Fortier Gets 12 Years in Deadly Bombing

Michael Fortier, the man who knew about the Oklahoma City bombing plot but did nothing to stop it, was sentenced Wednesday to 12 years in prison after he stood crying before a federal judge and begged forgiveness for the lives he could have saved.

In a courthouse next to the flattened city block where the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building once stood, Fortier addressed the court after listening to the testimonials of 16 people whose loved ones died or who themselves were injured in the April 19, 1995, blast--the most deadly episode of terrorism on U.S. soil.

To the government, the 29-year-old Fortier was its star witness, a man with intimate knowledge of how his former Army buddies, Timothy J. McVeigh and Terry L. Nichols, had put together a plan to bomb a government building and ignite a second American revolution.

But to the scores of victims in Oklahoma City, many still racked with grief, Fortier is a coward who had hoped to be released immediately after serving just under 34 months.

“Dear people, please, I offer my apology and I ask you to forgive me,” Fortier said, his back to the victims in the courtroom, his shoulders at times heaving as he repeatedly wiped away tears.

“I offer my apology in the hope that if you will accept it, the pain I have caused you will be reduced. Let the anger you feel toward me drain from your hearts and be replaced with feelings of peace. Please, please, don’t let thoughts of me continue to hurt you.”

Fortier provided crucial testimony that helped convict McVeigh and Nichols last year of the bombing that killed 168 people--including 19 children--and injured more than 500 others. McVeigh was sentenced to death; Nichols is to be sentenced next Thursday, and he most likely will spend the rest of his life in prison.

Fortier pleaded guilty to four federal criminal charges--failing to warn authorities of the bombing, lying to the FBI, transporting stolen weapons and conspiring to fence those weapons.

He could have received as much as 23 years in prison, and agreed to help prosecutors in return for a lighter sentence.

U.S. District Judge G. Thomas Van Bebber ruled two weeks ago that a more appropriate sentence range was from 14 to 17 1/2 years.

And Wednesday, after hearing prosecutors highlight Fortier’s cooperation in the case, the judge imposed the 12-year sentence.

Van Bebber also fined Fortier $200,000 in the hopes of preventing him from profiting from the bombing through book or movie deals. The judge also ordered that Fortier pay $200 into a special victims assistance fund and $4,100 in restitution to the Arkansas horse dealer whose stolen guns helped finance the bombing.

Fortier’s lawyer, Michael G. McGuire, immediately announced he would file an appeal for a reduction in the sentence. But many of the 16 victims who spoke in the courtroom Wednesday urged that Fortier receive the maximum penalty.

Outside the courtroom, ribbons, photographs, poems and teddy bears still cover a fence marking the Murrah building site, and motorists still drive through streets with bumper stickers proclaiming “We Will Remember.”

Marsha Kight, whose daughter Frankie Merrell--a teller at the Murrah building credit union--was killed, lashed out at Fortier as a “despicable man.”

She ridiculed his contention that he did not collaborate with McVeigh and Nichols. “There were no passive bystanders,” she said, adding: “One day Mr. Fortier will walk away from prison a free man. My daughter will never walk away from her grave.”

Donna Mae Hawthorne, whose husband of 30 years, Tom, died in the blast, talked movingly about the choices people make in life.

She said her husband often tried to help others, and had gone to the first-floor Social Security office that day to pick up some forms for an elderly man he had not even met.

“Tom died helping this stranger,” she said. “And I’m very, very proud of that. Because we all have choices and we all have to live with our choices.”

She added that the unfortunate thing for Fortier, and this city, is that he decided to do nothing to stop McVeigh. “Fortier made a choice,” she said, “and he’ll have to live with it. I ask for the maximum for him.”

Chief prosecutor Joseph Hartzler acknowledged that Fortier was “terribly” wrong for not alerting authorities of the bomb plot. But he also asked for leniency and listed key pieces of evidence--”bricks,” he called them--that after the bombing helped the government solidify what otherwise was a circumstantial case against McVeigh and Nichols.

Fortier told authorities about the theft of the guns and dynamite used in the bombing, as well as his trip with McVeigh to inspect the Murrah building and a spot for a getaway car.

Without Fortier’s help, he said, the government’s case “lacked a story line; it lacked a narrative.”

“Mr. Fortier provided that linkage,” Hartzler said.

Fortier, with his wife and parents sitting in the courtroom, said he simply believed that McVeigh was boasting about the bomb plot. He said he did not expect him to carry it out.

“I thought his plan would never bear fruit,” Fortier said. “I was terribly wrong.

“I should have let the police judge his intentions,” Fortier added. “I sometimes daydream that I did do this and I became a hero. But reality is, I’m not.”

While leaving the courtroom, Donna Mae Hawthorne was suddenly met by Fortier’s mother, Irene Fortier. Both are elderly women; one has lost a husband, the other was losing a son.

They embraced, lightly.

“You’re a very special lady,” Irene Fortier told Hawthorne. “I pray for you. I am very, very sorry.”