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.