Pubdate: Fri, 31 Jan 2003 Source: Lexington Herald-Leader (KY) Copyright: 2003 Lexington Herald-Leader Contact: http://www.kentucky.com/mld/heraldleader/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/240 Author: Lee Mueller and Charles B. Camp SUSPECT CLINIC FUELED A LAVISH LIFESTYLE ASHLAND - Dr. David H. Procter stood still as a bird outside the federal courthouse here one day last July -- until someone pointed a television camera at him. Blinking once behind his wire-rimmed glasses, he suddenly turned on the heels of his square-toed shoes and fled directly into the traffic on four-lane Greenup Avenue. "He was escaping you," his lawyer, Tracy Hoover, told reporters. Moments earlier, Procter had pleaded not guilty to criminal drug charges. Of all the physicians linked to the plague of prescription-pill abuse in this region, Procter is alternately the most visible -- and the most elusive. Some South Shore residents say he's a fine doctor they'd gladly see again if he extracts himself from his legal problems and retrieves his license. But law-enforcement officials claim Procter's clinic supplied drugs to a legion of Eastern Kentucky and southern Ohio abusers, and effectively served as a launching pad for other doctors who went on to start similar practices. In response to a federal indictment last summer, he denied writing illegal prescriptions and claimed someone else in his office hired the doctors, some of whom he said he never met. Procter's penchant for fine living has long made him conspicuous in an area where the annual income averages $27,000. He was clearing more than $200,000 a year by the late 1980s, according to old bankruptcy records. By 1997, his clinic was generating as much as $450,000 a year before expenses. He built a $750,000 house with a swimming pool and maid's quarters on a gated estate. He bought Victorian furniture, Chinese rugs, African art and an $1,800 pair of 7-foot-tall bronze storks, according to bankruptcy records. He owned a Mercedes, a motorcycle, a black Porsche 930 and a classic red Corvette. Procter and two former employees indicted with him face trial April 23. Procter arrived in South Shore at age 26, wearing an Afro-style haircut and fresh from a one-year internship in Nova Scotia, Canada. After working briefly for a well-known local doctor, he soon opened his own office beside a used-car lot along U.S. 23. By the early 1990s, an estimated 4,000 to 5,000 patients from the region were trekking to little South Shore to see Procter. Then things began to sour. Citing tax problems and losses on $1.2 million of rental properties, Procter and his wife, Karen, filed for bankruptcy protection in 1992. They listed nearly $1.6 million in debts and $1.4 million in assets. Then, in 1993, Procter was acquitted of threatening a youngster in a local schoolyard at gunpoint over a T-shirt that Procter said belonged to one of his boys. He later settled a civil suit with the youngster's family. Procter denied that he ever threatened the schoolboy with a gun. But twice in court papers he volunteered that shortly before the incident, he borrowed and returned a .357-caliber Magnum state-issued pistol from Keith Cooper, a state trooper at the time who is now Greenup County sheriff. Cooper claims ownership of about 100 guns. He did not recall lending one of them to Procter. "If (Procter) gets in trouble, he tells everybody, 'I'm so-and-so's friend,'" said Cooper, who enjoys a solid reputation among local lawmen. Procter also sold Cooper a house in 1985 on a land contract for $52,000 -- $4,000 less than Procter had paid for it in 1979. Cooper resold it for $66,000 in 1993. The link between the two is a political issue to some. "People had a lot of concerns," said Sgt. Kevin Diedrich, a Flatwoods policeman whom Cooper beat in the primary election for sheriff last year. Cooper dismissed the criticism as warmed-over election rhetoric, claiming he busted more than 80 people coming and going from Procter's clinic. Procter was accused of pressuring some patients into performing sexual acts in the 1990s, according to a complaint prepared in 2000 by the state Board of Medical Licensure to support a license-suspension order. One patient said Procter began counseling her for depression, but then initiated sexual activities and eventually established a pattern of visits that included no counseling -- only sex and prescriptions, according to the complaint. Procter repeatedly denied the sexual-misconduct allegations in fighting the attempt to suspend him. In November 1998, Procter drove off U.S. 23 and hit a utility pole. He said in a warrant that an angry patient knocked him off the road. Procter later changed his story and dropped the charge. Citing injuries from that wreck, he surrendered his medical license in August 2000; he has been collecting $198,000 a year in disability insurance, court records show. Still, he kept the clinic open until last fall, paying as much as $3,250 a week for a series of fill-in doctors. Procter showed up at the clinic occasionally, but claimed he was doing nothing more than emptying trash or opening mail. Last month, Procter changed lawyers, hiring Scott C. Cox of Louisville, a former federal prosecutor, to replace Hoover. Cox wouldn't comment on the charges against Procter. Before he was replaced, Hoover had argued that Procter was being made a scapegoat for government agencies that have failed to prevent trafficking in prescription drugs. "It will be a trial about drugs, sex and money," Hoover said. "He's the one they're going to hang out there." Until the day it closed last August, Procter's clinic had a large sign inside the door declaring that office visits cost $80 to $120. The last physician to work in the clinic, Dr. Steven Preston, 33, of Carlisle, Pa., said he arrived knowing the clinic's history, but Preston said Procter told him to operate a family practice, offering pediatric care. Unfortunately, "about 100 percent" of the patients he inherited were pain patients, Preston said. When he prescribed anti-inflammation medication instead of pain pills, many did not return, he said. - --- MAP posted-by: Josh