Probe targets good ol' boy corruption in Tenn. Smokey Mountains

NEWPORT, Tenn. -- When agents swooped in last year with helicopters and machine guns to bust what was reputedly the nation's largest illegal cockfighting pit, they shined new light on a tradition of good ol' boy vice in aptly named Cocke County.

Moonshine, hookers and drug dealing had for decades been as much a part of the landscape as the foggy haze that settles over this quiet community of 35,000 in the Great Smoky Mountains.

"You could go to Cocke County years ago and you didn't have to look very far to find trouble," District Attorney Al Schmutzer said.

He recalled a $20,000 contract on his head in the late 1970s for breaking up an interstate prostitution ring that served -- then robbed -- customers at a truck stop brothel so brazen it had no fuel pumps.

"The county has come a long way over time," Schmutzer said. "But there are still things to be done."

Last June's cockfighting bust -- which netted 143 arrests, the seizure of $40,000 in cash and capture of 305 fighting roosters -- blew the lid off a four-year federal and state probe that suggested the bad old days were back again, or may have never left.

Agents made a series of barroom sweeps for video-poker machines, prostitution busts and undercover stings.

Five sheriff's officers and two Newport police sergeants are now charged with a variety of offenses. The crimes include money laundering, drug dealing, witness tampering, insurance scams, stealing money from illegal immigrants during a traffic stop and receiving stolen NASCAR merchandise. The accused include the sheriff's nephew, chief deputy Patrick Allen Taylor.

The climax may have come this past week when Sheriff D.C. Ramsey, whose own record includes an overturned conviction for extorting money from DUI suspects three decades ago, said he was quitting because of a heart condition and "all the negative publicity about myself and Cocke County."

A court affidavit was unsealed just days before the sheriff's resignation, and it outlined the extent of the government's probe.

"One aspect ... involves illegal gambling businesses, to include cockfights and gambling machines in bars and payments to local law enforcement officers, to include Cocke County Sheriff D.C. Ramsey and his nephew Chief Deputy Pat Taylor, to further the illegal gambling," the affidavit said.

Ramsey, unlike two previous Cocke County sheriffs, has not been charged with a crime.

Ramsey wrote in his resignation letter, "I think it would be in the best interest of myself and Cocke County, which I dearly love, to step aside now so some good things can be said about our county."

In last year's bust, as many as 700 people from several states wagered as much as $3 million there on a single Saturday night.

Some considered the $400,000 raid overkill. Republican U.S. Rep. Bill Jenkins complained the FBI was wasting resources for fighting terrorism and methamphetamine production "on a thing like cockfighting."