Eighteen-year-old Gloria Ross was a mother to a young child and was close with her coworker, 22-year-old Candy Belt. The two women worked together at the New Life Massage Parlor in Oak Grove, Kentucky, a small town on the border with Tennessee, adjacent to the Fort Campbell army base. On the night of September 19, 1994, Gloria and Candy were on duty with two other women. A coworker later recalled it was a slow night, and the women spent time talking and bonding, describing it as feeling like a "girls' night."
In the early morning hours of September 20, 1994, a coworker and her friend returned to the parlor around 3:35 a.m. to find the front door blocked from the inside. When they managed to push their way in, they found an ashtray knocked over and the phone off the hook. Gloria and Candy were missing from the lobby. The women searched the building and discovered a horrific scene in a dark back room. Gloria Ross was found nude on a massage table, her hands folded on her chest. She had been shot in the head and her throat was slashed. Nearby, Candy Belt lay on the floor under a camouflage blanket, also shot in the head with her throat cut. She was still alive, but the gurgling sounds from her throat were her last attempts to breathe. The coworkers fled to the Fort Campbell gate across the street for help.
The New Life Massage Parlor was known to operate as a brothel, and its owner, Tammy Papler, later alleged that she had arrangements with local police officers to stay in business. She claimed she provided them with money and services in exchange for protection. Papler stated that one officer, Ed Carter, had been on her payroll as a janitor but had become controlling, and she had recently barred him from the establishment. Coworkers reported that Carter had entered the parlor around 2 a.m. on the morning of the murders, used the phone without making a call, and then left. This was just over an hour before Gloria and Candy were found.
The initial investigation was handled by the Oak Grove Police Department and the Christian County Sheriff's Office. Suspicion fell on Carter, who told investigators he was home with his wife by 3 a.m. His then-wife, however, later stated he did not arrive home until a few minutes after 4 a.m. She also told police that a small-caliber gun he kept under their mattress was missing that night. Carter resigned from the police force after taking a polygraph test. Despite the suspicions and allegations of police corruption, which were later echoed by a former city councilwoman who admitted to having worked at the parlor, the case went cold for nearly two decades.
In 2013, a break in the case led to a grand jury indictment. Former Oak Grove police officer Ed Carter and another man, Frank Black Jr., were charged with two counts of murder. A former police detective, Leslie Duncan, was charged with complicity to murder, after earlier pleading guilty to evidence tampering in the case. The trial finally took place in September 2016, almost exactly 22 years after Gloria and Candy were killed.
The prosecution argued that Carter and Black committed the murders and that Duncan helped cover it up. However, the defense maintained their clients' innocence. A key element at trial was DNA evidence collected from the scene. The DNA did not match Carter, Black, or Duncan. After a trial, the jury acquitted all three men of the charges. The brutal murders of Gloria Ross and Candy Belt remain officially unsolved. As of the latest reports, no new suspects have been named, and no further arrests have been made, leaving a case marked by violence and deep-rooted allegations of corruption without a final answer.
