Florida to South America’s cocaine sources, Morchower said. “You play ball with the government, and they help you with your sentence,” he said of the plea agreements struck with Massie and Nicholson. “I thought judges handed out the sentences. Sounds like it’s prosecutors and lawyers getting together to cut a deal. ”

Nicholson implicated Dr. Peper in retaliation for the dentist’s refusal to lend him $8,000, the defense attorney said. George Massie was looking for escape and “the only way to escape is to shift it and adopt a dentist. Isn’t a dentist suitable for framing?” Massie and Nicholson 1 *e like “a person in the water who’s drowning and trying to grab anything to stay afloat. Both of them grabbed on to the dentist.”

Other attorneys, police officers, the deputies who served as court room bailiffs, even the cashier at the cafeteria in the government building across the street, knew Denis Peper’s attorney as “Magic Mike.” Given to stylized gestures and dramatic delivery, his voice rising and falling theatrically, Morchower had several members of the jury nodding in agreement during his closing arguments, a presage of the verdict to come. “He’s really good,” acknowledged one of the police witnesses, in grudging admiration. “Magic Mike gets them off!”

Tip led to Massie

On Monday, Detective George Wade of the Richmond Police Department’s narcotics squad testified that a tip led to the surveillance of George Massie’s Richmond apartment on Dec. 12, 1986. Police followed Massie as he drove with Paul Knight Lacy and Lacy’s girlfriend Tamara Lee Messmer to Rappahannock County, where they stopped at Ronald Nicholson’s residence on the Fodderstack Road outside Washington. The three spent about a half hour