OAK GROVE, Ky., Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Two former police officers and a third man have been charged in Kentucky with being involved in the killing of two prostitutes in 1994.
The charges followed a seven-year investigation by the Kentucky State Police, CNN reported Thursday. One of the former police officers, Leslie Duncan, 50, of Central City, Ky., was sentenced to three years after he pleaded guilty in September to tampering with evidence.
The victims, Candace Belt, 22, and Gloria Ross, 18, worked at the New Life Massage Parlor in Oak Grove, a small town dominated by the adjacent Army post, Fort Campbell, which spans the Kentucky-Tennessee line.
State Trooper Stuart Recke said Duncan is charged with two counts of complicity to murder, while the other police officer, Edward T. Carter, 43, Somerset, Ky., and Frank J. Black Jr., 39, of Gadsden, Ala., have been charged with two counts of murder. Carter was being held in Ohio and Black in Alabama, pending extradition proceedings.
There had been suspicion of police involvement in the killings for years, CNN said. Tammy Papler, the massage parlor's madam, made the accusation openly at a 1997 city council meeting.
Bob Combs, the first police officers on the scene, said he was suspicious of Duncan. He said Duncan became the detective in charge.
"Duncan ran in there and messed up the scene. The phone was off the hook when I arrived, but then after Duncan was in there, the phone was back on the receiver," Combs, who went on to sit on the city council and is no longer a police officer, said. "No one had ever asked me -- the first officer on the scene -- anything about this case. No one ever asked me anything until the state police took over -- years after it happened."
