Big Secrets Erupt in a Small Town

OAK GROVE, Ky. — The wooden shack set back on a bleak stretch of highway outside Ft. Campbell sells Chinese food now. But in the days when off-duty soldiers and locals paraded through its back rooms like carny gawkers, the New Life fitness center was a house of secrets. Most people here had heard the whispers about what went on inside, but no one could have imagined where all those secrets would lead.

The secrets are out now, spreading faster than a barn fire, coursing too quickly for most people in this military-base town of 3,000 to tell the real from the fanciful. At times it seems as if every prominent, red-blooded man in Oak Grove ducked into the New Life Fitness and Massage Parlor for flings with hostesses who went by such racy monickers as "Harley" and "Mercedes."

It was stunning enough when Tammy Papler, the convicted madam who called herself "Mercedes," raged during a Town Council meeting in mid-July that Oak Grove's police and leaders took bribes, botched an unsolved murder case and sought sexual favors at her now-shuttered massage parlor. "This town is crooked," she barked, "and I've got the paperwork to prove it!"

Papler's allegations were quickly disputed by Oak Grove officials. Michael Burman, the city attorney, questioned her reliability and noted her 1994 arrest for promoting prostitution. "Her allegations shift faster than we can keep up with," Burman said.

Then "Harley" came forward to second Papler's allegations--and Oak Grove's somnolent civic affairs took on the frenzied air of a backwoods cockfight. "Harley" turned out to be Patty Belew, 26, a town councilwoman who admitted she had turned tricks for two years at the massage parlor before marrying into one of the community's oldest and largest clans.

Insistent that "the truth has to come out," Belew has lent Papler's corruption charges enough credibility to help spur the FBI and the Kentucky State Police to investigate Oak Grove's government. But Belew fears her "one moment of standing up" could jeopardize her council seat, her job as a mobile home saleswoman and the affection of her family.

"I feel like that lady in 'Harper Valley PTA,' " a weary-eyed Belew said, recalling the 1960s country-song heroine who took on her entire town and won her daughter's admiration by defiantly exposing its pious hypocrites. "I'm just afraid it ain't going to end that way."