UPDATE: Ed Bull Released From Jail After Old Viet Nam Veterans Military Motorcycle Club Covers His Civil Court Fees

We told you “legal drama fans” that we would alert you to any developments in the Contempt of Court 90-day jail sentence imposed on 80-year-old, disabled Vietnam vet Thomas Edward “Ed” Bull related to court-ordered payments attached to his divorce and related marital estate disbursement proceedings between 2021 and 2023. Readers will recall that Bull turned himself in at Rappahanock-Shenandoah-Warren County (RSW) Regional Jail in the early evening on Friday, August 30, just prior to his scheduled report time of 7 p.m. to begin serving that sentence.

A week later on Friday, September 6, this reporter received an email from Bull alerting us that he had been released from RSW on Wednesday, September 4, after serving just five days of that 90-day sentence. We inquired if the court had accepted his payment plan of $25 a month to pay off his legal debt including the 50/50 split payment of Real Estate Commissioner fees ($1,308.20) imposed by Judge Daryl Funk after taking the Bull divorce-related proceedings over after the retirement of Judge William Sharp in June 2022. Readers may recall an additional $1,189.50 the court-appointed R.E. Commissioner Nate Adams law firm, also his wife’s counsel in the divorce-related cases, said it incurred in attempting to secure the court-ordered Commissioner fee payment, that raised Bull’s total debt to $2,497.70.

No, he told us, the debt was paid off.

How, who, we asked knowing that Bull had indicated he did not have the resources to pay off the debt in one swoop. The long answer made short, was thanks to the help of the “Old Viet Nam Veterans Military Motorcycle Club” (MMC) of which he is a member.

It’s easier to put on a happy face when you’re leaving jail, as opposed to getting ready to check into it. And as of Wednesday, Sept. 4 around 4 p.m., RSW Jail was behind 80-year-old Ed Bull. Royal Examiner File Photos Roger Bianchini

However, Bull’s answer covered his experience of five days in jail during which he butted heads with administrators and staff over a desire to begin his incarceration with a fast of several days. — He has successfully fasted as part of a “Vision Quest” in the past for up to 10 days, he told us.

But jail officials told him if he continued to refuse to eat he would be defined as an inmate who was attempting to harm himself, possibly leading to a transfer to the Staunton incarceration facility that has a psychological treatment center.

His desire to continue his fast led to some adjustments to the single-inmate cell he had been placed in after his first night check in, which he spent in a cell with two other inmates. Both drinking and toilet water were initially cut off, though turned back on, and items like a drinking cup, toothbrush, and his mattress pad were removed from his cell for various periods of time, apparently as a self-harm preventitive. He was also closely monitored physically, reporting that his blood pressure remained in the good area initially.

However, Bull, who told us he has been diagnosed as 70% PTSD (Post-Traumatic-Stress-Disorder) disabled, also deals with diabetes. And after two days of his fast through the weekend, he began to have what he termed “bad days” physically, including swelling of his legs. After two such days, Monday and Tuesday, September 2nd and 3rd, Bull decided “I wasn’t going to make it 90 days” of incarceration, periodically fasting or not fasting.

Having not used his allowed telephone calls upon check in Friday, Bull requested them and was allowed to use the phone Wednesday morning, September 4. By 8 a.m. he had made two calls to “biker brothers” of the above-cited “Old Viet Nam Veterans MMC IDed as “Zig Zag” and “Blue” explaining his rising fear of trying to serve his full 90-day sentence. The MMC came through with the total required payment of nearly $2,500 ($2,497.70 to be precise), as well as an additional $150 involved members paid “out of pocket”. And after some running around between the Warren County Courthouse where MMC members tried to pay first, and the Nate Adams law firm in Winchester, where they were instructed to make the payment, Ed Bull was processed out of the RSW Jail by around 4 p.m., some eight hours after his calls for assistance to his biker brothers.

Of his experience with the legal system and incarceration stemming from his divorce proceedings, Bull holds no animosity towards his ex-wife, Brenda J. Mercer, whom from subsequent contacts he believes had been kept out of the nuts and bolts of the marital estate property disbursement process and the imposition of Commissioner and legal fees, and eventually incarceration of her now ex husband.

“What happened to me can happen to anyone. This is not about me, it’s about the process,” Bull told us after his release, adding, “I’m a little cog in the wheel … It’s about exposing how things transpire in the courts.” How it transpired in the latter stages surrounding his contesting of the split Commissioner fee order was that his wife, whom he notes is listed as the “plaintiff” in these actions, was not in court with her legal counsel to observe what was being argued.

But Bull told us there is a “Silver Lining” to this story. “I have two sons who haven’t talked to each other for 10 years. They started talking when dad went to jail,” he says. And dad is hopeful that conversation will continue now that their father is out of jail.

The boys are talking?!? ‘And out of all this chaos this Silver Lining makes my heart sing,’ dad enthused. Courtesy Photo Ed Bull

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